Introduction

The belief of the “tevel blo dai mahn” (spirit of the dead person) is the dominant theme in Melanesian societies. The Melanesians understand their immediate or distant future in the context of the return of their dead relatives in the “tevel” (spirit) form who would bring meaning, answers to lives questions, wealth and prosperity. The aim of this paper is to explore the Melanesians’ understanding of the spirit of the dead person and associate it with Ezekiel’s vison of the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37:1-14. This paper will explore the topic in various ways: (1) Previous works on the spirit of the dead person in Melanesia (2) Setting the context of the doctrine of “tevel blo dai mahn” (3) the Melanesian worldview (4) Melanesian belief system of the spirit of the dead within the framework of eschatology (5) Biblical response. The understanding of the belief of the dead person’s spirit helps to establish the biblical view of death and resurrection at the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Previous Scholarship

While the belief system of “tevel blo dai mahn” varies within different Melanesian societies, the common understanding remain the same that life does not cease at death, but continues on in a “spirit” form. Numerous work has been done from the anthropological point of view however, little or no work has been done to comprehensively address the belief system from the biblical point of view. The following is not a comprehensive list, rather a survey of a few selected works. Garry Trompf points out that death and after-life is the key concept in the Melanesian society. He surveys the human life cycle from birth to death, starting from the birth, then the teen age, the acme- young adult hood and finally the old age. He argues that in the Melanesian life journey, the eldest is the most respected figure in the community because he is closer to the ancestors. Therefore, death is seen as the most important event in any person’s life in the Melanesian society.¹ While the chapter explores a human life cycle from the Melanesian perspective, it overlooks that biblical aspect of it.

Neville Bartle developed a theology that addresses the issues of death, witchcraft and the spirits of the dead. He did the ethnographic research by asking the students from Nazarene Bible College, PNG what their experiences were with the spirits. Nearly every one of them shared stories of the spirits that they or their relatives have encountered. After listening to their experiences, Bartle categorised the spirit world into four main types of spirits. They are the High God, sky people, spirits of the dead and forest spirits.² Bernard Narokobi explains that the spirits of the dead are real who participate actively in the affairs of their living relatives in whatever they do. Even in the killing of the enemy, the spirit are invoked.³ John Waiko adds that “people traditionally believed in spirits and not in a single god as in Christianity and other religions. The help of the spirits of the dead was called upon to assist the living in almost all important activities.”⁴

The Melanesian concept of life after death seems to be similar with the African understanding of life after death. For example, the Africans see death as a process, which removes a person gradually from the period of physical existence on earth and the period after death within which the departed is remembered by relatives and friends who knew him. When the last of these survivors die off, the departed now enters the complete death.⁵

This brief survey shows that Melanesians generally believe that the spirit of the dead are real who control the activities of the living. While this is a dominant theme in the Melanesian societies, it lacks a biblical support.

Setting the Context

The Melanesian group of countries are placed below the equator in the South Pacific Ocean. The countries consist of West Papua part of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji.⁶ The name Melanesia derives from the Greek meaning “Black Islands.” It was first coined in 1832 by the nineteenth century French Navigator Dumont d’Urville to describe all those parts of the Pacific inhabited by people with dark skin.⁷ The key traditional cultural values that seem to be common among the Melanesians include kinship, community life, exchange system and family relationship ties.

These values are closely related and are integrated into the life of a community. Paliaima Tanda explains that “tribal warfare and protection, contribution towards compensation for reconciliation and settling of tensions, sharing of goods and wealth, appointment of leaders, bride price and denominational ties are built around community.”⁸ Such occasions as weddings, funerals, settling of tensions, it is a community thing. It is customarily expected that the whole community gets involve. For example, when death occurs in a village, the community takes ownership.

That means the whole village gets involve in providing food, money, visiting and comforting the grieving family or provide other forms of support. However, if the family fails to allow the community’s involvement in such occasions, it brings shame to the community. This is because the Melanesian think and do things in terms of community. When people work and do things together, at the deeper level, relationships are formed and maintained. “The community is formed by relationships and is more than the mere geographical togetherness of people. By entering into a relationship, one enters into or forms a community.”⁹ This cultural practice units the community and deepens its relationship.

