Ideologies Opposed to Holy Tradition

Alice C. Linsley


C.S. Lewis wrote, "With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us. " (from "Priestesses in the Church?")

C.S. Lewis places the discussion of the distinction between male and female in the context of Holy Tradition, for as he states, "With the Church, we are farther in..." As Christians we are so deep in Holy Tradition that we appear odd and out of touch to the world, but in fact, we alone are in touch with Reality. It is not something we brag about. It is something that God has accomplished in us by Divine Mercy. We have been granted clarity in a world where the God-established distinctions and boundaries are blurred. For Christians, righteous or ethical living means observing and honoring these distinctions and boundaries.

To illustrate the contrast between the world's understanding of ethical living and the Church's understanding, consider popular views on diversity and inclusion. In contemporary America "diversity" means drawing together the factions that I agree with and who I can count on for support. We saw this most recently in President Obama's selection of religious speakers. He chose a progressive Protestant, a gay Episcopal bishop, a left-leaning female ecumenist and a female convert to Wahhabi Islam. These speakers represent the diversity that Obama approves and from which he draws political support. He hopes from this consolidated base to gradually include those segments of society that don't support him: traditional Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, pro-life Protestants, a large number of American Jews, and many conservative Americans who are nervous about overturning the Protection of Marriage Act.

This brings us to a better understanding of the popular notion of inclusion. To be "inclusive" is to at least appear to reach out to people who differ from you. It is driven by a utopian vision of a society in which gender, racial, religious and political distinctions are set aside. It is to insist on egalitarianism. Such a view is contrary to Holy Tradition which makes distinctions and uphold boundaries. Holy Tradition renders egalitarianism meaningless. Why? Because egalitarianism is the world's attempt to create an alternative reality. Let us consider how this is so.

The Gospel according to Luke is indisputably the most egalitarian of the four Gospels. Yet Luke's Gospel makes it clear that the equality and inclusion we yearn for is found only within Holy Tradition. In the parable of the wine and wineskins (unique to Luke) we read "And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, 'The old is better" (Luke 5:36-39). This parable is about Holy Tradition. That becomes evident when we remember that new wine is not stable. Old wine, on the other hand, can go into both new and old wineskins because it is stable. What is new therefore can't be inclusive because it can be received by only the new. On the other hand, what is old is inclusive because it can be received by old and new. In this parable Luke testifies that Holy Tradition is inclusive in nature.

The alternative reality which the world attempts to force even on Christians leads to death and destruction because it is ultimately intolerant. It declares war on the saints who uphold Holy Tradition. This is why it is so important for Christians to understand our Tradition and to stand on the right side of the lines that are drawn.


Ideologies Opposed to Holy Tradition

Christians have difficulty grasping the distinction that Holy Tradition upholds between male and female because we fail to weigh the authority of Tradition against the ideologies that oppose Tradition. These ideologies include Feminism, Empiricism, liberal Protestantism and revisionist liturgies and prayer books.

Feminists attack Tradition on the grounds that it perpetuates oppression and exploitation of women. This is easily demonstrated to be false. The study of history reveals that the plight of women has improved wherever Christianity has become the dominant religion. Christianity’s legal establishment under Emperor Justinian resulted in improved status for women in the Empire. With the implementation of the Justinian Code the following practices quickly disappeared:

· Infanticide
· Polygyny (the practice of maintaining multiple wives)
· Incest
· Cultic prostitution
· The 3-tiered caste system that limited women’s marriage options
· The practice of fathers selling their daughters into slavery.

The Code also made it legal for:

· Slave owners to grant liberty to as many slaves as they wanted.
· Families to retain the estate in cases where the father died intestate.
· Noble women to exercise political power.

Where is the evidence that women have been oppressed under Church rule? Not much of a case can be made based on historical evidence. Christianity has largely improved the conditions of women.

Feminists want to see the demolition of patriarchy worldwide. This demonstrates how out of touch with Reality they are. Patriarchy is the universal order, with soft patriarchies found in many places. After 85 years of ethnographic research, no true matriarchy has been found to exist. A true matriarchy requires the following conditions:

· line of descent must be traced through the mothers
· rights of inheritance must be figured through the mothers
· political power must be vested with ruling females
· females must have the final say in deciding matters for the community

No true matriarchy has ever been identified by cultural anthropologists.

The real reason Feminists oppose Holy Tradition is because the father plays a primary role in establishing and maintaining a chain of believing descendents. Sadly, in the West, fathers have largely relinquished their responsibility to be spiritual heads of their families and to instill Holy Tradition in their children. As my friend, Father Timothy Fountain, explains, “Males are charged with spiritual protection of the people, not because they are superior, but because that is their assigned role.”

Empiricism undermines Holy Tradition by insisting that there is no place in education and in public debate for metaphysics. Many of the famous empiricists of the 20th century were atheists because their alternative reality precluded the possibility of a Creator and rejected metaphysical categories.

Liberal Protestantism is utopian in its outlook, seeking to bring its own version of peace on earth. This too is an alternative reality. It sets itself against the Reality of the Pleromic Blood and the Messianic Priesthood. The liberal Protestant aligns with forces for world unity and regards Holy Tradition as a quaint vestige of the past.

Revisionist liturgies and prayer books have tossed out much of Holy Tradition in their attempts to introduce egalitarianism to the Church. This is evident in the post-Vatican II liturgical 'reforms', especially in bringing the altar away from the East wall and having the priest celebrate facing the people. Here the reformers failed to uphold the binary distinctions inherent in Holy Tradition.

The priest stands facing East. The people are at his back, to the West. This is a critical and ancient aspect of Holy Tradition. Among Abraham's people the Sun was the emblem of the Creator. The Creator ruled the heavens, making a daily visitation of His realm from East to West (phenomenologically speaking). In so doing, the Creator cast His glory over His lower holdings on Earth. Out of deference to the Creator, Afro-Asiatic chiefs established their territories by positioning their 2 wives in separate households on a North-South axis (except Lamech the Elder, who set himself up as equal to God).

Holy Tradition teaches us that the priest stands at the sacred center between the rising of our God at His visitation and the passing of His glory over the people. All of this was tossed out in the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms.

Ignorance of the origins of the Priesthood has contributed greatly to the gradual undermining of this sacred institution. Protestants don't get it because they do not hold to a sacramental view of the Lord's Supper. Many Anglicans don't get it as is evidenced by their willingness to put women in the order of Priests. Roman Catholics, despite the in-roads of modernism, have preserved the distinction of a male priesthood in keeping with Holy Tradition. The Eastern Orthodox churches have preserved the Tradition very well, but at least one American seminary now entertains the possibility of women priests.

Primitive societies are much better at recognizing and upholding binary distinctions than moderns. They made distinctions between East and West, between Male and Female and between blood shed in birthing and blood shed in killing. The two bloods represent the binary opposites of life and death. The blood shed in war, hunting and animal sacrifice fell to warriors, hunters and priests. The blood shed in childbirth fell to wives and midwives. The two bloods were never to mix. That’s why women didn’t participate in war, hunting and ritual sacrifices. That’s why men were not permitted in the birthing hut.

Among tribal peoples, brotherhood pacts are formed by the intentional mixing of bloods, uniting two men, but binary distinctions such as male and female, or human and God are still maintained as part of sacred tradition.

This anxiety about the shedding of blood is universal and very old. The priesthood probably came into existence from the first day that blood was shed and humanity sought relief of blood anxiety. As a point of fact, the first blood, according to the Bible, was shed in giving birth. The second shedding of blood was when God make skin clothes for Adam and Eve. The third shedding of blood was when Cain killed Abel. We note that between the two bloods (birthing and fratricide) God sacrifices an animal to provide for the needs of humanity. God is the first Priest.

