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The Threshold Covenant; or, The Beginning of Religious Rites

Chapter 1: THE THRESHOLD COVENANT
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The author examines the origins and development of rites centered on doorways and household altars, arguing that early rituals expressed belief in binding relations between humans and the divine. He documents threshold ceremonies such as blood welcomes at the door, marriage threshold customs, being carried across or stepping over thresholds, foundation offerings, and symbolic marks like the red hand. The study then traces how these domestic practices expanded into temple thresholds across diverse regions and island cultures, and how threshold sanctity shaped local and national boundary rites. The work concludes with an inductive argument that blood offerings underlie covenant-making and sacred boundary formation.

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Title: The Threshold Covenant; or, The Beginning of Religious Rites

Author: H. Clay Trumbull

Release date: June 14, 2015 [eBook #49216]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by KD Weeks, Chris Curnow and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THRESHOLD COVENANT; OR, THE BEGINNING OF RELIGIOUS RITES ***

Minor errors or inconsistencies in punctuation and formatting have been silently corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any other textual issues encountered during its preparation.

The few Hebrew words and phrases in the text cannot be correctly rendered in this media format. The Hebrew characters are therefore replaced with a direct transliteration rendered in a bold font. Each word is transliterated by the author as well. There were no vowel marks in the text.

Footnotes have been resequenced to be unique, and were moved to the end of the text. Hyperlinks are provided for ease of reference. Any references to those notes in the text have been amended as well. In the Topical Index, references to cited authors which appear only in the footnotes on the given pages are linked directly to the notes.


THE
THRESHOLD COVENANT

OR
THE BEGINNING OF RELIGIOUS RITES
BY
H. CLAY TRUMBULL
Author of “Kadesh-barnea,” “The Blood Covenant,”
“Studies in Oriental Social Life,” etc.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1896

Copyright, 1896
BY
H. CLAY TRUMBULL