Right: Figure of an Egyptian priest with shaved head. Korah, Moses' half-brother, probably looked like this. Sarki means ruler among the people of Kano, which is where Noah’s ancestors came from. The Sarki are also a people group who live in the region of Orissa in India. Orissa is also a Nigerian word and Kano is in Nigeria. Sarki also live as ‘Haruwa’ in the Tarai region of Nepal. The word Haruwa is equivalent to the ancient Egyptian word ‘Harwa” meaning priest. It appears that priests played a leading role in the diffusion of the Afro-Asiatic worldview. It is interesting to note also that the word 'sarki' refers to red ochre which was ground into power and used almost universally in the burial of nobles as a symbol of blood between 20,000 and 80,000 years ago.In this essay, I explore the connections between the priesthood identified with Melchizedek and the priesthood associated with Horus, one of the 3-God (baal shalisha), the source of light, and the Son of God.
Alice C. Linsley
The Priesthood begins with God who first shed the blood of animals to clothe Adam and Eve’s nakedness.[1]
It continues with Abel, a shepherd who offered acceptable sacrifice and was killed by his jealous brother.[2]
It is traced through Abraham’s ruler-priest ancestors who spread from west central Africa to the Indus River Valley. They are listed in the Bible and we know a good deal about their Afro-Asiatic worldview.
That the priesthood was already a fully developed office before the time of Abraham is evident in the person of Melchizedek, the Priest of Salem (Jerusalem). It is evident also in the presence of Neolithic fire altars throughout the Middle East.[3]
With Melchizedek, the priesthood of God comes to be associated with the Jebusite settlement of Jerusalem. Abdi-hepa was a Jebusite king who ruled Jerusalem three centuries before its conquest by David. This distinguishes the priesthood of God from other priesthoods that do not recognize the ancient prophecies concerning Mount Zion and the House of David. Interestingly, according to 2 Samuel 24, David built a fire altar at the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite. Here David is shown as a ruler-priest and shepherd, the very roles that characterize the ruler-priests whose patrilineal lines intermarried, bringing us to the House of Joachim, Mary's father.
The antiquity of the priesthood is evident also when tracing the marriage pattern of Abraham’s Horite family in which the ruler-priests married the daughters of priests. The Horites were a particular group of priests whose worldview widely influenced Afro-Asiatic peoples and even the Indo-Europeans.[4]
Abraham's Horite ancestors believed in blood sacrifice for atonement of sin. They are likely the ones who spread the word about atonement through blood sacrifice. References to such redemption appear on a tablet titled "The Song of Debt Release," which was excavated in Hittite territory. The same practice was known to the Babylonians during Abraham's time.
The Horites take their name from the one they worship - Horus, the Son of God. They apparently believed that the Son of God would become incarnate from their bloodline. This is why they took great care that their priests married only patrilineal kin. (The priesthood was traced through the father. However, bloodline was traced through the mother.)
The Biblical record is so reliable that it can be used to reconstruct the priestly bloodline from Cain and Seth (whose lines intermarried) to Ham and Shem (whose lines intermarried) to Joktan and Sheba (whose lines intermarried) to the priest, Joachim, father of the blessed virgin Mary, Mother of the Promised Son of God.
The Priesthood as Fixed Order
It is evident that the priesthood that points to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, pertains exclusively to ruling men. This appears to be fixed by God from the beginning. To modern ears the idea that anything in the created order is fixed sounds improbable. We have been indoctrinated in the evolutionary insistence that things in the created order can change in essence. But this is a delusion. The order of creation is fixed. Created entities can and do change their form (what the Greeks called “flux”), but they do not change their essence. Such is the case with the priesthood.
So when the Episcopal Organization decided to call women “priests” that decision (motivated by politics rather than by truth) had no effect on the created order. TEC has no power to create new ontological categories. Women priests are not priests in “the order of Melchizedek”. The priesthood by its essence excludes women from this office. All the Episcopal Church managed to do was to create confusion and division. It isn’t difficult to track the Devil’s fire trails in this case.
The Order that Pertains Exclusively to Women
Analysis of the kinship pattern of Abraham’s people from Genesis 4 to the New Testament makes it clear that the order of creation excludes men from taking all the credit for working righteous on the earth. Only women would perform blood sacrifice in the form of birthing, and from the dawn of time it was foretold that a certain Woman would bring forth the Son of God.