Papua New Guinea is very unique among the other Melanesian countries and even the world because of the range of the cultures it has. According to Waiko, there are over 800 languages spoken in PNG.¹⁰ The nation has distinctive cultures and traditions. According to Darrell Whiteman Papua New Guinea culture is an “integrated system of learned, shared ideas that people in a society carry in their heads, which in turn are expressed in the form of material artifacts and observable behavior.”¹¹ Because of the cultural diversity, the anthropologist described Papua New Guinea as “the most complicated anthropological jigsaw on the earth’s surface.”¹² The belief system of spirit of the dead emerged from this context.

Melanesian Worldview

The Melanesians worldview is generally influenced by animism. Animism relates to belief in spiritual beings and impersonal forces that have power over human affairs. Daimoi explains that “Papua New Guineans believe in the existence of spiritual beings. From conception to the grave, they live with the consciousness of the spirits. They know that the spirits are real.”¹³ This belief system governs people’s behavioral patterns and attitudes. This belief system comes into play in such occasion as in death. When a person dies, people with an animistic worldview claim that a dead person still exists but in the form of a “spirit.” The spirit of a dead relative may be the source of wealth, security to the family or can bring sickness, poverty and death if the spirit is unhappy. This worldview of life after death is similar to how the Africans view death. The dead are not cut off from the living, for they may reveal themselves in dreams or appear to their living relations to give instructions, warnings or information. They may summon living relatives to appear before them to explain their misconduct, and may punish them.¹⁴ So both the Africans and the Melanesians have similar worldview of the death.

Paul Hiebert observes that worldview functions as a basis on which to build the systems of explanation and supply rational justification for belief in these systems.¹⁵ It serves as a lens through which a person sees the world and makes sense of his or her reality. While the belief system varies from place to place, the common belief “death does not terminate life nor end social relations, but it transforms one life and continues social relationships.”¹⁶ Thus, the relative can consult the spirit for power, protection or fortune when he goes for hunting or fighting.

Melanesian Belief of “Tevel blo dai mahn”

The Melanesians assert that there are spirits that live with the living. These spirits fall into various groups. For example, the spirit world consists of autonomous creative spirit beings – cultural heroes, gods and goddesses, who established the cosmos; autonomous spirit beings – demons, masalai, which inhabit the earth; ancestral spirit beings – the spirits of the recent dead, and the remote dead, who are still part of the living; and impersonal occult forces, which can be controlled, so as to cause some good or evil.¹⁷ Neville Bartle highlighted four main types of spirits. They are the high God, sky people, spirit of the dead and the forest spirits (masalai).¹⁸ While there are little variations, the key idea is that these spirits are real and they possess some form of power, strength and knowledge whom the living people can still have contact with.

There are various views to how Melanesians interpret how the spirits of the dead are related to the village life. Some Melanesians believe that the spirit of the dead does not leave the relatives immediately but remain with them until they have the fuller knowledge of the community. According to the Toaripi (Papuan Gulf), the spirit of the dead does not depart immediately rather waited in the bush to disclose to its relatives those who had performed sorcery because every individual death was the result of sorcery. After revealing the information to the family, the spirit eventually crossed the ocean to the land of the setting sun.¹⁹

According to the Simbu people (Highlands of PNG), the dead are still present with the living. They do not depart but remain until they have the fuller knowledge of the community. As parents and grandparents provided for their children while they were alive, they will continue to do the same after they have died. Over a period of time, as their age mates die off and memories become lost, they fade away into semi-oblivion and join the collective ancestors of the past… If sickness comes, gardens do not grow or other problems happen in the community, it shows that the spirits are upset and appeasement needs to be made.”²⁰ The Kiwai (Western Papua) believe that the spirit of the dead still lives with the relatives after the burial. In order to remove the spirit from the village, the villagers would gather food and have a feast. At the end of the ceremony, the people would beat the dugout canoes, wooden drums or walls of the houses to remove the spirit from the village. Majority of Melanesians believe that the spirits are always at the graveyards where the corpse are buried. They cause sickness, disaster or failure if they are unhappy or if they are happy they bring success, prosperity and fertility. The people therefore greatly fear the spirit of the dead.

While others believe that when corpse are buried, the spirit immediately depart to a far land to join other ancestral spirits. They are transform into white human beings and return with great wealth. This worldview influenced the Melanesians to accept the early white missionaries peacefully. When the early missionaries arrived in PNG, the people peacefully welcomed and accepted them as friends because they assumed that they were their long departed ancestors who have died. The missionaries gave axes, knives, mirrors and salt to them.

