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Bible Dictionaries
Tomb, Grave, Sepulchre
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or TOMB, GRAVE, SEPULCHRE
The terms ‘tomb’ and ‘sepulchre’ are used in Authorized Version indifferently to translation μνημεῖον, μνῆμα, and τάφος. ‘Grave’ is used 8 times (Matthew 27:52-53, Luke 11:44, John 5:28; John 11:17; John 11:31; John 11:38; John 12:17) as rendering of μνημειον. This last is by far the most frequent Greek word, μνῆμα occurring only in Mark 5:3; Mark 5:5; Mark 15:46, Luke 8:27; Luke 23:53; Luke 24:1. The usage of the Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 is as follows. ‘Sepulchre’ is reserved as translation of τάφος (lit. ‘burying-place’): Matthew 23:27; Matthew 23:29; Matthew 27:61; Matthew 27:64; Matthew 27:66; Matthew 28:1 [all the Gospel occurrences of ταφος]. In all the other passages ‘tomb’ is substituted for ‘sepulchre,’ or retained where Authorized Version already has it, as translation either of μνημεῖον or μνῆμα. ‘Grave’ thus disappears entirely in Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 .
The forms of sepulture that a people adopts depend partly upon religious belief, partly upon climate, partly upon the geological structure of the country. Among the Hebrews, while the conception of a personal resurrection arose only after the return from the Exile, the belief in Sheol as a place where the soul after death remained in some sort of connexion with the body did much to determine the disposal of the corpse and the nature of the tomb. Early in Hebrew history the burial customs became stereotyped. Between the days of Abraham and Jesus they underwent no essential modification.
1. Religious belief demanded (a) that the body should be buried (see Burial). The soul of the unburied person was supposed to have no rest, and even in Sheol the souls of such lurked in the corners (Isaiah 14:15, Ezekiel 32:23). Any one, therefore, who discovered a dead body was under a sacred obligation to bury it. The soul of the body left unburied was regarded as almost under a curse (1 Kings 14:11; 1 Kings 16:4; 1 Kings 21:24). (b) That members of the same family should be buried, if possible, in the same tomb (Genesis 47:29-30; Genesis 49:29-31, 2 Samuel 19:37, 1 Kings 14:31, Nehemiah 2:5). For this reason the family tomb was often situated upon the family property. It was this dread of being buried apart from one’s kith and kin that was one of the elements of the Hebrew’s hatred of the sea (Revelation 21:1). (c) That, except under very exceptional circumstances, the family sepulchre should be reserved for the burial of members of the one family. There are no Hebrew monumental inscriptions; but from Aramaean inscriptions calling down curses on any who should intrude their dead upon the dead already lying there, we can measure the intensity of feeling on this point. To allow a stranger to be buried in the family tomb was a sign of the very greatest magnanimity and love (Matthew 27:60, Genesis 23:6). (d) That no body should be burned except as part of the punishment of the most odious of crimes (Leviticus 20:14; Leviticus 21:9, Joshua 7:25). To burn the body of a foe was to do something that passed all the rights of belligerents (Amos 2:1).
2. Climate demanded that interment should take place as soon as possible after death (Matthew 9:23, Acts 5:6; Acts 5:10; Acts 8:2).
3. The geological character of the country conditioned to a large extent the particular form of sepulture. The country is one long limestone ridge, and almost everywhere the hills are naturally terraced, while the soft rock is easily worked. But the simplicity of the Hebrew burial customs should be noticed. It is not a little remarkable that a people living between two such civilizations as those of Babylonia and Egypt, in which the cult of the dead played so large a part, should have remained uninfluenced by such ornate and imposing ceremonial. The Jews did not embalm their dead. They raised no elaborate sepulchres over them; indeed, the building of a sepulchral chamber was an innovation based on the practices of Greece. While this may have been due in some degree to the lack of artistic capacity in the Hebrew, it was due also to spiritual views of death, and to the dread of idolatry that had always characterized the Semitic race. Wherever, in Syria or Arabia, Greek or Roman civilization has left some representation of the human body, the traveller finds that the face at least has been disfigured by the nomads.
