Origin

Without entering at ay Eat length into the question of the mode of formation of mountains, which would be here out of place, it may be stated that in the great majority of cases they are referable to three natural modes of formation, namely (1) elevation, (2) erosion, and (3) accumulation: of these three modes we have examples in Palestine and the regions around. 1. by elevation.

—Many mountain ranges owe their origin to direct elevation en masse at various ancient geological periods, above the surface of the ocean, or the general level of the adjoining lands. Some of these have been upraised at successive intervals of time, and from very early eriods have preserved their dominant characters.

Mo this class may be referred the Scandinavian and Grampian ranges, that of North Wales, the Bavarian (or Hereynian) Highlands, and the Sinaitie group between the Gulfs of Suez and of ‘Akabah. This last probably existed as a part of an extensive tract of continental land in Palzozoic times, and has maintained its dominant position down to the θεοῦ day during the general sub- mergence of the adjoining regions in the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods.

The Alps and Pyrenees received their final and probably most important upheaval in late Tertiary times. 2. By erosion.—In various parts of the globe mountain groups or ranges have been formed, owing to the erosion of valleys amongst previously existing tablelands.

When the floor of the ocean has been upraised into dry land in the form of a plateau, consisting of approximately horizontal (or even inclined) strata, rain and river action sets in, owing to which channels of ever-increasing depth and breadth are eroded, thus carving the plateau into separate and independent mountain masses if the process is sufficiently prolonged.

In this manner the great ranges of the Colorado in North America, the lesser group of Central and South Wales, the range of the Jura on the borders of Switzerland; and, in Eastern countries, those of Upper Egypt, Edom and Moab, and of Southern Gade have been formed. The Lebanon range owes its predominant position, with its culminating dome-like mass of Hermon (?

Mount Hor, Nu 347-8), which formed the northern limit of the land given to Israel, to direct elevation followed by erosion, by which the deep valleys and ravines have been worn down through an original tableland in late Tertiary and post-Tertiary times.

The range of Edom and Moab, stretching from the Gulf of ‘Akabah to the shore of the Dead Sea, is doubtless originally due to the elevation of the Arabian tableland from the bed of the ocean along one or more lines of fracture (or ‘fault’) in the crust of the earth, but has subsequently been carved out into many distinct summits by river erosion at a period when the rainfall was more abundant than at ese (see ARABAH); and amongst these Mount or (Jebel Haroun), the scene of Aaron’s death, is the most conspicuous example (Nu 20”: 7), 3.

By accumulation.—To this third class of mountains nearly all those of modern volcanic origin may be referred.

During eruptions of volcanoes, either upon the surface of the land or upon the floor of the sea, molten lava is poured forth in sheets or streams from the throat of the crater in each case, together with solid blocks of lava, showers of ashes, and lapilli, which spread over the flanks of the mountain and adjoining tracts, and ultimately rise in piled-up masses to varying heights in the form of truncated cones or domes.

‘The most familiar examples are the groups of Auvergne in Central France, and the isolated Mounts of Vesuvius and Etna. The regions adjoin- ing Eastern Palestine present numerous examples of voleanic mountains.

In the region east of the Upper Jordan, called in the NT Trachonitis, but now known as the Jaulfin and Haurdn, there are several distinct voleanic cones rising above the general surface of the country ;* and still farther eastwards, in the wild region of the Lejah, a grand range of volcanic mountains dominates the wide expanse of lava-fields of Bashan. Similar features are to be observed in parts of Central Arabia, and were little known until brought to our knowledge by a recent traveller.

t Here, not far from the cities of Mecca and Medina, a group of volcanic mountains rises above the expanse of the Arabian Desert, from which lava-floes descend to the plain. In all these districts of Arabia volcanic action has long been extinct; perhaps even before the appearance of man.

t From the above account it will be seen that in strictly Bible lands we have representatives of mountain forms owing their origin to the various modes of natural operations which in past ages have diversified the surface of our globe. A few special biblical references to mountains may be noted. ‘Mountain of God’ (oxy 13) in Ps 68" is general=a God’s mountain, indicating greatness or majesty. On the other hand, Sinai or Horeb is called ‘the mountain of God’ in a special sense (Ex 477 18° 9418.

