or possibly of any rich man, was accompanied by the burning of much costly incense, as its traditional mark of honour,' so that to burn anyone came to be the standing phrase for honouring him in this way. But the burning of the corpse itself was deemed (as will be shown below in connection with the modes of punishment) an aggravation of the penalty of death. Embalming, however, and preserving the bodies of the dead, which can be explained only out of the Egyptian religious belief about death, was indeed introduced during the temporary sojourn of the people in Egypt, but from the time of Moses it was completely abandoned as a custom essentially connected with a false religion. 3 As the law further decreed that anyone who touched a human bone or a grave must submit to this onerous purification, it became customary to make arrangements for burial in places as far removed as possible from human habitations or from temples, and by preference on high ground and in deep caverns in the rock, and in addition even to strew them over with lime, and thereby make the ground safe again to tread upon. What a complete contrast this presents to the custom of building Christian churches exactly over graves and round about the 176 scenes of martyrdom! When, later on, certain kings began to erect tombs for themselves within the temple of Solomon the act is expressly censured." The possessions of an enemy when taken as booty had the same contaminating effect as dead bodies. All which were not fireproof were merely to be washed, but whatever could be purified by fire, such as metals and the like, had to be cleansed in the fire, and then purified with the water of pollution.7 This stringent treatment is explained by the profound horror which Israel felt towards all heathen goods, which expressed itself most strongly in the ban described already, and about which there will be more to say below. -But just as, according to this ancient feeling, there existed things too unclean or too unholy for man to be allowed to touch, so also were there things which, from the same cause, were too holy to be touched without the contact being immediately penal. The two feelings are in mutual correspondence; and the more imminent seemed the possibility of the Holy Presence vanishing again from the world, the more anxiously, nay, the more recklessly, did the endeavour to keep guard over it assume its different forms. Jahveism, toɔ, thought it possessed objects so sacred that their mere contact with improper hands must necessarily be punished by nothing less than the ban.' As accordingly, the highest sacrifice was deemed most holy 2 (i.e. a sacrament) anyone who touched its flesh when it was already consecrated, was forfeited to the Sanctuary itself, i.e. came under the ban; whilst any of its blood which might have been accidentally spattered on the dress must be scrupulously washed out at a sacred place. Similar rites will have to be explained below 177 under the Priesthood. But all this gave rise to further scruples of the strangest kind, and it was one of the Messianic hopes that all such painful fetters would finally disappear.5 c. Material Impurities in Human Beings, and elsewhere. In the last place it was the ancient belief that certain substances in living human beings rendered them unclean. This arose in part from a natural dread of mysterious, enervating, or shameful issues from the body, which sometimes of themselves remind humanity strongly and suddenly enough of its helplessness, and chain the sufferers to their homes. In part it was at the same time due to the bitterest experience of infection, and the propagation of appearances on the human body, which, being incomprehensible, were the object of special dread to remote Antiquity. The law here only regulated more carefully 1 P. 75 899. 2 P. 108. 3 Lev. vi. 20 [27]; comp. Lucian, De Dea Syra, liii. sq. When, later, the Rabbis, according to the Mischna Jadajîm iii. 5, passed a law that the holy Scriptures made the hands unclean (so that anyone who touched them, or anything in contact with them, must wash their Comp. also the Can. Apostol. lxv. 5 BK. Zach. xiv. 20 sq., comp. xiii. 1. If anyone would see how many utterly trivial laws of purification were ultimately derived from the few that occur in the Old Testament by the schools of the Pharisees, and with what strictness they were to be observed, he should read the אהלות כלים דמאי .hands), its source is to be found in the long articles M same feeling. Among the Peruvians even every article of clothing or vessel which had belonged to the king had to be burned, as too sacred for another, as soon as he ceased to use it. Prescott, i. s. 347. , and others, but also compare with them such passages as Mark vii. sq., which clearly show that these laws were not even confined to the Talmud. 178 a force which had long been operative in vague feelings and impulses, but it gives us a vivid illustration of the extraordinary striving to keep the sacred community perfectly clean and pure, which was peculiar to Jahveism, and of its unparalleled scrupulousness in avoiding everything which would destroy this, or in stamping out again whatever had actually made its appearance. The details are as follows: 1. Seminal issue, whether in the usual case of the copulation of the two sexes, or in the unusual case during the sleep of the man, caused the above-mentioned uncleanness of the first grade; at the same time, any clothes or skin that was stained with it had to be washed.1 2. The monthly period of the woman brought with it the second grade of uncleanness, which lasted the space of seven days, but without rendering necessary the use of specially prepared water. Everything on which the woman sat or lay during this time, and every one who touched such things or her, incurred the uncleanness of the first grade, but the man who slept with her during this period had to suffer the same more onerous uncleanness for seven days." The similarity to the latter case3 was of itself enough to cause every mother to be unclean for seven days after the birth of her child; on the eighth day a son would be circumcised, in which solemnity she would participate quietly at home; but after this week she had still to remain for thirty-three days longer in the house, without touching anything sacred or going to the Sanctuary. If it was a female child the seven days were extended to fourteen, and the thirty-three to sixty-six, manifestly in accordance with the ancient belief that a female child causes the mother more labour and a longer illness. This belief (even though it may have little ground in fact) was itself caused by the well-known primitive disfavour with which the birth of a girl was regarded; and like every ancient custom in this par 1 P. 150.