APPENDIX. IMPORTANCE OF THIS RITE STRANGELY UNDERVALUED. It seems strange that a primitive rite like the blood-covenant, with its world-wide sweep, and its manifold applications to the history of sacrifice, should have received so little attention from students of the latter theme. Nor has it been entirely ignored by them; although its illustrations have, in this connection, been drawn almost entirely from the field of the classic writers, where its religious aspects have a minor prominence; and, as a result, the suggestion of any real importance in the religious symbolism of this rite has been, generally, brushed aside without its receiving due consideration. Thus, in The Speaker's Commentary,-which is one of the more recent, and more valuable, scholarly and sensible compends of sound and thorough biblical criticism,-there are references to the rite of human blood-covenanting in its possible bearing on the blood-covenanting of God with Israel before Mount Sinai,' after this sort: "The instances from classical antiquity, adduced, as parallels to this sacrifice of Moses, by Bähr, Knobel, and Kalisch, in which animals were slaughtered on the making of covenants, are either: those in which the animal was slain to signify the punishment due to the party that might break the covenant (Hom. I., III., 298; XIX., 252; Liv. Hist., I., 24; XXI., 45); those in which confederates dipped their hands, or their weapons, in the same blood (Æsch. Sept. c. Theb., 43; Xenoph. Anab., II., 2, 89); or those in which the contracting parties tasted 1 See pages 238-240, supra. each other's blood (Herodot. [Hist.] I., 74; IV., 74; Tac. Annal., XII., 47). All these usages are based upon ideas which are but very superficially related to the subject; they have indeed no true connection whatever with the idea of sacrifice as the seal of a covenant between God and man."1 When the entire history of man's outreaching after an inter-union of natures with his fellow-man and with his God is fairly studied, in the light thrown on it by the teachings of the divine-human Being, who gave of his own blood for the consummation of the longed-for divine-human inter-union, it will be more clearly seen, whether it were the relation of the primitive rite itself to the idea of sacrifice, or the study of that relation, which was 66 very superficial,” as a cause of its popular overlooking. The closest and most sacred form of covenant ever known in the primitive world, was that whereby two persons covenanted to become one, through being partakers of the same blood. At Sinai, when Jehovah would covenant with Israel, a common supply of substitute blood -proffered by Israel and accepted by Jehovah-was taken; and onehalf of it was cast upon the altar, Godward, while the other half of it was cast Israelward, upon the people. The declaration of Moses to Israel, then, was: "Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you;" or, as that declaration is repeated, in Hebrews: "This is the blood of the covenant which God covenanted to youward." And from that time forward, the most sacred possession of Israel,-above which hovered the visible sign of the presence of Jehovah, was the casket which contained the record of that blood-made covenant; and it was toward the mercy-seat cover of that Covenant Casket, that House of the Covenant, that the symbolic blood of atonement through new life was sprinkled, in the supreme renewals of that covenant by Israel's representative year by year. Even the Speaker's Commentary says, of this mutual blood-sharing by Israel and Jehovah at Sinai : The blood thus divided between the 3 Heb. 9: 20. 1 Speaker's Comm., at Exod. 24: 8. 2 Exod. 24: 3-8. two parties to the covenant signified the sacramental union between the Lord and his people.”: 1 Of the blood which was to be poured out on Calvary, Jesus said: "This is my blood of the [new] covenant, which is shed for many." 2 And of the sacramental union which could be secured, between his trustful disciples and himself, by tasting his blood, and by being nourished on his flesh, he said: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life." 3 It really looks as if there were more than a superficial relation between the fact of an absolute inter-union of two natures through an inter-flow of a common life, in the rite of blood-covenanting, and the sacramental union between the Lord and his people, which was typified in the blood-covenant at Sinai, and which was consummated in the bloodcovenant at Calvary. Herbert Spencer, indeed, seems to have a clearer conception than the Speaker's Commentary, of the relation of human blood-covenanting, to the inter-union of those in the flesh, with spiritual beings. He perceives that the primitive offerings of blood over the dead, from the living person, are, in some cases, “explicable as arising from the practice of establishing a sacred bond between living persons by partaking of each other's blood: the derived conception being, that those who give some of their blood to the ghost of a man just dead and lingering near [and of course, the principle is the same when the offering of blood is to the gods, thereby] effect with it a union, which on the one side implies submission, and on the other side friendliness." 4 This admission by Mr. Spencer covers the essential point in the argument of this entire volume. LIFE IN THE BLOOD, IN THE HEART, IN THE LIVER. Among all primitive peoples, the blood has been deemed the representative of life. The giving of blood has been counted the giving of 2 Mark 14 24. 1 Speaker's Com., at Exod. 24: 8. 8 John 6: 53, 54. Principles of Sociology, II., 364. |