tombs

• Sontad entombed Andon and Fonta

63:3.5Upon the death of his par­ents, Son­tad, de­spite a se­ri­ously in­jured foot, im­me­di­ately as­sumed the lead­er­ship of the clan and was ably as­sisted by his wife, his el­dest sis­ter. Their first task was to roll up stones to ef­fec­tively en­tomb their dead par­ents, broth­ers, sis­ters, and chil­dren. Un­due sig­nif­i­cance should not at­tach to this act of burial. Their ideas of sur­vival af­ter death were very vague and in­def­i­nite, be­ing largely de­rived from their fan­tas­tic and var­ie­gated dream life.

• custom to bury man’s belongings with him

69:9.42. Re­li­gious ten­den­cies. Prim­i­tive man also wanted to save up prop­erty as a nu­cleus for start­ing life in the next ex­is­tence. This mo­tive ex­plains why it was so long the cus­tom to bury a man’s per­sonal be­long­ings with him. The an­cients be­lieved that only the rich sur­vived death with any im­me­di­ate plea­sure and dig­nity. The teach­ers of re­vealed re­li­gion, more es­pe­cially the Chris­tian teach­ers, were the first to pro­claim that the poor could have sal­va­tion on equal terms with the rich.

• practice of burying pious men under places of worship

76:5.5Adam lived for 530 years; he died of what might be termed old age. His phys­i­cal mech­a­nism sim­ply wore out; the pro­cess of dis­in­te­gra­tion grad­u­ally gained on the pro­cess of re­pair, and the in­ev­i­ta­ble end came. Eve had died nine­teen years pre­vi­ously of a weak­ened heart. They were both buried in the cen­ter of the tem­ple of di­vine ser­vice which had been built in ac­cor­dance with their plans soon af­ter the wall of the colony had been com­pleted. And this was the ori­gin of the prac­tice of bury­ing noted and pi­ous men and women un­der the floors of the places of wor­ship.

• tombstone › surviving symbol of images, idols, and ghosts

85:1.4The an­cients had a pe­cu­liar re­gard for holes in stones. Such porous rocks were sup­posed to be un­usu­ally ef­fi­ca­cious in cur­ing dis­eases. Ears were not per­fo­rated to carry stones, but the stones were put in to keep the ear holes open. Even in mod­ern times su­per­sti­tious per­sons make holes in coins. In Africa the na­tives make much ado over their fe­tish stones. In fact, among all back­ward tribes and peo­ples stones are still held in su­per­sti­tious ven­er­a­tion. Stone wor­ship is even now wide­spread over the world. The tomb­stone is a sur­viv­ing sym­bol of im­ages and idols which were carved in stone in con­nec­tion with be­liefs in ghosts and the spir­its of de­parted fel­low be­ings.

• tombstone › used to keep ghosts away

87:6.74. Bury­ing un­der stones, one ori­gin of the mod­ern tomb­stone.

• of Simeon

126:1.2This hill, a lit­tle more than one hun­dred years pre­vi­ously, had been the “high place of Baal,” and now it was the site of the tomb of Sim­eon, a re­puted holy man of Is­rael. From the sum­mit of this hill of Sim­eon, Je­sus looked out over Naz­a­reth and the sur­round­ing coun­try. He would gaze upon Megiddo and re­call the story of the Egyp­tian army win­ning its first great vic­tory in Asia; and how, later on, an­other such army de­feated the Judean king Josiah. Not far away he could look upon Taanach, where Deb­o­rah and Barak de­feated Sis­era. In the dis­tance he could view the hills of Dothan, where he had been taught Joseph’s breth­ren sold him into Egyp­tian slav­ery. He then would shift his gaze over to Ebal and Ger­izim and re­count to him­self the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Ja­cob, and Abim­elech. And thus he re­called and turned over in his mind the his­toric and tra­di­tional events of his fa­ther Joseph’s peo­ple.

• of Hiram

156:4.1From July 11 to July 24 they taught in Tyre. Each of the apos­tles took with him one of the evan­ge­lists, and thus two and two they taught and preached in all parts of Tyre and its en­vi­rons. The poly­glot pop­u­la­tion of this busy sea­port heard them gladly, and many were bap­tized into the out­ward fel­low­ship of the king­dom. Je­sus main­tained his head­quar­ters at the home of a Jew named Joseph, a be­liever, who lived three or four miles south of Tyre, not far from the tomb of Hi­ram who had been king of the city-state of Tyre dur­ing the times of David and Sol­o­mon.

• delight in building t. for the prophets
• whited sepulchres are outwardly beautiful, inwardly ugly

166:1.5When Je­sus would have risen to de­part, one of the lawyers who was at the ta­ble, ad­dress­ing him, said: “But, Mas­ter, in some of your state­ments you re­proach us also. Is there noth­ing good in the scribes, the Phar­isees, or the lawyers?” And Je­sus, stand­ing, replied to the lawyer: “You, like the Phar­isees, de­light in the first places at the feasts and in wear­ing long robes while you put heavy bur­dens, griev­ous to be borne, on men’s shoul­ders. And when the souls of men stag­ger un­der these heavy bur­dens, you will not so much as lift with one of your fin­gers. Woe upon you who take your great­est de­light in build­ing tombs for the proph­ets your fa­thers killed! And that you con­sent to what your fa­thers did is made man­i­fest when you now plan to kill those who come in this day do­ing what the proph­ets did in their day—pro­claim­ing the righ­teous­ness of God and re­veal­ing the mercy of the heav­enly Fa­ther. But of all the gen­er­a­tions that are past, the blood of the proph­ets and the apos­tles shall be re­quired of this per­verse and self-righ­teous gen­er­a­tion. Woe upon all of you lawyers who have taken away the key of knowl­edge from the com­mon peo­ple! You your­selves refuse to en­ter into the way of truth, and at the same time you would hin­der all oth­ers who seek to en­ter therein. But you can­not thus shut up the doors of the king­dom of heaven; these we have opened to all who have the faith to en­ter, and these por­tals of mercy shall not be closed by the prej­u­dice and ar­ro­gance of false teach­ers and un­true shep­herds who are like whited sepul­chres which, while out­wardly they ap­pear beau­ti­ful, are in­wardly full of dead men’s bones and all man­ner of spir­i­tual un­clean­ness.”

