Desecration of What?
Posted by Kushana Torumekia at 8/27/2007 3:06 PM 
Categories: Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Archaeology, ISLAM
Categories: Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Archaeology, ISLAM
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It is a nostrum in archaeology that one of the slowest things to change is what a religion does with its dead. Barring plague or war, most religions hold that the proper treatment of the dead determines their fate in the afterlife. Our culture tends to think of this in immaterial terms, in terms of the soul — and many cultures do prepare and equip the soul for some kind of post-mortem journey or second existence after the body's passing on. These rituals and grave goods would not be neglected for fear that the soul would suffer destruction or punishment, would become lost or return to trouble its negligent relatives, or that the soul would suffer from poverty, hunger, or cold in the next world.There is another side to these preparations, however: the future of the body. Although this brings to mind pharonic Egypt, the treatment of the dead in many contemporary religions stems from an anxiety about the future of the dead body. In Zoroastrianism (this is not a tangent — keep reading) care is taken to collect the bones of the dead together. The religions that inherited Zoroastrianism's belief in a general resurrection preserve this same idea: both Orthodox and traditional Catholic Christianity forbid cremation, Orthodox Judaism does also, and Islam prefers to bury its dead (aligned to greet the general resurrection.) Why? Because God needs the bones to resurrect the dead, the resurrection is the re-clothing of bones with flesh. In Zoroastrianism, at least, the dead then pass through a physical trial to determine their worthiness — everyone walks through a river of molten metal. (To the righteous it will feel like warm milk.) This last judgment takes different forms in related, younger, religions — but it illustrates a principle in religious studies: coherence. The idea of bones-for-resurrection sticks out as a borrowed idea in younger religions because 1) God initially creates the body from dust yet cannot do so again for the general resurrection 2) the bones — and the body — are necessary for the last judgment in Zoroastrianism, but not necessarily for the younger religions which borrowed this idea.
Although no religion is perfectly harmonious and consistent in its theology, ideas that do not carry through a religion's theology at the the of their first statement may mean the idea has been borrowed from another religion, or formulated hastily in response to some outside pressure or change in the adherents' conditions. (It is good press to say one's religion is entirely consistent, especially if the religion's theology says God is perfectly consistent, but a careful reading of the concepts of any religion will show places that aren't.)
The Orthodox who, it seems, likely burnt down Israel's first crematorium did so out of an anxiety for the bodies of the dead (even the non-Orthodox dead whose relatives were, presumably, the facility's patrons.) While Orthodox Judaism fears cremation will defile the dead, in Zoroastrianism the fear is that the consuming fire will be defiled — for fire (light) is the symbol of ultimate goodness.* (Fire was, for much of human history, the only power humans had over the dark: try walking in a rural place on a night with little or no moon.)
* Hinduism, Zoroastrianism's distant cousin, cremates the dead. Fire is also divine in Hinduism. Why both are the case isn't a question I can answer — it is well before the time period I study.
-Kushana
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