able that they
should have altogether escaped embodiment in popular tradition and its
record. Furthermore, while on one hand the custom of speedy burial
rendered them much rarer than they are now under other conditions, and
so much the more extraordinary, the universal ignorance of the causes
involved would have accepted resuscitation as veritable restoration from
actual death. As such it would have passed into tradition. In cases
where it had come to pass in connection with the efforts of a recognized
prophet, or through any contact with him, it would certainly have been
regarded as a genuine miracle.

Among the raisings of the "dead" recorded in the Scriptures probably
none has been so widely doubted by critical readers as the story in the
thirteenth chapter of the second book of Kings, in which a corpse is
restored to life by contact with the bones of Elisha. Dean Stanley's
remark upon the suspicious similarity between the miracles related of
Elisha and those found in Roman Catholic legends of great saints here
seems quite pertinent. Let the record speak for itself.

"And Elisha died and they buried him. Now the bands of the Moabites
invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass,
as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band; and
they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha; and as soon as the
man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his
feet."

The bizarre character of such a story excusably predisposes many a
critic to stamp it as fabricated to enhance the glory of the great
prophet who had been a pillar of the throne. Yet nothing is more likely
than that tradition has here preserved a bit of history, extraordinary,
but real. There is not the least improbability in regarding the case as
one of the many revivals from the deathlike trance that have been noted
by writers ancient and modern. It is entirely reasonable to suppose that
the trance in which the seemingly dead man lay was broken either by the
shock of his fall into the prophet's tomb, or coincidently therewith;
and stranger coincidences have happened. Such a happening would be
precisely the sort of thing to live in popular tradition, and to be
incorporated into the annals of the time.

Here it may be rejoined that this is only a hypothesis. Only that, to be
sure. But so is the allegation that the story is a mere fantastic
fabrication only a hypothesis. Demonstration of the a