The forms of sepulture were these:—(a) The simplest, though not the commonest, form was an excavation in the rock surface, roughly corresponding to the shape of the human body, and covered with a slab of stone countersunk till it was level with the ground. All over Syria these primitive graves are to be met with. The Jews were most careful to keep the stone whitewashed, lest any should unwittingly walk over the grave and so incur ceremonial defilement. This kind of burial is referred to in Luke 11:44 ‘Woe unto yon, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.’ (b) A chamber was excavated in the limestone rock-face, and long narrow recesses, perhaps six feet by two, were cut into the rock at right angles to the face. The bodies, covered with the simplest of grave-clothes (Matthew 27:59, John 11:44), were thrust into these. The recesses were known as kokim, and were frequently made of double width, intended for the reception of two bodies. Sometimes, but very rarely, a chamber would have only one recess; generally it had several. It might, as in the case of the Tombs of the Kings and the Tombs of the Prophets, have one chamber opening off another, each chamber having many kokim. Three other forms of sepulture are in reality only modifications or combinations of these two main modes already mentioned, (c) Shelf tombs. Inside the chamber the recess for the body, instead of running in at right angles to the wall, was simply cut parallel with the wall, and formed a shelf on which the body was laid. The notable thing about many of these shelves is their narrowness. (d) The shelf was sometimes excavated so as to form a trough in which the body was laid, (e) In the floor of the chamber itself, or in the passage leading from one chamber to another, a grave might be cut, as in (a), and covered, with a slab.
It was in one of those chamber-tombs that our Lord was laid (Matthew 27:60, Mark 15:46, Luke 23:53); and disused tombs of this kind were used as places of abode by the outcast and the homeless (Mark 5:2). To prevent desecration by wild beasts, the tombs were often cut in almost inaccessible places; and ancient tombs in the Kidron Valley and in the face of Mount Quarantania are used even now as cells by anchorites, who may be seen climbing by ladders to and from their abodes. This form of sepulture in chambers was used also by the tribes of the desert. Doughty found such tombs at Medain Salih.
‘The mural loculi in the low hewn walls of these rudely foursquare rooms are made as shallow shelves, in length as they might have been measured to the human body, from the child to the grown person.… In the rock floors are seen grave-pits, sunken side by side, full of men’s bones, and bones are strewed upon the sanded floors.… In another of these monuments I saw the sand floor full of rotten clouts, shivering in every wind, and taking them up, I found them to be those dry bones’ grave-clothes’ (Arabia Deserta, i. 108).
In the time of Christ the protection of the tombs was comparatively easily secured. The door of the sepulchre was made intentionally small, and was closed by a great stone, sometimes circular, that ran in grooves in the rock. Ceremonial defilement was guarded against by whitewashing the stone at the door of the sepulchre every spring (Matthew 23:27). In Lebanon the present writer saw a tomb which had been excavated in the rock-face from a point below the normal level of the soil. After a body had been interred, the stone was replaced in the entrance, the earth was tossed back against the door, and all trace of the tomb was obliterated. This special precaution may have been peculiar to a district where wild animals were common. A tomb was never opened save for a fresh interment. It is this that gives point to St. Paul’s saying (Romans 3:13, cf. Psalms 5:9): ‘Their throat is an open sepulchre’ (τάφος), i.e. at every opening of their mouth they bury, by slander and detraction, some one’s fair fame. On the Holy Sepulchre see Golgotha.
Literature.—Artt. ‘Burial’ and ‘Sepulchre’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible , ‘Tombs’ in Encyc. Bibl., ‘Begräbnis bei den Hebräern’ in PRE [Note: RE Real-Encyklopädie fur protest. Theologic und Kirche.] 3 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , ‘Beerdigung’ in Hamburger’s RE [Note: E Realencyklopädie.] ; Nowack, Heb. Arch. i. 8 f., 187 ff.; Benzinger, Heb. Arch. 163 ff., 224 ff.; Bliss, Excavations at Jerusalem; PEFSt [Note: EFSt Quarterly Statement of the same.] , passim; ZDPV [Note: DPV Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins.] , passim; Tobler, Topogr. ii. 227 ff.; Sepp, Jerus. [Note: Jerusalem.] und das heilige Land, ii. 273 ff.; Revue Biblique, passim.
R. Bruce Taylor.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Tomb, Grave, Sepulchre'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/t/tomb-grave-sepulchre.html. 1906-1918.
