the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Apparition
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or APPARITION
In Authorized Version this word occurs thrice, in the Apocr. [Note: Apocrypha, Apocryphal.] only: Wisdom of Solomon 17:3 (Gr. ἵνδαλμα, Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 ‘spectral form’), 2 Maccabees 3:24 (Gr. ἑτιφάνεια, Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 ‘apparition,’ (Revised Version margin) ‘manifestation’), and 2 Maccabees 5:4 (Gr. ἑτιφάνεια, Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 ‘vision,’ (Revised Version margin) ‘manifestation’). In Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 it occurs thrice only: Matthew 14:26 || Mark 6:49 (φάντασμα Authorized Version ‘spirit’), and 2 Maccabees 3:24 (as above).
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 φάντασμα. 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 interchanged.
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 4:15 ff; Job 20:8, and especially to Wisdom of Solomon 17:3 (4) and Wisdom of Solomon 17:14 (Wisdom of Solomon 17:15) for earlier evidence of a popular belief in apparitions among the Hebrew people. The disciples’ sudden shriek of terror (ἀνέκραξαν, Mark 6:49) 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 naïve intelligences the discrimination of modern psychological research. The suggestions of excitable imaginations were indistinguishable from the actual presentations of objective reality. The best illustrations of their habits of thought must be sought in ancient and modern records of Oriental beliefs.
A. Erman (Life in Ancient Egypt, London, 1894, pp. 307, 308) says that ‘the Egyptians did not consider man as a simple 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 Κα.… After the death of a man, just as during his lifetime, the Κα was still considered to be the representative of his human personality, and so the body had to be preserved that the Κα might take possession of it when he pleased.… It is to their faith in the Κα that we owe all our 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 Sufi 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 mediaeval conception of the nature of ghosts see the locus classicus—Dante, Purg. xxv. 88–108—in which Dante explains his conception of the disembodied soul as having the power of operating on matter and impressing upon the surrounding air the shape which it animated in life (Aquinas), thus forming for itself an aerial vesture (Origen and St. Augustine). See also Dante, Conv. translation ii. c. 9, and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol. pt. iii. suppl. qu. lxix, 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 φάντασμα, merely remarking (p. 190): ‘If we adhere to the actual narrative, the going on the water was far from being an act of an ordinary character—it was something divine or ghostly.’ For the latest criticism of the popular belief of NT times in the manifestations of the spirit world, see P. Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, London, 1903, pp. 1–11.
P. Henderson Aitken.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Apparition'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/a/apparition.html. 1906-1918.
