TEC's Theology of Creation

The Episcopal Church will entertain many resolutions at its General Convention July 8-17 in Anaheim, California. Resolution Do33 calls for a "Continuous Cycle of Strategic Planning - Total request for triennium: $219,000. The explanation states:

"We are at a watershed moment in The Episcopal Church and do not want to lose this moment. It is a time that we have the opportunity to become the truly multicultural church about which we dream and we seem poised as a denomination to effectively reach the 'spiritual but not religious' in new ways, but it will require nimbleness to adapt to our rapidly changing social context. We must be focused and intentional to do so."

Another resolution that caught my attention is Resolution A516, titled "Sacred Acts for Sacred Waters". Here is the explanation:

"Scripture teaches us that God made the waters as part of Creation. Throughout Scripture and in liturgical practice, water has had deeply understood sacramental roles culminating with the water of baptism. Science and everyday experience confirm the description in the Scriptures of water as life-giving for all Creation. Millennium Development Goal #7 seeks to provide adequate supplies of life-giving water for all people.

Within Creation water undergoes a cycle. Water flows from sources, is contained, distributed, sometimes purified, used and then collected and distributed for further purification before rejoining the flow. In our reality the water of Creation is the result of complicated combinations of the natural processes set in place by the evolution of Creation and by many human interventions.

As the World's population grows, global and regional climates change, and the world society's increase in technological complexities and dependencies accelerates, water availability is changing and more sources of pollution are making water unfit for sustaining Creation, for liturgical purposes or for human consumption.

Individuals, congregations, communities, regions and nations are being called upon to make difficult decisions related to interventions in the water cycle. Often the decisions are made without explicit reference to Creation or to theological or ethical considerations. This Resolution asks that The Episcopal Church share the theologically sound tools already developed in diocesan programs and develop and share new tools that individual Episcopalians and congregations can use to help evaluate proposed interventions."

The commitment is so great to this vision of "life-giving water" that the resolution requests funding for a half-time position. It isn't clear whether this person is to advocate for environmental stewardship of water or to perform sacred acts for sacred water. But the salary is $60,000. (about $20,000 a year for 3 years). I know a Tungus shaman (shown right with eyes veiled) who might appeal to "the spiritual, but not religious in new ways".

4000 Year Old Bethlehem Tomb Discovered

June 25, 2009- Biblical Archaeology Review reports:

An unscathed 4,000-year-old tomb was accidently discovered in the city of Bethlehem during renovation being carried out on a local house. Construction workers were led to the tomb, which dates between 1,900 B.C. and 2,200 B.C., through a hole found near the Church of the Nativity.

The workers contacted the appropriate antiquities authorities, who arrived to document the tomb and its contents, which were located about a meter below the surface.

Intact tombs from this period are rare. Burial items such as pottery, plates and beads were retrieved from the tomb, along with the remains of two individuals. The opportunity to properly excavate and record an intact tomb from the era is expected to allow scientists to gain greater insight into the burial practices of the people living during the Canaanite period.

Go here.

Todd Bolen, commenting on this find, has written:

The tomb dates to the Intermediate Bronze period, also confusingly known as Early Bronze IV or Middle Bronze I. Many tombs from this period, including intact ones, have been found throughout Israel. In fact, this period is primarily known from its cemeteries, with relatively few settlements discovered. (See this post for photos of a cemetery from this period found a couple of years ago in Jerusalem.)

More importantly, this tomb indicates an early presence in the city that later came to be known as Bethlehem, the city of David’s birth. I don’t see anything about material from this period in NEAEH, which may indicate the significance of this discovery.

Testimony of Blessed John, Forerunner

Alice C. Linsley


Does kinship analysis provide insight into the relationship of John the Forerunner and Jesus the Christ? It certainly does! It helps us to identify the intermarriage (endogamy) between of the priestly lines from which both are descended. Understanding how John and Jesus were related helps us to grasp more fully John's testimony concerning Jesus, the Son of God, the Lamb of God.

There have been many attempts to reconcile the genealogical information given in Matthew 1 and Luke 3. These attempts address the lists, noting differences in names and in the order of names. But this is not a fruitful approach because it fails to take into consideration the complexity of the kinship pattern of ruler-priests after the 6th century B.C.

A more fruitful approach is to look for the repetition of kinship patterns and to consider what the patterns intend to tell us.

The relationship of John and Jesus is best understood when we understand that both come from the priestly lines that descend from Amram (see diagram). One line is traced through Aaron, Moses' full-brother, and the other is traced through Korah, Moses' half-brother. According to Numbers 26, Korah's claim to be priest was supported by the Hanochites (descendants of Nok through Jacob's first-born son Reuben). The priestly lines of Aaron and Korah later became organized into divisions. One division, that of the line of Matthew (Mattai/Mattan) resided in Bethlehem.  This was the line of Hari-mathea. 

Following the kinship pattern of his ruler-priest forefathers, Amram had two wives. onme was a half-sister as was Sarah to Abraham and the other was a patlineal couin or niece, as was Katurah to Abraham.  Ishar (whose name is a variant of Isis and was earlier called Hat-Hor, mother of Horus) was evidently his sister wife, which means that Jochebed would have been his cousin wife.

