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  Transcriber’s Note:

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
  For more transcriber’s notes, please go to the end of this e-book.




  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--still unfinished--on
the Sway of Friendship in the World’s Forces, that I came upon facts
concerning the primitive rite of covenanting by the inter-transfusion
of blood, which induced me to turn aside from my other studies, in
order to pursue investigations in this direction.

Having an engagement to deliver a series of lectures before the Summer
School of Hebrew, under Professor W. R. Harper, of Chicago, at the
buildings of the Episcopal Divinity School, in Philadelphia, I decided
to make this rite and its linkings the theme of that series; and I
delivered three lectures, accordingly, June 16-18, 1885.

The interest manifested in the subject by those who heard the Lectures,
as well as the importance of the theme itself, has seemed sufficient
to warrant its presentation to a larger public. In this publishing,
the form of the original Lectures has, for convenience sake, been
adhered to; although some considerable additions to the text, in the
way of illustrative facts, 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, there was added
difficulty in gathering the material for its illustration and
exposition. So far as I could learn, no one had gone over the ground
before me, in this particular line of research; hence the various items
essential to a fair statement of the case must be searched for through
many diverse volumes of travel and of history and of archæological
compilation, with only here and there an incidental disclosure in
return. Yet, each new discovery opened the way for other discoveries
beyond; and even after the Lectures, in their present form, were
already in type, I gained many fresh facts, which I wish had been
earlier available to me. Indeed, I may say that no portion of the
volume is of more importance than the Appendix; where are added facts
and reasonings bearing directly on well-nigh every main point of the
original Lectures.

There is cause for just surprise that the chief facts of this entire
subject have been so generally overlooked, in all the theological
discussions, and in all the physio-sociological researches, of
the earlier and the later times. Yet this only furnishes another
illustration of the inevitably cramping influence of a pre-conceived