Genesis and African Bishops

Alice C. Linsley

Anglican Archbishop Bernard Amos Malango of Central Africa in a letter to former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold stated: "The false gospel you are promoting by your actions is not saving anyone; it is an illusion." Here an African bishop states that what the Episcopal Church claims as real is far from reality. What does Bishop Malango mean by this?

His statement referenced the Episcopal Church’s public commitment to homosex as a blessed state, created by God. Regardless of how one may feel personally about homosex, the tradition of Israel, that of the Apostles, and the biblical worldview agree that homosex is a violation of God's order in creation. The man's seed is to go to the proper place, just as the plant seeds find their proper place in the ground.

How is it that African bishops confidently insist that their reading of the Bible is authentic on this issue? Is it arrogance or a power grab on their part? Are they trying to control the Anglican Communion? Hardly. Africans grasp the worldview of Genesis because Genesis presents an African worldview, specifically a Nilotic worldview.

African Christians resonate with the book of Genesis and universally recognize its authority. It feels African to them. Indeed, Abraham’s ancestors came out of west central Africa and the palace city of Sheba, one of Abraham's ancestors, has been found in a dense jungle on the Atlantic coast of Nigeria. The oldest human fossils have been found in Africa, most recently in Cameroon, not far from the area that was once the homeland of Noah. Scholars now acknowledge the African cultural heritage behind Judaism, Christianity, Islam and some Vedic texts. (See, for examples, the work of Abraham Akong, Cora Agatucci and George Lichtblau.)

The Old Testament speaks of many cultural phenomena that are associated with traditional African religions: the priesthood, animal sacrifice, consecration of objects, sacred kings, theophanies on mountains, circumcision, sacred law, blood rituals and taboos, sacred time, gender roles, and telling history through sacred story and genealogy.

Traditional African religions revere the teachings of the fathers or elders and regard the older traditions as being more authoritative than the newer. Innovations are not the hot item in traditional African societies.

The Word, as eternal, generative and originating with God, is a common theme in African oral arts, recurring among many tribes. This concept of the eternal and generative power of the Word is expressed in the following song of the Pygmies of Africa:

In the beginning was God.
Today is God.
Tomorrow will be God.
Who can make an image of God?
He has no body.
He is as a word that comes out from your mouth.
That word! It is no more.
It is past and still it lives!
So is God.

Consider also this praise song of the Bambara of Mali:

The word is total:
It cuts, excoriates
Forms, modulates
Perturbs, maddens
Cures or directly kills
Amplifies or reduces
According to intention
It excites or calms souls.

African bishops resonate to the cultural context of Genesis and understand that Genesis orients the whole of sacred Scripture. For Africans the Bible speaks in familiar tones, from a familiar context. It is a context that maintains binary distinctions: heaven and earth, night and day, male and female, God’s way and man’s way. In this context male and female supplementarity is an expression of God’s creative power and homosexuality signals not evolutionary advance, but devolution from Paradise.

Tribal religions operate on the principal: as in heaven so on earth. So, it is not surprising that the oldest moon cycle counter, the Lebombo Bone, was found in Africa. It is between 85,000 and 100,000 years old and represents a binary calendar.

Traditional African religions are based on a binary view of reality. Likewise, Genesis assumes the binary distinctions of day-night, sun-moon, heaven-earth and male-female. These are seen as a signature in nature of the Creator who loves order (te-hut) and hates disorder, chaos and lawlessness (te-hom). The Episcopal Church has rejected this biblical worldview in favor of its own view, characterized by randomness, evolutionary theory, socialism, materialism, individualism, and western arrogance.

In Genesis, readers find the most fundamental theological assertions concerning God. These are that God is the creator, that God is sovereign over all the earth, that God cares for and interacts with his creation, that God created humans male and female in God’s image, that sin leads to separation from God and kin, that God has a redemptive plan and that God’s plan includes judgment and mercy. Judgment comes as the consequence of breaking the laws established by the Creator "in the beginning." God’s mercy is seen in the restoration of the offender to Himself and to the community. The fullest expression of this restoration is found in Christ Jesus, who reconciles the world to the Father through His blood.