The incarnation of the Son of God makes necessary the monthly cycle of women and the act of giving birth. Every women of the Scriptures who could not bear a child knew that she would not share in the bloodline of the Promised Son.
So Sarah cried out and when she received the promised son, she insisted that he alone should reign over the kingdom of his father. [5]
So Rachel became embittered because she had not borne Jacob a child, but God opened her womb and she brought forth Joseph, who shaved his head as a ruler-priest[6] and married the daughter of the priest of the shrine of On (Heliopolis) in Egypt.
So Hannah, the priest’s wife, lamented her barren state before the Lord and petitioned with tears until she bore Samuel, prophet of the Most High God.[7]
NOTES
1. As God is the first priest, Jesus is revealed as High Priest after the order of Melchizedek. This is used in scripture to establish the primal authority of His Priesthood, from which every true priest derives his authority.
2. Abel is a type of Jesus Christ who offered acceptable sacrifice and was killed by his own brethren. Just as Abel's blood cries to the Father from the ground, so the Blood of Jesus is ever before the face of the Father.
3. The fire altars were sometimes made of stones and sometimes of brick. They were constructed according to the cosmology of the people. Some were built in the form of a falcon. The falcon was the symbol of Horus, the Son of God. To see the geometry of a falcon altar, go here to page 5. Ur means "fire" and it appears in many Afro-Asiatic place names. It probably refers to the fire altars. Archaeological evidence of such altars has been found in the Indus Valley culture dating from the proto-Harappan age (3500 BC- 2500 BC) to the Harappan age (2500 BC - 1750 BC). There was probably a fire altar in Jerusalem (a Jebusite city) in the time of Melchizedek. Elijah's offering, and Jezebel's false prophets, were consumed by fire from heaven on a fire altar.
4. See the Rev. John Campbell's research on the Horites here.
5. Abraham had two wives: Sarah and Keturah. Jacob had two wives: Rachel and Leah.
6.The word "korah" means shaved head and refers to a ruler-priest. It is also the name of Moses' half-brother who was apparently a ruler-priest. No wonder he contested Moses' authority! Moses was likely the youngest of Amram's 3 sons. For more on why Joseph shaved, see Biblical Archaeology Review, July/Aug. 2007, pages 36-41.
7. Elkanah had two wives: Hannah and Peninnah. For more on the pattern of ruler-priests having 2 wives, go here.
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12 comments:
I appreciate your view that the order of Creation had precluded either one of the two sexes from ever being able to "take all the credit" for working righteousness back on the earth. In this connection, I was wondering if you might have a comment on what you consider to be the significance of the repetition of the word "pain" in Gen. 3:16 (Heb. 'itstsabown), first in relation to the Woman ("in pain you shall bear children"), and then after that, in Gen. 3:17, in relation to the Man ("with pangs shall you eat from it [soil] all the days of your life."): I am guessing that your take would be that the word is evidently suggestive of a mutual, shared destiny for both men and women to get on the path to salvation, and in reality, the so-called Curse is not so much meant to be an actual "curse" condeming the Woman and the Man to an unremitting (passive) experience of particular kinds of physical pain and suffering (whether we are talking about childbirth or field labor), but there is in the passage more of a call for an inner spiritual effort to be offered up (which gives the more credence to the KJV rendering of the Heb. word "itstsabown" as "sorrow" -- being synonymous with the attitude of penitence. In other words, we can observe here that God of Genesis was very careful that words of Curse were uttered at the serpent, the soil, etc., but never at the human being.
You have stated my view quite well, Jonathan. You note the parallel between what the woman will experience - pain/sorrow and what the man will experience - pain/sorrow. This appears to be part of the Curse that God will use to undo the Curse, the way a good wrestler uses his opponent's own weight and movement to take him down.
Mark the Ascetic wrote, “Remembrance of God is pain of heart endured in the spirit of devotion, but he who forgets God becomes self-indulgent and insensitive.”
Concerning spiritual progress, Elders Barsanuphius and John observed that “No one achieved anything without pain of heart.”
Interesting also that the word 'sark' or 'sarx' in Greek means the soul or unregenerate flesh.
The Caananite/gentile/pagan religions (of Kano, Cain?) were religions of the flesh, mind, soul that did not follow the patterns set by God but were legalistic, cruel, intolerant and unforgiving, dedicated to appeasing evil spirits, trying to know, protect, control, manipulate the future, peace, prosperity, health, dominate people, deny truth, and destroy those who differ or disagree.
