[[368]] Ibid. tom. vii. 226.
CHAPTER XLIII.
OPINIONS OF THE JEWS, GREEKS, AND LATINS CONCERNING THE DEAD WHO ARE LEFT UNBURIED.
The ancient Hebrews, as well as the greater number of other nations, were very careful in burying their dead. That appears from all history; we see in the Scripture how much attention the patriarchs paid in that respect to themselves and those belonging to them; we know what praises are bestowed on the holy man Tobit, whose principal devotion consisted in giving sepulture to the dead.
Josephus the historian[[369]] says that the Jews refused burial only to those who committed suicide. Moses commanded them[[370]] to give sepulture the same day and before sunset to any who were executed and hanged on a tree; "because," says he, "he who is hung upon the tree is accursed of God; you will take care not to pollute the land which the Lord your God has given you." That was practiced in regard to our Saviour, who was taken down from the cross the same day that he had been crucified, and a few hours after his death.
Homer,[[371]] speaking of the inhumanity of Achilles, who dragged the body of Hector after his car, says that he dishonored and outraged the earth by this barbarous conduct. The Rabbis write that the soul is not received into heaven until the gross body is interred, and entirely consumed. They believe, moreover, that after death the souls of the wicked are clothed with a kind of covering with which they accustom themselves to suffer the torments which are their due; and that the souls of the just are invested with a resplendent body and a luminous garment, with which they accustom themselves to the glory which awaits them.
Origen[[372]] acknowledges that Plato, in his Dialogue of the Soul, advances that the images and shades of the dead appeared sometimes near their tombs. Origen concludes from that, that those shades and those images must be produced by some cause; and that cause, according to him, can only be that the soul of the dead is invested with a subtile body like that of light, on which they are borne as in a car, where they appear to the living. Celsus maintained that the apparitions of Jesus Christ after his resurrection were only the effects of an imagination smitten and prepossessed, which formed to itself the object of its illusions according to its wishes. Origen refutes this solidly by the recital of the evangelists, of the appearance of our Saviour to Thomas, who would not believe it was truly our Saviour until he had seen and touched his wounds; it was not, then, purely the effect of his imagination.
The same Origen,[[373]] and Theophylact after him, assert that the Jews and pagans believe that the soul remained for some time near the body it had formerly animated; and that it is to destroy that futile opinion that Jesus Christ, when he would resuscitate Lazarus, cries with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth;" as if he would call from a distance the soul of this man who had been dead three days.