One of the difficulties in attempting to reconcile genealogical lists is that these lists are used by the writers to achieve different narrative purposes. Nevertheless, once we understand the kinship pattern we can recognize the historical validity of the biblical claim that John and Jesus were blood relatives and both descendants of the Horite priestly lines.

According to Holy Tradition, John was a cousin of Jesus Christ through his mother Elizabeth who was sister to Ana (also spelled Anah). Ana was Christ's maternal grandmother (as the Anah shown in the diagram was Korah's maternal grandmother). In the relationship of John and Jesus, we find intermarriage between lines of priests according to the ancient pattern of their ruler-priests forefathers. John’s mother Elizabeth was of the “daughters of Aaron,” meaning that she was the daughter of a priest. According to Holy Tradition, Mary was also a daughter of a priest, Joachim.

John's father was a priest of the division of Abijah. "There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah; and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth…. Once when he [Zechariah] was serving before God while his division was on duty..." (Luke 1:5, 8) Abijah's was the eight division of priests.  (The sixteenth division resided in Nazareth.)

The recurrence of the name Abijah in the line of priests suggests the cousin-bride naming prerogative, one of the distinctive traits of the kinship pattern of the ruler-priests of Abraham’s Horite people. The cousin bride named her firstborn son after her father and this pattern is what makes it possible to trace Jesus' ancestry back to the Genesis 4 and 5 Kings.

Rabbi Shmuel Safrai, one of the founders of the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research, explains: "Apparently the priestly division of Abijah was named after one of the priests who returned to the land of Israel with Zerubbabel and Jeshua (Nehemiah 12:4). Another Abijah, mentioned in Nehemiah 10:7, was one of the signatories of the covenant during the time of Nehemiah, a number of generations after Zerubbabel and the first wave of returnees to Israel. This Abijah probably was a descendant of the Abijah after whom the division was named. Other priests of the Second Temple period were named Zechariah. Rabbinic works mention two such priests from the last generation before the temple was destroyed: Rabbi Zechariah ben Auvkulos (Lamentations Rabbah 4:3) and Rabbi Zechariah ha-Katsav (Mishnah, Ketubot 2:9)."[1]

There were twenty-four priestly divisions after the construction of the Second Temple (corresponding to the 24 Elders who worship before the throne in Rev. 4:4) Nineteen of these divisions are listed in Nehemiah 12:10-22. In this list we find these names of particular interest: Eber, Joachim, Joseph, Abijah, and Mattenai. These are the names of priests who married the daughters of priests and from these lines came John the Baptist, Joseph, Mary and Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God.

The first Eber mentioned in the Bible is a fifth generation descendant of Noah (Gen. 10:24) He fathered Peleg (division) and Joktan (from whom Abraham's son Joktan is descended).

Joachim is the name of Mary’s father, which is one reason that scholars believe that Mary was the virgin daughter of a priest. According to the custom of the ruler-priests of Israel, she married into a priestly line when she married Joseph, grandson of Mattenai (Matthew 1:16).

Abijah is an important name in Israel’s history, especially as we consider the perspective of the author of the Chronicles. Abijah succeeded his father Rehoboam to the throne of David in 913 B.C. and reigned for only 3 years. He delivered a speech before King Jeroboam I of the Northern Kingdom in which he condemned Jeroboam’s insurrection against the divinely covenanted authority of David, defender of the true Faith. He accuses Jeroboam of worship of golden calves (2 Chronicles 13:8) which he erected at Bethel and Dan (I Kings 12:26ff). Implicit in this accusation is the abandonment of the legitimate priesthood, because "anyone who comes with a bull and seven rams to get himself consecrated can become priest..." (2 Chronicles 13:9).

This parting of ways between 2 kings and their priests is reminiscent of the one that took place during the time of Peleg. It is political in nature, but it did not disrupt the kinship pattern of the priestly lines from which John, Joseph, Mary and Jesus Christ descended. The Chronicler’s focus is on the ruler-priest caste that long preceded the monarchy. He is interested in the genealogies of the priests and Levites whose kinship pattern remained unchanged because of the conviction that the promised Son of God would be born through Abraham, through Judah, and through David.

So having established that Elizabeth and Mary are daughters of priests, to which divisions did they belong? Which divisions intermarried? We know that Elizabeth married Zechariah of the division of Abijah, the eighth priestly division. Mary appears to have been from Nazareth, which means that her father was a priest of the eighteenth division. She married into the priestly line descending from Asaph "who prophesied at the king's direction." (1 Chronicles 25:2) The first to whom the lot fell to be a cantor of the "songs of Yahweh" was Joseph, the Asaphite (1 Chronicles 25:9). Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, married into this line.

In 1962 excavators discovered in the ruins of a Caesarea synagogue a small 3rd to 4th century marble fragment with a list of the twenty-four priestly divisions. This lists names the places where four of the divisions resided, including Nazareth. Nazareth was the home of the eighteenth priestly division, ha·pi·TSETS (Happizzez) (1 Chronicles 24:15). Until the discovery of this fragment, there was no extra-biblical record of Nazareth's existence before the sixth century A.D and no identification of a priestly division at that settlement.