-Lev. xv. 16-18, comp. Deut. xxiii. 11 [10] sq.; and as historical examples, 1 Sam. xx. 26, xxi. 5 [4] sq., 2 Sam. xi. 4. Comp. Jamblichus Vita Pyth. xi. (lv.), and similar instances among the Babylonians, Arabs and others. Herod. i. 198 Shahrastâni's Elmilal, p. 443. 11.Josephus quotes an example of it, remarkable on account of its consequences, Antiq. xvii. 6. 4. 2 See Lev. xv. 19-24, and the corresponding historical incident, Gen. xxxi. 35, with the allusions to it, Is. xxx. 22, lxiv. 5 [6]. This is how the Book of Origins legally determines it; but according to the words in Lev. xviii. 19, xx. 18, the oldest law assigns the penalty of death to this breach of purity, probably meaning in cases where it was becoming a regular practice. Nevertheless, we find complaints of contempt of these as well as of other similar enactments in Ezek. xviii. 6, xxii. 9–11. 3 It was even similar with the λoxeîa of the Greeks, Thucyd. Hist. iii. 104. Eurip. Iphigen, in Tauris, ver. 384; still more so among the Zarathustrians, see Vendîdâd, xvi. ticular sphere, it was able to persist for a very considerable time, although under Jahveism the disfavour gradually declined.' -When the one or the other period had elapsed, and when therefore the bodily purity could be restored, the mother had to bring an offering of purification which was of a similar kind to those that belonged to the other still more stringent purifications which will be next described. After deliverance from 179 so trying a bodily evil, it seemed too little to bring a single expiatory-offering, at least a whole-offering seemed due to Jahveh from one who was again to be received into partnership in all the good things of life. So what was required was a oneyear-old lamb as a whole-offering and a pigeon as an expiatoryoffering, or if poverty interfered with this arrangement, at any rate the latter was to be supplemented by a second pigeon as a whole-offering. Not till all this was over did the priest officially pronounce the mother's restoration to purity. 3. What the nation found most intolerable were the extraordinary tedious appearances on the human body which told of dire internal disorder. Two such kinds have prominence given to them, undoubtedly only because they were then the most frequent. In the first place there was the issue from the sexual organs, to which both men and women were liable, which might also cease without being healed, and then only grow worse again. Everyone who touched such a patient, or whom he touched with unwashed hands, as well as all utensils of which he made any use, became unclean in the milder sense, even his spittle defiled anyone who was clean. If he was cured, he might, when seven days had elapsed, be purified in body, and on the eighth day had to offer a couple of pigeons. That this was, at that time, a formidable disorder is plain, and we can have equally little doubt that it bore the greatest resemblance to gonorrhoea prevalent in Europe among males, and the fluor albus among females. The whole description would make it seem that it was not infectious.3 2 The other, and still far more fearful disease, was leprosy, the stroke of God,' as it was universally termed, an evil which suddenly produces small white spots, especially on the counte That the law in Lev. xii. really presupposes a longer weakness of the mother in the case of the birth of a girl, follows from the word, ver. 5, comp. the corresponding, only more definite, words in ver. 2. With this was long ago compared what Hippocrates says just at the beginning of the fifth chapter of the De Nat. Pueri. 2 Lev. xv. 1-15, 25-30. Perhaps we have an historical example of the illness with women in Mark v. 25-34, where it is true no allusion is made to uncleanness. 180 nance, but which is so wearisome and so hideous, that the ancient belief held that it always came as a curse ordained by God on him who felt its sudden stroke,' as though God had so marked him, as an enraged father might spit in the face of his child.2 The cure of it, too, was regarded as requiring extraordinary skill. This evil was very common in Israel during the latter years of its stay in Egypt,3 and appears to have grown rarer during the new elevation under Moses, so that it was related of the great national leader that he had removed it by his intercession, and that he could draw his hand out of his bosom either in a leprous state or not, just as he, or rather as his God, willed. It lasted, however, among the people, long after his days down into the latest times. The law, therefore, strictly commanded the priest to examine most carefully and repeatedly every one who was even suspected of leprosy, and to pronounce him unclean if the evil really did show itself on him. On account of the danger of infection, such a person, with clothes rent for mourning, and bare head, concealing his chin with his hand, and proclaiming aloud his own uncleanness, must withdraw from all society and only settle down in some utterly lonely spot, where at most he would have the company of those who were suffering the same affliction. Should his cure be effected, a most solemn, and, at the same time, most cautious reception back into society was prescribed. When the priest was satisfied that the cure was thorough, the simple cessation of the evil was first celebrated. The convalescent appeared with two clean birds, one of which was slain in an earthen vessel over fresh water; the other, still living, along with cedar-wood, threads of scarlet cloth, and hyssop, was then baptised in its blood,' and after the blood had been seven times 181 sprinkled towards the person who was to be purified, the bird was allowed to fly away free, as though it were itself to bear away into the wide world all the impurity which was now unattached. 1 Comp. 2 Chron. xxvi. 19. 2 According to Num. xii. 14. P. 151. 6 Comp. what is said of this imagery 3 Hist. ii. 80 sq. Berlin Akad. MB. under the day of atonement. Similar and stronger symbolical language is not rare either among ancient or modern nations; eg. in Bali at the present time, when the Sati spring into the fire, a dove is let loose from their heads as an image of their pure soul soaring to heaven (see Ausland, 1852, s. 40); just as formerly, according to Herodian, Hist. bk. iv., 2. 22, an eagle (the spirit, the soul) was allowed to fly to heaven from burning funeral piles. For the rest comp. Knudsen's Gross-Namaqualand (Barmen, 1848), |