Navajo and Ket Are Cognate Languages

This Ket-Na-Dene connection is the first time a new world language group has been conclusively linked to an old world language group.

Comparative Linguist, Edward Vajda, says, "All known Yeniseic languages seem to be related at a time depth of about 2,500 years. The large number of cognates between them permits the reconstruction of much basic vocabulary, suggesting a proto-language spoken by mobile bands of hunter-gatherer-fishers in the boreal forests of northern Inner Asia."

Vajda is the director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham. His research links the Yeniseic language family in central Siberia with the Na-Dene languages in North America. The Yeniseic family includes the extinct languages Yugh, Kott, Assan, Arin, and Pumpokol. Only the Ket language is spoken today and according to Vajda, this language is on the verge of extinction with less than 200 speakers, most over the age of 50.

The reconstruction of proto-languages through the comparative method has proven an excellent tool in investigating migration theories, especially when used alongside biological and archaeological findings.

This study identifies 36 cognates common to the Yeniseian family and the Na-Dene family.

"Linguistic evidence indicates that the Yeniseian family of languages, spoken in central Siberia, is most
closely related to the Na-Dene family of languages spoken, for the most part, in northwestern North America. This hypothesis locates the source of one of the three migrations responsible for the peopling of the Americas." 

Related reading: Ket-Navajo Connection in the News

The Scarlet Cord Woven Through the Bible

Alice C. Linsley


The Apostle Paul reminds the Hebrew Christians that they may enter with boldness into the Most Holy Place "by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is His body..." (Hebrew 10:19, 20)  In this we follow Christ, our great High Priest, who "did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood..." (Hebrew 9:12)

The Blood of Jesus Christ is the source and substance of the Christian's life. Scripture teaches that life is in the blood. For Christians this has radical and profound implications. When one is born, there is water and blood. When our Lord died, there was water and blood. In Baptism and Communion there is water and blood. We humans are attracted to the water, but wary of the blood.

For years I didn't grasp the distinct yet interwoven nature of Baptism and Communion. I think this is because I thought of Baptism apart from His blood, even though the Apostle Paul makes it clear that we are baptized into Christ's Sacrifice and raised to new life with Him. Does this mean that we are free of passions that drive a wedge into our fellowship with Him? Certainly not. That is why we also need the Priesthood, confession and spiritual disciplines such as prayer, fasting, alms-giving and Scripture study.

I have never spoken of the vision I had inside the little church of St. Paul in West Whiteland, Pennsylvania.  I saw an angel pouring His blood from a golden pitcher into the baptismal font. Over the years I have pondered this and delved more into the mystery of the blood of Jesus by which we sinners are forgiven and cleansed. I was an Episcopal priest at the time and I associated the blood of Christ with Holy Communion, but somehow I had neglected the significance of His blood in reference to Baptism. I knew that the Scriptures hold forth this truth: "Life in in the blood."  Hebrews explains that no cleansing comes by the blood of beasts, but only by the blood of Christ, the true Priest.

That set me thinking.  If Christ is the Mediator of a new Covenant in His blood and I enter that covenant by baptism, then my life depends entirely on His once and for all sacrifice. Somehow in that vision beyond the mundane, I sensed a timeless dimension to His Sacrifice and I began to ponder the pleromic nature of His blood. The Apostle Paul explains that Jesus Christ is the fullness (pleroma in Greek) of all things in heaven and on earth, both invisible and visible. The term “pleroma” was used among the Gnostics to describe the metaphysical unity of all things, but Paul uses the term to speak about how all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ in bodily form (Col. 2:9).



Pondering the Pleromic Blood

There is a significant difference between the Gnostic application of “pleroma” and Paul’s application. For the Gnostics, the pleroma is vague and undifferentiated, but for Paul the pleroma is the manifestation of the benefits of the “blood of Jesus.” Paul never allows the churches he planted to wander far from the blood of Jesus that brings forgiveness, cleansing and eternal life.

Paul articulated his understanding of the pleroma as early as his second missionary journey when he preached to the Athenians that, “in Him [Jesus Christ] we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) His thoughts developed further as he continued to reflect on the Hebrew Scriptures, and as he prayed, fasted, and received greater illumination. We find the fullest expression of the pleroma in his latter writings, especially in Romans and in Ephesians.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. (Ephesians 1:7-10)

While not yet fully developed in the Church, the Trinity underlies Paul’s understanding of the pleroma. He speaks of the distinct Persons of the Trinity and of the oneness of the Body of Christ in the language of Shema: “There is one Body, one Spirit, ...one hope ...one Lord, one Faith, one baptism, and one God and father of all, over all, through all and within all” (Eph. 4:4-5).

These words follow Paul’s explanation of the saving work of Jesus Christ. He explained to the Ephesians:

But now in Christ Jesus, you that used to be so far apart from us have been brought very close, by the blood of Christ. For He is peace between us, and has made the two into one and broken down the barrier which used to keep them apart, actually destroying in His own person the hostility caused by the rules and decrees of the Law. This was to create one single man in Himself out of the two of them and by restoring peace through the Cross, to unite them both in a single body and reconcile them with God. In His own person He killed the hostility… Through Him, both of us have in one Spirit our way to come to the Father. (Eph. 2:13-14)

Paul moves the Christian faith toward a Trinitarian comprehensiveness that forever distinguishes it from polytheistic dynamism (Hinduism), henotheistic animism (tribal religions) and the mushiness of post-Christian theologians.



All Things through Him and in Him

Since God is not bound by the constraints of time and space, perhaps the blood of the Son of God is that substance by which the world was made. The Creed and the Apostle John affirm that "through Him all things were made."  All things were made by Him before the Incarnation and now all things are gathered in Him, the Incarnate One.