Today when the Orthodox priest proclaims “Christ is in our midst” and the congregation responds “And ever shall be” we are reminded that Christ gives us His Body and Blood. Though we speak of the Eucharist as a “bloodless Feast” (against the Roman doctrine of Transubstantiation) we do not in these words deny the reality of Christ’s Blood. That is why a priest standing at the altar must immediately leave the sanctuary if he should cut himself and bleed. Here is yet another distinction between bloods: the Pleromic Blood of Christ and the mortal blood of man. Mortal blood must give way to the Pleromic Blood. St. Paul cautions the churches not to dishonor the Pleromic Blood. It must be received only by those who discern Christ’s Body.

Discerning binary distinctions is essential to understanding Holy Tradition. Upholding the distinctions is essential to preserving Holy Tradition. Every ideology that opposes Tradition blurs the distinctions between Male and Female and God and Humanity.

END

To read the first and second essays in this series go here and here.

C.S. Lewis on Women Priests

Priestesses in the Church?

C.S. Lewis


'I should like Balls infinitely better', said Caroline Bingley, 'if they were carried on in a different manner... It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing made the order of the day.' 'Much more rational, I dare say,' replied her brother, 'but it would not be near so much like a Ball.' We are told that the lady was silenced: yet it could be maintained that Jane Austin has not allowed Bingley to put forward the full strength of his position. He ought to have replied with a distinguo. In one sense conversation is more rational for conversation may exercise the reason alone, dancing does not. But there is nothing irrational in exercising other powers than our reason. On certain occasions and for certain purposes the real irrationality is with those who will not do so. The man who would try to break a horse or write a poem or beget a child by pure syllogizing would be an irrational man; though at the same time syllogizing is in itself a more rational activity than the activities demanded by these achievements. It is rational not to reason, or not to limit oneself to reason, in the wrong place; and the more rational a man is the better he knows this.

These remarks are not intended as a contribution to the criticism of Pride and Prejudice. They came into my head when I heard that the Church of England was being advised to declare women capable of Priests' Orders. I am, indeed, informed that such a proposal is very unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities. To take such a revolutionary step at the present moment, to cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the divisions between ourselves and other Churches by establishing an order of priestesses in our midst, would be an almost wanton degree of imprudence. And the Church of England herself would be torn in shreds by the operation. My concern with the proposal is of a more theoretical kind. The question involves something even deeper than a revolution in order.

I have every respect for those who wish women to be priestesses. I think they are sincere and pious and sensible people. Indeed, in a way they are too sensible. That is where my dissent from them resembles Bingley's dissent from his sister. I am tempted to say that the proposed arrangement would make us much more rational 'but not near so much like a Church'.

For at first sight all the rationality (in Caroline Bingley's sense) is on the side of the innovators. We are short of priests. We have discovered in one profession after another that women can do very well all sorts of things which were once supposed to be in the power of men alone. No one among those who dislike the proposal is maintaining that women are less capable than men of piety, zeal, learning and whatever else seems necessary for the pastoral office. What, then, except prejudice begotten by tradition, forbids us to draw on the huge reserves which could pour into the priesthood if women were here, as in so many other professions, put on the same footing as men? And against this flood of common sense, the opposers (many of them women) can produce at first nothing but an inarticulate distaste, a sense of discomfort which they themselves find it hard to analyse.

That this reaction does not spring from any contempt for women is, I think, plain from history. The Middle Ages carried their reverence for one Woman to the point at which the charge could be plausibly made that the Blessed Virgin became in their eyes almost 'a fourth Person of the Trinity.' But never, so far as I know, in all those ages was anything remotely resembling a sacerdotal office attributed to her. All salvation depends on the decision which she made in the words Ecce ancilla [Behold the handmaid of the Lord]; she is united in nine months' inconceivable intimacy with the eternal Word; she stands at the foot of the cross. But she is absent both from the Last Supper and from the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost. Such is the record of Scripture. Nor can you daff it aside by saying that local and temporary conditions condemned women to silence and private life. There were female preachers. One man had four daughters who all 'prophesied', i.e. preached. There were prophetesses even in the Old Testament times. Prophetesses, not priestesses.

At this point the common sensible reformer is apt to ask why, if women can preach, they cannot do all the rest of a priest's work. This question deepens the discomfort of my side. We begin to feel that what really divides us from our opponents is a difference between the meaning which they and we give to the word 'priest'. The more we speak (and truly speak) about the competence of women in administration, their tact and sympathy as advisers, their national talent for 'visiting', the more we feel that the central thing is being forgotten. To us a priest is primarily a representative, a double representative, who represents us to God and God to us. Our very eyes teach us this in church. Sometimes the priest turns his back on us and faces the East - he speaks to God for us: sometimes he faces us and speaks to us for God. We have no objection to a woman doing the first: the whole difficulty is the second. But why? Why should a woman not in this sense represent God? Certainly not because she is necessarily, or even probably, less holy or less charitable or stupider than a man. In that sense she may be as 'God-like' as a man; and a given woman much more so than a given man. The sense in which she cannot represent God will perhaps be plainer if we look at the thing the other way round.

Suppose the reformer stops saying that a good woman may be like God and begins saying that God is like a good woman. Suppose he says that we might just as well pray to 'Our Mother which art in heaven' as to 'Our Father'. Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. All this, as it seems to me, in involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does.

Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion. Goddesses have, of course, been worshipped: many religions have priestesses. But they are religions quite different in character from Christianity. Common sense, disregarding the discomfort, or even the horror, which the idea of turning all our theological language into the feminine gender arouses in most Christians, will ask 'Why not? Since God is in fact not a biological being and has no sex, what can it matter whether we say He or She, Father or Mother, Son or Daughter?'

But Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument not in favour of Christian priestesses but against Christianity. It is also surely based on a shallow view of imagery. Without drawing upon religion, we know from our poetical experience that image and apprehension cleave closer together than common sense is here prepared to admit; that a child who has been taught to pray to a Mother in Heaven would have a religious life radically different from that of a Christian child. And as image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.

The innovators are really implying that sex is something superficial, irrelevant to the spiritual life. To say that men and women are equally eligible for a certain profession is to say that for the purposes of that profession their sex is irrelevant. We are, within that context, treating both as neuters. As the State grows more like a hive or an ant-hill it needs an increasing number of workers who can be treated as neuters. This may be inevitable for our secular life. But in our Christian life we must return to reality. There we are not homogeneous units, but different and complimentary organs of a mystical body. Lady Nunburnholme has claimed that the equality of men and women is a Christian principle. I do not remember the text in scripture nor the Fathers, nor Hooker, nor the Prayer Book which asserts it; but that is not here my point. The point is that unless 'equal' means 'interchangeable', equality makes nothing of the priesthood for women. And the kind of equality which implies that the equals are interchangeable (like counters or identical machines) is, among humans, a legal fiction. It may be a useful legal fiction. But in church we turn our back on fictions. One of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize to us the hidden things of God. One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of the union between Christ and the Church. We have no authority to take the living and sensitive figures which God painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures.

This is what common sense will call 'mystical'. Exactly. The Church claims to be the bearer of a revelation. If that claim is false then we want not to make priestesses but to abolish priests. If it is true, then we should expect to find in the Church an element which unbelievers will call irrational and which believers will call supra-natural. There ought to be something in it opaque to our reason though not contrary to it - as the facts of sex and sense on the natural level are opaque. And that is the real issue. The Church of England can remain a church only if she retains this opaque element. If we abandon that, if we retain only what can be justified by standards of prudence and convenience at the bar of enlightened common sense, then we exchange revelation for the old wraith Natural Religion.

