This work does not treat of the origin of man’s religious faculty, or of the origin of the sentiment of religion; nor does it enter the domain of theological discussion. It simply attempts to show the beginning of religious rites, by which man evidenced a belief, however obtained, in the possibility of covenant relations between God and man; and the gradual development of those rites, with the progress of the race toward a higher degree of civilization and enlightenment. Necessarily the volume is not addressed to a popular audience, but to students in the lessons of primitive life and culture.

In a former volume, “The Blood Covenant,” I sought to show the origin of sacrifice, and the significance of transferred or proffered blood or life. The facts given in that work have been widely accepted as lying at the basis of fundamental doctrines declared in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and have also been recognized as the source of perverted views which have had prominence in the principal ethnic religions of the world. Scholars of as divergent schools of thought as Professors William Henry Green of Princeton, Charles A. Briggs of New York, George E. Day of Yale, John A. Broadus of Louisville, Samuel Ives Curtiss of Chicago, President Mark Hopkins of Williams, Rev. Drs. Alfred Edersheim of Oxford and Cunningham Geikie of Bournemouth, Professor FrÉderic Godet of Neuchatel, and many others, were agreed in recognizing the freshness and importance of its investigations, and the value of its conclusions. Professor W. Robertson Smith, of Cambridge, in thanking me for that work, expressed regret that he had not seen it before writing his “Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia.” He afterwards made repeated mention of the work as an authority in its field, in his Burnett Lectures on the “Religion of the Semites.”

This volume grew out of that one. It looks back to a still earlier date. That began as it were with Cain and Abel, while this begins with Adam and Eve. It was while preparing a Supplement for a second edition of that volume that the main idea of this work assumed such importance in my mind that I was led to make a separate study of it, and present it independently. The special theory here advanced is wholly a result of induction. The theory came out of the gathered facts, instead of the facts being gathered in support of the theory.

Of course, these facts are not new, but it is believed that their synthetic arrangement is. It has been a favorite method with students of primitive religions to point out widely different objects of primitive worship and their corresponding cults among different peoples, and then to try to show how the ceremonials of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures were made up from these primitive cults. But the course of investigation here pursued seems to show that the earlier cult was the simple one, which has been developed in the line of the Bible story, and that the other cults, even those baser and more degraded, are only natural perversions of the original simple one. This is a reversal of the usual order in studies of primitive religious rites. Here it is first the simple, then the complex; first the one germ, then the many varieties of growth from that germ.

As this particular subject of investigation seems to be a hitherto untrodden field, I am unable to refer to any published works as my principal sources of information. But I have gathered important related facts from various directions, giving full credit in explicit foot-notes, page by page. Many added facts confirmatory of my position might, undoubtedly, have been found through yet wider and more discerning research, and they will be brought to light by other gleaners in the same field. Indeed, a chief value of this volume will be in the fresh study it provokes on the part of those whom it stimulates to more thorough investigation in the direction here pointed out. And if such study shows an added agreement between some of the main facts of modern scientific investigation and those disclosed in the Bible narrative, that will not be a matter of regret to any fair-minded scholar.

In my earlier studies for this work, I had valuable assistance from the late Mr. John T. Napier; and in my later researches I have been materially assisted by Professors Herman V. Hilprecht, E. Washburn Hopkins, William R. Lamberton, John Henry Wright, Robert Ellis Thompson, Morris Jastrow, Jr., D.G. Brinton, Adolph Erman, W. Max MÜller, W. Hayes Ward, M.B. Riddle, Minton Warren, Alfred Gudeman, John P. Peters, M.W. Easton, and A.L. Frothingham, Jr., President George Washburn, Rev. Drs. Marcus Jastrow, H.H. Jessup, George A. Ford, William W. Eddy, and Benjamin Labaree, Rev. William Ewing, Rev. Paulus Moort, Dr. Talcott Williams, Dr. J. Solis Cohen, Dr. A.T. Clay, Dr. T.H. Powers Sailer, Judge Mayer Sulzberger, Mr. S. Schecter, Mr. Frank Hamilton Cushing, Captain John G. Bourke, Mr. Khaleel Sarkis, Mr. John T. Haddad, Mr. Montague Cockle, Mr. Le Roy Bliss Peckham, the late Mr. William John Potts, and other specialists. To all these I return my sincere thanks.

Facts and suggestions that came to my notice after the main work was completed, or that, while known to me before, did not seem to have a place in the direct presentation of the argument, have been given a place in the Appendix. These may prove helpful to scholars who would pursue the investigation beyond my limits of treatment.

Comments of eminent specialists in Europe and America, to whom the proof-sheets of the volume were submitted before publication, are given in a Supplement. Important additions are thus made to the results of my researches, which are sure to be valued accordingly.