If life is in the blood and only His blood gives life, we might trace the scarlet cord from before time, were that possible. Then we pick it up in Genesis. The promise that the woman's Seed shall overcome death and restore Paradise came to be fulfilled through Jesus' sacrifice and His resurrection. Jesus claimed to be the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15 when he told his disciples about his death.  He said that unless a seed fall into the ground and dies it cannot give life. (John 12:24)

In tracing the scarlet thread, we discover the "deeper magic" (to use C.S. Lewis' words from The Magician Nephew). The sacrifice of God's Lamb is alluded to in many biblical images and the scarlet cord image weaves throughout the Bible.

We continue to trace the scarlet cord where we read of the birth of twin boys to Tamar (Gen. 38:28-20). The story is told that when it came time for Tamar to give birth, Zerah stuck out his hand and the midwife tied a scarlet cord around the infant's hand. As soon as she had done this, the baby withdrew his hand and his brother Perez was born first. St Jerome wrote, "What is one to say of Tamar, who brought to birth the twins Zerah and Perez? Their separation at the moment of birth was like a wall that divides two peoples, and the hand tied with the scarlet ribbon already then speckled the conscience of the Jews with the passion of Christ." (Letter 123.12)

Perez is the younger son, but he is remembered in Ruth as one of David's honored ancestors. We remember that David too was the youngest of many sons, yet chosen to rule in Israel. And from Perez and David would come the Promised Messiah.

What is the significance of this story? It speaks of the redemption of the one who is not chosen to rule. It speaks of God's grace shown to the other, just as God promised Abraham that He would bless Ishmael and Abraham's sons by Keturah. The chosen one, Isaac, is not the only one blessed. The chosen people of Israel are not the only people blessed. The Blood which gives life, symbolized by the scarlet cord, is for all people. And that we be looking in the right direction, the scarlet cord leads from Tamar to David and from David to Messiah.

The scarlet cord is found in Leviticus. Here it is used in a priestly ritual to cleanse lepers and to retore them to the community (Lev. 14:4-6; 49-52). This too points us to the Blood of Jesus, for we who were afar and rotting in our sins, have been cleansed by His Blood and brought home.

The cord is found in Egypt on the doorposts of the Hebrews preparing to depart. This is the first Passover.

The cord appears again at Rahab's house in Jericho.  This forebearer of David and of Jesus tied a scarlet cord outside her window so that she and all her family would be saved from destruction. This is a second Passover and it too speaks of the salvation for those who are obedient to God's call.

St. Ambrose wrote concerning Rahab that she "uplifted a sign of her faith and the banner of the Lord's Passion; so that the likeness of the mystic blood, which should redeem the world, might be in memory. So, outside, the name of Joshua [Jesus] was a sign of victory to those who fought; and inside, the likeness of the Lord's passion was a sign of salvation to those in danger." (On the Christian Faith, Book V, no. 127)

And finally, the cord is traced to a temporal end and perfection in Hebrews 9:11-26, which tells us:

(11-14) But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

(15-22) And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. For where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is in force after men are dead, since it has no power at all while the testator lives. Therefore not even the first covenant was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, "This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you." Then likewise he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry. And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.

(23-26) Therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another - He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

Christ suffered the sacrifice of Himself only once.  Its "innumerable benefits" are such that Thomas Cranmer wrote in the first Exhortation before Communion, "And above all things ye must give most humble and hearty thanks to God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for the redemption of the world by the death and passion of our Saviour Christ, both God and man; who did humble himself, even to death upon the Cross, for us, miserable sinners, who lay in darkness and the shadow of death; that he might make us the children of God, and exalt us to everlasting life."

What is our response to such great love shown to us while we were yet sinners? Cranmer continues, "And to the end that we should always remember the exceeding great love of our Master, and only Saviour, Jesus Christ, thus dying for us, and the innumerable benefits which by his precious blood-shedding he hath obtained for us; he hath instituted and ordained holy mysteries, as pledges of his love, and for a continual remembrance of his death, to our great and endless comfort. To him therefore, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, let us give, as we are most bounden, continual thanks; submitting ourselves wholly to his will and pleasure, and studying to serve him in true holiness and righteousness all the days of our life. Amen. ((First Exhortation before Communion, Book of Common Prayer, 1928)



Related reading:  Two Passovers and Two Drunken Fathers; The Messianic Priesthood of Jesus; The Pleromic Blood and Gnosticism; The Pleromic Blood and Gender Distinctions; Life is in the Blood; Blood and Crosses

DNA Confirms Mixed Ancestry of Jews

Alice C. Linsley

Reformed Judaism Magazine has an article about the mixed ethnic and racial identity of Abraham's people. Here is the part that caught my attention:

Based on the anthropological and genetic record, we’ve been able to ascertain that the core Israelite population was not a single homogenous population, as the Bible says, but really an amalgam of local populations—Canaanites, Semites, and others—who merged in one form or another over many centuries and achieved a kind of tribal unity by about 1000 B.C.E., during the time of King Solomon. DNA then begins to come into play again after the development of a worldwide Jewish diaspora, which began in the aftermath of the Assyrian invasion of the Northern Kingdom in the 8th century B.C.E. and again after the destruction of the First (586 B.C.E.) and Second (70 C.E.) Temples in Jerusalem. For example, DNA research now confirms that groups in China and India are likely descendants of Israelites from the First Temple period.

The Bible reveals that the Jews are a not pure race. That is something that the Jewish leaders hoped to accomplish after the return from Babylon, but Jewish racial purity is largely a myth, except for the priestly lines which intermarried exclusively. Those are the lines listed in the genealogies of Genesis 4-12.  The priestly lines do not show a mixed DNA.