It is painful, being a man, to have to assert the privilege, or the burden, which Christianity lays upon my own sex. I am crushingly aware how inadequate most of us are, in our actual and historical individualities, to fill the place prepared for us. But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer. Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally, and till the Parousia) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him. We men may often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine. It is no cure to call in those who are not masculine at all. A given man may make a very bad husband; you cannot mend matters by trying to reverse roles. He may make a bad male partner in a dance. The cure for that is that men should more diligently attend dancing classes; not that the ballroom should henceforth ignore distinctions of sex and treat all dancers as neuter. That would, of course be eminently sensible, civilized, and enlightened, but, once more, 'not near so much like a Ball'.

And this parallel between the Church and the ball is not so fanciful as some would think. The Church ought to be more like a Ball than it is like a factory or a political party. Or, to speak more strictly, they are at the circumference and the Church at the Centre and the Ball comes in between. The factory and the political party are artificial creations - 'a breath can make them as a breath has made'. In them we are not dealing with human beings in their concrete entirety - only with 'hands' or voters. I am not of course using 'artificial' in any derogatory sense. Such artifices are necessary: but because they are artifices we are free to shuffle, scrap and experiment as we please. But the Ball exists to stylize something which is natural and which concerns human beings in their entirety - namely courtship. We cannot shuffle or tamper so much. With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us.

END


Related reading: Women Priests and the Anglican Church of North America; Why Women Were Never Priests; God as Male Priest; Blood and Binary Distinctions; More Thoughts on the Priesthood; What's Lost When Women Serve as Priests?

What is Holy Tradition?

“Although containing many written documents, Holy Tradition is not at all limited to what is written; it is not merely a body of literature. It is, on the contrary, the total life and experience of the entire Church transferred from place to place and from generation to generation. Tradition is the very life of the Church itself as it is inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit.” -- Fr. Thomas Hopko

Alice C. Linsley

In his essay "Man, Woman and the Priesthood" Bishop Kallistos recognizes that the nature and authority of Holy Tradition must be addressed in consideration of the question of women priests. He correctly notes that "Tradition is not to be equated with cultural stereotypes, with custom or social convention; there is a vital difference between 'traditions' and Holy Tradition."


What is Holy Tradition?

At the very least, we may say that Holy Tradition is the dogma received from the Elders and faithfully passed from generation to generation. As dogma it is not to be changed. The Saints stood for the unchanging Tradition no matter what pressures or persecutions were applied to them. Indeed many were martyred in defense of Holy Tradition.

We may also say that Tradition is a worldview in which God is central and humans are accountable to God for all things. (Later we will explore the cultural context from which this worldview emerges.) According to this worldview, God is ever at work fulfilling the divine promises made to the ancestors. If we pursue this we can't help but be struck by the Apostles' proclamation that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God's promises to the Patriarchs, to the Prophets and to David.

If we consider the teaching of St. Paul, we may go so far as to say that the Tradition of the Elders is the single true and adequate view of Reality; that Reality is synonymous with the Christ through whom all things were made and are held together. Paul’s understanding is that Reality is hidden in Christ and has been revealed in His incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension. Paul's central message is Jesus Christ as the fullness (Pleroma) of all things in heaven and on earth, both invisible and visible.

The biblical worldview is a picture of Reality centered in the divine person of Jesus Christ. Scripture and Tradition agree that nothing exists outside of Christ, and what is exists by the virtue of His Life-giving Blood. When we understand Holy Tradition in this light we avoid the erroneous notion that it is something akin to "best business practices". Holy Tradition is a Person.


What is the value of keeping the Tradition?

Among the Israelites, tradition was a social value, each father being responsible for teaching his children. Every time the Israelites failed to adhere to tradition, they found themselves in trouble. So it is that St. John of Damascus writes, "I beseech the people of God, the holy nation, to hold fast to the tradition of the Church... for the gradual erosion of what has been handed down to us will bring down the whole fabric in ruins."

The 'whole fabric' to which John of Damascus refers in his treatise on Holy Images is a specific and historic worldview with identifiable characteristics, including reverence for the ancestors. It is the worldview born of the experience of Afro-Asiaticswho lived long ago. They passed their tradition from generation to generation with great precision because they knew that they were preserving something of great value. Today we may drink of their wisdom in the Bible.

The value of keeping the Tradition of the Elders can be traced back to Israel’s African ancestors. An “ancestor” in traditional African religion is someone who died a good death, practiced the traditions of his people and faithfully transmitted them to his descendants. In this patriarchal context, a first-born son is most likely to become an ancestor because he is able to maintain the chain of the generation in a long genealogy. So, Jesus Christ, the only Begotten of the Eternal Father, delivers to us Holy Tradition and He heads a long chain of spiritual descendents.

As is still evident among primitive tribal groups, tradition entails the collective wisdom of many generations and the revealed wisdom granted by the Creator. The arrogance of the Enlightenment permeates Western civilization so thoroughly that we are astonished to discover that our empiricism and technological advances have not made us wiser than our primitive ancestors who intimately knew the seasons, accurately read the stars and constellations, and were attuned to Nature's messages from the Creator. If this were not true, St. Paul could hardly have accused the ancients of being without excuse since God has made known in Creation what is most fundamental for humanity to know about the Creator.

St. Ephrem the Syrian has expressed this most poetically. He wrote, "If God had not wished to reveal Himself to us there would have been nothing in creation that would be able to say anything at all about Him" (Hymns of Faith 44.7). He expanded on this, proclaiming, "This Jesus has so multiplied His symbols that I have fallen into their many waves" (Hymns on Nisibis 39.17). And finally, he confesses, "Wherever you look, God's symbol is there; wherever you read, there you will find his types. For by Him all creatures were created, and He stamped all His possessions with His symbols when He created the world" (Hymns on Virginity 20.12).


Is Holy Tradition the same as Holy Scripture?

It is clear that the preservation of the Tradition of the Elders is not dependent upon the invention of writing. Tradition is not the same as Scripture though Scripture presents the wisdom that humanity needs to avoid deception, destruction and suffering. The assumption that Tradition and Scripture are identical entities is a Protestant perception that fails to express the fullness of Christ and the Church. Certainly the Church receives the Scriptures as authoritative, but what the biblical writers speak of is beyond Scripture and Tradition.

Both Scripture and Tradition speak of Reality as being in Christ and very specifically in the life-giving Blood of Christ. For St. Paul, the “pleroma” is the manifestation of the benefits of Jesus’ timeless Blood. 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).

Jesus Christ is the Tradition that we receive and His symbols are written in Creation and in the Book from Genesis to Revelation. The Gnostics used “pleroma” 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). This means that the Church can expect no change in Holy Tradition, only the consummation of all things when Christ returns.


The Priesthood and the Pleromic Blood

Paul's understands that the Blood of Jesus constitutes the Pleroma, the single true all-encompassing Reality. Holy Tradition expresses this Reality. The Church is recognized where Tradition is upheld through apostolic preaching, right doctrine and the dominical sacraments, both of which are constitued by the Blood of Jesus with Water and the Spirit (the Three Witnesses of which St. John speaks).

The whole fabric of Holy Tradition is one with the Pleromic Blood of Jesus Christ. No where is this more evident than in the institution of the priesthood which is essentially the Messiah Priesthood. The Messianic Priesthood is unlike any other religious institution. It at once makes distinctions in its binary character and brings unity through its power to redeem and cleanse. It makes distinction between God and humanity and it makes distinction between male and female. The distinction in both cases addresses the primeval universal anxiety toward blood, an anxiety which many cultural anthropologists have observed.

Underlying the priesthood is the belief that humans must give an accounting to God, especially for the shedding of blood. The priesthood is intrinsically linked to blood. The priest is the functionary who addresses the guilt and dread that accompany the shedding of blood.

There are two types of blood anxiety: blood shed by killing and blood related to menstruation and birthing. To archaic peoples both types were regarded as powerful and potentially dangerous, requiring priestly ministry to deal with bloodguilt through animal sacrifice and to deal with blood contamination through purification rites.