This affirms the view that they were the spirits of their ancestors, so they were treated them with high respect. To satisfy their curiosity, the locals closely checked to ensure that they were really their ancestors. For example, the locals who were carrying the pioneer missionary’s children to the mission station had to pinch their skin to be really sure that they were real human beings, like the brown children.²¹ Regardless of the various teachings about the spirit of the dead, the idea that seems to be common in all these teachings is that life does not cease at death rather continues on in the spirit world.

Melanesian Understanding of Eschatology in the framework of “Tevel blo dai mahn”

The Melanesians’ understanding of eschatology can be better explained in the context of the spirit of the dead. In other words, the Melanesians believe that those who have died and have travelled to a far land will return with wealth and prosperity. The return of the ancestors will restore their lost identity and bring back the Golden Age.²² Many Melanesians anticipate this time when they will have abundant life with the return of their ancestors.

The return of the ancestors is connected closely to the Melanesian value of gutpela sindaun. Gutpela literally means “good, well, attractive or fine.”²³ The word sindaun carries several meanings: 1) “to sit down, to sit, 2) to live, to stay, and 3) conduct, way of life.”²⁴ When the two words are put together, it literally means to “sit down well” but conveys the idea of fellowship and having much. Gutpela sindaun conveys the idea of plenty: people have a chance to relax from the day-to-day labour of producing food; they have time to sit down to enjoy it. Gutpela sindaun also conveys the idea of social harmony; people sitting down, relaxing and talking together.²⁵ According to Rowsome, gutpela sindaun means “harmony, peace, unity, and social justice, release from oppression, wholeness, restoration, freedom, security, abundance: this is the desired life, the good life.”²⁶ Gernot Fugmann explains that “it means fulfillment in every aspect of life: health, success, fertility, respect, honour or influence over others.

Ultimately, it is the absence of negative forces in life as sickness, death, defeat, infertility, contempt or poverty.”²⁷ The return of the ancestors to bring liberation to its people and with wealth is often viewed as a time of prosperity and of peace and happiness. Thus, the indigenous traditionally wait for this time with great expectancy. Although, the Melanesian doctrine of “tevel-blo-dai-mahn” is believed to bring gutpela sindaun, it collides with what the bible teaches about the resurrection of the dead.

A Biblical Treatment: Valley of Dry Bones

As discussed above, in Melanesia, the dead relatives coming back to life in some form or other imprints the idea of resurrection in the minds of men and women. However, Papua New Guinea Melanesia being a Christian country has no word that equates “resurrection.” It is a loan word from Christianity which is simply described in Papua New Guinean Tok Pisin language as “kirap gen” meaning to wake up/get up. “Kirap gen” has no relation to the Christian understanding of the resurrection of the dead. It simply means to wake up from a normal sleep/ to get up from the place you’re sleeping or sitting.

But, the Tok Pisin phrase “tevel blo dai mahn” “the Spirit of the Dead Person” connotes the idea of resurrection “raising up from the dead.” The idea of resurrection is understood in Melanesia as the “spirit” of the dead person. This “spirit” of the dead person is perceived as the “tevel” the divine part of humans, which sticks around after death that communicates with the living. The “tevel” comes in a ghostly form.

The resurrection mentioned in the bible relates well to Melanesians because it teaches about life after death. Unlike the biblical doctrine of resurrection in bodily form, Melanesians are not interested in the physical resurrection of the loved one, they are more interested in the “tevel” spirit of the love one because that is the divine part. That divine part can be revived through magical means. That divine part seems to know all the answers the living needs to know about life and its meaning. That divine part can bring wealth and happiness.

However, the challenge is that Melanesian doctrine of “tevel blo dai mahn” contradicts the understanding of the resurrection of the dead in bodily form in scripture (Matt. 27:52; Dan. 12:2; 1 Thess. 4:6; Rev. 20:12-13. Especially the resurrection that is imaged by the dry bones in Ezekiel 37:1-14, which is the focus of the biblical response of this article. Also, before going any further, it is significant to note that dry bones prophecy is depicted at two levels: At one level, it reaches outwards to the House of Israel, offering a symbol of hope from Babylonian captivity. At another, deeper level, it reaches inwards to God, enabling Ezekiel to share the experience of re-creating dead humans into existence.²⁸ That is, the biblical response in this article gives emphasis to the deeper level of the dry bones prophecy.

