initiatory rite

Some time before his apprehension he had become a convert to Judaism, and had undergone the initiatory rite.

As the initiatory rite of the auspicious event, the females blow the conch-shell in the inner apartment, and some more impatient than the rest peep through the latticed corridor or window, while the bridegroom is slowly conducted to his appropriate seat made up of red satin with embroidered fringes, having three pillows of the same stuff on three sides.

The initiatory rite was essential to full participation in the Covenant.

The impression given by the author of the Acts is undeniably one of unbroken and undisturbed harmony: of a council in which the elder Apostles were of one mind with Paul, and warmly agreed with him that the Gentiles should be delivered from the yoke of the Mosaic law and from the necessity of undergoing the initiatory rite.

The Apostles and the primitive Christians, therefore, after the death of their Master, whom they believed to be the Messiah of the Jews, having received his last instructions, and formed their final impressions of his views, remained Jews, believing in the continued obligation to observe the Law and, consequently, holding the initiatory rite essential to participation in the privileges of the Covenant.