Minor errors or inconsistencies in punctuation and formatting have beensilently corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of thistext for details regarding the handling of any other textual issuesencountered during its preparation.
The few Hebrew words and phrases in the text cannot be correctly renderedin this media format. The Hebrew characters are therefore replaced with adirect transliteration rendered in a bold font. Each word is transliteratedby the author as well. There were no vowel marks in the text.
Footnotes have been resequenced to be unique, and were moved to the endof the text. Hyperlinks are provided for ease of reference. Any referencesto 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 givenpages are linked directly to the notes.
This work does not treat of the origin of man’sreligious faculty, or of the origin of the sentiment ofreligion; nor does it enter the domain of theologicaldiscussion. It simply attempts to show the beginningof religious rites, by which man evidenced a belief,however obtained, in the possibility of covenant relationsbetween God and man; and the gradual developmentof those rites, with the progress of the racetoward a higher degree of civilization and enlightenment.Necessarily the volume is not addressed to apopular audience, but to students in the lessons ofprimitive life and culture.
In a former volume, “The Blood Covenant,” Isought to show the origin of sacrifice, and the significanceof transferred or proffered blood or life. Thefacts given in that work have been widely accepted aslying at the basis of fundamental doctrines declaredin the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and havealso been recognized as the source of perverted viewswhich have had prominence in the principal ethnic religionsof the world. Scholars of as divergent schoolsof thought as Professors William Henry Green ofPrinceton, Charles A. Briggs of New York, George E.Day of Yale, John A. Broadus of Louisville, SamuelIves Curtiss of Chicago, President Mark Hopkins ofWilliams, Rev. Drs. Alfred Edersheim of Oxford andCunningham Geikie of Bournemouth, Professor FrédericGodet of Neuchatel, and many others, were agreedin recognizing the freshness and importance of itsinvestigations, and the value of its conclusions. ProfessorW. Robertson Smith, of Cambridge, in thankingme for that work, expressed regret that he had not seenit before writing his “Kinship and Marriage in EarlyArabia.” He afterwards made repeated men