Not a single female in the Bible served in a priestly role. We can argue a case for women deacons, but the deacon is not intrinsically linked to blood. Despite the efforts of many to create an egalitarian reality, we find no basis in Tradition or Scripture upon which to argue for women priests. The Bible does not say that women can be priests because the binary distinctions that frame the biblical worldview make “woman priest" ontologically impossible.

The Scriptures do not forbid women priests because the very idea of women sacrificing animals in the Temple was beyond imagination. It would have been regarded as an affront to the Divine order.

It was a bloody business when a priest sacrificed a lamb, so much so that the carcasses were burned outside the walls. It was a bloody business giving birth to children, so much so that the birthing hut was set outside the community. In the ancient Afro-Asiatic worldview from which Holy Tradition emerges, the two bloods were ordained for different purposes and could never share the same space. C.S. Lewis presents the grotesqueness of women priests in his depiction of the savage slaying of Aslan by the White Witch. If you wonder why the image is so troubling, consider that woman was made to bring forth life, not to take it.

The egalitarianism that prompts clergy to keep talking about women priests is not consistent with the Biblical worldview. God’s order in creation is binary in structure, distinguishing East from West, Night from Day, and Male from Female, yet holding them together as a single Reality (pleroma) in Jesus Christ. The order exists to orient humans to Reality, to keep us from becoming lost, to prevent us from confusing life and death. In this binary worldview we are given two coordinates. As anyone familiar with orienteering can explain, you must have at least two coordinates to determine your location. And it is senseless to speak of either of the coordinates as superior to the other.

Two coordinates enable us to know our earthly space and time. So God has given us the sun and the moon, the planets and the constellations to orient us. God has given us the sunrise in the East and the sun set in the West in orient us. Out of deference to the Creator whose emblem, the Sun, claims the heavens from East to West, Afro-Asiatic chiefs maintained their two wives on a North-South axis. These households marked the northern and southern boundaries of their territories.

God also has given us the Three Witnesses: the Water, the Blood, and the Spirit that we might know the Blessed Trinity. In Genesis, two coordinates signals a geographical territory whereas three signals the Kingdom of God.

The Church is not a democracy in which leaders may change Tradition according to popular consensus. No councils, even ecumenical councils, can change God’s order in creation. This is God’s message to Job. Who do we think we are to question what God has established? Were we there when God created the world and all that is in it?


Related reading:  Received Tradition versus Special Revelation; Women Priests; God as Male Priest; Ideologies Opposed to Holy Tradition

Women Priests (Part I)

Alice C. Linsley


"...I heard that the Church of England was being advised to declare women capable of Priests' Order. I am, indeed, informed that such a proposal is very unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities. To take such a revolutionary step at the present moment, to cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the divisions between ourselves and other Churches by establishing an order of priestesses in our midst, would be an almost wanton degree of imprudence. And the Church of England herself would be torn in shreds..." -- C.S. Lewis, from his essay “Priestesses in the Church?”


Lewis was speaking personally, as obviously he was opposed to the innovation of women in the Order of Priest, but he was also speaking prophetically, as is now apparent. Women priests is an innovation which, like a wedge driven into dry wood, has split the Anglican Communion. As is often the case, one innovation leads to another. This innovation led to the ordination of non-celibate homosexual clergy and to the blessing of same-sex unions in the Anglican Church of Canada and in The Episcopal Church USA. The actions of these churches has led to a fracturing of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The slide started in the 1920s when liberal clergymen began to question Biblical authority and the authority of Church Tradition. The Report of the Commission on Christian Doctrine Appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1922 (not published until 1938) reveals that only about half of the clergy of the Church of England held to the historic Faith “once delivered”. By 1930, the Church of England slipped further from the historic Faith when it succumbed to egalitarianism and the sexual freedom demands of English society. That year the Synod accepted contraception.

Many Protestant churches followed that path, but the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Vatican retained the authentic Christian Tradition against egalitarianism, modernism, and contraception. Orthodox resistance was heartily demonstrated at the 1978 Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission held in Athens. Here the Orthodox delegates soundly rejected all possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood. However, Church of England clergy, feeling pressure from their Episcopalian cousins in the United States, were ready to discuss the question.

Now, under similar pressure to accommodate to the world, Orthodox clergy are being encouraged to open the discussion, to engage in dialogue on the issue of women’s roles in the Church. I’m wary of “dialogue” which too often means beating down the opposition with high-sounding words, circuitous arguments and polished clichés. I’m told that there are seminarians at St. Vladimir Seminary (New York) who believe that women should be ordained priests. It is a good thing that I have no authority there. I would dismiss every seminarian of this mindset as unworthy of the priesthood, seeing that they do not discern the foremost necessity for a Priest, which is to preserve Holy Tradition.

But these seminarians, mostly converts to Orthodoxy, can’t be made to bear all the blame for wrong thinking. They have professors who encourage them in this waywardness and even bishops who insist that Holy Tradition should be questioned.

Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia (Timothy Ware) is one to be credited with opening the door. As Thomas Hopko wrote in the Forward to Woman and the Priesthood (St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1999), Bishop Kallistos “has moved in the direction of greater tentativeness about the possible ordination of women as priests and bishops in the Orthodox Church. He demonstrates less conviction about the authority of the traditional Orthodox practice on the issue, and questions his own rather firm arguments against the ordination of women…” (work cited, p. 1)

In this series of essays, I will examine Bishop Kallistos’ approach to the question of women priests. I refer primarily to his essay, “Man, Woman and the Priesthood”, in which he focuses three crucial questions. He writes, “First, there is the question of the nature and the authority of Tradition…” and “There is secondly the question of anthropology...the distinction that exists within humanity between male and female” and “Thirdly, there is the question of what we mean by priesthood.”


In Part II, we look at the nature and the authority of Tradition.

In Part III, We consider ideologies opposed to Holy Tradition.


Related reading:  God as Male Priest; Why Women Were Never Priests; Blood and Binary Distinctions

Sarah's Story

Alice C. Linsley

Sarah’s story is one of loss, long-suffering, hope and fulfillment. Though she was born a princess in the household of her father Terah, a high-ranking Hebrew ruler-priest, her life was not without troubles. She married her half-brother, Abraham. After their father died in Haran, Abraham's older brother Nahor ascended to rule over Terah's territory in Aram. Abraham was sent away to establish a territory of his own near a maternal uncle living in the region of the Negev.

Sent-away sons often lived with or near their maternal uncles. This is called "avunculocal residence." Jacob was sent away to live with his maternal uncle Laban. Moses was sent away to live with his uncle, Jethro, the priest of Midian. (The Midianites were descendants of Abraham by Keturah, Gen. 25). It is likely that Joseph, the son of Jacob and Rachel, was sent away to serve his maternal uncle Potiphar in Egypt. 

Sarah enjoyed the life of a wealthy, highborn woman. Her name is derived from the Akkadian word for queen: šarratum. Sarah's high social status was recognized by Pharaoh who was told of her beauty. From childhood, she had servants to attend to her needs. One was Hagar, Sarah's handmaid. 

Sarah had to leave her home and all that was familiar. When Sarah set out with Abraham for the land of Canaan, she was Abraham’s only wife. However, after Abraham relocated to the land of Canaan, he took a second wife, Keturah, his patrilineal cousin. This marriage arrangement was typical of the early Hebrew ruler-priest caste.

As the first wife, it was Sarah's responsibility to produce an heir for Abraham. Sarah's barren state was a cause of great sorrow for her. By the time she brought forth Isaac, Abraham's proper heir, Keturah had already brought forth six sons. Genesis does not say that Abraham married Keturah after Sarah died. It simply states that “Abraham married another wife whose name was Keturah.” The idea that he married her after Sarah’s death is implied by the order of the accounts of marriage and is reinforced by rabbinic tradition. Both Abraham and Keturah were descendants of Sheba the Elder (Gen. 10:7).

