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have left its traces in the terminology of the Bible-written in the light of these primitive customs?

BLOOD MAKES UNITY: EATING SHOWS UNION.

It is having a common blood, not partaking of food in common, that makes unity of life between two parties who are brought together in covenant. Yet the sharing of food is often a proof of agreement, or even of agreed union; and all the world over and always the act of eating together accompanies, or rather follows, the rite of covenanting by blood.1 Never, however, is the mere eating in common supposed to perfect a vital union, or an organic unity, between the parties to a mutual feast; while the sharing a common blood, or an accepted substitute for blood, through its tasting or by being touched with it, is supposed to perfect such a unity. So far biblical and extra-biblical symbolisms agree.

A "covenant union in sacrifice" is an indefinite and ambiguous term. It may mean a covenant union wrought by sacrifice, or a covenant union accompanied by sacrifice, or a covenant union exhibited in sacrifice. But, in whatever sense it is employed, the fact remains true, that, wherever a bloody offering is made in connection with sacrifice and with covenanting, it is the blood-drinking, the blood-pouring, or the blood-touching, that represents the covenant-making; while eating the flesh of the victim, or of the feast otherwise provided, represents the covenant-ratifying, or the covenant-showing.3

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Thus at Sinai the formal covenanting of the Lord with his people was accompanied by sacrificing. Representatives of the people of Israel "offered burnt-offerings, and sacrificed peace-offerings of oxen unto the Lord." Nothing is here said of the technical sin-offering, but the whole burnt-offering and the peace-offering are included. The blood-outpouring and the blood-sprinkling preceded any feasting. And as if to make it clear that "by sprinkling the blood and not "by eating the flesh of

1 See pp. 41, 148-190, 240, 268 f.

3 See pp. 147-190.

2 See p. 345, supra.

4 Exod. 24: I-II.

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the victim,” the “covenant union in [this] sacrifice was represented,” Moses took a portion of the blood and “sprinkled [it] on the altar,” and another portion "and sprinkled it on the people," saying as he did so, "Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you." It was not until after this covenanting by blood, that the people of Israel, by their representatives, “did eat and drink" in ratification, or in proof, or in exhibit, of the covenant thus wrought by blood.

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The Babylonian Talmud finds in the prohibitions of blood-eating, in Leviticus 17: 3-14, a command" not to eat any portion of a sacrifice before its blood is sprinkled upon the altar." 1 Professor Robertson Smith shows from Arabic authorities that of old in Arabia "it required a casâma [or a covenanting sacred rite] to enable two tribes to eat and drink together." And this casâma he shows to have included ordinarily among Arabians a common blood-drinking or blood-sprinkling, similar to that described at Mount Sinai. This custom indeed would seem to have a trace in the common Oriental mode of hastening to kill a lamb, or a calf, as the first act in receiving a guest; pouring out the covenanting blood and then sharing the flesh of the peace-offering. Any one familiar with Oriental customs can testify to the prevalence of this method of receiving a guest. Thus with Arabs, as with Hebrews, the real covenant-union in sacrifice was represented by the blood-sharing, and was celebrated by the feast-partaking.

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Maimonides calls attention to the fact that in the Mishnah there is a suggestion of a commingling of two bloods in a covenant-rite between the Lord and his people, at the time of the exodus. This is quite in accord with the suggestion in this volume that in the rite of circumcision it was Abraham and his descendants who supplied the blood of the covenant, while in the passover-sacrifice it was the Lord who commanded the substitute blood in token of his blood-covenanting. Refer

1 Cited in Friedländer's Guide of the Perplexed of Maimonides, note at p. 233. Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, note at p. 262.

Ibid., pp. 48-50.

4 See Gen. 18: 1-8; 1 Sam. 28: 21-24.

ring to the command, in Exodus 12: 44-48, for the circumcision of the Israelites as precedent to their partaking of the passover (the covenanting by blood to precede the exhibit of the covenant in sharing the flesh of the sacrifice), Maimonides says of the Mishnah teachings: "The number of the circumcised being large, the blood of the Passover and that of the circumcision flowed together [thus perfecting a blood-covenant]. The Prophet Ezekiel (16: 6), referring to this event, says, 'When I saw thee sprinkled with thine own blood, I said unto thee, Live because of thy blood,' i. e., because of the blood of the Passover and that of the circumcision [thus commingled]." The question of the correctness of this exegesis of Ezekiel's words is, of course, unimportant as affecting the proof here given of the rabbinical recognition of the blood-covenanting idea in the Exodus narrative.

