Mary's Ruler-Priest Lineage

Alice C. Linsley


Mary is without doubt the most honored woman of the Bible. She is called Theotokos which means God-Bearer because she brought forth Jesus Christ, who Christians worship as the promised Son of God who came into the world to save sinners, to make void the curse of death, and to restore Paradise.

Through Mary’s faithfulness God fulfilled the promise in Genesis 3 that the Serpent would be defeated (his head crushed) by the Seed of the Woman. This promise, preserved through thousands of years, came to focus on the Tribe of Judah and then more narrowly on a descendent of King David, the anointed of God.

Such religious expectation would have been preserved through the generations by priests and prophets. As the First Priest in Scripture is God [1], we have in the story of the Woman and the Serpent a type of Theotokos and Satan. For Satan to be defeated, the Woman’s Seed would have to be of God, not of man, and so Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God, not the son of Joseph.

The expectation of Messiah was preserved through a priestly lineage that was carefully guarded, following the kinship pattern of Abraham’s people. As we have seen in our study of the kinship of Abraham’s people, rulers and priests were careful in the selection of their brides and married according to a unique pattern. Priests married priest’s daughters. Priests were brothers or half-brothers and they married women who were cousins or half-sisters. This is what is alluded to in Mishna Taanith[1]: “Four-score pair of brethren-priests took to wife fourscore pair of sister-priestesses in Gophne, all in one night.”

The people of Abraham took great care in the selection of wives for their priests since the offspring would trace their blood lines through their mothers. This kinship pattern enables us to understand the relationship of Mary and Joseph, both of priestly houses.


Mary’s Lineage

According to Holy Tradition, Mary’s parents were Joachim[2] and Anne. Joachim was a priest and his wife Anne was probably a daughter of a priest. Mary is said to have been born in the grotto under the Church of St. Anne which would have been adjacent to the Temple, in an area where the Temple priests lived.

Mary’s husband was Joseph. Before his marriage to Mary, he was an elderly widower with children of his own. Joseph’s father was Heli (also spelled Eli), a priest.

Bishop A. Hervey, who wrote a learned work on the “Genealogies of Our Lord Jesus Christ”, holds that Mary’ father was the brother of Joseph’s father. Mary and Joseph were therefore first cousins, and both descendents of David. This means that Jesus was a direct descendent of King David by blood (through Mary) and by status (through Joseph).

Hippolytus writing in the early third century, records that Mary’s mother was one of three daughters of a priest named Matthan[3] and his wife Mary. The eldest sister, Mary, was the mother of Salome; the second sister, Sobe, married a Levite and was mother of Elizabeth; the third sister was Anne, Mary’s mother. Mary’s cousin Elizabeth was the mother of John the Baptist. Elizabeth and Mary were cousins, and both daughters of priestly houses.

Mary is "Miriam Daughter of Joachim Son of Pntjr (Panther) Priests of Nathan of Beth Lehem." From the earliest predynastic times among the Egyptian Horites, ntjr designated the king. The name Panther or p-ntjr meant "God is King."

It is certain that Mary was of the ruler-priest class because even those who hated her admit this. Sanhedrin 106a says: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.” It is said that she was so despised that some Jews tried to prevent the Apostles from burying her body.

I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hur (Hor) as the "father of Bethlehem." The author of Chronicles knew that Bethlehem was originally a Horite settlement in the heart of Horite territory. The prophets foretold Bethlehem as the birth place of the Son of God.

Joseph's family lived in Nazareth which was the home of the eighteenth division of priests, that of Happizzez (1 Chronicles 24:15). The words happi and ntjr originate in the Nile Valley, as do the names of many of the ruler-priests listed in the genealogies in Luke and Matthew. Melchi, a name that appears twice in Mary's ancestry, means "my image" in Amharic.



What the New Testament Genealogies Tell Us

Matthew 1:1–6 and Luke 3:32–34 are in agreement on the following line of descent:

Abraham
Isaac
Jacob
Judah
Perez – son of Er by levirate law, son of Tamar by Judah
Hezron
Ram (Aram)
Amminadab
Nahshon
Salma (or Salmon), married Rahab
Boaz, married Ruth
Obed
Jesse
David

Luke 3:23–31 continues the list as follows (notice the recurrence of names, marked with an asterisk): If using the diagram at right, please cite this author.