Priests married only the daughters of other priests and the priestly lines were patrilineal kin. The priesthood was already well established before Aaron. Moses' father was the eighth generation ruler-priest of the House of Seir, the Horite. Joseph married the chaste daughter of the priest of Heliopolis. Abraham’s mother is not named in the Bible, but according to tradition she was the daughter of a priest associated with the shrine of Karnach on the Nile. Her father is called "Karnevo" in the Babylonian Talmud.  The Karnach temple was dedicated to Horus who was called the “son of God”. The Horites were a caste of priests who were devotees of Horus.

Genesis 10 reveals that Abraham was a descendent of Kush, so we know that the Genesis material has a Nilotic cultural context.

This same article in Reform Judaism Magazine goes on to says: "DNA research of male and female lineages has shown, for example, that certain tribes in Africa and India have Jewish roots."  The Sudra who settled in southern India were from Sudan. They are the ones who build the Harrapa civilization and spread their Nilotic worldview across the anceint Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

They migrated out of East Africa, as did the great kingdom builder Nimrod, one of Abraham's ancestors. These Kushite rulers are responsible for the spread of a common worldview and common religious practices from Bor-No (Land of Noah) near Lake Chad to India.


Related reading:  Jewish Myth of Racial Purity; Challenge to Shaye Cohen's Portrayal of Abraham; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology; Who Were the Kushites?; The Migration of Abraham's Ancestors; Who Were the Horites?

In the Beginning was Love

Alice C. Linsley
Holy Saturday 2008

In the beginning was Love: generative and Self-giving. Love made the verdant fields and sprinkled them with wild flowers. Love made long-necked beasts and earth-hugging creatures. Love was patient in nurture and watchful, ever mindful of universes and planets, and a certain planet earth, and a certain people Israel.

Love gave sons, even when men denied them or the flesh failed. So Sarah conceived and laughed. So Tamar became the mother of twins. So Ruth, under the robe of Boaz, became great grandmother to David, anointed King. So the Handmaid of the Lord, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, conceived Love in her womb, the Love from before all time.

Eternal Love through millennia prepared salvation and the hearts of men; deliverance from floods, from prison, from enemies, from slavery, from exile, from sin and death. Love overcame all things and endured all things. Love set boundaries to preserve Love’s inheritance, and established statutes to instruct in the way of Life.

Love led the Patriarchs to water and preserved their wells. Love spoke face to face with a woman at Jacob’s well and gave her grace to go and sin no more.Out of a cistern, Love lifted the Prophet who came in the name of Love. Many were the despisers of Love. They cast Love’s servants into pits, stoned them, sold them into slavery, betrayed them to their enemies and nailed them to crosses.

Other lovers of Love were burned, flayed or beheaded. Some suffered quietly until their hearts ceased within them and they entered into Love’s rest. The number of those despised is greater than a man could count and each name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Love never forgets.

Love remembers every deed, every thought, every impulse. Imposters came and went, but Love remained. Sexual love vied for first tart in every generation and lacked grace. Sentimental love played silly tricks and lacked endurance. Intellectual love became lost in meandering phantasmal trails. Egotistical love shouted for glory until red-faced and hoarse. The vanities parade themselves as slaves in the market. The virtues go home with Love as beloved children.

Love shows His face in the radiance of the sun, in the dark catacomb, in the bloody imprint of Veronica’s cloth, in the smiling faces of the saints, in the gasps and groans of victorious confessors and martyrs. Love bursts the bonds of Hades and leads captives to eternal habitations.

Love ever seeks, though Adam's children hide themselves and their sins. Yet Love knows all, sees all and overcomes all. There is none like Love: eternal, generative, patient, wise, attentive and ever present. Therefore, seek Love for apart from Love there is no life.

Why Good Friday is Good

Alice C. Linsley


The Apostle Paul’s authority in the Church is undisputed, yet he is undoubtedly one of the most hated figures of history because of his uncompromising defense of the Gospel. Part of his defense involved refuting the legalism that overthrows the sacrifice of Messiah. Were it possible to be saved by obedience to the Law, the Cross would merely be a tragic moment in history.

Paul understood the Blood of Jesus as the ground that constitutes the Pleroma, the single true all-encompassing Reality. The Church is recognized where this Reality is upheld through apostolic preaching, right doctrine and the dominical sacraments, all of which are efficacious because of the Blood of Jesus. This is what Luther realized after reading Paul's epistles. This is why Luther opposed indulgences, which posited the papal claim of salvific equality with the blood of Jesus beyond the grave. This diminishment of the Blood of Christ was intolerable.

The Apostle Paul's writing influenced St. Augustine, Luther, Calvin and many saints, monks and theologians. His confessional approach to Scripture and the Tradition of Israel is fundamental to a right understanding of the Christian Faith. Paul’s confessional hermeneutic is centered on the Blood of Jesus. He never allows philosophical speculation to lead the Gospel away from the comprehensive reality of the Blood of Jesus. All the things of God are realized in the Incarnation, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Messiah. All Truth comes into focus when viewed through Jesus’ Blood. All worldly striving is shown to be futile by His Blood.

Paul’s focus on “the centrality of the Cross” is one of the greatest strengths of his writings. We must always hold in our sight the bloodied cross upon which Christ’s immaculate Body was given for the salvation of the world. This is the vehicle of salvation, in fulfillment of the prophecies that he would be hanged on a tree.

His Cross is the new Tree of Life, from which we were driven by our sin in the beginning. In this sense, His Blood is restorative. By His Blood we are restored to Paradise and to the divine image. Referring to Moses lifting the staff with the serpent, Jesus tells his disciples, “When I be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself” (John 12:34. Also see John 3:14.) In a very real sense, the waters of baptism are Jesus’ Blood, which makes us clean.

I came to understand this is a fresh way through a vision that I had in 1990 while sitting in a quiet church. Suddenly, everything around me disappeared except for the stone baptismal font, which had replaced the altar, front, center and elevated. An angel appeared above the font, and from a golden pitcher poured blood into the font. I knew that it was the Blood of Jesus and I slipped to my knees, overwhelmed by the presence of holiness.