One can find African bishops who reject some of these fundamental assertions. Former Archbishop Desmond Tutu is an example, but he is an anomaly and anomalies serve as exceptions to the rule. His Anglican Church of Southern Africa is an anomaly among the African churches, as it is the only one to ordain both women and non-celibate homosexuals to the priesthood.

Tutu has said, "Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?" (Interview with All Africa News)

Clearly, this bishop doesn't accept the biblical worldview as the Church has received it, and which the Church has no authority to change. Nor does the Church have the power to change the fundamental order of nature that was established by God in the beginnning. Can we reverse gravity or make the sun to rise in the West? It is arrogant to think we have such power.

It is delightfully ironic that the Lebombo bone, the oldest evidence for a binary worldview was found in Swaziland, in southern Africa. God does have a terrific sense of humor!


Related reading:  Why The Episcopal Church Leaders Hate the Nigerians; The Importance of Binary Distinctions; Avoiding Heresy

The Blood of Jesus is the Blood of Mary

Michael Liccione has a very interesting essay on Mary and Salvation here:

http://mliccione.blogspot.com/2007/10/mary-and-eens.html


I encourage you to read it and ponder.

A Question for My Readers

Here is the question: "We meet Adam by name for the first time in Genesis 4:25. If Eve is called the "mother of all living" in Genesis 3:20, why is Adam never called the "father of all living"?

I am eager to read your thoughts on this.

An Eastern Orthodox Approach to Genesis?

Alice C. Linsley

Is there an Eastern Orthodox interpretation of Genesis? Father Seraphim Rose (1934-1982) thought so. In his book Genesis, Creation and Early Man, this Orthodox monk who lived in the woods of California, rejected evolutionary theory and proposed that the six days of creation ended about 6,000 years ago. His view would be appreciated by Young-Earth Creationists, if they were to read his work.

Fr. Rose believed in a catastrophic worldwide flood and insisted that this is the view of the Church Fathers and the teaching of the Church until modern times. His evidence for this is fairly thin. Detailed study of the Genesis flood account permits the view of an extensive regional flood, during the African Humid Period (the African Aqualithic).

In Part I of Genesis, Creation and Early Man, Fr. Rose looks at the writings of the Church Fathers to give us "an Orthodox patristic commentary" on Genesis. He claimed to be setting forth Orthodoxy’s view on Genesis, but some Orthodox Bible scholars do not agree with his interpretations.

Part III is a letter to a Greek Orthodox medical doctor who was a theistic evolutionist. Fr. Seraphim argued that evolution is an essential piece in the developing one-world religious synthesis of the coming Antichrist. If that is true, many Evangelical, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox Christians have embraced a dangerous dogma.

There are problems with Seraphim Rose’s approach to Genesis. We will look at some of them briefly.

1. Rose’s book on Genesis demonstrates an inconsistency in his thought. He criticizes "some Protestant fundamentalists" for taking Genesis literally, but then attempts to demonstrate that the Church Fathers also interpreted Genesis literally. How can Rose regard the literalism of American Fundamentalism as a misguided approach while regarding the literalism of the Church Fathers as exemplary?

2. Rose is incorrect in asserting that the Holy Fathers interpreted Genesis in a uniform and literal way. The homiletical concern of the early Fathers influenced how they handled the text. They largely interpreted Genesis to meet the spiritual needs of their flocks. Some interpreted the stories allegorically, others in terms of patterns and types, finding rich material in Genesis for teaching about the re-creation and the recovery of Paradise. Blessed John Chrysostom noted something in the story of Lamech that none of the other Fathers mention, namely, that God's unfathomable grace is shown to Lamech.

This is what Chrysostom said concerning Lamech, the Elder: By confessing his sins to his wives, Lamech brings to light what Cain tried to hide from God and “by comparing what he has done to the crimes committed by Cain he limited the punishment coming to Him.” (Homilies on Genesis, Vol. 74, p.39. The Catholic University Press of America, 1999.)