Now let us return to the diagram to explore the pattern. Here we see 2 priestly lines from Amram: one traced through Moses' half-brother Korah and the other through Moses' full-brother Aaron. Aaron's descendents are labeled "priests" while Korah's descendents are often labeled "Levites" (see I Chronicles 24:20). Regardless of the labels, it is evident that these lines intermarried. We note that one of Korah's descendents is named Obed and Obed is also the name of David's grandfather.

I Chronicles 26:4-8 tells us, "Also for Korah's descendants there were Obed Edom's sons Shemaiah (the firstborn), Jehozabad (the second), Joah (the third), Sachar (the fourth), Nethanel (the fifth), Ammiel (the sixth), Issachar (the seventh), and Peullethai (the eighth). God had blessed Obed Edom. His son Shemaiah had sons who ruled their families because they were soldiers. Shemaiah's sons were Othni, and Othni's skilled brothers Rephael, Obed, Elzabad, as well as Elihu and Semachiah. All of these people were Obed Edom's descendants. They, their sons, and their relatives were skilled and had the ability to perform the service. Obed Edom's family included 62 men."

"Obed-Edom" is how the Chronicler identifies Korah's descendents with the information given in Genesis 36. Seir is identified in Genesis 36:20 as a Horite. This means that he was a ruler among the people of Abraham. Seir's granddaughter is Anah, the maternal grandmother of Korah the Elder, whose daughter Ishar married her patrilineal cousin Amram, father of Moses, Aaron , Miriam and Korah.

Elizabeth married into the priestly line of Amram when she married Zechariah, descendent of Abijah, descendent of Aaron. Mary, of the priestly line of Happizzez (Nazareth), married into the levitical line of Amram when she married Joseph, son of Asaph. (The name Happizzez is related to the ancient Egyptian word for water, specifically the life-sustaining Nile which was call Hap or Hep.)

This means that John the Forerunner's testimony concerning Jesus as "the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29) springs from direct knowledge of the tradition of his forebearers that the Son of God was coming into the world to save sinners.


Related reading:  Who Were the Horites?; The Genesis Record of Horite Rule; Abraham and Moses: Different Origins of Israel?; Matthew's Testimony Concerning the Empty Tomb; The Cousin Bride's Naming Prerogative

Who was Eliezer of Damascus?

William Dyce's oil painting of Eliezer (1860) is on permanent exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

"O Lord God, what can You give me seeing that I shall die accursed, and the steward of my household is Dam-Mesek Eliezer?" Genesis 15:2



Alice C. Linsley


I received this e-mail message from a former student. It is such a good question that I’m posting it for readers of Just Genesis.

I have two questions. Who was Eliezer of Damascus? If Abraham already had sons – Ishmael (by Hagar) and Joktan (by Keturah) - why was he so concerned in Genesis 15 about having another son to be his heir?

Eliezer was a prominent servant in Abraham’s house. His name means God is of help. Some commentators believe that he is the servant that Abraham sent to Paddan-aram to procure a cousin (or niece) wife for Isaac. Isaac already would have had a half-sister wife in Beersheba. The second wife would be necessary for Isaac to assume rule of his father's territory before Abraham died.

Eliezer, Abraham’s helper in selecting the proper wife for Isaac, finds Rebekah at a well (shrine), just as Abraham found Keturah at the well of Sheba, just as Moses found Zipporah at a well sacred to Abraham’s descendents, the Midianites. Interestingly, Eliezer is also the name of Moses' second son by Zipporah (Ex 18:4; 1 Ch 23:15 ff ).

Some versions of the Bible do not specifically mention Eliezer. The New Jerusalem Bible (following the Vulgate) has only these words: "Since you have given me no offspring... a member of my household will be my heir."

Versions that follow the Septuagint offer this: "What will you give me, seeing I go childless and the heir of my house is Dam-Mesek Eliezer, the son of my domestic maidservant."

The text poses challenges. The word that is translated "childless" is ariri in Hebrew, which means accursed. Why would Abraham regard himself as accursed?  Sarah's infertility meant that Abraham would not have a firstborn son by his half-sister (Gen. 20:12) and according to the Horite marriage and ascendancy structure, this was the rightful heir to Abraham's throne. From the context we gather that Sarah's infertility was viewed as a curse (cf. Gen. 20:17,18).

Some scholars believe that “Damascus” is a gloss on the text. If so, it is an interesting gloss because it points us back to Sarah’s Syrian roots and therefore points to Sarah as the one from whom the son of promise would be born. Isaac inherited the patrimony of Abraham, but as the lines descending from Shem and Ham continued to intermarry, the Son of Promise, Jesus Christ, would come from Abraham by both his wives. This gives us insight into God’s promise that Abraham’s descendants would become as numerous as the stars (Gen. 15:5).

Personally, I don't believe the Hebrew Dammesek is a gloss. It refers to the son or blood (dam) of Mesek. This portrays a picture of Eliezar as Abraham's son by a maidservant, paralleling the story of Hagar. If we are to accept this interpretation, Abraham had 9 sons: Ishmael, Eliezer, Isaac, Joktan, Zimram, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah.