In her desperation, Sarah decided to use Hagar as a legal surrogate according to Horite/Hurrian law. Horite family law allowed for a concubine to bear an heir, and this is what Sarah had in mind when she encouraged Abraham to produce an heir by her handmaid Hagar. The son was to be born on Sarah’s lap, symbolically making the child Sarah’s offspring.

Analysis of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the biblical Hebrew indicates that the proper heir was the firstborn son of the first wife, usually a half-sister. As Sarah was barren, Abraham could lawfully appoint Eliezer, the son of the concubine Mesek, to be the steward of his household. A steward is not the same as a proper heir. 

Mesek was probably Keturah’s handmaid. She is mentioned in the Septuagint, but not in the Masoretic Text. “Eliezer dam-Mesek” means “Eliezer blood/son of Mesek”. Dam mesek is erroneously taken as a reference to Damascus in some versions of the Bible. The appointment of a concubine's son as steward over Abraham's estate would have been "salt in the wound" for Sarah.

Two Wives in Separate Settlements

Two wives were instrumental in establishing and maintaining territorial boundaries. However, the birth of two firstborn sons raises the question: “Which is the ruler’s proper heir?” Among the early Hebrew the proper heir was the firstborn son of the first wife, usually a half-sister. That is why Isaac was Abraham's proper heir, and like his father, Isaac was a man of great wealth. He ruled over his father's territory in Idumea (ancient Edom). Like his ancestor Adam, Esau is associated with the red skin people.

Sarah settled in Hebron at the northern boundary of Abraham's territory. Her settlement was served by craftsmen, herdsmen, shepherds, and warriors. Likewise, Keturah's settlement in Beersheba was well provisioned with servants, metal workers, stone masons, herdsmen, potters, bakers, weavers, and warriors.

The wives' settlements marked the northern and southern boundaries of Abraham's territory. Abraham divided his time between the settlements of his two wives, and after Sarah died, he spent his last years in Beersheba.

The wives of Hebrew rulers exercised considerable influence over their settlements. Sarah ordered her Egyptian servant Hagar to leave the settlement and, though he loved his son Ishmael, Abraham conceded to Sarah’s demand (Gen. 21).

Both Hebron and Beersheba were in ancient Edom, the territory that the Greeks called Idumea, which means the land of red people. These are Jesus' ancestors and many of them are described as having a red skin tone like Adam, Esau, and David.

The biblical data suggests that Abraham controlled a sizeable territory that extended between Hebron and Beersheba and Ein Gedi and Gerar. This corresponds to ancient Edom, a territory associated with the Horite Hebrew (Gen. 36).

Settlements required permanent water sources. The major water systems of Abraham's territory included the Well of Sheba (Beersheba), the Spring of Abraham in Hebron, Ein Gedi, and wells in Gerar. Genesis 26:18 reports that Isaac, Abraham's heir, had to reopen the wells in Gerar.

Keturah's Descendants

Keturah had six sons, and these were clan chiefs who spread across Arabia. Among Keturah's people are the Joktanite clans of Arabia, descendants of Joktan, one of Keturah's sons (Gen. 25).

According to Genesis 23:1, Sarah lived 127 years. She died in Hebron and was buried in a cave in a field that Abraham purchased from a kinsman, Ephron the Hittite (Gen. 23:1-20). In this final act, Abraham honored his wife and half-sister through a costly purchase of land. Genesis 25:9 tells us that Abraham was buried there also.

And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre; the field which Abraham purchased of the sons of Heth: there was Abraham buried, and Sarah his wife.

Related reading: Hebrew Rulers with Two Wives; Cousin Brides Among the Hebrew; Sarah's Laughter; Abraham's Complaint; Abraham's Concubines; The Wives' Settlement Marked the Boundaries

Jeff Benner's Lexicon of Genesis

Title: Hebrew Text and Lexiocn of Genesis

ISBN: Hardcover-9781602640597
Softcover-9781602640580

Author: Jeff A. Benner

Publisher: Virtual Bookworm

Format: Hardcover and Softcover, 9" x 6", 222 Pages

Description: The Hebrew Text of the Book of Genesis and Alphabetical Lexicon of each Hebrew word.


This book will benefit those who want to learn to read Biblical Hebrew. The Hebrew text of Genesis is based on the Leningrad Hebrew. An alphabetical lexicon lists all the Hebrew words of the text as it appears in the text with the prefixes, suffixes and conjugations intact to assist the student in interpreting difficult words.

The book also includes a dictionary of each Hebrew word found in Genesis and defines it in its original Hebraic perspective with references to The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible and Strong's dictionary.

By working through Genesis using Jeff Benner's book, those wishing to master Biblical Hebrew will be well on their way to reading the Bible without the aid of a translator.

Dispensationalism and the Three Witnesses

Alice C. Linsley


I'm not a Dispensationalist in the tradition of the 1917 Scofield Bible but I find two dispensations in the Bible. The older dispensation involves those who anticipated the appearing of the Son of God according to the Edenic Promise that was given to their ancestors. The second involves those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the fulfillment of the Edenic Promise (Gen. 3:15). Yet these are not really two dispensations.  They are one and the same, unified by the Pleromic Blood of Jesus Christ. This is evident in history, becuse in both dispensations it is always the same three witnesses who testify and their testimony never changes.

According to Semitic law, the testimony of three witnesses is binding and the number three in Genesis always represents a unity. The witnesses are the water, the blood and the Spirit, and they bind the two dispensations of which Jesus and St. Paul speak: the old and the new.

The sign of the Old Covenant is the blood of lambs and the sign of the New Covenant is the Blood of The Lamb. None can be saved by the blood of animals, regardless how unblemished. God's provision of the Christ Lamb makes it clear that blood is the essential life-giving and life-redeeming substance, but not the blood of beasts. So the two dispensations speak of blood and contrast the efficacy of the blood of sacrificed animals and the blood of the Christ.

The nexus of the dispensations is the point in time when the three witnesses give consistent and unified testimony to Christ's appearing and His identity at Jesus' presentation in the Temple and at His baptism at Nimrah (waters of God).

The blood  is represented by the Priest Simeon. The water is represented by the Baptizer John, and the Spirit  is represented by the Prophetess Anna. Note the message of each witness: Simeon said that his eyes had beheld the fulfillment of the promise to Israel. John pointed to Jesus and called Him the "Lamb of God" and Anna spoke of Jesus to all in Jerusalem who were awaiting salvation.

John points to the Three Witnesses when he writes: "Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. This is the one who came by water and blood - Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement." (I John 5:5-8)

The Pleromic Blood is what justifies all who believe, regardless if they lived before the Incarnation or after the Incarnation. There can be no remission without the shedding of blood. Even more, there can be no life without the Pleromic Blood.

This truth must have been apparent to people who lived long before Abraham because 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. P.L. Kirk reports that prehistoric Australian aboriginal burials reveal pink staining of the soil around the skeleton, indicating that red ochre had been sprinkled over the body. The ‘Fox Lady’ of Doini Vestonice, Czechoslovakia (near Russia) who was buried 23,000 years ago, was also covered in red ochre. Anthropologists generally agree that the red ochre dust represented blood and the ritual burials were done in the hope that, by virtue of the blood, the dead would live again.

The Pleromic Blood can be traced through the Scriptures as the scarlet cord that ties all things together. In other words, all things are made one in Jesus Christ and this is confirmed by the Three Witnesses.

The division of biblical history into more than these two dispensations causes us to overlook the centrality of Christ and the Three Witnesses. Instead, Dispensationalism asks us to focus on the signs of God's various covenants: the rainbow, circumcision, etc. Focusing on the signs rather than on the One to whom the signs point is spiritually counter-productive.

