Bible Review

Dante’s Limbo, however, contained not only the unbaptized children and Old Testament saints, but also the righteous pagans.

When they arrive in heaven, they are greeted by Enoch and Elijah—the two earlier righteous spirits who ascended directly into heaven without passing through Limbo. See article by Birger Pearson, “Parallel Paths to Heaven: Enoch and Jesus,” BR 19:02 and the accompanying sidebar on Elijah.

The reference is to Genesis 3, in which Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge. God expels them from Eden so that they cannot eat from the tree of life and gain immortality.

This part of hell was also called “the Bosom of Abraham,” and epithet taken from the parable in Luke 16 in which a rich man who dies suffers torments in Hades, while impoverished Lazarus is taken by angels to a special part of the underworld to be embraced in Abraham’s bosom.

It might seem that the name of Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great, the pharaoh most often associated with the Exodus)—would also mean “Ra is born,” but his name is normally written R‘-ms-sw (roughly, Ramessu) and means “Ra-fashioned him,” using another meaning of the verb msi, that is, “to fashion, form.” The two senses of the verb are related, however, in that Egyptians thought of the fashioning of a divine statue as equivalent to the god being born.

Readers may be more familiar with seeing some of these names spelled differently—as Ptahmosis, for example, or Thutmosis. Just as Mose became Moses when translated into Greek and then English, so too with these names that first became known to the West through Greek historians such as Herodotus, Diodorus and Manetho.

Later tradition identified the witnesses as Elijah and Moses, based primarily on their appearance together at the transfiguration and on Moses’ proven ability to cause drought, turn rivers to blood and unleash plagues on the wicked.

It is a strange but pure coincidence that both columnists in this issue write about hitchhiking and the Bible. Honest.—Ed.