] Καὶ 198; cf. ma 70 in Nu 10%). The ‘mount of congregation’ (RV; better, ‘mountain of meeting or assembly, 7yi> 70) in Is 14° refers to the dwelling-place of the gods, which the Babylonians located in the far north. See CONGREGATION in vol. i. p. 466°. Mountains are frequently alluded to in connexion with theo- hanies ; they melt at the presence of J”, Jg 5°, s 975 ete.

; they are called on to cover the guilty from His face, Hos 108, Lk 23° ||; they leap in praise of J”, Ps 114°; they are called on to wit- ness His dealings with His people, Mic 6? ete. ete. Mountains were resurted to as hiding-places in time of war, Jg 6?, Mt 9418}; they were hunting- grounds, 1 S 26”; grazing-places for cattle, Ps 50" G. Schumacher, ‘The Jaulin,’ PE F'St, 1866-1888. + O. M. Doughty, Arabia Deserta, 2 vols. (1888).

t The age of these volcanic eruptions is discussed in the present writer's ‘Physical Geology of Arabia Petrwa and Pales tine,’ PEF Mem. p. 98 (1886). MOURNING etc. ; places of illicit worship, Is 65’, Ezk 6 ; beacon stations, Is 307; lurking-places for ambnscade, Jg 9%, Mountains are typical of difficulties, Zec 47. Their removal is spoken of by our Lord as a type of what is possible to strong faith, Mt 17” ||. E. HULL.

MOURNING (52x ‘mourn’; 73x ‘sigh or groan’; np; ‘lament’; 15D ‘ wail’ (κόπτεσθαι) ; θρηνεῖν, πενθεῖν) in Scripture is sometimes attributed in a figurative sense to Nature,—the withering of the pastures beneath and the blackening of the sky above, the wasting of the frnit-trees, and the destruction of the beasts of the field, of the fowl of the air, of the fish of the sea, being at once the effects of God’s judg- ments upon her for man’s sin and the manifestations of her sorrow and grief as the sharer of his punish- ment and misery (Jer 433, Hos 4%, 5] 1102), Ina like figurative sense it is attributed to nations, and especially to Israel, as when the prophet (J1 18) summons the daughter of Zion to repent- ance, and bids her ‘lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth’; or when, in a time of famine, Judah is said to mourn (Jer 143), and the people assembled at the gates are in deep mourning, and sit humbly on the ground; or when, again, it is predicted (Zee 12'°"4) that, in the day of the outpouring of the Spirit of grace and supplication upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, ‘ they shall look unto me whom they have pierced, an ney shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for his first-born’ (RV).

With a moral connotation, too, expressive of sorrow for sin, or distress for the miseries of the nation, it is ascribed to individuals, as to Daniel (103), to Ezra (10°), and to Nehemiah (1*), while Ahab in penitential mourning rends his clothes and puts sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasts like a man sorrowing for the dead (1 K 21”).

Mourning in the literal sense, as the expression of sorrow for the dead, appears in Scripture not only with all its ordinary natural manifestations, but also with the large y of conventional and formulated grief which usage had gathered round it among the Israelites as among other Oriental peoples.

However ready to submit to the will of God without murmur or complaint, the Oriental is demonstrative in the social and public manifesta- tions of his sorrow, and has reduced the expression of his tine for the dead to a system which tends to crush out natural feeling. In Jer 1605 and Ezk 24'°-17 together there is a fairly complete list of the mourning customs of Israel.

mening is the most general and most strongly marked expression of pain or mental emotion, and is the primary and, indeed, universal expression of mourning for the dead. This, like other mani- festations of oeee emotion, is more under control among civilized than uncivilized peoples, and more restrained among the staid and unimpassioned people of the West than the lively and excitable children of the East. ‘Englishmen,’ says Darwin (The Expression of the Emotions, p.

155), ‘ rarely ne except under the pressure of the acutest grief.’ . Sls funerals,’ says arp (The Struggle of the Nations, p. 511),—and his description of Egyptian mourning finds frequent parallels among the ἘΣ ΞΕ were not like those to which we are accustomed,—mute ceremonies, in which sorrow is barely expressed by a furtive tear: noise, sob- bings, and wild gestures were their necessary con- comitants.

