You guys are superimposing modern ideas of how resurrection is supposed to take place vs the explanation that was used at the time when the Bible was written.
Ancient Hebrews believed the tail-bone of the spine (Luz, what modern anatomists call the coccyx) was an important ingredient of Jewish resurrection, as well as the significance of the "living waters" associated with Jewish/Xian resurrection, baptism, etc. This concept was shared with other cultures, as a commonly-accepted belief of the period. You needed to have the coccyx, or else resurrection couldn't take place (and the coccyx could be destroyed permanently in the fires of Gehenna).
Sorry for the formatting: the special characters (Greek, Latin, Hebrew) doesn't come across...
(From JB Orian's Origins of European Thought About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate)
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Rabbinic tradition 3 taught that in the grave, while the rest of the body perishes, the lower end of the spine remains (known as Luz) which when the dew falls upon it will become a complete body again and live. Thus is solved the mystery of the Resurrection of the Body. Hell-fire (named from Gehenna) may now be seen to mean extremity in death, in that unhappy dryness (cf. p. 258, n. 5). It is contrasted with the water of life, which is with God (Ps. xxxvi, 9), coming out from his throne (Rev. xxii, 1, 17).4 So Dives' burning torment and need for water (Luke xvi, 24). In the judgement after death the reward of the righteous is the water of life, and the part of sinners 'shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death' (Rev. xxi, 6-9; cf. xx, i4f., vii, 17).
Not less illuminating is the Mohammedan view. In the Koran we read that God created every beast from water'.5 Like the Rabbinic teaching is the doctrine that in the grave the earth consumes the whole of the body except the bone al Ajb, the bottom of the spine, which will remain till the blast of resurrection.6 ' For this birth the earth will be prepared by the rain above mentioned which is to fall continually for forty years and will resemble the seed of a man and be supplied from the water under the throne of God which is called living water; by the efficacy and virtue of which the dead bodies
3 See e.g. the evidence collected by Pocock in his notes to Porta Mosis
(portions of Maimonides), p. 117, and Kohler, Jewish Theology, p. 288.
It is worth noting that this (Luz) was the tepdv ooreov (pp. 207 f.).
4 Knowledge of this belief in the East explains Plaut. Trin. 940.
5 Chap, xxiv, 44 (Palmer's translation).
6 See Pocock, op. cit. pp. 255 f.
THE WATER OF LIFE. BOILING 289
shall spring forth from their graves as they did in their mother's womb or as corn sprouts forth by common rain, till they become perfect; after which breath will be breathed into them and they will sleep in their sepulchres till they are raised to life at the last trump.'* Then, when they are judged, those believers whose evil actions outweigh the good are said to be scorched for a time in hell, but, according to some, Mohammed taught that 'while they continue in hell they shall be deprived of life or (as his words are otherwise interpreted) be cast into a most profound sleep that they may be the less sensible of their torments; and that they shall afterwards be received into paradise and there revive on their being washed with the water of life'.2 Thus in this thought, that life is liquid, and the dead are dry we have found the reason for the widespread conception of a'water of life'.
That water is life is nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in the actual experience of frogs in Mediterranean and similar climes. There is a hymn in the Rig Veda about their reawakening after the dry season: 'When the waters from the sky fall upon them as they lie like a dried skin in the (dried up) pond, the voice of the frogs rises in concert like the lowing of cows which have calves.'z This helps us to understand why the frog was a symbol of resurrection.
1 Sale in 'The Preliminary Discourse' (to the Koran), Sect, iv (p. 65 in Warne's edition). Cf. irpcoTOTOKOs EK TCOV veKpcov, Coloss. i, 18.
2 Sale, op. cit. p. 72.
For both the Greeks and the Romans strength belonged to the procreative life-soul, 4A^(f|, genius (pp. 187 ff.). We have already seen reason in the Biblical, Rabbinic and other evidence to believe that for the ancient Jews the 'spirit' = life-soul was associated with the head, believed to be in the head (pp. 103, 144, 153, 183, n. 4), which saw visions, was prophetic (p. 103, where ^the visions of the head' were visions of the ruah, Dan. ii, 1, 28); also that it was on the one hand—in a sneeze2 (pp. 104 f.)—conceived of as of the nature of vapour, fitting the name ruah and its Greek version TrveOncc, and on the other hand conceived of as liquid identical with the seed or life-fluid in the head and spine (pp. 144, 188 ff., 234 f., 287). By this identification we explained the linking of death with sexual shame in the Fall (Gen. ii, 17-iii, 19 on
1 E.g. Judges xiv, 6, 19; xv, 14. There is other evidence that vitality and strength were identified with the ruah. When the faint and strengthless are revived, their ruah returns to them. For example, when Samson, dying of thirst, had drunk,' his spirit (ruah) came again and he revived' (Judges xv,
19; cf. I Sam. xxx, 12 with xxviii, 20, 22, etc.). Encouraging Jerusalem, Isaiah implies that 'spirit' means strength: 'the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses are flesh, and not spirit... and they all shall fail together* (xxxi, 3).
2 It is interesting to find in the Rabbinic tradition possession conceived of as the entry of a spirit in the form of a small fly through the nostrils into the brain (see L. Blau, Dasaltjud. Zauberwesen, p. 160), with which we may compare the Arab story of the punishment of Nimrod by the sending of a fly through his nostrils into his brain so that' he wandered to and fro as a madman' (seeJ. Meyouhas, Bible Tales in Arab Folklore, p. 43). Josephus tells how Eleazer draws out the spirit from one possessed by putting to his nostrils a ring having beneath its seal a root indicated by Solomon (Antiq. Jud. VIII, 2).
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484 IV. JEWISH CONCEPTIONS OF THE MIND, ETC.
p. 109, n. 4) and the belief that it is the tail-end of the spine which grows into a new body in the Resurrection (pp. 126, n. 3; 208; 287 f.). We also saw that strength and vitality were identified with the procreative life-soul (='spirit') in the head and hair (pp. 234f.). Thus far the conception is almost identical with what we have traced as underlying the yu)(i*| and the Roman genius.
The tail at the other end of the spinal marrow and associated with fertility by its hair (see pp. 130 f., 231 ff.) was also important. It consists largely of fat, the significance attached to which appears below (pp. 177, n. 9, 188 ff.). The tail-end of the spine was the * holy bone' for the Greeks (see pp. 208 ff.) and, as it were, the seed that grew into a new body according to Jews and Mohammedans (see p. 288). Such thoughts will explain why special value was attached to the tail of the October Horse, and to the liquid from it. See also p. 472.