The beginning of the vision no doubt portrays the reality of death as it displays a large number of dead dry bones scattered throughout the valley (Ezek. 37:1, 2). Ezekiel knows that these are human bones by recognizing their skulls with large empty eyes and jawbones. Though an insight not clearly attained in the Old Testament, much of pre-critical exegesis of Ezekiel 37:1-14 took a visionary event that prefigure or initiate humankind’s resurrection at the end of human history.²⁹

In addition, though the resurrection that Ezekiel is interested in might be limited to the resurrection of the House of Israel, it seems likely that this vision contributed to the formulation of the later Doctrine of the literal resurrection of the dead in the New Testament. In other words, this imagery does offer a new perspective of the resurrection of the dead in bodily form and not in the “spirit” form as perceived by the Melanesian Doctrine of “tevel-blo-dai-mahn.”³⁰

The question “Can these bones live?” in verse 3 might seem ridiculous because these are very dry bones and there is no any hope for them live again. These bones cannot live indicates hopelessness. However, at the deeper level of this prophecy, it would need to be tied to belief in general eschatological resurrection (cf. Dan 12:1-2), though such idea has not developed in the minds of the Israelites. On the other hand, when these dry bones are perceived through the Melanesian Doctrine of “tevel-blo-dai- mahn,” the bones can still live, not literally, but in the “tevel” (ghostly) form. For it is believed that the ancestors who died long ago do come back to life in the “tevel” form.

But maybe these dry bones can literally live again in the bodily form, a view that is quite contrary to Melanesian belief system. For Ezekiel responds in verse 3: “O Sovereign Lord you alone know.” From Ezekiel’s viewpoint, he seem to say, “I have no hope for the image I see.” “Preach to the dry bones?” (v.4) – “Is there any point in preaching to the dry bones?” However, there is a point that dry bones can live again from God’s perspective in verses 5-6, but not from Ezekiel’s. Likewise, Melanesians tend to argue that there is also a point because one can still speak, communicate, and see the “tevel(s)” of the dry bones in the grave using magical words.

In Ezekiel, it is plainly clear that no other, but only God can revive. Verse 6 of Ezekiel 37 tends to dismiss the Melanesian Doctrine of “tevel-blo-dai-mahn.” The verse shows that God can revive the dry bones in four stages: God will firstly, connect the bones, Secondly, he will cover the bones with flesh, than, overlay the flesh with skin, and finally, infuse them with breath. This implies the fact that God is the only biological revival. And there is no other source apart from God who can do this.

The imagery also creates the impression that the construction proceeded rapidly; bone knocked on bone until it was in its proper place, but verse 8 identifies a problem; there was no breath in the bones. Now this breath will bring life to the bones, but what is the source of the breath? The “four winds” in verse 9 may denote direction; it may refer to divine breath that blows in every corners of the earth, giving life to all creatures.

According to verse 10, the breath enters the body. God puts breath into the bones, but the use of ruah whether it should be interpreted as “spirit” “breath” causes ambiguity. In any case ruah represents the divine animation force. It refers to the spirit of the LORD denotes a life-giving breath or spirit coming from God, which creates human beings out of inanimate matter. The result is, in the valley of the dry bones there is an imagery of a new creation. It pictures Adam (God must again breathe them into life) in Gen. 2:7. Adam did not become a living being until God hath breathed in him the life given breath. The dry bones become alive, not in the “tevel” form, but in bodily form infused by the breath of God.

In the “tevel-blo-dai-mahn Doctrine of the Melanesians, there are no four stages of construction as outlined in verse 6. There is no infusing from the breath of God. The resurrection of the dead in “tevel” form therefore, does not come from God, and is not a correct representation of God’s re-creation work as shown in the dry bones imagery of Ezekiel 37:1-14.

The fabrication of the dead bones to living beings is affected by divine presence through the pronouncement of the priest-prophet Ezekiel.³¹ In Melanesia’s “tevel-blo-dai-mah,” some unknown powers other than God take possession of men and women and speak through them and commands them to recite magical words that raise ghosts. For instance, the witch of Endor in 1 Samuel 28 is an older example of talking to “tevel” of the dead in Bible times.³²

In Ezekiel’s vision at a deeper level, the idea of a bodily resurrection, therefore, can be associated with the end of days. The vision is an answer that after death, God can bring forth new life, even there is only death. For in 1 Sam. 2:6 says, “The Lord brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up.” At a deeper level, the day would come when God would open the graves and tombs and, by the power of his presence and breath, bring forth the dead in newness of life. That is, it provides a glimpse that after a person dies, if she or he were righteous in life, then he or she may hope to participate forever in the newness of life in the heavenly world.