He also noted that Naamah, Lamech's daughter is probably the key to understanding Lamech's story. He didn't know that Naamah married her cousin, Methuselah, and named their firstborn son after her father (Gen. 5:26). However, he knew that she was important. He called her "Noeman" and said about her, "Well, now for the first time it refers to females, making mention of one by name. This was not done idly, or to no purpose; instead the blessed author has done this to draw our attention to something lying hidden." Homilies on Genesis, CUA Press, Vol. 74, p. 38)

Some early Fathers, such as St. Ephrem the Syrian, read the creation accounts as history, but were less concerned about verification of historicity than about the spiritual message. Some Fathers, such as St. Augustine, recognized that the days of creation in Genesis 1 may be taken as non-literally. Unlike Bishop Usher, they didn't attempt to discover the age of the earth by counting the generations from Adam to Jesus. They apparently recognized that the information in Genesis 4 and 5 is of a different nature than that found in Genesis 10 and 11.

To demonstrate the lack of uniformity in the patristic interpretation of Genesis, consider these differing conclusions about Lamech, the Elder (Gen. 4):

St. John Chrysostom said, "By confessing his sins to his wives, Lamech brings to light what Cain tried to hide from God and "by comparing what he has done to the crimes committed by Cain he limited the punishment coming to Him." (St. John Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis, Vol. 74, p.39. The Catholic University Press of America, 1999.)

St John also wrote that mention of Lamech’s daughter, Naamah, in Genesis 4 is "to call our attention to something lying hidden." Indeed, Naamah is the key to understanding the kinship pattern of Abraham’s ancestors. She married her patrilineal cousin Methuselah and named their first-born son Lamech after her father. This is the first place in the Bible where we find the cousin bride's naming prerogative. This naming practice of the cousin brides of the Horite ruler-priests makes it possible for us to trace Jesus ancestry back to Cain and Seth, whose lines intermarried.

The kinship pattern of the rulers listed in the Genesis genealogies shows two lines of descent. One is traced through the cousin/niece bride who named her first-born son after her father. Example: Naamah, Lamech the Elder's daughter,(Gen. 4) married her patrilineal cousin Methuselah (Gen. 5) and named their first-born son Lamech. This pattern, which I call the "cousin bride's naming prerogative," is found with the names Joktan, Sheba and Esau, among others.

The other line of descent is traced through the first-born son of the half-sister bride, as Sarah was to Abraham. The ruler-priest lines of the two first-born sons intermarried, thus preserving the bloodline of those to whom God made the promise that a woman of their people would bring forth the Seed who would crush the serpent's head and restore Paradise.

St. Ephrem the Syrian took a different approach to the Lamech story. He wrote that Lamech, the Elder killed Cain and Enoch so that his daughters could intermarry and be saved from the curse. (St. Ephrem’s Commentary of Genesis, Section IV, page 132. The Catholic University Press of America.)
 
Tertullian took yet another approach to Lamech, writing: "Finally, ‘there shall be,’ said He, ‘two in one flesh,’ not three nor four. On any other hypothesis, there would no longer be ‘one flesh,’ nor ‘two (joined) into one flesh.’… Lamech was the first who, by marrying himself to two women, caused three to be (joined) into one flesh."

Fr. Rose failed to demonstrate that there is an Orthodox interpretation of Genesis, but he did do a good job of aligning some of the Fathers’ writings with the assertions of Bible literalists. He maintains that all the peoples of Earth are descended from Adam (p. 480), that the Earth is young, and the Noah's flood was worldwide. Many in Orthodoxy do not hold these views, but all Orthodox claim the Fathers and Scripture to be authoritative.

Fr. Rose was correct is asserting that the Bible teaches a fixed order in creation. Each original kind was fixed to reproduce according to its nature and not to evolve into a different kind (pp. 123, 133–137, 386–388). Even evolutionists are beginning to recognize that this may be true, since after 85 years of frantic searching the common ancestor of apes and humans has never been found.