If Abraham wished to honor the custom of his forefathers, we can understand his distress about not having a son by Sarah. We also must recognize his faith, for he accepted God’s word in the matter as final. He chased away his doubts as he chased away the birds of prey that descended upon the animal carcasses (Gen. 15:11). No wonder Abraham is called the "father of all who believe" in the Son of God (Rom. 4:16). St. Paul tells us, "Abraham is our father in the eyes of God, in whom he put his faith, and who brings the dead to life and calls into existence what does not yet exist" (Rom. 4:17). Abraham trusted God and God made him into a great multitude of peoples, including the Arab descendants of Masek and the Egyptian descendants of Hagar.

Hagar and Masek are to Abraham's household what the concubines Zilpah and Bilhah are to Jacob's household. They built up the ruling houses of these patriarchs by producing many offspring. If the biblical pattern is to be trusted, we may reasonably suspect that Hagar and Masek were the servants of Sarah and Keturah, just as Zilpah was the servant of Leah and Bilhah the servant of Rachel (Gen. 30). That Masek was Keturah's servant is supported by the fact that the name Masek is still found among the south Arabian Mahra. They dwell in Yemen, Oman and southern Saudi Arabia (see map below). This is where we would expect to find the descendants of Abraham by Keturah's servant Masek. This indicates that Eliezar was likely not of Damascus and supports the view that he was a son and he too was an Arab.

Related reading:  Abraham's Two Concubines; The Conversion of Hagar; Why Eliezar was Abraham's Heir; Abraham's Sons

Is a Presbyter a Priest?

Alice C. Linsley


Before reading this article, I recommend that this article be read first: What is a Priest?


In the New Testament the word "presbyter" is used to designate the one who presided when the body gathered for worship.  This probably didn't mean a priest, as only men born in the priestly lines would be considered priests and among these only some would have been sacrificing priests.  So the terms presbyter and priest don't represent the same concept. 

Some of the Apostles were likely born of the priestly lines, but that hardly matters since the Church's High Priest is Jesus and he was born of the priestly lines on his mother's side and Joseph's side.  Mary and Joseph were of priestly lines and cousins. Mary's father was the shepherd priest Joachim, and Joseph was of the priestly line of Mattai.

Ken Collins writes: “In the New Testament, the Temple has hierarchs and the church has presbyters. Most translate hierarch as priest, which is really incorrect, because priest is just an English contraction of the word presbyter. But if the translators put down priest for presbyter, it looks like they are discrediting churches that do not call their clergy priests. But if they put down presbyter, which is the untranslated Greek word, or elder, which is the word’s meaning, they discredit the churches that are so old that the word presbyter turned into priest as the language of their members changed.”

When did this morphing happen in history? Where do we find this expressed in Scripture? Clearly, there was a disjunction when the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. thus bringing the sacrificial system to an end. However St. Paul and St. John clearly believe that there is an eternal priesthood (in the Platonic sense) that nothing can destroy. They see it as a fixed ordinance in the Kingdom of God, derived from the one True Priest, Jesus Christ. In other words, the priesthood lives in Jesus Christ, the Sacrifice once offered who is to be the focus of every gathering. 

HE is the continuation of the only priesthood that the Apostles knew, a priesthood that maintained itself through a particular kinship pattern among Abraham' s Horite caste. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born of Abraham’s ruler-priest bloodline.

Collins is right that many churches don’t have priests. These are churches removed from the Holy Tradition concerning the Christ received by the Apostles. Most are products of the Reformation and the many subsequent divisions that characterize churches that don’t hold to the sacramental center of the faith symbolized by the priesthood.

Now to Collins’ most provocative suggestion: that the oldest churches somehow morphed the word “presbyter” into priest over time. This is simply not the case.  Presbyter refers to elders, not priests.  There is no need to substitute priest for presbyter.  The early church had gatherings which were not presided over by priests.  No surprise there.  Many of the priests were hostile to Christians.  Yet some of those ruler-priests, men such as Nicodemus, came to believe and through them the Church recieved its priests after the order of Melchizedek, the prefigurement of Jesus Christ.

The true meaning of priest is defined by the Son of God whose Blood was shed for the life of the World. This Jesus was born to a long line of ruler-priests who are identified with the “order of Melchizedek” as an eternal priesthood. Presbyter means elder and not all elders are priests. But this is no reason to insist that the ancient churches which have priests have got it all wrong.


Related reading:  Who Were the Horites?; What is a Priest?; Growing Consensus that WO Must Be Addressed

The Order of Melchizedek

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.

Elder Joseph on Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve speak of the most fundamental condition of humanity. We are created in the divine image from the dust and we return to dust in death. We listen to God's Word and obey Him, reaping Life, or we listen to the devil's delusion and reap death in disobeying our Creator.

The following insights on Adam and Eve come from Elder Joseph the Hesychast, one of the greatest Christian ascetics of the 20th century. He resided on Mt. Athos and exercised a profound influence on the monks there. He urged them to lives of purity and often held up the Virgin Mary (the new Eve) as the example of the pure life. He challenged them to put off the old Adam and to put on Christ, the new Adam.

