Crossing the threshold, or entering the door, of a house, is in itself an implied covenant with those who are within, as shown by the earlier laws of India. He who goes in by the door must count himself, and must be recognized, as a guest, subject to the strictest laws of hospitality. But if he enters the house in some other way, not crossing the threshold, there is no such implied covenant on his part. He may then even despoil or kill the head of the house he has entered, without any breach of the law of hospitality, or of the moral law as there understood.[4] Illustrations of this truth are found in the Mahabharata, as applicable to both a house and a city.[5] “It is in accordance with the strict law of all the law books,” of ancient India, “that one may enter his foe’s house by _a-dvāra_, ‘not by door,’ but his friend’s house only ‘by door.’”[6]
It would seem to have been in accordance with this primitive law of the East that Jesus said: “He that entereth not by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.... I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture. The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.”[7]
It is possible that there is an explanation, in this law of the doorway, or threshold, of the common practice among primitive Scandinavians of attacking the inmates of an enemy’s house through the roof instead of by the door;[8] also, of the custom in Greece of welcoming a victor in the Olympian games into his city through a breach in the walls, instead of causing him to enter by the gates, with its implied subjection to all the laws of hospitality.[9] (See Appendix.)
Examples of the blood welcome at the threshold abound in modern Egyptian customs. When the new khedive came to his palace, in 1882, a threshold sacrifice was offered as his welcome. “At the entrance to the palace six buffaloes were slaughtered, two being killed just as the khedive’s carriage reached the gateway. The blood of the animals was splashed across the entrance, so that the horses’ hoofs and wheels of the carriage passed through it. The flesh was afterwards distributed among the poor.”[10]