Further, brilliant minds such as Saul Kripe are asserting the reality of essentialism. Essentialism is the view that a specific entity (group of people, living creatures, or objects) has a set of attributes or traits all of which are essential to its identity and function and without which the entity would not exist. In his book Naming and Necessity (1980, Cambridge: Harvard University Press) Kripe maintains that entities have essential properties that can be discovered by scientific investigation and that their essences are independent of human language and culture.


Conclusion

The part of Rose’s book that seems to best represent Orthodoxy is where he gives three reasons to study Genesis. Here are the reasons he gives:

First, humans behave according to what they believe they are, so what a person believes about man’s origin influences his actions and attitudes. He is right! Orthodox believe that through Jesus the divine image is fully restored, and to be made in the image and likeness of God is to be like Jesus. The belief that humans are simply animals can be used to justify behaviors and actions that are cruel and barbaric.

Second, Genesis is part of Scripture and God gave us Scripture for our salvation. To that, I would add: All of the book point to the fulfillment of God's promise in Genesis 3:15 that the Woman would bring forth the Seed who crushes the serpent's head, overcome death and restores Paradise.

Third, Christianity is about eternal life. This too is true. Our life is in the One by whom all things were made. Genesis is as much about human destiny as it is about our beginnings. That is the one truly Orthodox view of Genesis that can be affirmed by all.

If it is possible to speak of "an Orthodox approach" to Genesis is is not what Fr. Rose proposed, but rather attendance to what the Fathers have observed. A reading of St. Augustine (354-430), St. John Chrysostom (344-407), Ephrem the Syrian (306-372), St. Basil the Great (329-379), Ambrose of Milan (339-397) and Tertullian (155-230) on Genesis makes it clear that there is no uniform patristic interpretation of Genesis. These is a consensus, however, that the text is divinely inspired and worthy of deep study, for therein lays wisdom. Let us attend!

Related reading:  Metropolitan Nicholas of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki on Science and Faith; A Coptic Monk Reflects on Genesis; St. John Chrysostom on Lamech's Speech; St. Ephrem the Syrian on Genesis; St. Jerome on Genesis; Fr Hopko on the Image and Likeness of God; The Orthodox Study Bible; Theories of Change and Constancy; Evidence of an Old Earth, Part 1; Evidence of an Old Earth, Part 2; Support Research in Biblical Anthropology

Africa in the Days of Noah

Alice C. Linsley

8000 year old black mahogany dugout found in the region of Lake Chad, in the Land of Noah. The Dufuna dugout was buried at a depth of 16 feet under clays and sands whose alternating sequence showed evidence of deposition in standing and flowing water. The dugout is 8000 years old. By comparison, Egypt's oldest boat is only about 5000 years old.

Peter Breunig of the University of Frankfurt, Germany, an archaeologist involved in uncovering the Dufuna boat, reports that the canoe’s age “forces a reconsideration of Africa’s role in the history of water transport”. He adds, “that the cultural history of Africa was not determined by Near Eastern and European influences but took its own, in many cases parallel, course”. According to Breunig, “The bow and stern are both carefully worked to points, giving the boat a notably more elegant form”, compared to “the dugout made of conifer wood from Pesse in the Netherlands, whose blunt ends and thick sides seem crude”. To go by its stylistic sophistication, he reasons, “It is highly probable that the Dufuna boat does not represent the beginning of a tradition, but had already undergone a long development, and that the origins of water transport in Africa lie even further back in time.”

Indeed, the Dufana dugout was found in what is now the Sahara desert, but in the days of Noah this region of wet and the major water systems were interconnected. Lake Chad, a freshwater lake located in west-central Africa, was then a sea. Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger all have shorelines on Lake Chad. This is the only place on the surface of the earth that claims to be Noah's homeland - Bor-No, meaning Land of Noah. Noah's boat probably came to rest on Mount Meru or possibly on Mount Kenya in Tanzania. Or it may have landed on a mountain in eastern Niger.