Not only was it customary to hire weeping women, who tore their hair, filled the air | with their lamentations, and simulated by skilful actions the depths of despair, but the relatives and friends themselves did not shrink from making an outward show of their grief, nor from disturbing MOURNING the equanimity of the passers-by by the immoderate expressions of their sorrow.’ Of weeping for the dead the books of the Old and New Testament are full.

It was considered unnatural not to weep for the dead. ‘Weep for the dead,’ says the Son of Sirach, ‘so as not to be evil spoken of’ (Sir 3817). Whatever the position of woman in the ancient Hebrew cult, there is evidence that mourning was performed both for women and by women. In proof that women were mourned for, we have the notices recorded in Genesis of the care and interest taken by the patriarchs in the burial of their wives.

Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death (Gn 24); and grief for a mother was always bitter (Ps 3519. We have also Barzillai’s words to David, ‘ Let thy servant, I pray thee, be buried in the grave of my father and mother’ (2S 1957, In NT times we have the case of Dorcas, around whose remains, in the short interval before inter- ment, all the widows for whom she had done so much stood weeping (Ac 933.

Abraham, as we have noted, wept for Sarah (Gn 233); Jacob when deceived by the report of Joseph’s death (37%) ; Joseph for his father (50') ; the camp of Israel for Moses (Dt 348) ; David and his men for Saul and Jonathan (2S 113); David at the grave of Abner, for the child of Bathsheba, for Amnon, for Absalom (3°? 128 1338.

1885); the mothers of Bethlehem for their murdered innocents (Mt 2"); Jesus at the grave of Lazarus (Jn 11%), where His weeping was restrained and silent (ἐδάκρυσε), and over the coming doom of Jerusalem (Lk 19"), where He wept aloud (ἔκλαυσε). Wailing is sometimes added to Weeping, to express a deeper intensity of grief, as in the case of the mourners gathered in the death-chamber of Jairus’ daughter (Mk 5* 5).

Wailing like the jackals, and mourning as the ostriches (Mic 18), is expressive of the bitterest sorrow ; and groaning like the bear, the dove, or the crane (Is 38' 59"), of a grief more restrained. Exclamations of grief were common along with wailing (Jer 22, Am 5', 1 K 13%). Vociferous grief, as Maspero points out above, was specially characteristic of ans Egyptians.

It was heard as a great cry in Egypt that night when all the first- born were stricken (Ex 12”), and it no doubt entered into the ‘grievous mourning’ which the Esyptians made for Jacob as they escorted the remains of the patriarch to his last resting-place in the cave of Machpelah (Gn 50"). Of such mourning a striking ilustration is Shea (Ball, Light from the resp 119) from a wall-painting in an Egyptian tomb.

In the funeral procession here represented, a master of the ceremonies, followed by eight women, precedes, and four men with long staffs follow the shrine; ‘all making gestures of mourning by beating their breasts and their mouths while wailing (the interrupted sound has a peculiarly melancholy effect), or by throwing dust on the head.’ The excitable Eastern temperament, however, was not content with weeping and wailing and exclamations of grief.

Beating the breast (Is 32", but text dubious) was one of the commonest forms of lamentation. Beating the breast and the mouth, as we have just seen, was a feature of the mourn- ing of the early Egyptians. The bewailing which accompanied the weeping for the daughter of Jairus (ἐκόπτοντο) probably included the beating of the breast (Lk 853), and so also the lamentation (κοπετόν) made by devout men for Stephen (Ac 8°).

Of Joseph it is recorded that he fell Boe his dead father’s face and kissed him (Gn 50’), although this is a solitary instance in Scripture. See art. Kiss. Tamar is represented (2 S 13") as laying her hand upon her head and going her way, crying as she | went. To tear the hair and the beard (Ezr ®), to \rend the clothes and put on sackcloth and filthy 454 MOURNING garments (2 S 351.

9, Est 45), to sit among the ashes (Job 35), and to sprinkle earth or dust or ashes upon the head (28 13", Rev 181°), were actions in which sorrow and grief more or less naturally or con- ventionally expressed themselves. To go bent as under a load (Ps 35 385. 7, to go barefoot and bareheaded and to cover the lips (Ezk 24'* 17, Mic 37), were less demonstrative tokens of mourning. Mutilation of nose, brow, ears, hands is mentioned by Herodotus (iv.