Elder Joseph died in 1959. May his memory be eternal!

From the Letters of Elder Joseph The Hesychast:

I earnestly entreat you: take care of your souls. May not one of you resemble our foremother Eve, but may all of you imitate Theotokos Mariam, the Virgin Mary. She said, 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord!' and became the Mother of God and the Lady of angels. Her fruit, our sweet Jesus, through obedience ascended the Cross and descended into Hades to heal the great wound of disobedience. Therefore, understand from this the power of this mystery.

We are human and children of transgression, having as a cornerstone the sin of Adam and Eve. So the Lord is condescending towards us and forgives everything when we repent.

...once we recognize God as the Creator of every good thing, as our Father, Provider, and Protector, we must believe in Him with all our heart and soul. We must have our hope only in Him, and when we perceive his manifold benefactions, we shall love Him. And when we love God with all our heart as the Creator, then we shall also love our neighbor as ourselves, knowing that we are all brothers - by nature, in Adam; and by grace, in Christ.

Grace comes gradually, and as soon as it approaches a person, he melts like wax. And at that moment he does not recognize himself; he is wholly a many-eyed, very clear nous. During this supernatural activity, he cannot distinguish himself, because he is completely united with God. Then the rust falls out. The seal is removed. The 'old man' dies. The primeval blood is removed. The whole man is renewed. The person does not undergo a bodily change, but his natural talents and gifts are enlightened, strengthened, and renewed by grace. And the Adam of old, who was formed in the image of God, is vitalized.

This world, my child, is so vain; full of every evil; a place of exile for Adam and subsequently for us as well. But blessed is he who has traded well during this exile and reached the haven of salvation, for he will eternally rejoice with the saints and reign together with Christ unto all ages.

God's Word Never Fails

Alice C. Linsley

John Collier's Annunciation

Collier's wonderful painting shows Mary as a typical school girl. It is a good reminder of both her humanity and her humility. Her purity is represented by the lillies which also foreshadow the empty Tomb.

If the Angel Gabriel is facing east, Mary is portrayed as reading her lesson or preparing for a test in the morning. The new dawn shines on her and on the Book which she holds firmly in her hands. She is as attentive to the Word as the archangel is to proclaiming her unique blessedness.

I like this painting because it reminds us that God's Word never fails to accomplish God's purpose. Mary was not a random choice. She was of a long line of women descended from the first people to receive the Word that the Woman's Seed would crush the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15). For Satan to be defeated, the Woman’s Seed would have to be of God, so Jesus is the Son of God and the fulfillment of the expectation of Abraham's people that the Son of God would be born in human form from their bloodline.

How can this be? Because Abraham's people preserved the bloodline of priests by maintaining a specific kinship pattern in which priests married half-sisters and patrilineal daughters of priests (cousins or nieces). Their expectation of the promised Son of God explains their strict adherence to this marriage pattern, with priests marrying only the daughters of priests (confirmed by DNA studies which have identified the cohen/priest marker). These daughter grew up as chaste women.  In Abraham's time they grew up at their father's water shrines because the ancient priests kept sheep for the sacrifice and controlled water systems such as wells to sustain their flocks. This explains why many of the heroes of the Old Testament met their brides at wells or river shrines.

Calling to remembrance our all-holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorious Lady Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, with all the Saints, let us commend ourselves and each other, and all our life unto Christ our God.


Related reading:  Mary's Priestly Lineage; Mount Mary and the Origins of Life; Peleg: Time of Division; Cousin Brides and the Ruler Sons

Shaken Confidence of Materialists

“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes....” Romans 1:16

Materialists view religion as a human invention and regard those who believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God as deluded or naive. Their confidence rests on the assumption that this Gospel is invented. Their confidence is easily shaken because nothing in Reality supports this assumption.

Reality supports the view that everything exists by the Word of God and that the Word of God has fulfilled all things in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. St. Anthony the Great articulated this philosophically when he wrote: "God’s providence controls the universe. It is present everywhere. Providence is the sovereign Logos of God, imprinting form on the unformed materiality of the world, making and fashioning all things. Matter could not have acquired an articulated structure were it not for the directing power of the Logos, who is the Image, Intellect, Wisdom and Providence of God.”

Reality shakes the confidence of Materialists so thoroughly that they must escape into fantasy. They fantasize about a universe governed by randomness. They invent creatures to fit their convergence evolution theory but have no physical evidence for such creatures since they never existed. They attribute Christianity to the Jews and then illogically insist that the Jews corrupted Jesus' true religion by shunning the Gnostics.

Most Materialists should be delighted with my discovery that Abraham and his ancestors looked forward to the appearance of the Son of God in human form and believed that He would be born from their blood line. They might argue that because the promise of the Son existed before Abraham's time, Christianity is so terribly old that it should be relegated to the realm of extinct entities. But it is also possible that their confidence would be shaken by the fact that the Jews didn't invent Christianity.

