The Blood Covenant

Henry Clay Trumbull's book is about the primitive rite of making a covenant by the inter-transfusion of blood, and what it has to do with Scripture. The preface says it grew out of three lectures given at a summer school of Hebrew in Philadelphia on 16 to 18 June 1885, and out of work on a book on the sway of friendship in the world's forces.

The text gathers reports of the rite. Dr. Livingstone is reported as speaking favorably of blood friendships between tribes in Central Africa, and Commander Cameron describes his guide Syde making the covenant with a local chief, Pakwanya, west of Lake Tanganyika in June 1874. One passage turns to the Parsees, among whom divine and human union was thought to come through blood and a shared offering, with the horse a favourite offering among Parsees, Hindoos and Chinese. Another describes the Kebarrah ceremonies, when hostile tribes meet in peace, and quotes Revelation 2:17 on a white stone and a new name.