Finally, there is the distinctive kinship pattern among Abraham's people which, by its numerical symbolism, speaks of the Kingdom of God as consisting of  two households. Just as the rulers among Abraham's people required two wives in separate locations to establish a kingdom, so God's Kingdom is comprised of two groups: those who share the benefits of the Pleromic Blood before Christ's Incarnation and those who share those benefits in the dispensation of His appearing. Both groups enter by faith, responding to the voice of the Good Shepherd. This is why Jesus spoke of having two flocks (John 10:16) . The bridge between the two flocks is the unified testimony of the Three Witnesses, and the Shepherd of both is the same Jesus Christ, the Son of God.


Related Reading:  The Messianic Priesthood of Jesus, God Has Made Progress With Us; The Testimony of Blessed John, Forerunner; Nimrod and the Baptism of Jesus

How to Use "Just Genesis"

Just Genesis presents the latest research on the book of Genesis drawing on many disciplines, especially cultural anthropology and linguistics.

By clicking on the INDEX (top left), visitors find essays on topics ranging from Abraham to the Teraphim. Topics are arranged alphabetically.

I respond to all questions and comments. I also research topics of interest to readers and publish the research as soon as possible. Is there something in Genesis that perplexes you? Let me know and I'll try to help you make sense of it.

Noah's Ark

Alice C. Linsley

Noah is one of the most fascinating figures of the Bible. He was an archaic ruler who lived in the region of Lake Chad during the African Humid Period (Holocene Wet Period) between 10,000 and 3,000 BC. This region is called "Borno" - country of Noah - and is the only place on Earth that claims to be Noah's homeland.

The Holocene Wet Period has be called the "Gurian Wet Period" and the "Aqualithic." The latter term was coined by British archaeologist John Sutton (Journal of Africa History 1974; Antiquity 1977). The Holocene Wet Period owes the abundance of water to climate cycles related to Earth's Great Year, to monsoons off the Indian Ocean, and to the African rifts that created great watersheds or troughs.

Rifting combined with prolonged rains caused this entire region to flood.

Lake Chad is located at the boundary of Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon.

Between 12 and 10 thousand years ago, the Nile connected to the Chadic and Niger water systems through a series of shallow lakes in the Sahara Desert. This explains the common plant and animal species found in all three water systems. Living at Lake Chad he would have had a fleet of boats and he likely controlled commerce on the Lake and the major waters ways that connected Lake Chad to the Nile and to the Benue Trough.

Noah kept a personal menagerie of exotic animals, as was the custom for Proto-Saharan rulers. The oldest known zoological collection was found during the 2009 excavations at Nekhen on the Nile. The royal menagerie dates to about 3500 BC and included hippos, elephants, baboons and wildcats.

The raven mentioned in the Noah story is probably the fan-tailed raven, which is in the crow family. Its habitat extends across North Africa, Arabia, Sudan and the Horn of Africa. It also ranges across the Air Massif in Niger where it nests in crags. The red area on the map (right) shows the Fan-Tailed Raven’s habitat. This is also the location of Biblical Eden, a vast well-watered area that extended between the source of the Nile and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

There are at least ten species of dove found in Africa and the species indigenous to the Land of Noah is the pink-bellied turtle dove (Streptopelia hypopyrrha). In the ancient world the dove represented heavenly confirmation or divine appointment. Noah's dove returned with an olive branch. In paintings of the Annunciation, the dove is portrayed as descending to Mary as confirmation or God's Word. Likewise, the Sonship of Jesus is confirmed by the dove that descended at His baptism.


The Ark

According to Genesis 6:14, Noah's Ark was constructed of גפר (gofer/gopher) wood, which is the word used to describe the basket in which Moses floated on the Nile. In other words, the ark was constructed of reeds. The hollow reeds were extremely buoyant. The reeds were bundled and attached to a wood frame.

Genesis 6:14 tells us that reeds were used in the construction of the ark. "Make yourself an Ark of gofer wood, with reeds make the Ark." (The Schocken Bible, Vol. 1) Compare that to the King James Version - "Make yourself an ark of gopherwood; make rooms [Hebrew: kinnim] in the ark, and cover it inside and outside with pitch." Some scholars believe that instead of kinnim, the word should be read kanim, meaning reeds. The Jewish Encyclopedia believes "gofer" is likely from the Akkadian giparu, meaning reeds. The idea of rooms or compartments may be because the Sumerian word giparu also refers to reed huts. Keep in mind that ancient Hebrew is written without vowels.

Available Boat Building Materials

The common people of Noah's time used log dugouts, indicating the presence of forests in west central Africa. As the ruler of Borno, Noah would have had at his disposal the best building materials in plentiful supply and the best boat builders. After years of wetness the mahogany forests would have failed since their roots require firm ground to survive. Some of this wood would have been available, so we can't rule out the possibility that the Ark was made at least partially of African mahogany. Yet there is no evidence that gofer wood is mahogany.

A fully preserved black mahogany dugout was excavated in Borno in 1987. The Dufuna dugout (shown above) 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.

According to Peter Breunig (University of Frankfurt, Germany), “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”. Judging by stylistic sophistication, Breunig reasons that, “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.”

Another theory is that the Ark was made of reeds, a building material that would have been abundant in Bor-nu during the Gurian Wet Period. This is supported by the fact that the word translated "ark" in Genesis 6:14 is found only one other place in the Bible: in the story of Moses' mother putting him in a reed basket (Exodus 2:3). Taking this line, the Schocken Bible reads: "Make yourself an Ark of gofer wood, with reeds make the Ark...", Vol. I, p. 35.

There is also the possibility that the word  gofer doesn't refer to a building material at all. Perhaps it is a description of the Ark's role in ransoming Noah and his household from destruction. The Hebrew word for ransom or compensation is kofer and the Hebrew kaphar means to propitiate, to atone for sin, or to cover. Kpr refers to the deified priest standing at altar to make atonement.

This view is supported by the literal translation of Genesis 6:14: Make for you a box of woods of gofer nests you will make the box and you will cover (kaphar) her from the inside and from the outside with a covering (kaphar).

It should also be noted that the Hebrew radicals k p r refer to "pitch" (bitumen) so the meaning may simply be to cover the box with pitch inside and out. Artifacts dating to over 70,000 years found in Syria, Israel and South Africa reveal that stone points were "hafted" to hand implements and weapons using various types of adhesives, including bitumen, resins and ground pigments.

However, it is interesting that the word kaphar resembles the Hausa word for atonement - kafa. Is it possible that gofer is kofer (ransom) and the meaning of this verse entails atonement? Are the boxes like the Ark of the Covenant with its angelic covering? If so, we have in Noah's Ark a picture of both divine protection and the work of Jesus Christ known as propitiation. This, of course, is how the Church Fathers have interpreted Noah's Ark.


Related reading:  Was Noah Mesopotamian or Proto-Saharan?; Saving Noah; Noah's Birds; Noah's Homeland; Answers to Students' Questions About the Flood; Genesis and Climate Change; 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

Theories of Creation: An Overview

Alice C. Linsley


Readers have asked me to explain my views on creation, but before I do so, I would like to present an overview of the main theories of creation.

Gap Theory creationism: In this theory, God created every original thing in six consecutive 24-hour days, but a gap of time between the first and the second verses of Genesis 1 explains the great age of the Earth. An early proponent of this view was Thomas Chalmers, a professor of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh.

Day-Age creationism notes that the Hebrew word yom may indicate a 24-hour day or an unspecified period of time that could entail a period of thousands or millions of years. This theory attempts to reconcile the differences between young-earth creationism and evolutionary creationism. According to this view, the sequence and duration of the seven "days" is representative of the cosmological events theorized to have happened, so that Genesis can be read as a summary of modern science, simplified for the benefit of pre-scientific humans.

