chose to be deposited, were commonly in solitary and unfrequented places. Thus we read that the demoniac of Gadara wore no clothes, and abode not in any house, but had his dwelling among the tombs (Mark v. 2, 3. 5. Luke viii. 27.);1 delighting in these gloomy and melancholy recesses, as most friendly and congenial to the wretched state of his mind.2 Josephus also states, that these sepulchres were the haunts and lurking places of those numerous and desperate bands of robbers with which Judæa was at that time infested. And a recent traveller, whose researches have thrown much light on the sacred writings, informs us, that these burying grounds frequently afford shelter to the weary traveller when overtaken by the night; and that the recesses are likewise a hiding place for thieves and murderers, who sally forth from them, to commit their nocturnal depredations.4

Sometimes they buried their dead in fields, over whom the opulent and families of distinction raised superb and ostentatious monuments, on which they lavished great splendour and magnificence and which they so religiously maintained from time to time in their pristine beauty and glory. To this custom our Saviour alludes in the following apt comparison: Woe unto you scribes and pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. (Matt. xxiii. 27.) The following extract from Dr. Shaw's Travels beautifully illustrates this: "If we except a few persons, who are buried within the precincts of the sanctuaries of their marabutts, the rest are carried out at a small distance from their cities and villages, where a great extent of ground is allotted for the purpose. Each family has a particular part of it walled in, like a garden, where the bones of their ancestors have remained for many generations. For in these enclosures the graves are all distinct and separated, each of them having a stone placed upright both at the head and feet, inscribed with the name and title (2 Kings xxiii. 17.) of the deceased; while the intermediate space is either planted with flowers, bordered round with stones, or paved with tiles. The graves of the principal citizens are further distinguished, by having cupolas or vaulted chambers of three, four, or more square yards built over them: and as these very frequently lie open, and occasionally shelter us from the inclemency of the weather, the demoniac (Mark v. 5.) might with propriety enough have had his dwelling among the tombs: and others are said (Isa. lx. 4.) to remain among the graves and to lodge in the monuments (mountains.) And as all these different sorts of tombs and sepulchres, with the very walls likewise of their respective cupolas and enclosures, are constantly kept clean, white-washed, and beautified, they continue to illustrate those expressions of our Saviour, where he mentions the garnishing of sepulchres, and compares the scribes, pharisees, and hypocrites to whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but within were full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness." But though the sepulchres of the rich were thus beautified, the graves of the poor were oftentimes so neglected, that if the stones, by which they were marked, happened to fall, they were not set up again, by which means the graves themselves did not appear; they were άδηλα, as St. Luke expresses it; they appeared not, and the men that walked over them were not aware of them. (Luke xi. 44.)2

It appears from the Scriptures, that the Jews also had family sepulchres in places contiguous to their own houses, and (as we have already observed) generally in their gardens. Such was the place in which Lazarus was interred; and such also was the grave in which the body of our Lord was deposited. Joseph of Arimathea, a person of distinction, by St. Mark called an honourable counsellor (Mark xv. 43.), mindful of his mortality, had hewn out of the rock in his garden a sepulchre, in which he intended his own remains should be reposited. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was no man yet laid. When Joseph therefore had taken the body of Jesus, and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, he carried it into the tomb which he had lately hollowed out of the rock (which was not a tomb, sunk into the earth like a cave, but what is called in Isa. xxii. 16. a sepulchre on high); and rolled a great stone to the low door of the sepulchre, effectually to block up the entrance, and secure the sacred corpse of the deceased, both from the indignities of his foes and the officiousness of his friends.