About 8000 years ago, the Chadic Sea was about 600 feet deep and sustained boating and fishing industries. The average fishermen used canoe dugouts (as shown above) which they could carve themselves, but nobles used boats constructed of marsh reeds lashed together and sealed with pitch.

Between 10,000 and 8000 BC the climate changed, ushering in years of persistent, heavy rains. The Nile was transformed from a slow stream into a roaring river with mile-deep gorges. This was the beginning of the wet period that would turn the Sahara into vast grasslands able to support elephants, antelopes, gazelles, ostriches, giraffes, and hyenas.

Lakes formed in the basins, large enough to support fish, crocodile and hippopotamus. Early hunters camped along the lakes, as evidenced by heaps of domestic refuse at many sites along the lake shores. Lake Chad filled and merged with the Mega-Chad Sea, creating a body of water comparable in size to the state of Sudan. The overflow spilled southwest out the Benue River to the Atlantic.

The flood of Noah likely occurred during the late Holocene Wet Period which lasted from about 10,000 to 3000 B.C. During the peak of the rainy period, around 8000, Mega-Chad would have covered 157,000 square miles. The surrounding land was spongy and there was great flooding at the confluence of the Niger, Benue, Yobe and Osimili Rivers. The floodwaters created a disaster of such proportions that it is still remembered. Rainbows would have been a common sight over the region due to rising mists.

In the ancient world, regional chiefs controlled rivers, lakes and wells from west central Africa to the Indus River Valley. The region where Lake Chad is located is called “Bor-no”, the “Land of Noah", suggesting that Noah controlled the water commerce in the area. As a chief he would have had access to the best and the most plentiful supply of boat building materials and shipwrights.

Since the worst flooding occurred about 8500 years ago we can assume that Noah ruled this region at that time. Noah was a figure of such importance that a great portion of the Genesis Prehistory pertains to him. We are told that the land of Noah was tilled and there were grape vines. In the late 1980s, German archaeologists found remains of wine making equipment in the tomb of the ancient Nubian king Scorpion I (dating to about 3150 BC). That find consisted of grape seeds, grape skins, dried pulp and imported ceramic jars covered inside with a yellow residue chemically consistent with wine. Ancient Egyptian murals depict details of wine-making. Egyptians flavored their wines with tree resins, herbs, and figs.

An oracle concerning Noah states, “This one shall bring us relief from our work and the toil of our hands.” (Genesis 5:29) We are also told that Noah was drunk with wine on at least one occasion.

Many factors caused population migration from the area of Borno. The region suffered the effects of a massive volcanic explosion on the floor of the Dead Sea. The eruption caused earthquakes and likely more severe flooding. The loss of life and homesteads among the peoples living in the southern edge of Lake Chad was apparently great and archaeologists report that the area shows no evidence or re-habitation for at least 200 years.

Doubtless the territories of the lake region declined in power and influence as a result of the Monsoon Belt moved more to the south and the desert began to encroach. This caused people to move toward the Nile and the center of political power moved from central west Africa to eastern Sudan, Egypt and Canaan.


Related reading: Boat Petroglyphs in Egypt's Central Eastern Desert; Who Were the Kushites?; The Saharan Origin of Pharaonic Egypt; When the Sahara Was Wet; Finding Noah's Ark

The Blood of Jesus

Painting by Troy Guillory

To be washed in the “blood of Jesus” is to be judged and exonerated by God, the Great Judge and God’s Son, our Great High Priest. Christianized African slaves made the connection between the Savior’s blood and the blood that gives life to all living things. Albert Raboteau, an African American who has become Orthodox, has written:

When I was considering becoming Orthodox, a friend and fellow historian of African-American religion asked me if I understood how much Orthodoxy fit the aspects of African-American religion that had most personally interested me over the years. Several months earlier, an Orthodox monk had remarked to me how attuned he thought Orthodoxy was to the traditional spirituality of black people. Both comments took me by surprise.

