deathnarrative, the sky is very near to the earth at the beginning of time, and
the creator being can let down his gate to humans by sending down a
rope, a form of communication between the earth and the sky. On a given
day, the creator sends down a stone tied to the rope. The ancestors do not
want the stone because they do not know what to do with it, so they call
upon the creator to send something else, who complies with their request
by sending a banana tied to the end of the rope, which the ancestors joy-
fully accept. Then, they hear a voice from the sky: “Because you have
chosen the banana, so shall your life be. When the tree gives birth to off-
spring, when the parent’s stem dies and its place is taken by the young
stems. So shall you die! If you had chosen the stone, your life would have
been like the stone—changeless and immortal.”
In ancient Jewish religion, God gives life and takes it (1 Sam. 2.6;
Deut. 32.39) with death the punishment for sin. Death is an inevitable
human destiny, and it is called the king of terrors in Job (18.18). In addi-
tion, the dead are considered unclean and thus cause pollution to the
living (Num. 19.11; Lev. 11.35). Ancient Jews dispose of the dead by
burial without embalming, which is an Egyptian treatment of the dead.
The grave is called the habitation of the dead (Isa. 22.16), and there is
importance attached to being buried alongside family members. Ancient
Jews do not have a concept of the soul, and after death a person becomes
a shadowy double of the living person and returns to dust – inanimate
matter – from which the person originated (Job 34.14; Gen. 3.19). At the
end of time, the dead experience bodily resurrection (Isa. 26.19; Dan.
12.2). In response to death, the survivors mourn by tearing clothing, eat-
ing a funeral bread, fasting, breast beating, sprinkling ashes over their
heads, sitting in ashes, covering the upper lip, going barefoot and bare-
headed, shaving off hair, and even mutilating themselves. Besides the
grief experienced by survivors, these mourning practices can possibly be
related to making oneself unrecognizable to the deceased, thus avoiding
initiating their envy or malice.
Early Christians adopt many Jewish observances surrounding death,
although Christians also conceive of death as a sleep and the grave as a
resting place (John 11.13; 1 Thess. 4.13). A former Jew such as the apos-
tle Paul accepts that death is the punishment for sin (Rom. 6.7, 23). The
death of Jesus is, however, a unique historical event because it is united
with his resurrection, which holds forth the promise of eternal life (1 Cor.
15.21–22). Therefore, the death and resurrection of Jesus form a unity of
a single salvation event (2 Cor. 5.15). The death of Christ is interpreted
as a propitiatory sacrifice, which functions as a means for the forgiveness
of sins and cancels the guilt associated with sin. Along with this notion
of a propitiatory sacrifice, there is the concept of a vicarious sacrifice,