The Egyptian amulet of blood-friendship was red, as representing the blood of the gods. The Egyptian word for “red,” sometimes stood for “blood.”[494] The sacred directions in the Book of the Dead were written in red;[495] hence, follows our word “rubrics.” The Rabbis say, that when persecution forbade the wearing of the phylacteries with safety, a red thread might be substituted for this token of the covenant with the Lord.[496] It was a red thread which Joshua gave to Rahab as a token of her covenant relations with the people of the Lord.[497] The red thread, in China, to-day, as has been already shown, binds the double cup, from which the bride and bridegroom drink their covenant draught of “wedding wine”; as if in symbolism of the covenant of blood.[498] And it is a red thread which in India, to-day, is used to bind a sacred amulet around the arm or the neck.[499] Among the American Indians, “scarlet, or red,” is the color which stands for sacrifices, or for sacrificial blood, in all their picture painting; and the shrine, or _tunkan_, which continues to have its devotees, “is painted red, as a sign of active [or living] worship.”[500] The same is true of the shrines in India;[501] the color red shows that worship is still living there; red continues to stand for blood. The two covenant tokens of blood-friendship with God--circumcision and the phylacteries--are, by the Rabbis, closely linked in their relative importance. “Not every Israelite is a Jew,” they say, “except he has two witnesses--the sign of circumcision and phylacteries”;[502] the sign given to Abraham, and the sign given to Moses. In the narration of King Saul’s death, as given in 2 Samuel 1 : 1-16, the young Amalekite, who reports Saul’s death to David, says: “I took the crown that was upon his head, and the bracelet that was on his arm [the emblems of his royalty], and have brought them hither unto my lord.” The Rabbis, in their paraphrasing of this passage,[503] claim that it was the phylactery, “the frontlet” (_totephta_) rather than a “bracelet,” which was on the arm of King Saul; as if the king of the covenant-people of Jehovah would not fail to be without the token of Jehovah’s covenant with that people. So firmly fixed was the idea of the appropriateness and the binding force of these tokens of the covenant, that their use, in one form or another, was continued by Christians, until the custom was denounced by representative theologians and by a Church Council. In the Catacombs of Rome, there have been found “small caskets of gold, or other metal, for containing a portion of the Gospels, generally part of the first chapter of John [with its covenant promises to all who believe on the true Paschal Lamb], which were worn on the neck,” as in imitation of the Jewish phylacteries. These covenant tokens were condemned by Irenæus, Augustine, Chrysostom, and by the Council of Laodicea, as a relic of heathenism.[504] 6. THE BLOOD COVENANT AT SINAI.