12. Taking food together and hospitality.
The original idea of the sacrificial meal was that the kinsmen in concert partook of the body of the god, thereby renewing their kinship with him and with each other. By analogy, however, the tie thus formed was extended to the whole practice of eating together. It has been seen how a stranger who partook of food with an Arab became sacred and as a kinsman to his host and all the latter’s clan for such time as any part of the food might remain in his system, a period which was conventionally taken as about three days. “The Old Testament records many cases where a covenant was sealed by the parties eating and drinking together. In most of these the meal is sacrificial, and the deity is taken in as a third party to the covenant. But in Joshua i. 14 the Israelites enter into alliance with the Gibeonites by taking of their victuals without consulting Jehovah. A formal league confirmed by an oath follows, but by accepting the proffered food the Israelites are already committed to the alliance.”[30] From the belief in the strength and sanctity of the tie formed by eating together the obligation of hospitality appears to be derived. And this is one of the few moral ideas which are more binding in primitive than in civilised society.
13. The Roman sacra.
“A good example of the clan sacrifice, in which a whole kinship periodically joins, is afforded by the Roman sacra gentilicia. As in primitive society no man can belong to more than one kindred, so among the Romans no one could share in the sacra of two gentes—to do so was to confound the ritual and contaminate the purity of the gens. The sacra consisted in common anniversary sacrifices, in which the clansmen honoured the gods of the clan, and after them the whole kin, living and dead, were brought together in the service.”[31]