of these cases; and the incidents of the story follow one another so rapidly, that we cannot suppose they took time to go and bring one; and as such a scene was not expected, we have no reason to conclude they had one in readiness. This simple method of conveying a dead body to the grave, was familiar to the most ancient Greeks; for when Patroclus was carried forth by the myrmidons, Achilles went behind to support his head : Οπιθεν δε καρη είχε διος Αχιλλευς. Il. lib. xxiii, 1. 136,t The Israelites committed the dead to their native dust; and from the Egyptians, probably borrowed the practice of burning many spices at their funerals. "They buried Asa in his own sepulchres, which he made for himself in the city of David, and laid him in the bed which was filled with sweet odours, and divers kinds of spices, prepared by the apothecaries' art; and they made a very great burning for him."" The Old Testament historian entirely justifies the account which the Evangelist gives, of the quantity of spices with which the sacred body of Christ was swathed. The Jews object to the quantity used on that occasion, as unnecessarily profuse, and even incredible; but it appears from their own writings, that spices were used at such times in great abundance. In the Talmud, it is said, that no less than eighty pounds of spices were consumed at the funeral of Rabbi Gamaliel the elder. And at the funeral of Herod, if we may believe the account of their most celebrated historian, the procession was followed by five hundred of his domestics carrying spices.▾ Why then should it be reckoned incredible, that Nicodemus brought of myrrh and aloes * Potter's Gr. Antiq. vol. ii, p. 189, 190, 192. #2 Chron. xvi, 14. Josephus' Antiq. book xvii, ch. viii, sec. 3. about an hundred pounds weight, to embalm the body of Jesus? Nothing, in the estimation of the ancients, could compensate for the want of burial; and to be deprived of a grave they reckoned one of the greatest calamities by which they could be overtaken, In Greece, a person guilty of suffering even the dead body of a stranger, found in the field, or on the shore, to remain unburied, was not permitted to converse with men, nor appear in the temples; but was considered as profane and polluted, the just object of divine vengeance, and human detestation.* A Roman general was held by his fellow-citizens in utter abhorrence, because he had left the bones of his soldiers without the rites of burial on the field of battle. The strong prepossessions of the heathen exerted no influence on the mind of God's ancient people: Instructed by the word of revelation, they well knew that the state of the lifeless body can neither facilitate nor retard the return of the spirit to God who gave it; but they justly thought it belonged to the decencies of life, and was even allied to humanity, to hide in the tomb a frame, which like their own was lately the habitation of a reasonable soul. These natural feelings give a peculiar emphasis to the words of the prophet: "His dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost ; and to the complaint of the Psalmist, "Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth." Mr. Bruce relates a circumstance which shews that these words, in whatever way they are to be understood, might be literally verified: In prosecuting his journey towards the capital of Abyssinia, he arrived, * Jer. xxxvi, 30. * Potter's Gr. Antiq. vol. ii, p. 162. with his attendants, at the village of Garigana, whose inhabitants had all perished with hunger the year before: their wretched bones being all unburied and scattered upon the surface of the ground where the village formerly stood. They encamped among the bones of the dead; no space could be found free from them. To persons, however little civilized, and particularly to the Jews, who trembled at the idea of their bones being scattered about in the open field, such a spectacle must have been very revolting, and have filled the mind with many painful reflections. Nearly connected with this desire is another equally strong and general, of reposing in the sepulchres of our fathers. To be buried in a foreign land, the Greeks looked upon as a very great misfortune, not much inferior to the loss of life. Thus Electra, in Sophocles, having preserved Orestes from Clytemnestra, by sending him into a foreign country, and many years after, hearing he had ended his days there, wishes he had rather perished at first, than after so many years continuance of life, have died from home, and been deprived of the last offices of his friends. This sentiment is admirably expressed in the epitaph of Leonidas the Tarentine, quoted by Potter: Πολλον απ' Ιταλίης κειμαι χθονος εκτε Ταραντος "Far from the land of Italy I lie, and from Tarentum, my native soil, which is more grievous to me than death itself." This is the reason that the bodies of those who died in foreign countries were often brought home, by the kindness of their surviving relations, and interred with great solemnity in the sepulchres of their fathers. Thus Theseus was removed from Scyrus to Athens; Orestes from Tegea, and his son Tisamenus from Helice to Sparta; and Aristomenes from Rhodes to Messene. The desire of Jacob to be buried in his native land, was partly the natural feeling of the human breast, and partly the effect of religious principle; the unequivocal expression of his faith and hope, that the promise of Jehovah to bestow the land of Canaan upon his posterity, for an inheritance, should in due time be faithfully performed. The solemnity and earnestness of the charge which the dying patriarch gave with his latest breath, to his attending sons, shews how deeply he felt on that point: "And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people; bury me with my fathers in the cave, that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite; in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre; in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite, for a possession of a burying-place. The funeral procession was attended by professional mourners, eminently skilled in the art of lamentation, whom the friends and relations of the deceased hired, to assist them in expressing their sorrow. They began the ceremony with the stridulous voices of old women, who strove, by their doleful modulations, to extort grief from those that were present. The children in the streets through which they passed, often suspended their sports, to imitate the sounds, and joined with equal sincerity in the lamentations. "But whereunto shall I liken this gene Potter's Gr. Antiq. vol. ii, p. 163. See also Odyssey, lib. xi, 1. 57–78; where the ghost of Elpenor conjures Ulysses, by every tender and every awful consideration, to commit his ashes to the grave in due form, and raise over them a mound on the shore of the foaming ocean, and fix the oar with which he rowed upon the summit. 2 Gen. xlix, 29, 30. ration; it is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, We have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented."a Music was afterwards introduced to aid the voices of the mourners: the trumpet was used at the funerals of the great, and the small pipe or flute for those of meaner condition. Hired mourners were in use among the Greeks as early as the Trojan war, and probably in ages long before; for in Homer, a choir of mourners were planted around the couch on which the body of Hector was laid out, who sung his funeral dirge with many sighs and tears: τον μεν επειτα Τρήτοις εν λεχέεσσι θεσαν, παρα δέισαν αοιδες, gc. Il. lib. xxiv, 1. 720. "A melancholy choir attend around, With plaintive sighs and music's solemn sound; Alternately they sing, alternate flow The obedient tears, melodious in their woe." Pope. In Egypt, the lower class of people call in women, who play on the tabor; and, whose business it is, like the hired mourners in other countries, to sing elegiac airs to the sound of that instrument, which they accompany with the most frightful distortions of their limbs. These women attend the corpse to the grave, intermixed with the female relations and friends of the deceased, who commonly have their hair in the utmost disorder; their heads covered with dust; their faces daubed with indigo, or at least rubbed with mud, and howling like maniacs. Such were the ministrels whom our Lord found in the house of Jairus, making so great a noise round the bed on which the dead body of his daughter lay. The noise and tu a Matt. xi, 17. Potter's Grecian Antiq. vol. ii, p. 195, 205. Adam's Rom. Antiq. p. 476–478. |