David
Nathan
Mattatha *

Menna
Melea
Eliakim
Jonam
Joseph *
Judah – father of Er who died childless by his cousin wife Tamar

Simeon
Levi
Matthat *
Jorim
Eliezer
Joshua
Er – descendant of Er by his half-sister wife
Elmadam
Cosam
Addi
Melki
Neri
Shealtiel
Zerubbabel – who returned to Judah from Babylonian captivity with Mordecai
Rhesa
Joanan
Joda
Josech
Semein
Mattathias *
Maath
Naggae
Esli
Nahum
Amos
Mattathias *
Joseph *
Jannai
Melchi
Levi
Matthat *
Heli
Joseph *
Jesus

Note the recurrence of names, suggesting cousin brides who named their first-born sons after their fathers. The name Er appears in the 7th generation from Judah. This suggests that Judah's son Er, who married Tamar, had another wife besides Tamar. This may explain why Er refused to produce a son to be the heir of his deceased brother (levirate marriage) with Tamar. He would not have wanted his brother's heir to compete over territory with his own heir.

Tamar must have been Er’s patrilineal cousin. The firstborn son of the cousin/niece bride ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather. Tamar's father was a ruler at Timna, and ancient metalworking site.
When we consider these Patriarch in Mary's lineage, we observe some common features. They were chiefs or kings over their territories. They kept flocks, dug wells, and built up their households through  two wives. One was a half sister, as was Sarah to Abraham.  The other was a patrilineal cousin or niece, as was Keturah to Abraham. Both firstborn sons ascended to thrones.  The firstborn sons of concubines served the ruling sons.  All other sons were given gifts and sent away to establish their own territories.
The Horite ruler-priests offered sacrifices to God at stone altars. They controlled the water systems, such as rivers, oases and wells. These were important not only for human survival, but also to water the flocks and herds kept by the ruler-priests. This is why the roles of ruler, priest and flock owner were inseparable.


The Protoevangelium of James[4] says that Mary’s father had flocks as did all priests of the Bible. Moses tended the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. A common image of God in the Old Testament is as the Shepherd of Israel (Ps 80:1) and the priests of Israel are referred to as “shepherds.”  The Good Shepherd leads His flocks to the "still waters" because He controls the waters. They are his possession, just as the ruler-priests of Abraham's people controlled the ancient water systems.

What could be more natural than for priests to maintain a source of animals for sacrifice? Their lives were such that they would naturally learn the skills of a good priest. The shepherd makes a good priest because he must:

- watch for those who prey on the sheep
- defend the sheep from attackers
- heal the wounded and sick sheep
- find and save lost or trapped sheep
- call them by name and know their individual quirks
- and earn their trust

This is why Jesus is referred to as Good Shepherd, High Priest and “the Anointed [Messiah] of God”, the term applied to David, a king-shepherd who, according to 2 Samuel 24, offered acceptable burnt sacrifice at the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite[6].

So Mary, in fulfillment of the first biblical promise (Gen. 3), was chosen by God to bring forth the High Priest, Good Shepherd, Messiah and Eternal Son of God. None other can claim this great honor. No other woman deserves the Church's highest acclaim.


Related reading:  Joseph's Relationship to Mary; Mount Mary and the Origins of Life; God's Word Never Fails, The Daughters of Horite Priests


NOTES

1. God sacrificed an animal to cover the nakedness of the man and the woman.

2. Mishna Taanit deals with the public fasts observed in ancient Palestine. Go here: http://www.archive.org/stream/mishnatractateta00greeiala/mishnatractateta00greeiala_djvu.txt

3. Joachim means “God will establish”. Joseph means “God will increase”.

4. The name Matthan/Mattai and its linguistic equivalents appear 5 times in Luke’s list. The name come from the word “gift” and can also refer to the “giving’ of Torah. Mattaniah means “gift of God”.

5. The Protoevangelium of James states that the “brethren of the Lord” were sons of Joseph by another wife. Here: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/480056/Protevangelium-of-James

6. Araunah was a Jebusite. Jerusalem (Salem) was a Jebusite city and one of the priests of Salem was Melchizedek.