Sounds very familiar for this is the character of several secular and religious systems today (even those who claim to be Christians) who oppose Christ and His Gospel.
Georgia, the Greek sarx probably is not related to the Afro-Asiatic "sarki" which is connected instead to "sakti" which relates to the new moon. The priests determine religious feasts and fasts based on the cycle of the moon, just as we do in determining the date of Easter/Pascha.
Alice, Thanks for explaining. However, didn't early religions connected the moon and its cycles to our humanity, the flesh (Greek Sarx/sark) and a woman's monthly cycles?
Early communities observed that the moon influenced tides and menses certainly. I don't believe that we can conclude that the moon symbolizes the flesh or humanity in general. In Afro-Asiatic religion, with its binary distinctions, the moon represented the female principle and was regarded as inferior to the Sun which represented the masculine principle. Again this was based on observation since it is evident that the Sun is greater than the Moon.
In keeping with Jonathan's post on Gen 3:16 where the consensus is that Adam and Eve are not cursed but the serpent is, I have a question on Yahweh's quote, "Yet your desire and craving will be for your husband and he will rule over you."
After reading many of your articles, would it be safe to say that the above quote is strictly Horite law? Their binary system of Horite priestly rulership? The sin was aspiring equality with Yahweh (with Eve as the decision-maker)and Yahweh corrects them with the Horite binary system? Just like the Elamites error in the 'Tower of Babel' of bringing earth to heaven and Terah seeing the Sun and Moon as equal according to Joshua 24:2?
Am I on the right track here?
This relationship of subordination is not from Horite Law, though Horite Law reflects this arrangement. The subordination of the female to the male is a direct result of fear, the first emotion described after the Fall. When men are fearful they become aggressive and defensive. When women become fearful, they get "clingly" and surrender their wants/needs in order to preserve the relationship.
Feminists argue that patriarchy is the result of universal oppression of women by men. They want to make men the oppressors, and ignore the effects of fear on males and females. In the biblical worldview patriarchy came as an effect of fear (Gen. 3:10) entering the male-female relationship after disobedience. Because of fear the woman's desire will be for her husband and he shall rule over her. (Gen. 3:16) In her seminal book, In a Different Voice, Harvard psychology professor Carol Gilligan demonstrated through her research how this is so.
In the creation narrative man comes first and the woman second, also in this narrative the woman is of the man and the not the man of the woman even as the moon reflects the sun rays, yet more we see that the woman is decribed as a helper, nurturer, caregiver, subordinate (moontrual relation/femanine aspect) receiving and reflecting the light of the man the progenitor the dominant the decisive, the reproductive organs speak to a receiver the internal (cup, chalis, vessel, mortar, bowl) the man the deliverer, the external (the pestle, the rod, the obelisk, the spear, the antenna).
This arrangement and design precluding the fall, prior to deception, the corruption of things.
Further we see that a tavnit or pattern in scripture such that he/she that is superior or authoritative can have multiple lessers, subordinates, helpers, whether of kings with subjects, husbands with their wives, wives with their children.
The Renewed Covenant stating emphatically that the man is the head of the woman, Messiah the head of man and The Father the head of Messiah.
Thus from beginning to end we have a clear pattern of male dominance complimented by female submission of things both terrestrial and things celestial.
That said, the complimentary relationship from my perspective though is never abusive-needy in nature till after through fear the absence of true love, it was and is still certainly supremacy-subordinate in nature.
What say yee to this view? Especially in relation to the salvation process, as two dominant forces produces war, where as two passive forces produces stagnation.
First Time Contributor,
Kwame Kamau
Trinidad, West Indies
Truth Seeker
Kwame, thank you for your thoughtful observation. Please continue to contribute!
A very interesting and thorough examination of the Order of Melchizedek.
Thank you for all your hard work!
Just wondering why certain Jews erased the Canaanites from Biblical history except Melchizedek King of Jerusalem when we know from archaeological evidence the Jewish tribes and Canaanites lived together as the same people nations mixed with different tribal families Melchizedek was more important then Abraham but little is known about him, everything has been changed people are erased, called cursed then lies are told claiming mass slaughter when archaeological evidence shows the opposite tribal wars or different nations of different people erased the history of Canaan with the Hebrew people either because of tribal problems or race issues replacing the original ethnic people with a different race.
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