Their confidence is further shaken because they can't explain how this belief in the Incarnate Son of God could be preserved from primal man in Africa to this day. Just as none were able to explain how the 318 bishops who came to the Council of Nicea from around the world and had not formerly communicated with each other should hold a consistent view of Jesus Christ. Such preservation of Truth can't be explained by material mechanisms.

The Materialist worldview is riddled with holes and a thoughtful Materialist recognizes this. He probably doesn't recognize that his worldview is an artifact of the Father of Lies. Satan is the chief materialist.

St. Anthony the Great on Creation

"God, by His Logos, created the different kinds of animals to meet the variety of our needs: some for our food, others for our service. And He created man to apprehend them and their actions and to appraise them gratefully. Man should therefore strive not to die, like the non-rational animals, without having attained some apprehension of God and His works.”

“Providence is manifested in events which occur in accordance with divine necessity – such as the daily rising and setting of the sun, and the yielding of fruits of the earth. Law, similarly, is manifested in events which occur in accordance with human necessity. Everything has been created for man’s sake. Since God is good, whatever He does, He does for man’s sake.”

“God’s providence controls the universe. It is present everywhere. Providence is the sovereign Logos of God, imprinting form on the unformed materiality of the world, making and fashioning all things. Matter could not have acquired an articulated structure were it not for the directing power of the Logos, who is the Image, Intellect, Wisdom and Providence of God.”

Jesus Fulfills the Horus Myth

“The most pressing question on the problem of faith is whether a man as a civilized being can believe in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for therein rests the whole of our faith.”--Fyodor Dostoevsky


Alice C. Linsley


Recently a reader named Jonathan asked (here) about the significance of the Horites. I had identified Abraham's people as Horites. Using kinship analysis, I've shown that Abraham's father and mother were both Horites. So were Abraham's wives, Sarah and Keturah. (Read about this here.)

The research on the "Time of Division" and "Horite Territory" addresses, not Abraham's descendents, but rather his Horite mother, his Horite father, and his Horite grandfather, Na'Hor. If Abraham's mother was Horite, that means Abraham was Horite, as these people traced bloodline through the mother, as Jews do to this day.

The Horites appear to have been a caste of ruler-priests whose God - Horus - was regarded as the "Son of Ra". Horus was said to be the parthenogenetic child of the virgin mother, Hathor-Meri. Her totem was the cow and she is shown in Nilotic shrines holding her infant in a stable.

Abraham's Nilotic ancestors considered Horus the "Seed" of Ra because Hathor was said to conceive when she was overshadowed by the Sun. In the oldest known Messianic tradition the Son of God is born as a calf to Hathor-Meri who is portrayed as a sacred cow, and the birth took place in a stable with the Babe sleeping in a crib.

According to some stories Horus was killed by his brother and rose again. Horus is said to have died on the 17th of Athyr. His death was commemorated by the planting of grain. On the third day, the 19th of Athyr, there was a celebration of Horus’ rising to life. It is no coincidence that Jesus alludes to the Horite myth when describing his passion and resurrection. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24). He identifies himself as the "Seed" of Genesis 3:15.

Horite belief in a deified son who would embody kindness and unite the peoples found fulfillment in Jesus Christ, a descendant of the Horite 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 Horite ancestors in Eden (Gen. 3:15). This is why Frank Moore Cross cannot avoid the conclusion that the God of Israel is the God of the Horites.

Consider how Horus, the archetype of Christ, describes himself in the Coffin texts (passage 148):

"I am Horus, the great Falcon upon the ramparts of the house of him of the hidden name. My flight has reached the horizon. I have passed by the gods of Nut. I have gone further than the gods of old. Even the most ancient bird could not equal my very first flight. I have removed my place beyond the powers of Set, the foe of my father Osiris. No other god could do what I have done. I have brought the ways of eternity to the twilight of the morning. I am unique in my flight. My wrath will be turned against the enemy of my father Osiris and I will put him beneath my feet in my name of 'Red Cloak'." (Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt by R.T. Rundle Clark, p. 216)

Here we find the words of Psalm 110:1, a messianic reference: The Lord says to my Lord: "Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet."

The parallels between the Horus myth of the Proto-Saharans and the Christian account of Jesus are striking. Either Christianity absorbed ancient the ancient Proto-Saharan myth to explain Jesus, or Jesus is the fulfillment of the Messianic expectation of Abraham and his Proto-Saharan ancestors.


Horite Priests were Ha-biru/Hebrew

The Egyptians had many gods and goddesses, but the Horites were followers of Ra and Horus from whom they received divine enlightenment. Horus was identified with the daily journey of the sun from the eastern horizon to the western horizon. As the kinship pattern of Abraham's people reveals, they were very concerned with preserving the bloodline through the mothers, and their concern was motivated by an expectation that a great King and Savior would be born from them whose radiance would shine over all the earth, who would be a light to the nations. And they were right!

Why would preserving a kinship pattern wherein priests marry daughters of priests matter? It would matter if you believed that God had made a promise that a Son would be born of Woman who would crush the serpent's head and restore Paradise. That is why it is so significant that the kinship pattern of Abraham's people never changed. The Promised Son was to be born in Bethlehem, which was a Horite settlement. Because the kinship pattern didn't change, the genealogical material in Genesis drives us from the Garden of Eden, to Bethlehem, to the empty Tomb. The kinship concerns of the Horites were based on their expectation of the Promised Son of God.

