Editorial note — Chapter V · OF CEMETERIES AND OTHER PLACES, SACRED AND RELIGIOUS

[Footnote 369: Genesis xxiii, 9: 'We take this word Machpelah for a proper name, as many others do: but the Talmudists generally think it to have been a double cave, as the lxx also, with the vulgar Latin, understand it. Yet they cannot agree in what sense it was so: whether they went through one cave into another, or there was one above the other.'—Bishop Patrick, s.l.] [Footnote 370: One might almost have thought that this is a false reading for Leah and Rebecca. For the common tradition was that Adam and Eve were buried in Mount Calvary: so that where the first Adam fell before death, the second Adam triumphed over death. And the bishop speaks below of three patriarchs, and their three wives buried in Machpelah: which is at variance with the text as it stands: but would agree with the proposed emendation. Yet S. Isidore says, 'De morte Abrahae,' fol. 295: 'Sepultusque est in spelunca duplici; in cujus interiore parte Adam esse positum traditio Hebraeorum testatur.' S. Victor upon Spelunca duplex: 'Domus quaedam fuit subterranea, in qua erat solarium, et multi fuerant sepulti, in ea et diversis foveis et subter et supra;' and in another place, 'Spelunca in qua est sepulta spiritualem designat vitam, quae est occulta: quae recte duplex vocatur; propter bonam actionem et contemplationem.']