Father Timothy Fountain, a reader of this blog, has noted, “Paul locates both death (burial = unclean) and life (new life) in baptism (Rom. 6) and in I Corinthians 11 says that in communion we proclaim Christ's death and "participate in his blood." Via the sacraments, as you say, the blood of the saints becomes the blood of Christ - "he in us and we in him." When a priest baptizes, chrismates and celebrates at the altar, water, blood and Spirit are all there, both under outward and visible signs and as inward and spiritual grace.”

The Cross was not a random event in history. It is the fulfillment of the most ancient divine promises and hopes of humanity. It was foretold in the Afro-Asiatic Dominion that flourished before the time of Abraham. Consider the linguistic connections between these Afro-Asiatic languages: The Hebrew root "thr" = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm "toro" = clean, and to the Tamil "tiru" = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian "tor" = blood. Hausa and Hahm are languages of Nigeria and Tamil and Dravidian are languages of India. These represent the far western and far eastern limits of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

The Apostle Paul refers to the Blood of Jesus no less than twelve times in his writings. Because God makes peace with us through the Blood of the Cross, he urges “Take every care to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together” (Eph. 4:3). Paul's confession of the saving Blood of Jesus informs his understanding of Baptism and the Body of Christ. He continues: “There is one Body, one Spirit, just as one hope is the goal of your calling by God. There is one Lord, one Faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, over all, through all and within all” (Eph. 4:4-5).

The blood of the saints is precious to God because it is the Blood of His eternal Son, by which our communion with God is restored. "But now in Christ Jesus, you that used to be so far apart from us have been brought very close, by the blood of Christ. For He is peace between us, and has made the two into one and broken down the barrier which used to keep them apart, actually destroying in His own person the hostility caused by the rules and decrees of the Law. This was to create one single man in Himself out of the two of them and by restoring peace through the Cross, to unite them both in a single body and reconcile them with God. In His own person He killed the hostility... Through Him, both of us have in one Spirit our way to come to the Father" (Eph. 2:13-14).

Is Mosaic Authorship Necessary?

Alice C. Linsley


Darren Cooney, a reader from Rhode Island, has asked:

“I am curious as to what you think about sticking to idea of the authorship of Moses as far as doctrinal teaching (i.e. liturgical homilies, etc) goes. As you said in your article, the Fathers held to this understanding, so do you think it can be problematic to stray from it as far as expounding doctrine goes? In other words, not in the arena of history or academics, but in the arena of prophetic preaching, etc.

Father Morgan [interim priest at reader’s parish] seemed to agree with you that there is no great benefit in ascribing the Pentateuch to Moses. He was coming from the perspective of the Documentary/Four Sources Hypothesis though, so he wasn't looking much at David.”

Mr. Cooney asks an excellent question. Is it essential for Christians to hold to the view of Mosaic authorship of Genesis for doctrinal purposes? The short answer is “No. It is not essential to hold a view that Holy Scripture does not explicitly and clearly teach, especially when the view is not uniformly held by the Church Fathers.”


The earliest Christian Apologist didn’t hold to Mosaic Authorship

St. Basil and St John Chrysostom taught that Moses is the author of Genesis, but this view wasn’t uniformly held among the earliest Christian apologists. To verify that fact, we will examine the writings of Justin Martyr, a Samaritan Christian who lived from 100 to 165 AD .

Justin Martyr believed that the "prophets" Moses and David foretold Messiah, and he distinguished between the two prophets when he read Genesis. Justin also placed greater emphasis on the Messianic promises through David than on the laws ascribed to Moses. He cites Isaiah: “Hearken to me, and your soul shall live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, even the sure mercies of David. Behold, I have given Him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the nations. Nations which know not Thee shall call on Thee; and peoples who know not Thee shall escape unto Thee, because of Thy God, the Holy One of Israel, for He has glorified Thee.” (Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 1)

Justin also wrote, “But we do not trust through Moses or through the law; for then we would do the same as yourselves. But now-- (for I have read that there shall be a final law, and a covenant, the chiefest of all, which it is now incumbent on all men to observe, as many as are seeking after the inheritance of God. For the law promulgated on Horeb is now old, and belongs to yourselves alone; but this is for all universally. Now, law placed against law has abrogated that which is before it, and a covenant which comes after in like manner has put an end to the previous one; and an eternal and final law--namely, Christ--has been given to us, and the covenant is trustworthy, after which there shall be no law, no commandment, no ordinance. Have you not read this which Isaiah says: 'Hearken unto Me, hearken unto Me, my people; and, ye kings, give ear unto Me: for a law shall go forth from Me, and My judgment shall be for a light to the nations. My righteousness approaches swiftly, and My salvation shall go forth, and nations shall trust in Mine arm?' And by Jeremiah, concerning this same new covenant, He thus speaks: 'Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand, to bring them out of the land of Egypt'). If, therefore, God proclaimed a new covenant which was to be instituted, and this for a light of the nations, we see and are persuaded that men approach God, leaving their idols and other unrighteousness, through the name of Him who was crucified, Jesus Christ, and abide by their confession even unto death, and maintain piety. Moreover, by the works and by the attendant miracles, it is possible for all to understand that He is the new law, and the new covenant, and the expectation of those who out of every people wait for the good things of God. For the true spiritual Israel, and descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham (who in uncircumcision was approved of and blessed by God on account of his faith, and called the father of many nations), are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ, as shall be demonstrated while we proceed.” (Dialogue, Chapter 11)

Notice Justin Martyr’s listing, with priority given to Judah, the ancestor of King David and Jesus Messiah.