Gradually after my chrismation, I began to reflect more generally upon the relationship between the faith of Ancient Christianity that had claimed me and the religious traditions of my people whose history I had been researching, writing, and teaching for the past twenty-five years. Since there are so few black Orthodox, it seemed like a lonely task. Providentially, a friend informed me of the conferences on Ancient Christianity and African-Americans, the purpose of which is to gather people from around the country to discover - in the context of prayer and the Divine Liturgy - the deep affinities and resonances between Orthodoxy and African-American spirituality.

The resonances or points of convergence between Orthodoxy and African-American spirituality are profound. The first resonance is historical. Ancient Christianity is not, as many think, a European religion. Christian communities were well established in Africa by the third and fourth centuries. In Egypt and Ethiopia, Coptic traditions of worship, monasticism, and spirituality have remained authentically African and authentically Christian down to the present day.

The second resonance is spiritual: there are important analogies between African traditional religions and Orthodox Christianity. In classical theological terms, these analogies constitute a protoevangelion: a preparation for the Gospel based on God's natural revelation to all peoples through nature and conscience. I would distinguish eight principal areas of convergence between African spirituality and Ancient Christianity.

1. Traditionally, African spirituality has emphasized the close relationship, the "coinherence" of the other world and this world, the realm of the divine and the realm of the human. The French poet, Paul Eluard expressed this insight concisely when he said, "There is another world, but it is within this one." Orthodoxy also emphasizes the reality and the closeness of the kingdom of God, following the words of Jesus, "The kingdom of God is within [or amongst] you." Indeed, the closeness of the heavenly dimension is graphically symbolized in Orthodox churches by the iconostasis, the screen which stands for the invisibility that keeps our visible eyes from perceiving the heavenly kingdom already present among us behind the royal doors. The icons hanging upon the iconostasis serve as so many windows upon this invisible, but ever present world, as do the lives of the saints that the icons represent. In both traditions, ritual is understood to be the door that allows passage between the two worlds to take place. Traditional African religions depicted the other world as the dwelling place of God and of a host of supernatural spirits (some of them ancestors) who mediated between the divine and the human and watched over the lives of men and women, offering, when asked, to protect people from harm or to provide favor on their behalf. Orthodox Christians believe in the power of saints, ancestors in the faith, to intercede with God for us and to protect and help us in time of distress.

2. African spirituality values the material world as enlivened with spirit and makes use of material objects that have been imbued with spiritual power. Orthodoxy sees the world as charged with the glory of God and celebrates in the feast of Theophany the renewal of the entire creation through God becoming flesh in the person of Jesus. Orthodoxy also appreciates the holiness of blessed matter, and uses water, chrism, candles, icons, crosses, and incense in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy and the Holy Mysteries (Sacraments).

3. The person in traditional African spirituality is conceived not as an individualized self, but as a web of relationships. Interrelatedness with the community, past as well as present, constitutes the person. Orthodox theologians speak of the person as being radically interpersonal, a being in communion, ultimately reflecting the interpersonal nature of the Divine Trinity. And the corporate character of Christian identity is grounded in the reality of the Mystical Body of Christ.

4. African religions speak of human beings as the children of God, who carry within a spark of God or "chi," a bit of God's soul that animates the spirit of each man and woman. Orthodoxy, following Genesis, teaches that we are created in the image and likeness of God and that it is our basic vocation to be "divinized," becoming more and more like the image in which we are created.

5. African spirituality does not dichotomize body and spirit, but views the human being as embodied spirit and inspirited body, so that the whole person body and spirit is involved in the worship of God. Orthodoxy also recognizes the person as embodied spirit and stresses the importance of bodily gestures, such as signing the cross, bowing, and prostrating, in the act of private and public prayer.

5. Worship in African-American tradition is supposed to make the divine present and effective. In ceremonies of spirit-entranced dance, the human person became the representation of the divine;. And divine power heals and transforms. In Orthodox worship, God becomes present to His people, most powerfully in the Eucharist as the Holy Spirit changes bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ and as those receiving Christ in Communion become more and more healed and transformed.