Young Earth creationism holds to the six 24-hour days of creation but does not accept any gap of time. According to this theory the Earth is only between 6,000 and 10,000 years old. Within this camp, some accept the possibility of developmental change within species, but most believe that God created all living species in the beginning as an act of special creation. Proponents of this theory include Baptist Pastor and biochemist Duane Gish, and the late Henry M. Morris, a civil engineer and author of several books in which he developed young earth creationism.

Progressive creationism holds that God created new "kinds" of plants and animals over a period of millions of years. It estimates the age of the Earth in the millions, but generally rejects macroevolution as biologically untenable and without evidence in the fossil record. In this theory, it is not necessary for all humans to have decended from a common primal ancestor and Noah's flood is accepted to have been local rather than global. Proponents of this view include the late Bernard Ramm, a Baptist theologian and Bible scholar, and astronomer Hugh Ross, who holds that the Flood was local yet killed all humans except for those on the ark.

Evolutionary creationism (or Theistic Evolution) accepts the theory of evolution but insists that all change, growth and development over time is directed by God or by forces put into place by God. The greatest proponent of this view is Charles Darwin himself. He wrote in a 1879 letter to John Fordyce: "In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.”

Framework Theory holds that the creation account of Genesis 1 is not to be taken literally or used as a scientific text, but should be regarded as an ancient sacred text with a symbolic structure that points to God's orderly design and the importance of the Sabbath commandment. In this view Genesis 1 is independent of Genesis 2. In this view the more primtive story is the Genesis 2-3 account of the creation and the Genesis 1 account dates to a later time of the Priestly source. Proponents of this theory are Henri Blocher and Meredith Kline.

Intelligent Design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. In Chapter 6 of The Origin of Species, Darwin posed critiques of evolution. He admitted that it is difficult to imagine how "organs of extreme perfection and complication," such as the eye, evolved by natural selection. ID is a well-considered form Darwin's own critique. Building on logical doubts, ID theorists have developed the idea of "irreducible complexity."


An integrated approach that takes its lead from the Bible

Here is another approach to creation and the book of Genesis. It draws on Biblical Anthropology, climate studies, linguistics, genetics, and the Bible itself as an important database.

We find evidence in Genesis for climate change and catastrophic flooding. Noah lived in the region of Lake Chad approximately 2490-2415 BC, when the Sahara experienced a wet period (Karl W. Butzer 1966). Recent geological studies have found that the huge basins and troughs of the Sahara were interconnected so that boats could travel from Niger to the Nile. This was one of the last wet periods and it coincided with cultural and technological achievements in the Old Kingdom.

Using kinship analysis we discover a unique marriage pattern among Abraham's ruler ancestors who practiced endogamy. This is why geneticists can identify the Kohen gene.

Biblical data has led to the discovery of the Nile-Japan Ainu connection. It also has established links between the Kushites and the Kushan.

Most of these discoveries represent important breakthroughs. Such discoveries are possible because science and religion are companions in the search for truth.

I am an old earth creationist. I reject young earth creationism because it is bad science and even worse Bible interpretation. Young Earth Creationists use Archbishop James Usher’s chronology to date the age of the earth. However, Usher was ignorant of the marriage and ascendancy structure of Abraham's Horite people and therefore misrepresented these early rulers as the first people on earth. The Genesis "genealogies" are regnal not generational. They are king lists and some kings ruled simultaneously. Further, the Biblical data indicates that these rulers were kingdom builders, metal workers, and temple builders. They lived no earlier than about 7,000 years ago and millions of years after the dinosaurs!

Young earth creationism assumes that Genesis must be defended against Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism. God's word does not need to be defended. If anything, it needs to be defended from bad science that imposes a timeline that contradicts what Genesis reveals.

I believe that from "the beginning" God created humans in the divine image and fully human, and that humans and apes have always been separate species. Discovery Institute's Casey Luskin maintains that the complete sequencing of the gorilla genome challenges the theory that humans and apes have a common ancestor. Luskin says, "There is not a clear signal of ancestral relationships that is coming out of the gorilla genome once you add it into the mix."

Luskin, as with many who do not concur with conventional Darwinian views, is regularly pillored at evolution blogs and websites.

As far as I have been able to determine, finds of ancient fossils have been easily categorized as either ape or archaic human. Finds labled "hominids" in evolutionary taxonomy represent different archaic human populations.

After almost 100 years of frantic searching, there remains no material evidence that humans and apes had a common ancestor. This aspect of Darwin simply has not been proven. Until it is, I feel no compulsion to relent in my position. That's the empirical approach, afterall.

This doesn't mean that I reject a role for natural processes. These can be observed. I wonder why such observations must be forced into Neo-Darwinian interpretations. The air sacs being an example. Many features that Darwinians insist are evidence of evolution have other likely explanations. The morphology of the hyoid that suggests that A. afarensis had air sacks in the throat is not indicative of evolution of humans and apes from a common ancestor. The same hyoid bone feature has been found in other archaic human populations as an adaption to aquaboreal environments. Similar hyoid structure appears in the Kebara Cave population of Israel that lived around 60,000 B.C.

Genesis tells us that God created in an orderly fashion over a period of time and according to a plan. It is the work of science to discover the order and the work of theologians and Bible scholars to discern the plan. For Abraham's ancestors the order was perceived as fixed, though they recognized flux within the fixed boundaries. Their acute observation of the patterns in nature suggested a divine plan.

Since none of us were present to observe the beginning, we can speak only of what we think may have happened.  We tend to describe events according to our cultural understandings, our worldviews.  However, the book of Genesis presents the understanding of the Nilotic and Proto-Saharan peoples who were Abraham's ancestors, and it is their culture that we must consider. These ancestors migrated out of Africa to Pakistan, India, and even Cambodia. Anghor Wat, in Cambodia, was originally a Horite shrine city and the Horites originated in Egypt and Sudan.  Angkor is a variant of the ancient Egyptian Anhk-Hor, meaning "Life to Horus."  Wat means city or shrine settlement  In the ancient world the largest settlements were at water shrines tended by a caste of priests and defended by a caste of warriors.

One of the oldest known castes is that of the Hapiru or Habiru (Hebrew). This was a caste of priests and priest attendants who served at the water shrines and temples of the ancient world beginning as early as 4000 BC. They are sometimes called "O-piru" because they reveranced the Sun as the emblem of the Creator. The O in O-piru is a solar symbol.

Within this priest caste there emerged a cult devoted to Horus as early as 3500 BC at Nekhen in Sudan. These are called Horites. The Horites were a Proto-Saharan caste who later were found among the Kushites. The Kushite marriage and ascendancy structure speaks of the promised Son to whom God will deliver the eternal kingdom. Abraham's people were Horites. Even today Jews call their ancestors "Horim" which is a variant of "Horite."

Genesis is a valuable source of information about early modern human populations. It provides details that are useful in reconstructing points of origins, diversity of populations, migrations, technological development, religious practices, and the marriage and ascendancy structure of the early rulers and the spread of the Afro-Asiatic worldview. It connects many of the peoples living from Borno to Borneo and explains common mythological motifs such as the serpent, the tree of life, the solar boat, and falcon-shaped Harappan fire altars dedicated to Horus, the prefigurement of Jesus Christ. 

When it comes to theories of creation, people immediately think of the creation narratives in Genesis. However, Genesis is not about the origins of life on earth. Ultimately, it is about the origins of Messianic expectation among Abraham's Habiru ancestors, a caste of priests who spread their worldview far and wide. It is the story of Jesus' very ancestors to whom God made a promise thousands of years ago that a Woman of their caste would bring for the "Seed" of God (Gen. 3:15). Jesus is that Seed. He is a direct descendant of those people to whom that promise was made, and He is the fulfillment of Horite expectation.


Related reading: A Scientific Timeline of Genesis; Scientists Against Scientism; The Folly of Scientism; Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin; Genesis: Is it Really About Human Origins; Between Biblical Literalism and Biblical Illiteracy; Who Were the Kushites?; Who Were the Horites?; Abraham's Ancestors Came Out of Africa

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Who Were the Nephilim?