An examination of Justin’s exegesis suggests that he assigned Genesis texts that pertained to Jewish dietary and moral laws to the prophet Moses, but those that pertained to Messiah he assigned to the prophet David. Consider these examples:

“For it was told you by Moses in the book of Genesis, that God granted to Noah, being a just man, to eat of every animal, but not of flesh with the blood, which is dead.” (Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 20)

“Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High, was uncircumcised; to whom also Abraham the first who received circumcision after the flesh, gave tithes, and he blessed him: after whose order God declared, by the mouth of David, that He would establish the everlasting priest.” (Dialogue, Chapter 19)

Justin Martyr offers a satisfying answer to Mr. Cooney’s question about whether Christians must hold to Mosaic authorship of Genesis. In Justin’s view, God is the author of Genesis and has spoken through the prophets Moses and David.


Abraham, Moses and David:  One and the Same Message

Perpetuating Mosaic authorship of Genesis is not helpful because it is too simplistic.  Moses was the son of a Horite ruler-priest, just as Abraham was the son of a Horite ruler before him, and David was the son of a Horite ruler Jesse. The Horites preserved the believe in the coming of the Son of God. Therefore, insisting that Moses is the author of Genesis somehow suggests that he invented the expectation of the coming of the Son of God who is called the "Seed of the Woman" in Genesis 3:15.  Instead, Moses received this tradition from his Horite (horim) ancestors. Christians recognize the promise of Jesus in Genesis.  And if we examine closely the kinship patern of Abraham, Moses and David, we find that they are all Horites whose priestly lines intermarried exclusively.  And all three figures are instrumental in preserving the tradition which they received from their ancestors who lived in Eden.


Related reading:  Who Were the Horites?; Abraham and Moses: Different Origins of Israel?; Why Jesus Visited Tyre

Test Your Knowledge of Genesis

Take the Genesis Trivia Quiz here:

http://christianity.about.com/od/bibletriviaquizes/qt/genesisquiz2.htm


When you are finished, make note of the answers. The answers to numbers 2, 6 and 10 are especially interesting.

Answer #2 - Probably not the person named.

Answer #6 - Incorrect. Canaan is the correct answer, and he was not a son in the literal sense.

Answer #10 - And remember that blood line was factored through the mother, not the father. This means that we should be curious about Tamar's clan, tribe, etc.


Now for an ADVANCED LEVEL QUIZ:

What does the name 'Tamar" mean?

What does the name 'Keturah' mean?

Where did Abraham pitch his tent between Ai and Bethel?

What does the word "Moreh" mean?


ANSWERS:

Tamar means date palm. The date palm was a symbol of fertility.

Keturah means perfume. Keturah, Abraham's cousin bride, was a descendent of Sheba and so was Abraham. There appears to be a relationship between the Sheba clans and the Ketu Clans of the Jebusites.

Abraham pitched his tent near the Oak of Moreh. Teachers, prophets or seers sat under great oaks and date palms. These could be seen for miles away. People came to these trees to meet with the seers associated with them.

Moreh means one who know and instructs, or in a later idiom, one who gives torah. We might render this as prophet or seer.


Related reading:  Here is Another Quiz

The Possibility of Davidic Authorship

Alice C. Linsley


The Authority of Sacred Texts

For Jews the authority of a sacred text depends upon the authority of its source or sources. Jewish tradition regards Genesis as part of “The Five Books of Moses,” the Pentateuch. Therefore, the authority of Genesis rests on the authority of Moses. That Moses was Horite or Horim, is rather problematic for Jews. Many have viewed him and Abraham as different peoples, rather than as men who belonged to the same ruler-priest caste.  Abraham and Moses do not represent different origins of Israel.

The genealogical material in Genesis clarifies that Abraham and Moses belong to the same caste.  Their kinship, marriage and ascendency pattern is identical.  This is the case, we must recognize that they are one family and their story is of one piece.  It is the story of the Horim, those who the Jews call their ancestors or parents.

Some scholars believe that Moses is responsible for the preservation of the material and that it came to be written much later. Others hold a view that God dictated the words to Moses, much as Muslims believe that an angel dictated the Quran to Mohammed. The Church Fathers didn’t question the role of Moses, but they also didn’t provide much in the way of explanation for how Moses accomplished this.

In the first of this series on “Who Wrote Genesis” I proposed that the material in the Genesis prehistory could have been mediated through King David who was a direct descendent of the Horim.  His city Bethlehem was a Horite city. It is possible then to regard David as contributing to the family narrative that his people received from their ancestors who expected a "Woman" of their caste to bring forth the "Seed" (Gen. 3:15).  What we have is a consistent witness that constitutes the authority of Genesis.

Unlike the other books assigned to Moses, Genesis is not a book of law and it shares none of the other books’ fixation with Moses, the Levitical priesthood, and the nation of Israel. The most ancient authorities don’t claim that Moses wrote the entire Pentateuch, only particular passages identified with these words: “Moses wrote…” This raises the question of whether Genesis can be understood as having authority apart from the other books assigned to Moses. If we believe that each book of the Bible is superintended by the Holy Spirit, then we also believe that each has its own unique authority. Taken together, the books of the Bible must be regarded as extraordinarily authoritative.


The Question of Mosaic Authorship

The Five Books of Moses represent 5 scrolls of roughly equivalent length. They are regarded as containing all the essentials of the law and religious instruction called “Torah.” Therefore Jews sometimes refer to these scrolls as “The Five Fifths of the Law.” This general view of sacred law and doctrine is what Ezra has in mind when he writes, “The Torah of Moses which the Lord God of Israel had given.” (Ezra 7:6)

In Greek, the books are called “Pentateuchos”- Book of Five Volumes. The Septuagint accepts these books as revelation mediated through Moses. The Church Fathers accepted this also, never questioning John 1:45: “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets wrote” or Jesus: “...there is one who accuses you – Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:45-47). The Apostles taught what they had been taught, that both the revelation mediated by Moses and the revelation delivered through prophets testify to Messiah’s appearing. But can we take these passages as proof that Moses is the author of Genesis? Not if we are diligent in the weighing of evidence.