• of Lazarus

168:0.4Many friends from near-by ham­lets and oth­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem came over to com­fort the sor­row-stricken sis­ters. Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters were the chil­dren of a well-to-do and hon­or­able Jew, one who had been the lead­ing res­i­dent of the lit­tle vil­lage of Beth­any. And not­with­stand­ing that all three had long been ar­dent fol­low­ers of Je­sus, they were highly re­spected by all who knew them. They had in­her­ited ex­ten­sive vine­yards and olive or­chards in this vicin­ity, and that they were wealthy was fur­ther at­tested by the fact that they could af­ford a pri­vate burial tomb on their own premises. Both of their par­ents had al­ready been laid away in this tomb.

• of Lazarus

168:1.1Af­ter Je­sus had spent a few mo­ments in com­fort­ing Martha and Mary, apart from the mourn­ers, he asked them, “Where have you laid him?” Then Martha said, “Come and see.” And as the Mas­ter fol­lowed on in si­lence with the two sor­row­ing sis­ters, he wept. When the friendly Jews who fol­lowed af­ter them saw his tears, one of them said: “Be­hold how he loved him. Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind have kept this man from dy­ing?” By this time they were stand­ing be­fore the fam­ily tomb, a small nat­u­ral cave, or de­cliv­ity, in the ledge of rock which rose up some thirty feet at the far end of the gar­den plot.

• of Lazarus

168:1.11When Je­sus spoke those words of com­mand, “Take away the stone,” the as­sem­bled ce­les­tial hosts made ready to en­act the drama of the res­ur­rec­tion of Laz­a­rus in the like­ness of his mor­tal flesh. Such a form of res­ur­rec­tion in­volves dif­fi­cul­ties of ex­e­cu­tion which far tran­scend the usual tech­nique of the res­ur­rec­tion of mor­tal crea­tures in mor­ontia form and re­quires far more ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties and a far greater or­ga­ni­za­tion of uni­verse fa­cil­i­ties.

168:1.12When Martha and Mary heard this com­mand of Je­sus di­rect­ing that the stone in front of the tomb be rolled away, they were filled with con­flict­ing emo­tions. Mary hoped that Laz­a­rus was to be raised from the dead, but Martha, while to some ex­tent shar­ing her sis­ter’s faith, was more ex­er­cised by the fear that Laz­a­rus would not be pre­sentable, in his ap­pear­ance, to Je­sus, the apos­tles, and their friends. Said Martha: “Must we roll away the stone? My brother has now been dead four days, so that by this time de­cay of the body has be­gun.” Martha also said this be­cause she was not cer­tain as to why the Mas­ter had re­quested that the stone be re­moved; she thought maybe Je­sus wanted only to take one last look at Laz­a­rus. She was not set­tled and con­stant in her at­ti­tude. As they hes­i­tated to roll away the stone, Je­sus said: “Did I not tell you at the first that this sick­ness was not to the death? Have I not come to ful­fill my prom­ise? And af­ter I came to you, did I not say that, if you would only be­lieve, you should see the glory of God? Where­fore do you doubt? How long be­fore you will be­lieve and obey?”

168:1.13When Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing, his apos­tles, with the as­sis­tance of will­ing neigh­bors, laid hold upon the stone and rolled it away from the en­trance to the tomb.

• of Lazarus

168:2.1As this com­pany of some forty-five mor­tals stood be­fore the tomb, they could dimly see the form of Laz­a­rus, wrapped in linen ban­dages, rest­ing on the right lower niche of the burial cave. While these earth crea­tures stood there in al­most breath­less si­lence, a vast host of ce­les­tial be­ings had swung into their places prepara­tory to an­swer­ing the sig­nal for ac­tion when it should be given by Ga­briel, their com­man­der.

168:2.2Je­sus lifted up his eyes and said: “Fa­ther, I am thank­ful that you heard and granted my re­quest. I know that you al­ways hear me, but be­cause of those who stand here with me, I thus speak with you, that they may be­lieve that you have sent me into the world, and that they may know that you are work­ing with me in that which we are about to do.” And when he had prayed, he cried with a loud voice, “Laz­a­rus, come forth!”

168:2.3Though these hu­man ob­servers re­mained mo­tion­less, the vast ce­les­tial host was all astir in uni­fied ac­tion in obe­di­ence to the Cre­ator’s word. In just twelve sec­onds of earth time the hith­erto life­less form of Laz­a­rus be­gan to move and pres­ently sat up on the edge of the stone shelf whereon it had rested. His body was bound about with grave cloths, and his face was cov­ered with a nap­kin. And as he stood up be­fore them—alive—Je­sus said, “Loose him and let him go.”

• whited sepulchres are outwardly beautiful, inwardly ugly

175:1.19“Woe upon all of you who re­ject truth and spurn mercy! Many of you are like whited sepul­chres, which out­wardly ap­pear beau­ti­ful but within are full of dead men’s bones and all sorts of un­clean­ness. Even so do you who know­ingly re­ject the coun­sel of God ap­pear out­wardly to men as holy and righ­teous, but in­wardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and in­iq­uity.