VI. A funeral feast commonly succeeded the Jewish burials. Thus after Abner's funeral was solemnised, the people came to David to eat meat with him, though they could not persuade him to do so. (2 Sam. iii. 35.) He was the chief mourner, and probably had invited them to this banquet. Of this Jeremiah speaks (xvi. 7.), where he calls it the cup of consolation, which they drank for their father or their mother; and accordingly the place where this funeral entertainment was made, is called in the next verse the house of feasting. Hosea calls it the bread of mourners. (Hos. ix. 4.) Funeral banquets are still in use among the oriental Christians.1

The usual tokens of mourning, by which the Jews expressed their grief and concern for the death of their friends and relations, were by rending their garments, and putting on sackcloth (Gen. xxxvii. 34.), sprinkling dust on their heads, wearing of mourning apparel (2 Sam. xiv. 2.), and covering the face and the head. (2 Sam xix. 4.) They were accustomed also in times of public mourning to go up to the roofs or platforms of their houses, there to bewail their misfortunes, which practice is mentioned in Isaiah xv. 3. and xxii. 1. Antiently, there was a peculiar space of time allotted for lamenting the deceased, which they called the days of mourning. (Gen. xxvii. 41. and 1. 4.) Thus the Egyptians, who had a great regard for the patriarch Jacob, lamented his death threescore and ten days. (Gen. 1. 3.) The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days. (Deut. xxxiv. 8.) Afterwards among the Jews the funeral mourning was generally confined to seven days. Thus, besides the mourning for Jacob in Egypt, Joseph and his company set apart seven days to mourn for his father, when they approached the Jordan with his corpse. (Gen. 1. 10.) In the time of Christ, it was customary for the nearest relative to visit the grave of the deceased, and to weep there. The Jews, who had come to condole with Mary, on the death of her brother Lazarus, on seeing her go out of the house, concluded that she was going to the grave, to weep there. (John xi. 31.) A similar custom obtains to this day in Upper Egypt. We read no where of any general mourning for Saul and his sons, who died in battle; but the national troubles, which followed upon his death, might have prevented it. David indeed and his men, on hearing the news of their death, mourned and wept for them until even. (2 Sam. i. 12.) And the men of Jabesh-gilead fasted for them seven days (1 Sam. xxxi. 13.), which must not be understood in a strict sense, as if they eat nothing all that time, but that they lived very abstemiously, eat little, and that seldom, using a low and spare diet, and drinking water only.

How long widows mourned for their husbands is no where told us in Scripture. We find it is said of Bathsheba, that when she heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for him (2 Sam. xi. 26.); but this could neither be long nor very sincere.

The Jews paid a greater or less degree of honour to their kings after their death, according to the merits of their actions when they were alive. Upon the death of their princes, who had distinguished themselves in arms, or who, by any religious actions, or by the promotion of civil arts, had merited well of their country, they used to make lamentations or mournful songs for them: from an expression in 2 Chron. xxxv. 25. Behold, they are written in the Lamentations, we may infer that they had certain collections of this kind of composition. The author of the book of Samuel has preserved those which David composed on occasion of the death of Saul and Jonathan, of Abner and Absalom; but we have no remains of the mournful poem, which Jeremiah made upon the immature death of the pious king Josiah, mentioned in the last-cited chapter: which loss is the more to be deplored, because in all probability it was a masterpiece in its kind, since never was there an author more deeply affected with his subject, or more capable of carrying it through all the tender sentiments of sorrow and compassion, than Jeremiah.1

No. I.

GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX

OF THE

PRINCIPAL PLACES

Mentioned in the Scriptures, especially in the New Testament.

[Referred to, in page 11. of this Volume.]

*** On account of the very great uncertainty attending the ascertaining of the situation of the majority of places, incidentally mentioned in the Old Testament, this index is chiefly restricted to the principal places and countries which occur in the New Testament. It is compiled from the labours of Calmet, Wells, Schleusner, Dr. Whitby, M. Anquetil, Dr. Hales, and other writers who have treated on sacred geographyl, and particularly from the Travels in Palestine of Dr. E. D. Clarke, Mr Buckingham, the Rev. James Connor, and of Dr. Robert Richardson, who explored various parts of the East during the years 1816-1818, in company with the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Belmore..

1 The notices of the seven cities of Ephesus, Laodicea, Pergamos, Philadelphia, Sardis, Smyrna, and Thyatira, are derived from Smith's Survey of the Seven

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