“May I call your attention to one or two points? The Greek word for altar, βωμός (bomos), altar, from root βα (ba), seen in βαίνειν (bainein), ‘to step.’
“May not the whipping of the boys mentioned on page 175 be a misinterpreted substitute for sacrifices at the boundary posts, perhaps even at one time human sacrifices? Such later modifications of sacrifice into symbolic whippings are not unheard of elsewhere.”
Professor Lamberton’s suggestion that the Greek word for altar has its origin in a “step” has confirmation in the fact, already noted, that the earliest temples were a shrine at the summit of a series of steps, as in a step-pyramid, in Babylonia, Egypt, Canaan, Mexico, Peru, and the South Sea Islands.[[720]] Is there not a reference to this ordinary mode of building an altar among the outside nations, in the divine command to Israel in the wilderness as to the building of an altar to Jehovah? “Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.”[[721]]
FROM PROFESSOR DR. DANIEL G. BRINTON.
In the realm of American antiquities, and of anthropology generally, Dr. Brinton, Professor of American Archæology and Linguistics in the University of Pennsylvania, stands foremost. He has been President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and his knowledge and his work have had marked recognition in the International Oriental Congresses, in the American Philosophical Society, in the Academy of Natural Sciences, and in other learned bodies. He writes:
“I have gone over, with constantly increasing interest, your pages on ‘The Threshold Covenant,’ an interest associated with admiration of the wide reading you have brought to bear on the theme, and the temperate and enlightened spirit in which you have presented the facts.
“You have, without question, established the practical universality of the rites and ceremonies you describe, and the ideas from which they took their origin. Your volume is another and powerful witness to the parallelisms of culture, and to the unity in the forms of expression of the human mind.
“These analogies and identities are, as you well know, open to several interpretations or explanations. The main one offered by you seems to me, as a fact, quite probable; certainly it was constantly associated with such rites.
“I am not able altogether to agree with the point of view expressed in your Preface, and on pages 193–195, in reference to the general origin and trend of religious ideas; but possibly I should find myself closer to your position were I to see it more amply defined. I cannot think the earliest religions were, as a rule, more ‘uplifting’ than the later ones; I think there was a general progress upwards.