THE
BLOOD COVENANT
A PRIMITIVE RITE
AND ITS BEARINGS ON SCRIPTURE
BY
H. CLAY TRUMBULL D.D.
Author of “Kadesh Barnea.”
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1885
COPYRIGHT, 1885
BY H. CLAY TRUMBULL
GRANT & FAIRES
PHILADELPHIA
PREFACE.
It was while engaged in the preparation of a book—stillunfinished—on the Sway of Friendship in theWorld’s Forces, that I came upon facts concerningthe primitive rite of covenanting by the inter-transfusionof blood, which induced me to turn aside frommy other studies, in order to pursue investigations inthis direction.
Having an engagement to deliver a series of lecturesbefore the Summer School of Hebrew, under ProfessorW. R. Harper, of Chicago, at the buildings of theEpiscopal Divinity School, in Philadelphia, I decidedto make this rite and its linkings the theme of thatseries; and I delivered three lectures, accordingly,June 16-18, 1885.
The interest manifested in the subject by those whoheard the Lectures, as well as the importance of thetheme itself, has seemed sufficient to warrant itspresentation to a larger public. In this publishing,the form of the original Lectures has, for conveniencesake, been adhered to; although some considerableadditions to the text, in the way of illustrative facts,[iv]have been made, since the delivery of the Lectures;while other similar material is given in an Appendix.
From the very freshness of the subject itself, therewas added difficulty in gathering the material for itsillustration and exposition. So far as I could learn,no one had gone over the ground before me, in thisparticular line of research; hence the various itemsessential to a fair statement of the case must besearched for through many diverse volumes of traveland of history and of archæological compilation, withonly here and there an incidental disclosure in return.Yet, each new discovery opened the way for otherdiscoveries beyond; and even after the Lectures, intheir present form, were already in type, I gainedmany fresh facts, which I wish had been earlier availableto me. Indeed, I may say that no portion of thevolume is of more importance than the Appendix;where are added facts and reasonings bearing directlyon well-nigh every main point of the original Lectures.
There is cause for just surprise that the chief factsof this entire subject have been so generally overlooked,in all the theological discussions, and in allthe physio-sociological researches, of the earlier andthe later times. Yet this only furnishes another illustrationof the inevitably cramping influence of a pre-conceivedfixed theory,—to which all the ascertainedfacts must be conformed,—in any attempt at thorough[v]and impartial scientific inv