In his speculations the separation of soul from body is total, till their re-union at the day of judgment; and this unquestionably is the christian belief. The fablers of all religions have taken a different view, because at all times and in all countries they have accommodated their fictions to the notions of the people. The grave is with them a place of rest, or of suffering. If Young had been a Jew, a Mahommedan, or a Roman Catholic, he might be understood as speaking literally when he says,
How populous, how vital is the grave.
St. Augustine had been assured by what he considered no light testimony that St. John was not dead, but asleep in his sepulchre, and that the motion of his breast as he breathed might be perceived by a gentle movement of the earth. The words of our Lord after his Resurrection, concerning the beloved disciple, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee,” gave scope to conjecture concerning the fate of this Evangelist, and yet in some degree set bounds to that spirit of lying invention which in process of time annexed as many fables to corrupted Christianity as the Greek and Roman poets had engrafted upon their heathenism, or the Rabbis upon the Jewish faith. “Sinner that I am,” said a French prelate with demure irony, when a head of St. John the Baptist was presented to him to kiss in some Church of which it was the choicest treasure,—“sinner that I am, this is the fourth head of the glorious Baptist that I have had the happiness of holding in these unworthy hands!” But while some half dozen or half score of these heads were produced, because it was certain that the Saint had been beheaded, no relic of St. John the Evangelist's person, nor of the Virgin Mary's, was ever invented. The story of the Assumption precluded any such invention in the one case,—and in St. John's the mysterious uncertainty of his fate had the same effect as this received tradition. The Benedictines of St. Claude's Monastery in the Jura exhibited his own manuscript of the Apocalypse,—(the most learned of that order in no unlearned age, believed or affected to believe that it was his actual autograph,)—and they considered that it was greatly enhanced in value by its being the only relic of that Saint in existence.
The fable which St. Augustine seems to have believed, was either parent or child of the story told under the name of Abdias, that when the Beloved Disciple had attained the postdiluvian age of ninety seven, our Lord appeared to him, said unto him, “come unto me, that thou mayest partake at my feast with thy brethren,” and fixed the next Sunday, being Easter, for his removal from this world. On that Sunday accordingly, the Evangelist after having performed service in his own temple at Ephesus, and exhorted the people, told some of his chosen disciples to take with them two mattocks and spade, and accompany him therewith. They went to a place near the city, where he had been accustomed to pray, there he bade them dig a grave, and when they would have ceased from the work, he bade them dig it still deeper. Then taking off all his garments except a linen vestment, he spread them in the grave, laid himself down upon them, ordered his disciples to cover him up, and forthwith fell asleep in the Lord. Abdias proceeds no farther with the story; but other ecclesiastic romancers add that the evangelist enjoined them to open the grave on the day following; they did so and found nothing but his garments, for the blessed virgin in recompence for the filial piety which he had manifested towards her in obedience to our Lord's injunctions from the cross, had obtained for him the privilege of an Assumption like her own. Baronius has no objection to believe this, but that St. John actually died is, he says more than certain,—certo certius; and that his grave at Ephesus was proof of it, for certe non nisi mortuorum solent esse sepulchra.
Yet the Cardinal knew that the historian of his Church frequently represented the dead as sentient in their graves. The Jews have some remarkable legends founded upon the same notion. It is written in the book of Zohar, say the Rabbis, how when Abraham had made a covenant with the people of the land, and was about to make a feast for them, a calf which was to be slaughtered on the occasion, broke loose and ran into the cave of Machpelah. Abraham followed, and having entered the cave in pursuit, there he discovered the bodies of Adam and Eve, each on a bed, with lamps burning between them. They were sleeping the sleep of death, and there was a good odour around them, like the odour of repose. In consequence of having made this discovery it was that he desired to purchase the cave for his own burial place; and when the sons of Jebus refused to sell it, he fell upon his knees, and bowed himself before them, till they were entreated. When he came to deposit the body of Sarah there, Adam and Eve rose up, and refused their consent. The reason which they gave for this unexpected prohibition was, that they were already in a state of reproach before the Lord, because of their transgression, and a farther reproach would be brought upon them by a comparison with his good deeds, if they allowed such company to be introduced into their resting place. But Abraham took upon himself to answer for that; upon this they were satisfied with his assurances, and composed themselves again to their long sleep.
The Rabbis may be left to contend for the authority of the book of Zohar in this particular against the story of the Cabalists that Adam's bones were taken into the Ark, and divided afterwards by Noah among his sons. The skull fell to Shem's portion; he burnt it on the mountain which for that reason obtained the name of Golgotha, or Calvary,—being interpreted, the place of a skull, and on that spot, for mystical signification the cross whereon our Saviour suffered was erected;—a wild legend, on which as wild a fiction has been grafted, that a branch from the Tree of Life had been planted on Adam's grave, and from the wood which that branch had produced the cross was made.
And against either of these the authority of Rabbi Judas Bar Simon is to be opposed, for he affirms that the dust of Adam was washed away by the Deluge, and utterly dispersed.
The Rabbis have also to establish the credit of their own tradition against that of the Arabs who at this time shew Eve's grave near Jeddah;—about three days journey east from that place, according to Bruce. He says, it is covered with green sods, and about fifty yards in length. The Cashmerian traveller Abdulkurreem who visited it in 1742, says that it measured an hundred and ninety-seven of his footsteps, which would make the mother of mankind much taller than Bruce's measurement. He likens it to a flower-bed; on the middle of the grave there was then a small dome, and the ends of it were enclosed with wooden pales. Burckhardt did not visit it; he was told that it was about two miles only, northward of the town, and that it was a rude structure of stone, some four feet in length, two or three in height and as many in breadth, thus resembling the tomb of Noah, which is shewn in the valley of Bekaa, in Syria. Thus widely do these modern travellers, on any one of whom reasonable reliance might have been placed, differ in the account of the same thing.