17) as being practised by the Scythians in token of mourning for a departed king. Such mutilation was forbidden by the law of Moses (Lv 19%, Dt 141), although we read of making bald the hair and cutting off the beard (Is 15*), and even of lacerating the body, as a sign of vexation and grief (Jer 415).

Among the Ara it was custom in mourning, especially for the women, both to scratch their faces till the blood flowed and to shave off the hair ; and it looks as if, in spite of the Deuteronomic prohibitions, similar practices had come into vogue among the Israelites (Driver, Deuteronomy, p. 136). Fasting, more or less strict, seems to have been an invariable accompaniment of mourning, and mourners denied themselves recreation and other enjoyments.

When it is said that the men of Jabesh-gilead fasted seven days in grief for the death of Saul and Jonathan (1S 3118), we must suppose the fast to have been less strict than usual among Orientals, and that some food was allowed to the mourning people. From the Talmud (Baba Bathra, 16a) we learn that lentils were allowed during the period of mourning.

It was customary for friends and neighbours after an interval to come and comfort the mourners and urge food upon them (2S 12'* 17), and food was also distributed at funerals (Jer 147 RV, Ezk 24”, Hos 9%), especially to the poor (? Job 41”), ‘The bread of mourners,’ the bread partaken of by the nearest relatives of the deceased during the period of mourning, was accounted ceremonially unclean and defiling (Hos 94).

It has been dis- cussed whether this mourners’ meal of the days of the prophets was not in some way connected with a funeral feast. The subject is obscure, but in Dt (2014) the Israelite, speaking of the tithe, is represented as saying, ‘I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, neither have I put away thereof, being unclean, nor given thereof for the dead.

’ ΤΆ we adopt the rendering ‘for the dead,’ the passage sity Ne taken as pointing to the custom for the friends of the nears to testify their sympathy with the mourning rela- tives by sending bread or other food for their refreshment, as we have just observed.

If we render ‘to the dead,’ the passage would rather point to the widespread custom of placing food in the ΤΑΥ͂Θ with the dead—a custom common among the Egyptians, and found among the later Jews in ‘the messes of meat laid upon a grave’ (Sir 30'8). See the subject discussed in Driver, Deuteronomy, pp. 291, 292. That funeral feasts became an institution of later Judaism is clear, for Josephus (BJ 1. i.

1) records that the custom of giving funeral feasts ‘is an occasion of poverty to inany of the Jews, because they are forced to feast the multitude, for if any one omits it he is not esteemed a holy man.’ To this day it is a custom among the Jews to dispense alms with a liberal hand cusing the week of mourning in honour of the departed. In a time of mourning it was a good custom to send messages of condolence to the bereaved (2S 10'-?)

; and friends were wont to gather to com- fort them in their sorrow (Jn 11!*)—a custom which prevails to this day in Syria in the bands of mourners who assemble from neighbouring villages to join in the lamentations. Funeral orations MOURNING were common in later times. Elegies, as we learn from Scripture, were composed to be sung for the dead. David composed his well-known elegy to honour the memory of Saul and Jonathan (2 Sim, and another for the gallant Abner (2S 3%).

Such an elegy was composed by Jeremiah for king Josiah, and the ‘singing men and women’ sang dirges for him, continued, as it would appear, through a course of years (2 Ch 35%). Of this character were the Hashem ations of Jeremiah, called in the Talmud and elsewhere by the very name (n)3'7), ‘elegies,’ ‘ dirges,’ full of the bitterness of grief, as they were, for Jerusalem destroyed by the Chaldeans. See LAMENTATIONS (BOOK OF), and, on the rhythm of such kindth, POETRY.

When a young persen dies unmarried, modern Syrians make the funeral lamentation more pathetic by first going through some forms of a wedding ceremony. The chief mourners naturally were the relatives of the deceased, —husband (Gn 23?), widow (Job 27"), father and mother (Mk 5*:“), brother (Lk 718), sons (Gn 25° et passim). Among the well-to-do it was common to hire professional mourners. They accompanied the dead body to the grave, moving onwards with formal music (cf.

