(j) There are special purposes for which the sacred dance was performed as a mourning or a burial rite. At times these are of a curiously contradictory character. The ghosts of the dead number among them those who are kindly disposed towards the living, and those who are malevolent in their attitude towards them; the latter are supposed to be able to do harm. Speaking quite generally, it appears, upon the whole, that the less advanced the cultural stage the greater the tendency to regard the spirits of the departed as malevolent. Since the various races from which illustrations of the sacred dance as a mourning rite are gathered were, or are (as the case may be), in different stages of civilization, it follows that the purposes of the rite vary; for the belief regarding the attitude of the dead towards the living has a good deal to do with the purpose for which the sacred dance was performed. Thus we find that it sometimes has the object of driving away the ghost of the departed; or else there will be a dance on the grave for the purpose of preventing the ghost from roaming. At other times it is the means of scaring away evil spirits who are believed to congregate in the vicinity of a corpse. Very strange, but interesting, is the custom among some races of personating the dead in the sacred dance; this is supposed to be a potent means of bringing him back, and he is believed to join the survivors in the dance; he is present, but invisible, in the man who personates him. This reminds one of the union with a supernatural spirit by imitating him in the dance, to which reference has been made above; the same idea underlies each. But the purpose of the sacred dance as a mourning or burial rite which appears as the most usual is that of honouring the departed. This is doubtless very frequently simply a mark of affection; but at other times it is in the nature of a propitiatory act whereby the spirit of the departed is persuaded to refrain from molesting the living.
Many illustrations of these various purposes of the sacred dance will be offered in the following pages.
CHAPTER III
THE SACRED DANCE AMONG THE ISRAELITES
I
So far as the Old Testament is concerned this subject of the dance in religious ritual illustrates a fact which biblical study, on the comparative basis, is bringing more and more into prominence, and which needs to be recognized both in the interests of truth and in order to realize more fully the evolutionary development of religion as an eternal principle in the divine economy. The original aims and objects of the sacred dance were, as we have seen, “primitive”; the continuance of the rite throughout the ages, even to comparatively recent times among practically all peoples, does not in any way detract from the truth of this, for everyone knows with what persistency religious custom and ritual continues, not only after the original object and meaning has been forgotten, but even when it has no meaning at all. Its existence among the Israelites, therefore, shows them to have been and to have acted throughout their religious history as other races did in this respect (and it is only one of many other illustrations that could be given), in spite of what we rightly believe to have been special opportunities for more exalted forms of worship.
It must be confessed that the religious uniqueness of the Israelites, as a nation, has been, and often still is, exaggerated to an undue extent. Certainly there were among them those who may well be described as unique, sui generis; but they were the great exceptions. The nation as a whole was for many centuries no better and no worse than others; and what stronger evidence for this could be afforded than that given in the prophetical books of the Old Testament? Its ultimate emergence from the religious norm of the world to a position of isolated superiority was due to a mere handful of men who offered the greatest example that the world had hitherto seen of what could be accomplished by subordinating will and personality to the influence and guidance of the Divine Creator.
True, it was among some of these very prophets that the most interesting kind of sacred dance—the ecstatic dance—was in vogue, with its wildness and extravagances; in this they, or at least the earliest of them, did not differ from certain classes of “holy men” all the world over; where they did differ was in their development of the conception which underlay the purpose of the ecstatic dance, i.e. union with the deity; and it is just here that they stand out in such bold relief from all others. The earliest prophets believed that this sacred dance was the means whereby the divine spirit came upon them; this belief they shared with others; but they rose to the higher belief that this means was not necessary for achieving the purpose for which it was used. It had served a useful purpose; but having served its purpose it was dropped. The prophets came to the realization that there were more spiritual means whereby union with the deity was brought about; then the sacred dance found no further place among them. They shed the husk, but retained the kernel. It was the same principle upon which St Paul acted in later days in regard to the Law. The sacred dance, too, was in its way a “school-master” (Gal. iii. 24), leading men to better things. When, centuries later, the far more cultured Greeks were still “raving” in honour of Dionysos, the Hebrew prophets had long since learned that it is God Himself Who puts His spirit upon men (cp. Isa. xlii. 1), and that this is not a thing to be effected by the will or act of man. “Who hath directed the Spirit of Jahwe?” asks one of them in fine irony (Isa. xl. 13).
Thus the history of the ecstatic dance among the Hebrew prophets is one of many illustrations showing their uniqueness.
It is not, however, with these extraordinarily gifted prophets that we are now concerned. We are thinking of the very ordinary and very human Israelites as a whole who, like innumerable men and women of other races, were endowed with emotions and aspirations which were common to humanity. And it is a curious but interesting phenomenon that the sacred dance was among the Israelites, as among all other peoples, one of the means whereby these emotions and aspirations were expressed.