BETWEEN INDIAN AND JEWISH IDEAS AND CUSTOMS. 103 
commanded him to divide a number of slaughtered beasts in a 
similar way, and had then caused His fire to pass between them 
(Genesis xv, 8, 9, 10, 13-17, 18). Symbolically this rite (like the 
besprinkling of the book, and of the people with blood at the 
making of the Sinaitic covenant) set forth that all solemn covenants 
were types of God’s great covenant with man, to make which 
effective, as the epistle to the Hebrews shows us, it was needful 
that the testator or grantor should first die (Exod. xxiv, 5-8 ; 
Heb. ix, 16-20). 
The story of Dido’s building a city at Carthage upon as much 
land as a bullock’s hide would cover, may be derived from a similar 
covenant for the grant of the needful land, and not, as is usually 
alleged, simply from the likeness between the Greek byrsa, a hide, 
.and the Phoenician byrsa, a citadel. 
H 