Mt 9%), and singing dirges to the dead. They were both men and women. We have already noted the presence of both in Egyptian funeral processions, and, as has been just observed, they were ‘ singing men and women’ thatlamented Josiah. Itis men skilful in lamenta- tion whom Amos (5᾽5) summons to pronounce a dirge over the moral ruin of their country. It is men that are spoken of in Ecclesiastes (125) as the wailers that go about the streets.

It was male flute-players that were present lamenting the death of Jairus’ daughter (Mt 953). On the other hand, it is the women whose profession it was (n}3;\p>) to attend at funerals, and by their skilled lamentations to aid the real mourners in giving vent to their grief, whom Jeremiah has in view when he says, ‘ Call for the women who chant dirges, and send for cunning (Heb. ‘ wise’) women that they may come’ (Jer 917.

They are still required for such service, and are skil in interweaving femuily references and inimprovising poetry in praise of the departed. These professional mourning women are met with both in ancient and modern Arabia (Trumbull’s Studies in Oriental Life, p. 153 ff.); and Maspero (Dawn of Civilisation, p. 684) mentions that among the ancient Chaldeans old women performed the office of mourners, washing the dead body, per- fuming it, and clothing it in its best apparel.

The period of mourning for the dead is variously given. The ordinary time, however, as we have already noticed, was seven days. All that was in a house or tent along with a dead body was unclean for seven days, and the bread which the mourners ate was, as we have seen, defiled. The period of mourning prescribed by Jewish authorities for a parent isa year. Of this time the first thirty days are considered the most important, and of these, again, the first seven are most stringently observed.

e first seven days after a death are known as the Shiva, during which the mourners, as has already been indicated, are not permitted to cook anything for their own use, and are required to avoid all forms of amusement and recreation, not even listening to music. On hearing of the falsely reported death of Joseph, Jacob mourned for him many days (Gn 37%), and he himself in turn was mourned by the Egyptians threescore and ten days (Gn 50%), including, however, forty days of his embalming.

Herodotus (ii. 86, 88) tells us that the Egyptians had seventy-two days of mourning for the dead. Joseph’s own mourning for his father is said to have lasted seven days (Gn 50”). The children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab, as they had wept for Aaron when he died MOUSE MUFFLERS 454 apon Mt. Hor (Nu 20”, Dt 34°). Of Judith it is said (Jth 16%) that the house of Israel mourned for hersevendays.

‘Seven days,’ says the Son of Sirach (Sir 22"), ‘are the days of mourning for the dead ; but for a fool and an ungodly man, all the days of his life.’ The prescribed period of mourning for a father and mother expires on the eve of the first anniversary of the death. The anniversary itself is invariably observed with strict solemnity by the Jews.

It is said that hundreds of Israelites who profess none of the orthodox beliefs of Judaism, and recognize none of its ceremonial laws as bind- ing ΠΡῸΣ them, yet keep this anniversary, attend- ing the synagogue for the only time in the year, and distributing money among their poor and afflicted co-religionists.

The scriptural instance of commemorating the dead on the annive of their death is that of the daughters of Israel who went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite, and kept up the celebration four days (Jg 11). Lirsraturs.—Nowack, Heb. Arch. i. p. 193 f.; Benzinger, Heb. Arch. p. 163 ff.; art. ‘ Trauer bei den Hebriern’ in He , RE?, and ‘Mourning’ in Kitto, Cycl. ; Thomson, TaeiiGent Book (. Pal. and Jerus.

See ‘Funerals and Mourning’ under Manners and Oustoms’ in Index); Mackie, Bible Manners and Customs; Peritz, ‘Woman in the Ancient Hebrew Oult’ (re- printed from JBL, 1898, Part ii.); continuation of art. inJQR on ‘Death and Burial Customs among the Jews,’ by A. P. Bender, Cf. also W. R. Smith, RS? (see ‘Mourning’ in Index) ; 8Schwally, Leben nach dem Tode ; Well., Reste?, 177 ff.; Driver on Am 6216 acai 232 ff. ; and Bertholet, Isr. Vorstell. v. Zustand nach dem 7’ T. NICOL.