Here are some of the reasons to doubt the assignment of Genesis to Moses:

There is no claim of Mosaic authorship in Genesis, or in any of the Five Books. There are passages attributed to Moses (Deuteronomy 1:5, 4:45, 31:10) and passages that tell us that Moses made written records (Exodus 17:14, 24:4, 34:27, Numbers 33:2, Deuteronomy 31:9,24), but nowhere is there an allusion to the authorship of the Hebrew, raised as an Egyptian. In fact, references to Moses in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy are always in the third person. Consider, the examples of Numbers 2:1, 5:1, 31:1, Deuteronomy 33:1 and Numbers 12:3, which states, “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.” Or Exodus 11:3: “Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt.” Is it likely that a “meek” man would write these statements about himself?

Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is doubtful because Moses could not have written the account of his own death and burial. “So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD, and he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-pe'or; but no man knows the place of his burial to this day. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended.” (Deut. 34:5-8)

The phrase “to this day” implies that considerable time has elapsed between Moses’ death and the writing of the passage. However, we must be careful in the labeling of anachronisms, because some identified by modern scholars, such as camels in Abraham’s time (Gen. 24), have been shown to be groundless. The Biblical narrative is supported by the representation of camel riding on Mesopotamian seal cylinders dating to Abraham’s time. (See Gordon/Rendsburg, in BANE:120-12; and Journal of Near Eastern Studies 3, 1944, pp. 187-93.)

Reading the works of Albright, Von Rad and Speiser, one receives the impression of an evolutionary viewpoint that colors their interpretations of the text. The notion that human society in Abraham’s day was primitive is not supported by the evidence. Instead we have evidence of widespread commerce over huge areas 30,000 years ago and sophisticated mining operations in southern Africa involving tunnels and thousands of miners over 80,000 years ago.


The Pentateuch Had Different Authors

The internal evidence indicates that the Pentateuch could not have been written in the form that we have received it by Moses. There is material that comes from a time well after his death, such as the attacks on Horite religious practices such a local shrines.

Some scholars maintain that the five books could not have been written by the same person because of the “doublets”, which they propose come from different sources. A doublet is the same story told twice, but presented from different perspectives. They cite the two creation stories, the two flood stories, the two accounts of Abraham attempting to pass off his wife as his sister, and the two accounts of Hagar being driven from Abraham’s household.

Personally, I find the doublets to be dubious evidence of multiple authors. If Genesis is an account of the Afro-Asiatic peoples, we must expect at least two versions of the material. These versions can be explained by the fact that the Afro-Asiatic peoples have a western/African version of these stories and an eastern or Mesopotamian version. This is not evidence of different authors as much as it is proof of the Genesis claim that “The whole world spoke the same language, with the same vocabulary.” (Gen. 11:1) The “whole world” here refers to the Afro-Asiatic Dominion and we have considerable linguistic evidence that all these peoples spoke cognate languages.

Furthermore, when we look at the creation story in Genesis 1, we recognize similarities to Mesopotamian creation stories, but when we look at the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, we recognize similarities to African creation narratives.  Genesis clearly contain both the Afro and the Asiatic threads.

The more persuasive evidence for multiple authors of the Pentateuch is that Genesis simply doesn’t belong with the other books. Genesis is a narrative record of the Afro-Asiatic peoples before the emergence of a people identified as Israel. As such, it is distinct from and stands apart from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy which focus on Moses and the people of Israel.

While Genesis names no one as its author, it claims to be the “toledot” or record of God’s intervention in history among real persons. The claim to be toledot is made thirteen times in Genesis, not a randomly selected number, but one associated with the Afro-Asiatic lunisolar calendar of 13 months (requiring adjustment 7 times every 19 years.) This is significant because it suggests an organization different from the 7 days of Genesis 1.



The Case for Davidic Authorship

I am not the first to propose the possibility of Davidic authorship of Genesis, but I do offer some overlooked evidence in support of this position. Let us consider, very generally, the case for Davidic authorship.

Genesis has affinity to the book of Ruth, the narrative of King David’s pedigree.

The selection of the youngest son to rule over his brothers is the theme of David’s life.

Unification of the tribes under David would require officially embracing the traditions of both northern and southern tribes and these traditions are reflected in the doublets.

The evidence of close relations between the House of Sheba and the House of David.

The acceptance of David by the Jebusites, an Afro-Asiatic people.

The African etiology of the term “selah” found in David’s Songs of Zion.

The theme of setting up a shrine to the God who selects you.

David’s “people of the land” heritage.

David’s 3 blood lines: Edomite, Moabite, Israelite.

Solomon’s fortification of Hazazon-Tamar.


Related reading:  The Genesis Record of Horite Rule; The Horite Marriage and Ascendency Pattern; Using Arab Math to Uncover the Authors of the Torah; Who Were the Horites?

Who Wrote Genesis?

Alice C. Linsley
March 2008

Who wrote Genesis? That important question can’t be answered definitely, as there is still so much we don’t know about the dating of the material. However, an inter-disciplinary approach to the question poses some satisfying, if not fully verifiable, answers. In this first essay in a series on the authorship of Genesis, we will consider the challenges we face when trying to date the Genesis material.


Dating the Genesis “Prehistory”

Attempts to date the so-called “primeval history” of Genesis require shifting through layers of material. And to be sure, there are layers upon layers and traces of even more remote layers. Consider for example, the structure of the unity of 3 brothers. We see this in these alignments:

Cain, Abel, Seth

Shem, Ham, Japheth

Haran, Nahor, Abraham

Ishmael, Isaac and Jokshan.