Another Jewish teacher, cited by Cudworth,' said of the influence of the Old Testament sacrifices, that "the blood of beasts offered up in sacrifice had an attractive power to draw down Divinity, and unite it to the Jews." Yet again, Hamburger, one of the foremost rabbinical authorities of the present day, insists that the very word for " atonement," in the Hebrew, commonly taken to mean "a cover," or "a covering," has in it more properly the idea of a compassed union, or an "at-onement." He says: 3 "I hold the word kaphar, in the sense to pitch ' [to overlay with pitch, Gen. 6: 14] to fill up the seam' ['to close up the chasm'], as a symbolic expression for the reunion of the sinner with God." And it is not the flesh of the sacrifice, but the blood, that God counts the atonement, or the means of at-one-ment between the sinner and himself.1

That "sprinkling the blood" toward the altar in the Jewish sacrifices as preliminary to "eating the flesh of the victim," represented the idea

1 Friedländer's Guide, p. 232. See, also, Lightfoot's Hor. Heb., IV., 241.

2 See citation from "that learned Hebrew book Cozri," in Cudworth's Intellectual System of the Universe, Am. Ed., II., 537.

3 Hamburger's Real Encyclopädie f. Bibel u. Talmud, I., 804, note.

4 See Lev. 17: 11.

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of blood-drinking, as in the primitive mode of blood-covenanting, would seem to be indicated by the words of the Lord in Psalm 50: 12, 13:—

"If I were hungry, I would not tell thee:

For the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.

Will I eat the flesh of bulls,

Or drink the blood of goats?"

"For though it be here denied," says Cudworth,1 "that God did really feed upon the sacrifices, yet it is implied that there was some such allusive signification in them" in the minds of their offerers; and that the bloodsprinkling represented the covenant blood-drinking, as surely as the fleshsharing represented the covenant-celebrating. Why should the Lord say that he does not care to drink the blood of goats, if no one of his worshipers ever thought of his doing so?

Every gleam of the old religions goes to show that it was blood-sharing, and not food-sharing, that made a vital union—for the life that is or for the life that is to come. Thus "for the significance which the Arabs down to the time of Mohammed attached to the tasting of another man's living blood, there is an instructive evidence in Ibn Hishâm, p. 572. Of Malik, who sucked the prophet's wound at Ohod and swallowed the blood, Mohammed said, ' He whose blood has touched mine cannot be reached by hell-fire.' " 2 Not he who shared a meal with the prophet, but he who had become a partaker of his blood, which was his life, was in vital union with the prophet-so that not even death could finally separate the two.

Whether all bloody sacrifices included the idea of covenant-union as immediately accomplished, or whether, again, they sometimes merely looked toward covenant-union through atonement as their ultimate fruition, may indeed be a point in question; but that "covenant-union in [bloody] sacrifice" as finally accomplished was represented in its accomplishing not by the flesh, but by the blood, would seem to be a fact

1 Intellect. Syst., II., 537.

2 W. Robertson Smith's Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, p. 50.

beyond fair question. On this point Bähr, out of his world-wide outlook

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over religious symbols, says: 'Everywhere, from China to Iceland, the blood is the chief element, the kernel, and the central point, of sacrifice. In blood lies its [i. e. sacrifice's] peculiar efficacy; through blood is its peculiar action; blood is synonymous with sacrifice; it is the sacrifice in the narrower sense. In this point the Mosaic sacrifice harmo

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nizes perfectly with the heathen. To sacrifice is to proffer and to receive life. When the blood is shed and it streams forth, a life is given to the divinity to which the sacrifice is dedicated. This giving is at the same time the taking (the receiving) of a life from the divinity; and the sacrifice looks also, in general, to a binding together of life, or to a communion of life between those offering and the divinity. In so far as this communion is the end and object of all religion, every cult concentrates finally in sacrifice [and 'blood is synonymous with sacrifice; it is the sacrifice in the narrower sense']."

This view of blood-union in, or through, typical sacrifices, thus found to be held by Jewish rabbis and by later Arabians, as well as by adherents of the ethnic religions, shows itself more or less clearly in writings of the Christian Fathers, in their explanation of the covenant relation between Christ, as the Antitype of all bloody sacrifice, and his trustful people. For example, Ignatius says: "I desire the drink of God, his blood, which is love incorruptible and life eternal;" and again : 3 "Being kindled to new life in the blood of God, ye have accomplished wholly the work of that relationship." 5 Says Clement of Alexandria : 6 "In all respects, therefore, and in all things, we are brought into union with Christ, into relationship through his blood, by which we are redeemed;" and again: "To drink the blood of Jesus, is to become

1 Symbolik, II., 262 f.

2 Ad Romanos, 7.

3 Ad Ephesios, 1.

4 The old Latin version gives the "blood of Christ God."

5 The Greek words, to syngenikon ergon (rò σvyyevɩkòv ěpyov), are otherwise translated by Horneman, "work worthy of Christian brothers;" by Hefele, "the work of brotherhood."

6 Paedagogus, II., 5.

↑ Ibid., II., 2.

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