6. The African-American spirituals placed a strong emphasis on a tone of sad joyfulness that reflected African-Americans' experience and their perspective on life. In Orthodoxy, the sad joyfulness of the liturgical chant tones poignantly expresses the attitude of penthos or repentance which characterizes the Orthodox Christian's attitude toward life. This tone of sad joyfulness relates directly to the third major area of analogy between African-American spirituality and Orthodox, the experience of suffering Christianity. (See http://www.stmaryofegypt.net/afamorx.shtml)

And to Mr. Raboteau’s list, I add the African emphasis on blood as the symbol and sign of life.

God brought forth new life from the shedding of blood in the great flood of Noah. God brought forth a new earth from that baptism of water. Notice how water and blood are coupled, just as in His crucifixion blood came forth mingled with water.

Noah’s first act after leaving the ark was to offer sacrifice to God. Abraham's most supreme sacrifice, after God had entered into covenant with him, was to offer Isaac. Having raised up for the people a savior in Moses, God did not deliver them until they had sprinkled the doorframes with the blood of the Paschal lamb. Then God established for this people the Passover as an enduring ordinance with the words: " When I see the blood I will pass over you."

The blood of cattle or of goats could never take away sin; it was only a shadow of the true reconciliation with the Creator. Nothing earthly could accomplish the heavenly. Only God can atone for our sin. That being so, blood of a totally different nature was necessary for a covering of guilt and deliverance from death. According to the divine counsel, only the blood of God's Son could affect redemption and righteousness. Jesus Christ accomplished all by his willing and perfect obedience and love.

Because Jesus Christ is both the source of creation and God’s covenant of grace and peace, He is the head of the human race, a second Adam. In the Incarnation, He assumed full responsibility for all that sin in the flesh had done against God. His obedience and love were not that of a mere mortal, though He was fully man. His was the obedience and love of the One through whom all things were made and through whom all things are restored to perfect blessedness.

To enjoy this blessedness one need only trust in Him whose blood accomplishes all righteousness. The sinner who turns from his sin to God receives forgiveness and the promise of new life. Through that faith, he is perfectly reconciled to God and there is nothing that can prevent God from pouring out the fullness of His grace upon him.

Mining Blood?

Alice C. Linsley


The Lebombo Mountains in Southern Mozambique, Swaziland and Eastern South Africa have proved to be archaeologically rich. The Swaziland side is mostly volcanic rock. In this region there are mines which appear to have been in operation between 40,000 to 80,000 years ago. These were not small hallows in the earth, but major mining operations.

“One of the largest sites evidenced the removal of a million kilos of ore. At another site half a million stone-digging tools were found, all showing considerable wear. All of the sites in fact produced thousands of tools and involved the removal of large quantities of ore; and while some were open quarries, others had true mining tunnels.” (From here.)

At Lion Cavern it is estimated that at least 1 200 tons of soft haematite ore had been removed in archaic times.

What ore was so important that it would be mined on such a scale and be used almost universally in Paleolithic burial sites? They were mining red ochre, an ancient and universal symbol of blood, the liquid of life. Stan Gooch explains:

Everyone, both heretic and orthodox, and including the present-day users of ochre themselves, agree that it represents blood. A very common interpretation, and one that we can readily accept here, is that just as a new baby comes into the world covered with blood, so the corpse must also be covered with blood to facilitate, or perhaps cause, the re-birth of the deceased in the spirit world beyond. Birth blood is therefore one very probable meaning.

A further significance (borne out also by much other evidence) is given by the Unthippa aboriginal women. They say that their own female ancestors once caused large quantities of blood to flow from their vulvas, which then formed the deposits of red ochre found throughout the world. So we can say that red ochre also represents menstrual blood: in both cases therefore female blood connected with the birth process. (We shall later be able to be even more precise and say that ochre is the menstrual blood of the Moon Mother; or more properly, the placental blood which covered the Earth when She gave birth to it.) (http://www.aulis.com/twothirds8.htm)

The Lebombo Mountains in Swaziland is the region where these mines have been found. This is also where H.B.S. Cooke and his associates report the discovery of the oldest known human burial, perhaps between 46,000 and 80,000 years old. The site is that of a small boy, buried with a seashell pendant and covered in red ochre. These same archaeologists report the finding of the Lebombo bone, at least 35,000 years old, at Border Cave in Natal. The Lebombo bone is the oldest mathematical tool found to date and appears to be a moon phase counter. It counts up to 6 phases, which suggests that it represents a binary calendar. This bone is associated with the people who were mining red ochre.


