The Emperor Adrian—the skeptic whose epigrammatic address to his soul in prospect of death,
Animula, vagula, blandula,[[42]] &c.,
is well known—asked Rabbi Joshua Ben Hananiah, in the course of an interview following the successful siege of Bitter, “How doth a man revive again in the world to come?” He answered and said, “From Luz, in the back-bone.” Saith he to him, “Demonstrate this to me.” Then he took Luz, a little bone out of the back-bone, and put it in water, and it was not steeped; he put it into the fire, and it was not burned; he brought it to the mill, and that could not grind it; he laid it on the anvil and knocked it with a hammer, but the anvil was cleft, and the hammer broken.
The name Luz is probably derived from Genesis xlviii. 3, where, however, it refers to a place, not to a bone. The bone alluded to is the sacrum, the terminal wedge of the vertebral column. Butler, in his Hudibras, erroneously traces to the Rabbinic belief the modern name os sacrum, its origin really being due to the custom of placing it upon the altar in ancient sacrifices.
The learned Rabbins of the Jews
Write, there’s a bone, which they call Luz
I’ th’ rump of man, of such a virtue
No force in nature can do hurt to;
And therefore at the last great day
All th’ other members shall, they say,