This is an important layer because is suggests this triad: Sheba, Nok and Noah

Cain and Seth belong to Sheba, indicated in Chapter 10 where we discover that Ham and Shem’s lines culminate with the same individual - Sheba. There is speculation that the largest African monument ever found may be the palace city of Sheba, found in the dense rain forest on the Atlantic coast of modern Nigeria. See: http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-land-of-nod-region-of-nok.html

The wives of Cain and Seth belong to Nok. This is evident in their naming their first-born sons "Enoch" or "Nok" after their father. See: http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2007/11/where-did-cain-find-his-wife.html and http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2007/04/brides-naming-prerogative.html

The wife of Lamech the Younger belongs to Noah. She is the mother of Noah of the flood. Though she is not explicitly named, we detect her pedigree through the name she gave to her first-born son.

With this information, we come to see that the hero of the flood is the descendent of Seth, by a daughter of Nok, and the child of a daughter of Noah. This is significant because it reveals the existence of 3 African kingdoms related by blood and existing at the same time.

These kingdoms existed before the material was organized in the form we have received it. Much of the narrative of Genesis is anachronistic, being told well after the time these people lived. This is evident in phrases such as “The Canaanites were in the land.” (Gen. 12:6) This means that the period represented by the people in Genesis 4 and 5 must be before the time of Abraham, Moses, David and the Babylonian captivity.


Identifying the Kinship Pattern

Interpreters of Genesis have missed a crucial observation because they assumed that the genealogical information in Genesis 4 and 5 represents doublets or the same tradition contributed by different sources. The “begets” of Genesis 4 and 5 present a very old kinship pattern which I have diagrammed and analyzed using E.L. Schusky’s Manual for Kinship Analysis. Kinship patterns are like cultural signatures. Once a pattern is identified, it can often be used to trace the origin of a people that has migrated away from their homeland. Analysis of the pattern presented in Genesis 4 and 5 directs us to West Central Africa as the probable homeland of Abraham’s ancestors. Consider this diagram:

This Lamech, designated "the Younger" by E. A. Speiser, is the father of Noah of the flood.

My diagram and analysis of this material reveals that the two lines are distinct yet inter-related by marriage of the daughters (who are not listed). The daughters married their patrilineal parallel cousins and named their first-born sons after their fathers. (See: http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2007/11/where-did-cain-find-his-wife.html) The key to understanding the pattern is Naamah, Lamech's daughter. She married her patrilineal parallel cousin Methuselah (Gen. 5:26) and named their first-born son Lamech, after her father. This pattern is evident throughout the Genesis 4 and 5 genealogical record.

Likewise, Cain's daughter married her cousin Enosh and named their first-born son Kenan. "Kain" (or Cain) and "Kenan" are linguistically equivalent names. Irad's daughter married her cousin Mahalalel and named their first-born son Jared. Irad and Jared are linguistic equivalents. Methushael's daughter married her cousin Enoch and named their first-born son Methuselah, again linguistic equivalents.Factoring the daughters into the genealogical picture clarifies the kinship pattern of Abraham's ancestors. The consistency of the pattern throughout Genesis 4 and 5 supports the biblical claim that this genealogical material presents biological father-son descent rather than a telescopic view, and it is not a case of literary doublets.

Now where do we find the pattern today? It is found among groups in West Central Africa. It is a unique pattern, a kind of cultural signature of clans and metal working chiefs in Niger, Nigeria and in the grasslands of Cameroon (See the research of Emmanuel Vubo, here: http://www.africa.kyoto-u.ac.jp/kiroku/asm_normal/abstracts/pdf/26-3/26-3-2.pdf).

What is the significance of this finding? It indicates that Abraham’s ancestors came out of West Central Africa. We also find that Cain and Seth married sisters who named their first-born sons, Enoch (Hanock) after their father. So the patriarch of this family is not mythological Adam, but historical Enoch, and the African form of this name would be the bi-consonantal “Nok.”

Hebrew prefers tri-consonantal names, but the Chadic languages of central Africa prefer bi-consonantal names. Therefore the name that should appear at the head of the family tree is Nok, not Adam. The region of Nok extended from the Benue River northward to Jos and westward to within about 200 miles of the present day city of Kaduna. (It was bordered on the east by the region on Noah, called Bor-Nu.) See map of the region of Nok at http://www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/iarc/culturewithoutcontext/issue6/darling.htm

The biblical support for this appears in Psalm 8:4 which reads, “What is man [enosh] that you are mindful of him, the son of man [ben adam] that you care for him?” The parallelism of the Hebrew makes it clear that the historical Enosh is regarded as progenitor just as the archetypal Adam is regarded as progenitor.


Dating Noah’s Flood

Then there is the challenge of dating the great flood of Noah. Whether one follows the eastern tradition of the story (Mesopotamian) or the western tradition (central African), one reaches the same conclusion that the flooding was the result of a prolonged period of rain and wetness, memorialized by these words: “forty days and forty nights.” (For more on the 2 traditions, see: http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2007/04/afro-asiatic-dominion.html)

Using the Nok connection and Noah’s flood as our points of reference, we can propose a time period for the people listed in Genesis 4 and 5. They would have lived between the time of the central African chief, Nok, and before the flooding that took place throughout the Afro-Asiatic Dominion (http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2007/11/linguistic-evidence-for-afro-asiatic.html). Noah’s flood likely occurred during the Guirian Wet Period, which lasted from about 5500 to 2550 B.C., and the artifacts of Nok suggest that the founding of that civilization can’t be dated before about 2550 B.C. Wherever we place the noble clans of Genesis 4 and 5 in history, it is clear that they do not pertain to the dawn of humanity.


