born in his house or bought with his moneys.”[1] And “in the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son. And all the men of his house, born in the house, and bought with, money of the stranger, were circumcised with him.” The servants whom Abraham had bought with his money must have been strangers to his blood and that of his tribe. We know that in heathen communities, during the early period of their history, membership of the community depended on kinship by blood, real or traditional. A certain number of Families or Houses, the members of which claimed a common ancestor, made up the Tribe, and a certain number of Tribes made up the Commonwealth. When the circle was first enlarged, it was by adoption. Not to be a member of a family and tribe was to be a political outcast.[2] The families or houses were bound together by religious rites, participation in which was the sign and test of membership. Primitive Rome was the most striking type of this order of things. But primitive Athens also afforded an instance of it. In the same way the Hebrew Commonwealth, in the time of Moses, consists of families or houses, grouped into tribes, the family and the tribe alike being the offspring of a common ancestor. In the Numbering of the people they are taken by their tribes, and then numbered “by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers.” The family or house is the elementary group and the basis of the whole. “It may be affirmed,” says Professor
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