f the flesh. In the first place, it is difficult to
reason safely to any dogmatic conclusions from the funeral customs
of a people. These usages are so much a matter of capricious
priestly ritual, ancestral tradition, unreasoning instinct, blind
or morbid superstition, that any consistent doctrinal construction
is not fairly to be put upon them. Secondly, the Zoroastrians did
not express scorn or loathing for the corpse by their manner of
disposing of it. The greatest pains were taken to keep it from
disgusting decay, by placing it in "the driest, purest, openest
place," upon a summit where fresh winds blew, and where certain
beasts and birds, accounted most sacred, might eat the corruptible
portion: then the clean bones were carefully buried. The dead body
had yielded to the hostile working of Ahriman, and become his
possession. The priests bore it out on a bed or a carpet, and
exposed it to the light of the sun. The demon was thus exorcised;
and the body became further purified in being eaten by the sacred
animals, and no putrescence was left to contaminate earth, water,
or fire.35 Furthermore, it is to be noticed that the modern
Parsees dispose of their dead in exactly the same manner depicted
in the earliest accounts; yet they zealously hold to a literal
resurrection of the body. If the giving of the flesh to the dog
and the vulture in their case exists with this belief, it may have
done so with their ancestors before Nebuchadnezzar swept the Jews
to Babylon. Finally, it is quite reasonable to conclude that the
old Persian doctrine of a resurrection did include the physical
body, when we recollect that in the Zoroastrian scheme of thought
there is no hostility to matter or to earthly life, but all is
regarded as pure and good except so far as the serpent Ahriman has
introduced evil. The expulsion of this evil with his ultimate
overthrow, the restoration of all as it was at first, in purity,
gladness, and eternal life, would be the obvious and consistent
carrying out of the system. Hatred of earthly life, contempt for
the flesh, the notion of an essential and irreconcilable warfare
of soul against body, are Brahmanic and Manichaan, not
Zoroastrian. Still, the ground plan and style of thought may not
have been consistently adhered to. The expectation that the very
same body would be restored was known to the Jews a century or two
before Christ. One of the martyrs whose history is told in the
Second Book of Maccabees,