Dating the Peoples of Genesis 4 and 5

The evidence suggests that 3 lines inter-married: the lines of Sheba, Nok, and Noah, and these represent historical people who lived in West Central Africa between about 10,000 and 8,000 years ago. This helps us in determining the author of Genesis because it poses a key question: Who would have had access to this information?

If Genesis is the record of God’s intervention among Afro-Asiatics before the emergence of a people called Israel, it is a record of distant antiquity. This poses the challenge of constructing a picture of the ancient world to which the Genesis prehistory alludes. Until recently, the picture has been one of Mesopotamian peoples from whom Abraham is selected by God to have a special covenantal relationship. But what if Abraham’s ancestors didn’t come from Mesopotamia? What if they came out of Africa, as the pedigree of Genesis 4 and 5 suggests? Then we must look for clues to help us understand the relationship between the Mesopotamian context of Abraham and the African context of his ancestors Cain, Seth and Noah.

There are 2 ways to approach this. We may assume that the similarities between the sacred stories of the ancient Fertile Crescent and the Indus River are due to a westward migration of Semite nobles. If this is the case, than the Genesis prehistory takes part of the story from pre-Vedic legends of creation and early humanity. This would account for the correspondence between the Hindu heroes Adimo, Heva, Sherma, Hama and Jiapheta and the Genesis persons Adam, Eve, Shem Ham, and Japheth. But what if the reverse is true? What if the correspondence is due to the eastward movement of Abraham’s ancestors from West Central Africa to Ur and Haran? This is the more likely scenario given everything we know about the northeast migrations of peoples from Africa to Mongolia.

If the migration is eastward and the stories reach as far as the Indus River Valley, these stories must be viewed as a seedbed of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion, a vast civilization that extended from West Central Africa to India, far too large an area to be able to identify a clearing house for all this information. However, there is a time in Israel’s history when all this information was greatly valued: during the reign of King David, whose ancestry is Afro-Asiatic. This is why some scholars propose that the material in Genesis was compiled around 1000 B.C. This makes sense when we consider that during David’s reign commerce and cultural exchange was directed both toward African kingdoms and toward the Mesopotamian kingdoms, and there was a good deal of interest in pedigree to validate David’s claim to the throne.

Meditation for Pure Monday

Genesis 1:1-13 LXX, 1st Reading at Vespers on Pure Monday
Monday of 1st Week of Great Lent (March 10, 2008)

God said “Let There Be: Genesis 1:1-13, especially vs. 1: "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth."

Genesis calls for faith in God - for trust in and commitment to Him, exceeding human intuition, surpassing every vision of men and the insights of philosophers. Genesis is revelation, God's revelation of Himself, recorded for the world by His Holy Prophet Moses. St. Basil says of Moses: “It is this man, whom God judged worthy to behold Him, face to face, like the angels, who imparts to us what he has learned from God. Let us listen to these words of truth written without the help of the 'enticing words of man's wisdom' (1 Cor. 2:4).”

Indeed, Beloved, read and feast on Moses' record of God's Self-revelation. The Saint gives a blessing that the Church sets before us for weekday reading during the Great Fast. As the title of this book, "Genesis," means "origin," so Moses shares many of the originswhich arose at the will of God. This first week of readings focuses on the origin of the created order, especially the origin of mankind and the ugly realities hovering over our race: sin and death. Genesis starts with God's creation of the heaven and the earth. Godspoke, and as St. Basil says, “The order was itself an operation, and a state of things was brought into being, than which man's mind cannot even imagine a pleasanter one for our enjoyment.”

In this passage we learn a great deal about God, even though much concerning Him remains and shall ever remain shrouded in Mystery. We encounter the eternal God Who is the Lord of history. We discover that God is "everywhere present and fillest all things," being quite distinct from His creation. God is the Prime Actor in the Genesis account. In this week's readings He is disclosed as the Creator Who "made" the heaven and the earth. As St. Basil has us notice, the Word of God is effective, not like human words that are mere uttered sounds. "And God said...and there was..."(Gen. 1:3). All things were brought into being through the spoken, creative Word of God, "and without Him nothing was made that was made" (Jn. 1:3). The revelation of God the Holy Trinity lies embedded in this passage implicitly, although God as the Tri-Unity of Persons is notexplicitly manifest. God finally manifests Himself definitively in the Theophany at the Baptism of the Lord Jesus. Yet Christian Faith affirms that all three Persons create: the Word of God the Father brought all things into being even as “the Spirit of God moved over the water” (Gen.1:2).

Also God is disclosed in this passage as the active Lord of History. Mark two facts concerning the opening line: “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). First, there will be an end to time even as there was a beginning. The created order is not an endlessly repeating cycle of being and extinguishing. It is history, as St. Basil states: “The dogmas of the end, and of the renewing of the world, are announced beforehand in these short words put at the head of the inspired history....That which was begun in time is condemned to come to an end in time.” Bishop Kallistos Ware states the same, “God is making the world....Creation is not an event in the past but a relationship in the present.” The Word holds us in being, and we exist!

Finally, God is revealed as One Who is "Other" than His physical creation. Pantheism is brushed aside. God creates from nothing, not shaping nor forming nor manipulating that which already existed. Bishop Kallistos notes, “God was under no compulsion to create.” Rather, as St. John Chrysostom states, “Thou it was Who didst bring us from non-existence into being.” The created order is “made” by God “of things that were not” (2 Macc. 7:28). The modern secularists who dwell endlessly on imagined interactions of existing forces to explain the universe, reveal, as St. Basil points out, “their inherentatheism...that nothing is governed...and that all was given up to chance.”

Glory and praise to God, the supreme Artificer of all that is wisely and skillfully made.

This meditation and other spiritually edifying readings and meditations can be read at DYNAMIS! A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral, Wichita, KS
www.dynamispublications.org