The Revisers have used this word in its ordinary current sense of ' an immaterial appearance, as of a real being, a spectre, phantom, or ghost.' There is always connected with this term the idea of a startling or unexpected appearance, which seems also associated with the original ^duTaa-fia. The immaterial appearance of a person supposed to be seen before {double) or soon after death {ghost), is a wraith ; but these three synonyms are often inter- changed.
The Jews of Christ's time, like all unscientific minds (ancient and modern), believed in ghosts naturally, instinctively, uncritically. Dr. Swete {The Gospel according to St. Mark, London, 1898, p. 131) refers to Job 4'=t- 208, and especially to Wis 173(4) and 17" C^) for earlier evidence of a popular belief in apparitions among the Hebrew peojile. The disciples' sudden shriek of terror {dp^Kpaiav, Mk 6'') shows that they thought the phantom was real ; but if we try to realize their attitude and outlook, we shall understand the futility of attributing to such naive intelligences the discrimination of modern p.sychological research. The suggestions of excitable imaginations were indistinguishable from the actual presentations of objective reality. The best illustrations of their habits of thought
Egyptians did not consider man as a sunpie individuality ; he consisted of at least three parts, the body, the soul, and the ghost, the image, the double, or the genius, according as we translate the Egyptian word Ka. . . . After the death of a man, just as during his lifetime, the Ka was still considered to be the representative of his human personality, and so the body had to be preserved that the Ka might take possession of it when he pleased. ... It is to their faith in the " ' "' knowledge of the home life of the
people of ancient Egypt.'
E. J. W. Gibb (History of Ottoman Poetry. London, 1900, pp. 56-59) says that 'according to the Sufl theory of the human soul it is a spirit, and therefore, by virtue of its own nature, in reality a citizen of the Spirit World. Its true home is there, and hence, for a certain season, it descends into this Physical Plane, where, to enable it to act upon its surroundings, it is clothed in a physical body. . . . The power of passing from the Physical World into the Spiritual is potential in every soul, but is actualized only in a few.'
For the mediisval conception of the nature of ghosts see the locus classicus — Dante, Purg. xxv. 88-108 — in which Dante ex- plains his conception of the disembodied soul as having the power of operating on matter and impressing upon the surround- ing air the shape which it animated m life (Aquinas), thus form, ing for itself an aerial vesture (Origen and St. Augustine). See also Dante, Conv. tr. ii. c. 9, and Thomas Aquinas, Siimma TheoL pt. iii. suppl. qu. Ixix, art. 1.
Keim {Jesus of Nazara, London, 1879, iv. 184- 191) critically reviews the various explanations offered of the miracle of Jesus walking over the billows, but says nothing of the word (pavraaiia.
112
APPEAKANCE
APPRECIATION
merely remarking (p. 190) : ' If we adhere to tlie actual narrative, the going on tlie water was far from being an act of an ordinary character — it was something divine or ghostly.' For the latest criti- cism of the popular belief of NT times in the manifestations of tlie spirit world, see P. Wernle, Beginnings of Christiatiity, London, 1903, pp. 1-11. P. Henderson Aitken. APPEARANCE. See Christ in Art, and Por-
APPEARANCES.— See Resurrection.
APPRECIATION (of Christ).— The whole NT is one long appreciation of Christ. It is no blind- fold acceptance of Him, no mere echo of a tradition, but a series of utterances of men personally con- vinced of the supreme value of Christ to the world. St. Paul speaks of Christ only as he himself has been influenced by the Lord, not a<; tlie disciples had described Jesus to him. Hi- pin ii- —high, beautiful, and so often mysti. al - ai.' ili' direct expressions of his own perMnial i (■ii-cinu-ness of Jesus Christ. No one has :u( u-id him of e.\tra- vagance or of e.xaggeratiuii. It is because he has felt that to be clothed with the Lend must he the perfection of power and joy, that he says, ' Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ' (Ko 13"). It is because he has seen the love eternal that nothing imagin- able can utterly root out again from the awakened lieart, that be says, ' Neither death, nor life, . . . nor any other creation, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord ' ( Ro 8»"- ). And St. John opens his first Epistle with the strongest personal declaration of the whole of the Epistles, ' that which we have heard, . . . seen with our eyes, . . . and our hands have handled of the word of life . . . declare we unto you'(lJnl').
But the simplest appreciation of all — as natural as a bird's song or a child's praise— is that which threads its way through every page of the Gospels. Inspite of all the enmity written there ; remembering that tliere were those who saw in Him an ally of Beelzebub (Mt 12-'<), working with the de\ ils aid ; that some called Him 'a gluttonous man, a wine- bibber, friend of publicans and sinners' (11'"); that lawyers, and Pharisees, and Sadducees were ever watching to trip Him (•2"2''), and plottin" with Herodians (v.'*) to destroy Him ; that the Galikean cities, which should have known Him best, — Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum (II-'' ^), and even Nazareth, — rejected Him (Lk 4^'-) ; and remem- bering the awful and lonely agonies of the last hours, we can yet point to the Gospels as abounding with witness to the wide contemporary apprecia- tion of Christ.