2. Among the modern Jews, the late celebrated Jew- ish savant and successor to Renan at the Sorbonne, pro- fessor Munk, regarded as one of the strongest evidences which the O. T. affords for a doctrme of the immortaUty of the sold the expression "He was gathered to his people," so frequent in the -vvritings of the O. T. The Kev. D. W. Marks, in a series of Sermons (Lond. 5611 = 1851), p. 103 sq., says of it : " It has generally been sup- posed that ' to be gathered to one's people' is an ordinary term which the sacred historian employs in order to convey the idea that the person to whom it is applied lies buried in the place where the remains of the same family are deposited. ' But whoever attentively consid- ers aU the passages of the Bible where this expression occurs will find, says Dr. Munk, that being 'gathered to one's ancestors' is expressly distmguished from the rite of sepulture. Abraham is 'gathered mito his peo- ple,' but he is bmied in the cave which he bought near Hebron, and where Sarah alone is interred. This is the first instance where the passage ' to be gathered to one's people' is to be met with ; and that it cannot mean that Abraham's bones reposed in the same cave with those of his fathers is very clear, since the ancestors of the patriarch were buried in Chaktea, and not in Canaan. The death of Jacob is related in the following words : 'And when Jacob had finished charging his sons, hB gathered up his feet upon the bed, and he expired, and was gathered unto his people' (Gen. xlix, 33). It is equally certain that the phrase ' he was gathered mito his people' cannot refer to the burial of the patriarch, because we learn from the next chapter that he was embalmed, and that the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days ; and it is only after these three score and ten days of mourning are ended that Joseph transports the remains of his father to Canaan, and inters them in the cave ofSIachpelah, where the ashes of Abraham and Isaac repose. When the inspired penman alludes to the actual burial of Jacob he uses very different terms. He makes no mention then of the patriarch ' being gathered to his people,' but he simply employs the verb "i2p, 'to bury:' 'And Joseph went up to bury his fa- ther.' The very words addressed by Jacob on his death- bed to his sons, 'I am about to be gathered unto my people ; burj- me with my fathers,' afford us sufficient evidence that the speaker, as well as the persons ad- dressed, understood the expression 'being gathered to one's people' in a sense totally different from that of be- ing lodged within a tomb. But a stronger instance still may be advanced. The Israelites arrive at ]\Iount Hor, near the borders of Edom, and immediately is issued the divine command, 'Aaron shall be gathered unto his people, for he shall not come into the land which I have given to the children of Israel. . . . Strip Aaron of his garments, and clothe in them Eleazar his son. And Aaron shall be gathered, and there he shall die.' No member of his family lay bmied on Momit Hor ; and still Aaron is said to have been there 'gathered to his people.' Again. jMoscs is charged to chastise severely the Midianitc's for having seduced the Israelites to fol- low the abominable practices of TlS h'2'2 (' Baal Peor') ; and, this act accomplished, the legislator is told ' that he will be gathered xmto his people.' This passage cer-
BIMORTALITY
51Y
IMMORTALITY
taiiily cannot mean that Moses was to be gathered in the grave with any of his people. The Hebrew law- giver died on Mount Abarim ; and the Scripture testi- fies • that no one ever knew of the place of his sepul- chre ;' and still the term to be gathered to his people is there likewise employed. Sufficient instances have now been cited to prove that •'.•'■QV bn r]OXn is to be vniderstood in a different sense from the rite of sepul- ture, and that the Hebrews in the times of IMoses dul entertain the belief in another state of existence, where spirit joined spirit after the death of the body.
'• But, although the position here assumed seems verj' tenable, it is nevertheless true that the Israelites cer- tainly did not have a very clear conception of the future existence of the soid, and ' that life and immortality' were not brought to light vei-i/ distiiictl/j before Christ came, for whom the office was reserved of making clear- ly known many high matters before but obscurely in- dicated" (Journal of Sacred Literature, viii, 179).
lY. New-Testament Vieirf;. — When Jesus Christ ap- peared in this world, the Epiciu-ean philosophy (q. v.), the fables of poets of a lower world, and the corruption which was prevalent among the nations had fully de- stroyed the hope, to say nothing of a belief, in future existence. It was left for him to declare the existence of the soul after death, even though the " earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved" (2 Cor. v, 1), with great certainty and very explicitly, not only by an al- lusion to the joys that await us in the future world, and to the dangers of retribution and divine justice (Matt, x, 28), but also in refutation of the doctrines of the unbelieving Sadducees (Matt, xxii, 23 sq. ; Mark xii, 18 sq.; Luke xx, 28 sq.). Jesus Christ, said Paul, " hath abolished death, and hath brought life and iin- mortality to light" (2 Tim. i, 10), and "will render to every man according to his deeds. To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for giorj^ and honor, and immortality, eternal life" (aip^apaiav) (Rom. ii, 6 sq.). The original for eternal life here used (a0- Baprria) denotes nothing else than the immortality of the soul, or a continuation of the substantial being, of man's person, of the et/o, after death, by the destruction of the body (comp. JNIatt. x, 28 ; Luke xii, 4). See the article Eternal Life ; and on the origin of the soul, and its pre-existence to the body, the article Soul.