THE CONTROVERSIALIST 1 75 



guising himself, Saul sought the woman, who, at his 

 request, called up the prophet Samuel from Sheol, the 

 under-world. The apparition is visible to her, but 

 invisible to the king (who had thrown off his disguise), 

 to whose inquiry she replies, " I see Elohim (god or 

 gods) coming up out of the earth." A conversation, 

 through the woman as medium, follows between Saul 

 and Samuel, who, reproaching the king for disquieting 

 him, says, " Jahveh will deliver Israel also with thee 

 into the hands of the Philistines, and to-morrow shalt 

 thou and thy sons be with me " (i. e., in Sheol). 



The story throws a flood of light upon ancient 

 Israelitic belief in necromancy and other forms of 

 magic, and in the abode of the dead. This last had 

 nothing in common with the elaborate conception of 

 a future state of rewards and punishments which was 

 incorporated into Hebrew eschatology during the Cap- 

 tivity. The belief in Sheol may be equated with that 

 of the Greek belief in Hades, both these being sur- 

 vivals of barbaric ideas about the fate of the departed. 

 " The small and great are there, and the servant is 

 free from his master." The ancient Israelites thought 

 that a man consists of body and soul, and that after 

 death the soul continued to exist as a ghost in the 

 under-world, whence it could be summoned bv the art 



3 J 



of the necromancer, retaining, on its appearance, some 

 shadowy outline in form and feature by which it could 



