The Blood Covenant: A Primitive Rite and its Bearings on Scripture

A comparative and documentary study of the ancient custom of forming bonds by mingling or transfusion of blood, collecting ethnographic, classical, Egyptian, African, and European evidence for a widespread ritual. The author outlines primitive convictions that blood equals life and the heart houses the soul, describes practices and symbolic substitutes such as blood-drinking, covenant-cutting, and blood-bathing, and traces how these motifs appear and are transformed in religious rites. Attention is given to possible survivals and tokens in Jewish ritual practices and gospel language, supported by philological, archaeological, and travel-source material with an extensive appendix of illustrative examples.