The Protoevangelium (Gen. 3:15) is a promise to neither the serpent nor to Eve. It is the Word gone forth that shall not return void. We note also that "the woman" to whom God speaks in Genesis 3:16 is not Eve. The name Eve was given by Adam four verses later. So, who is "the woman" whose offspring will crush the serpent's head? "The Woman" can only be Mary, the Mother of God.

Mary's father was a priest who married a daughter of a priest, following the same pattern that we see with Abraham's people. This is the same unchanging pattern that I discovered in my analysis of the kinship of Abraham's ancestors AND his descendants.

Jesus' Horite ancestry is demonstrated through analysis of the distinctive Horite marriage and ascendancy pattern. He is the Seed of the Woman of Genesis 3:15, the long-expected Immortal Mortal who tramples down death by death and receives an eternal kingdom.


Related reading:  Royal Babies; The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ; Samuel's Horite Family; Moses' Horite Family; The Horite Marriage and Ascendancy Pattern

Riddle for the Readers

Americans are a racially and ethnically diverse people. We often ask "What's your background?" and what we mean is "Where did your ancestors come from?"

My father's parents were the children of missionary families. His mother was born in India and lived there until age 16. His father was the nephew of Adoniram Judson, American Baptist missionary to Burma. So while my father's parents were ethnically Americans and lived in California, they had a view of the world that included India and Burma.

My mother's parents aren't easy to label either. My maternal grandfather was British and although he married an American, he retained his British citizenship until his death. As a young man he collected taxes for the Crown in South Africa. My maternal grandmother was the only daughter of Bavarian immigrants who settled in the Yakima Valley of Washington. So my mother's side also held a large view of the world.

It is evident that Abraham's family held a view of the world that included Egypt, Mesopotamia and Horite Territory in Canaan. How might Abraham respond to the questions "What's your background? " "Where did your ancestors come from?

If we are to trust the Genesis geneological information we would have to say that Abraham's background was Horite, since his mother was Horite and race was traced through the mother. And we would have to say that Abraham's ancestors came out of Africa, since he is directly descended from Noah and Noah lived near Lake Chad.

Here is where it gets interesting... How might Ishmael answer these questions?

Or Isaac?

Or Joktan?

All are first-born sons of Abraham by three different woman.

Let's hear your ideas!

Spread of the Afro-Asiatic Worldview

Alice C. Linsley


How are we to explain the prevalence of blood sacrifice performed by a priest caste and a common binary worldview among peoples as geographically removed as the Egyptians and the Sarki of Nepal? How is it that these distant peoples have a similar lexicon, suggesting a common linguistic heritage?

A comparison of the lexicon of Afro-Arabian languages, Sanskrit and Dravidian suggests that a vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion stretched from the Sahara to Asia about 10,000 years ago. One explanation is a common trade language used among the blood-related Afro-Asiatic rulers who also shared a common religion and worldview. This can be traced using comparative linguistics, comparative cosmology, ethnoastrology and kinship analysis. In this essay we will look at the physical evidence for this common lexicon and what it reveals about the ancient Afro-Asiatics.

The Spread of Afro-Asiatic Words

Afro-Asiatic languages include Akkadian, Amharic, ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, Babylonian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Ethiopic, Hahm, Hausa, Hebrew, Omotic, Phoenician, and Ugaritic. These “cognate languages" may share a common ancestor language or origin. Because this is so, linguists are able to compare the languages and draw conclusions about the older “proto” Afro-Asiatic language and dialects spoken before 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. The Afro-Asiatic world was much wetter then and the major water systems were controlled by chiefs such as those listed in Genesis 4 and 5.

Genesis tells us that there was a division among the Kushites in the time of Peleg and his brother Joktan.  This involved a territorial separation and the emergence of two groups: Afro-Arabians and Afro-Asiatic (Arameans). 

We find some words and roots among west Asian Indo-European languages that resemble words and roots in the Afro-Asiatic languages. One explanation is cultural diffusion of traits over a large area resulting in common features. This diffusion took place through migration, commerce and the marriage of nobles. The need to communicate led to a language of diplomacy and trade and this explains the linguistic affinities between the languages of west central Africa, Arabic, Coptic, Dravidian and Tamil.

There is no question that tribes and clans migrated across Africa and the ancient Near East and that they communicated with other peoples they encountered. However, migration alone is not a sufficient explanation for the common linguistic and religious worldview across the Afro-Asiatic Dominion. The evidence suggests a more complex picture of priestly activity and intermarrriage of ruler-priests who controlled the water systems 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.


Life Among the Ancient Afro-Asiatic Peoples

The Kushite rulers held a theology that Biblical Anthropologists recognize. This can be determined from artifacts such as the Sheba-qo Stone which describes the theology that held sway at Heliopolis (Biblical On) and Memphis. The Stone dates to the Nubian Dynasty or the Kushite Empire, but the theology is much older. According to this theology the Creator is the great Craftsman who gives wisdom and skill to the King and his craftsmen. This is expressed in Proverbs 25:2 - "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter."

