Note 976 — Chapter XXXVI · FISH IN OFFERINGS, AUGURIES, ETC.

“In Israel not to be buried was a terrible disgrace which one could hardly wish for one’s enemy: the spirits of the unburied wandered restlessly about. Burial alone so bound the spirit to the body that it had rest and could harm no one.” Cheyne’s assertion in Encyl. Bibl. (op. cit.), p. 1041, seems to me hardly warranted, at any rate by the O.T. passages which he adduces in support of this statement, in attributing to Israel the idea of the unburied dead being condemned to miserable wandering. For the Greek conception see inter alia the Antigone of Sophocles.