Alice C. Linsley


The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.  Genesis 6:4

There is a simple explanation for this passage. The nephilim were the powerful ruling ancestors of Abraham's Horite Hebrew (the Horim). They are called gibbor-iym, which means the mighty ones. They are also called "the mighty men" of old.

The word "Nephilim" refers to "great ones," not giants. This is a reference to the "might men of old" (Gen. 10). Nephilim comes from the same root as the Aramaic npyl (nephil) which means giant as in great. This is equivalent to the Arabic nfy, meaning hunter. It is said concerning Nimrod that he was a “mighty hunter” or a “mighty man” before the Lord.

The reference is clearly to the early biblical kingdom builders such as Nimrod. They ruled over territories from Africa to Anatolia and from Arabia to Southern China. Among them were the ruler-priests, the Habiru (Hebrew) who served at the royal temples and shrines.

Among Abraham's ruler-priest ancestors, the high king was regarded as a "son of God" or a deified ruler. These "heroes of old" appear again in the book of Revelation where priests and angels are linked in the descriptions of the coming of the Son of Man. The Orthodox Study Bible (p. 1725) notes that the angelic powers represent the Old Testament priests who sounded their trumpets during the temple liturgy (Jos. 6:12; 1 Ch. 16:6; Ps. 97:6). The seven angels with their seven trumpets are accompanied by an angel who offers the prayers of the saints with a great amount of incense (Rev. 8:3). Their rulings houses, which originated in the Nile region, spread across the Levant and Mesopotamia and as far as Southern India. They were the great kingdom builders of the dawn of history, men such as Nimrod, the son of Kush (Gen. 10).

Two deified rulers about whom we have a good amount of information from archaeology are Ped-Isis and Pi-Hor, the sons of a metalworking ruler of Ku-pr. Kuper means "temple of Kush." The ancient Egyptian word for temple or house was pr. The Hapiru devotees of Horus called a temple O-piru, meaning "house of the Sun." Azu or Asa is an East African name for God. Sargon the Great's birth place was Azu-piranu which means “house of God” and is equivalent to the Hebrew word "Beth-el." The Horite Hebrew ruler-priests were called Hapiru in Akkadian Cuneiform, and the word actually means "human." The Egyptians called the temple attendants ˁprw, the w being the plural suffix.

Clearly belief in a deified son who would embody kindness and unite the peoples found fulfillment in Jesus Christ, a descendant of the Horite Hebrew ruler-priests, the divine son of the Virgin Mary, daughter of the priest Joachim of the line of Nathan. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham's Hebrew ancestors in Eden (Gen. 3:15).


Angels or Ancestors?

It is commonly believed that the Nephilim were fallen angels who had intercourse with human females in Noah’s time and produced a race of giants. The apparent intention of this reference is to highlight the disordered affairs of men and justify the destruction brought by Noah's flood.  The flood was perceived to be God's punishment of the unrighteous.  However, the nephilim were likely righteous rulers who were Abraham's ancestors.  The resurrection from the dead was believed to depend on the righteousness of the ruler.

The notion of one kind of created being mating with a distinct kind of creature is entirely foreign to the biblical wordview which maintains strict boundaries between "kinds" and would regard such an event as a violation of God-established boundaries.  In this sense, it is apparent that Genesis 6:4 is intended to show disorder in the creation.

However, this interpretation of Genesis 6:4 poses many difficulties. Those who hold to a worldwide flood must explain how there continued to be Nephilim after the time of Noah if all were destroyed in the Flood? Also, angels were not created to sexually reproduce. Jesus states that the angels neither marry nor are given in marriage. There is also the evidence of the words “and also afterwards” which suggest that a story about the time of Noah has been conflated with a story from Numbers 13:33: “there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, which come of the Nephilim”.

The intepretation of fallen angels rests on the assumption that the word nephilim is the masculine plural participle of Hebrew naphal, meaning to fall, but this is not conclusive. In the Book of Daniel the Aramaic term used to denote angels is "watchers" (`îrîn). Each is also called "watcher and holy one" (`îr weqadîsh). The term "watcher" implies that angels are to act as God's sentinels, as were the angels appointed to guard the entrance to Eden.

These watchers appear in literature that post-dates the earliest material in Genesis. They are mentioned in Vedic (Sanskrit) texts which tell of gods begetting children with humans. They appear in the Epic of Gilgamesh, in the Lamech scrolls, and in The Book of Enoch which states that 200 "Watchers" descended to earth in the time of Jared and instructed men in the arts and sciences. The term appears in the book of Daniel which has a Babylonian context.

The evidence then points to a gloss on the text by someone versed in extra-biblical Babylonian texts. This conception of the Nephilim isn't consistent with the worldview of the African Noah. However, because both the Babylonians and Abraham's people are Afro-Asiatics, there must be some points of contact and an older layer that points to Africa. This is found in the hint that the watchers might be ancestor spirits or the souls of deified persons. In this view the word nephil is related to the Hebrew nefesh (soul) and to the Swahili nafsi (soul).

An ancestor in traditional African religion is someone who died a good death, practiced the traditions of his people and faithfully transmitted them to his descendants. A first-born son is most likely to become an ancestor because he is able to maintain the chain of the generation in a long genealogy.This African view of the nephilim fits the author's identification of the nephilim with the gibborim or "heroes of old" who are "men of renown" (Gen. 6:4). These rulers were regarded as "sons of God", as was the case with the rulers of ancient Egypt who were required to make a pilgrimage to "The Land of the Gods" prior to their ascent to the throne. They are believed to have the power to visit their descendents in dreams and visions and to interceed for them in death.

Peoples of central Africa believe that the greater a ruler in life, the more powerful his spirit after death. Deified ancestor rulers stand between the living and the Creator. The spirits of righteous ancestor rulers continue after death to seek good for their people. Malevolent spirits bring evil and can "sleep" with human women. In west Africa these dream visitors are called 'night husbands' or 'spirit husbands.' (The Latins of antiquity similarly believed in sexual encounters with incubi and succubi.) The African notion is the more primitive layer and the most likely background for Genesis 6:1-4.

Consider Tswana poet Gabriel M. Setiloane's words:

Ah, . . . yes . . . it is true.
They are very present with us
The dead are not dead; they are ever near us;
Approving and disapproving all our actions,
They chide us when we go wrong,
Bless us and sustain us for good deeds done,
For kindness shown, and strangers made to feel at home.
They increase our store, and punish our pride.

[Excerpt from "How the Traditional World-View Persists in the Christianity of the Sotho-Tswana," in Christianity in Independent Africa, Edward Fashole-Luke, ed., Indiana University Press, 1978, p. 407].

This description of watching ancestors fits the Genesis depiction of the Nephilim as the "heroes of old" or "men of renown". A 2008 discovery in southeastern Turkey of the funeral stele of a royal official indicates that Abraham's Nilotic ancestors believed the soul of the ancestor survives after death. The Aramaic word for soul that appears on the stele is "nabsh". Aramaic was spoken throughout northern Syria and parts of Mesopotamia in the eighth century BC.

The Nephilim probably originally related to human ancestors, not to angelic beings. The Genesis 6:4 reference appears to be a later gloss on the text and serves the purpose of highlighting disorder in the creartion.  However, it reflects a worldview quite contrary to that of Abraham's Kushite ancestors and comes instead from a time and culture like that of the dualistic Persians or the Helenized Jews.

Nonetheless, the question remains: are Daniel's "watchers" angels or the deified ancestors who the Bible might speak of as resting in the bosom of Abraham?


Related reading: Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection; The Seventh Seal and Silence in Heaven; Horite Deified Sons; Why Does Genesis Speak of Gods?; Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; Angels and Demons: The Prometheus Connection; UFOs in Genesis; The Bosom of Abraham