The question, what part of the man goes after death into Sh@6l, cannot be answered from the standpoint of the dichotomy of the OT, which has been already described. For the body is laid in the grave and falls a prey to corruption. The breath of life returns to God, and with its separation from the body the man ceases to be a nephesh or living being. In spite of all this, it is everywhere taken for granted that at death an in- definable somewhat of the personality descends to Sh@ol, and there—not exactly dives on, but—vege- tates on. This can be explained only by assuming that the old conception of Shé’6l had already taken
‘firm root when that view of man’s nature originated
which subsequently became the prevailing one, and which was irreconcilable with this conception. The dichotomous theory plainly belongs to Jah- wism, while the other conception is a relic of pre- Jahwistic or ex-Jahwistic influences, and is nearl
allied to the Greek belief in manes. At a man’s death a kind of image or outline of the whole personality detaches itself from the corpse. It wants blood, and hence it is without real life (which has its seat in the blood), it is invisible,— save when it appears in dreams or is called up by necromanecy,—and it is for ever chained to Shé’ol. It cannot be proved that the condition and appearance of the shades were thought of as exactly the same as those of the man at the moment of death, and that it was on this account that there was such a dread of mutilations of the body. The mention of Samuel’s mantle in 1 § 28"
specially : F. Bottcher, De inferis rebusque post mortem futuris ex Hebreeorum et Greecorum opinionibus, vol. i. {embracing only the Heb. part ; no more appeared], Dresden, 1846 (although in many respects antiquated, still of value as a commentary upon the relevant passages); B. Stade, Uber die alttest. Vor- stellungen vom Zustand nach dem Tode (Leipzig, 1877); A. Bertholet, Die israel. Vorstellungen vom Zustande nach dem Tode (Freiburg, 1899); R. H. Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, in Judaism, and in Christianity: or Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian Eschatology (London, 1899); L. Aubert, art. ‘La vie aprés la mort chez les Israclites’ in Rev. de Théol. et Philos, 1902, p. 140ff. ; G. Beer, art. ‘Der biblische Hades’ in Theol. Abhandlungen zu Ehren H. J, Holtzmanns (Tiibingen, 1902). Of. also the works of Schwally, Frey, Griineisen, Matthes, cited above (p. 6142, note), in speaking of the controversy asto Animism and Ancestor Worship.
* This is undoubtedly the origin of the pretty frequent ex- pression ‘ gathered to his fathers’ (also ‘to his people or to his fellow-tribesmen’) or ‘go to or be laid with his fathers’ (Gn 258 3529 4929. 33, Dt 3250, Jg 210,1 K 210), But the employment of this formula in the case of Abraham, Moses, and Aaron, as well as David, shows that it was used also in a wider sense, namely, of going to Shé’ol. The importance attached to the mingling of one’s bones with those of relations (2 S 2115.) is sufficiently explained by the fact that this seemed the most honourable and at the same time the safest form of obsequies. On the other hand, the denial of sepulture was regarded as a great misfortune (cf. 2 § 2110, Jer 2219, and the frequent threat to give bodies to be eaten by wild beasts and birds). No doubt (as among the Greeks), there was a fear that the spirit of the unburied dead would roam about without rest instead of entering Sh®ol.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
ee
669
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
shows, however, that the shades were thought of in general after the fashion in which their originals had been accustomed to appear on earth. _ According to what is at present the prevail- ing opinion, the old conception of Sheol survived down to the last in the express designation of the shadowy being as nephesh. If so, we should have to assume for this word not only the senses de- scribed above (namely, the spirit of life specialized in a human body, and hence=‘ life,’ and also ‘person’ or ‘living being’), but a third wholly different meaning.* Very strong support appears to be given to this by the circumstance that even in late passages we hear expressly of a going down of the nephesh into Shé’6l or of its sojourn there, or, finally, of its rescue from Shé’6l (Ps 16” 3040) 491605) g6!8 894948), Pr 234; cf. also Ps 941”, where instead of Shé6l we have the poetic dimah, ‘silence’). But in all these passages nephesh may quite well be understood as equivalent to ‘life’ or (as happens frequently elsewhere) simply a cir- cumlocution for the personal pronoun (‘my soul’ being=‘I’ or ‘me’). Thus in Ps 16" the mean- -ing is ‘Thou wilt not give over my life (or me) to Sheol,’ z.e. ‘Thou wilt not suffer me to die.’ Ps 304) must, on Schwally’s theory, mean: ‘Thou causedst the phantom image of my person, which was already in Shé’dl, to come up from it again.’ But the speaker had not actually died, his life only seemed already a prey to Shé’ol, but obtained a timely rescue from it. If the defenders of nephesh méth or the bare nephesh as equivalent to ‘soul of the dead’ should appeal in support of it to the contrasted expression nephesh hayyah, ‘living soul’ (Gn 2? eé al.), they would over- look the fact that nephesh méth or (abbreviated) nephesh in the passages in question stands for neither more nor less than ‘corpse’; and this, by the touching of which uncleanness is occasioned, is surely something quite different from the in- visible phantom image of the living personality which goes straight to Sh@ol. Nephesh méth in the sense of ‘corpse’ is based simply upon the very frequent (cf. e.g. Lv 2! ‘if any one offereth to Jahweh,’ etc., 5? 7!8 etc.) weakening of the mean- ing ‘person’ to the notion of ‘some one’; and nephesh hayyah, ‘living being,’ is not opposed to another form of being of the nephesh, but is a pleonasm intended to lay greater stress upon the main idea (cf. our own expression ‘a living per- sonality,’ which would not suggest to any one the contrast of ‘a dead personality’). An argument against Schwally’s contention lies in the very cir- cumstance that nowhere is the plural of nephesh used for manes, as we should then have certainly expected. From the time of the Exile (probably for the first time in Is 142) they are called réph@im, i.e. probably ‘ flaccid ones,’ but never néphashoth.