Red ochre burial

The earliest known use of red ochre powder (300,000 years) is at the site GnJh-03 in the Kapthurin Formation of East Africa, and at Twin Rivers in Zambia.

The use of red ochre in burial was widespread in prehistoric times. A man buried 45,000 years ago at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southern France, was packed in red ochre. “The Red Lady of Paviland” in Wales was buried in red ochre about 20,000 years ago. Her skeletal remains and burial artifacts are encrusted with the red ore.

Australian burial sites dating to about 20,000 years reveal pink staining of the soil around the skeleton, indicating that red ochre had been sprinkled over the body. The remains of an adult male found at Lake Mungo in southeastern Australia were copiously sprinkled with red ochre.

The ‘Fox Lady’ of Doini Vestonice, Czechoslovakia (near Russia) who was burial 23,000 years ago, was also covered in red ochre.

A 20,000 year old burial site in Bavaria reveals a thirty-year-old man entirely surrounded by a pile of mammoth tusks and nearly submerged in a mass of red ochre.

In the La Braña-Arintero cave in the Cantabrian Mountains of Spain, 7000 year old skeletons were discovered in 2006. The bodies were covered with red ochre.

Two flexed burials were found in Mehrgarh, Pakistan with a covering of red ochre on the bodies. These date from about 5000 BC.

Native Americans used red ochre for ceremonies and burial.

John Greenway tells this story concerning the influence of red ochre among Australian Aborigines today:

The most terrifying physical inquisitors in aboriginal Australia are the little known Red Ochre Men… It is astonishing how little is known by outsiders of the Red Ochre Men. Many whites who have learned about everything else of aboriginal life have not even heard of them, so well enforced is the omerta among even those of the aborigines who wish the whole organisation ended… The cult is nearly universal in aboriginal Australia… In the deserts the Red Ochre cult moves right across the land in the course of a year, carrying its own ceremonies and myths, touching all tribes in its path, and working as a kind of ecclesiastical circuit court embodying all processes of the religious judiciary.

The function of the court is to punish law-breakers — not so much the perpetrators of everyday misdemeanours like spear fights and wife-beating, but those felons who blaspheme the laws incorporated in the myths. If, for example, the young man on trial in Meekatharra had really shown the tjurunga [the law sticks] to women, his only chance to escape the Red Ochre Men would have been to flee from his tribal jurisdiction and live in a city or large well-policed town among other fugitives from their honour and their heritage.

The Red Ochre men are Aboriginal priests in that they alone are responsible for blood sacrifice to re-establish community/communion. The shedding of blood is done according to the sacred laws and offered with prayer and priestly ritual. Here again we find evidence that the priest resolves issues of blood guilt and anxiety surrounding the shedding of blood through killing or menstruation or the birth process.

Among every "primitive" society studied by anthropologists a preoccupation with blood has been noted. A principle of anthropology that applies here is: The wider the distribution of a trait, the older it is. Since the use of red ochre as a symbol of blood is virtually universal, we may conclude that it is very old and that the earliest populations regarded blood as a primal substance akin to water.

The oldest known religious offices are the priest and the shaman. They serve similar roles in their communities but they represent different worldviews. Yet for both blood and water are the most fundamental substances of life.

Red ochre was used cosmetically and for cave art among peoples who inhabited rock shelters. A 50,000 year old ochred mammoth tooth plaque was found in Tata, Hungary. Many of symbols found in rock shelters of Africa, Indonesia and Australia were made by archaic humans using red ocher.


Related reading: Blood and Binary Distinctions; Life is in the Blood; What Constitutes Being?; African Religion Predates Hinduism; Theories of Primal Substance; Red Ochre and Red Deer at Ancient Burial Sites