The royal craftsmen worked with visible things such as tools of stone and metal. The Creator, on the other hand, works with what is concealed and mysterious like the wind or breath (ruach). The breath of the Creator went forth at the beginning of creation and things were created out of His mouth/word, and not from a pre-existing substance. He crafted the heavens above and the earth below, and separated the light from darkness. This theology is expressed in Genesis 1 and in the Wisdom Tradition that regards God as the architect whose wisdom is evident in the order of creation.

The seats of wisdom that have been indentified in the Bible include Tema, Edom and Tyre, all of which have a history of metal work and connection to the Horite ruler-priests.

The Feminine Principle (Heb: hokma, Gr: sophia) is described in language that identifies her with the ruach of God. She says, “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High and covered the earth like a mist… I walk in the depth of the abyss.” (Wisdom of Ben Sirach 24:3,5) Here we have echoes of Genesis 1 where we are told that the Spirit of God went forth over the chaotic waters and brought order, separating the waters above (firmament) from the waters below, and the seas from the day land. This ordering Principle is sometimes called Tehut, and the oldest known moral code is the Law of Tehut.

Tehut is sometimes likened to the Egyptian Ma'at, but there is a significant difference. Ma'at was created whereas Tehut appears to be the generative and uncreated Word of God (logos). Proverbs 8:22-31 and 9:1-6 appear to be about Ma'at. She says that "Yahweh created me, first-fruits of his fashioning, before the oldest of his works... the deep was not, when I was born..." Whether Proverbs is attributed to Solomon or to a time well after Solomon, the theology concerning Ma'at comes from a period much later than Abraham's Kushite ancestors.

The Kushites reflect the genetic diversity of Africa

Among the Kushites are the dark skinned Dravidians, the Sudra, who established their religious practices in southern Pakistan and India. This is called the Harappa culture. Har-appa is Dravidian for "Horus is Father". The Dravidians have much in common with the Nilotic people living in the Horn of Africa.

"Kushite" is a general term that includes many people groups who lived along the Nile and in the Chadic Basin. Some were light skinned, some black, some reddish, some reddish-brown, and some were brown. To this day Africa has the greatest genetic diversity of any place in the world.

Ancient Nilotic cattle herders (Nubians)

Among the Kushites we find Nubians, Beja, Copts, Egyptians, Proto-Saharans, Horites, and their kinsmen who were living on the western and southern coast of Arabia.

DNA studies of the Sudan show "genetic unity and linkage" between the Sudanic, Egyptian, Nubian and other Nilotic peoples, as well as some populations of the Horn of Africa (Yurco (1996), Keita (1993, 2004, 2005) Lovell (1999), Zakrewski (2003, 2007). Genetic and lingistic research indicates that the Copts are one of the oldest Egyptian populations. This is based on the relatively high frequency of the B-M60 marker, indicating early pre-dynastic colonization of Egypt by Upper Nilotes.

From the University of Khartoum we have this report:

The area known today as Sudan may have been the scene of pivotal human evolutionary events, both as a corridor for ancient and modern migrations, as well as the venue of crucial past cultural evolution. Several questions pertaining to the pattern of succession of the different groups in early Sudan have been raised. To shed light on these aspects, ancient DNA (aDNA) and present DNA collection were made and studied using Y-chromosome markers for aDNA, and Y-chromosome and mtDNA markers for present DNA. Bone samples from different skeletal elements of burial sites from Neolithic, Meroitic, Post-Meroitic and Christian periods in Sudan were collected from Sudan National Museum. aDNA extraction was successful in 35 out of 76 samples, PCR was performed for

sex determination using Amelogenin marker. Fourteen samples were females and19 were males. To generate Y-chromosome specific haplogroups A-M13, B-M60, F-M89 and Y Alu Polymorphism(YAP) markers, which define the deep ancestral haplotypes in the phylogenetic tree of Y-chromosome were used. Haplogroups A-M13 was found at high frequencies among Neolithic samples. Haplogroup F-M89 and YAP appeared to be more frequent among Meroitic, Post-Meroitic and Christian periods. Haplogroup B-M60 was not observed in the sample analyzed.

For extant DNA, Y-chromosome and mtDNA haplogroup variations were studied in 15 Sudanese populations representing the three linguistic families in Sudan by typing the major Y haplogroups in 445 unrelated males, and 404 unrelated individuals were sequenced for the mitochondrial hypervariable region.

Y-chromosome analysis shows Sudanese populations falling into haplogroups A, B, E, F, I, J, K, and R in frequencies of 16.9, 8.1, 34.2, 3.1, 1.3, 22.5, 0.9, and 13% respectively. Haplogroups A, B, and E occur mainly in Nilo-Saharan speaking groups including Nilotics, Fur, Borgu, and Masalit; whereas haplogroups F, I, J, K, and R are more frequent among Afro-Asiatic speaking groups including Arabs, Beja, Copts, and Hausa, and Niger-Congo speakers from the Fulani ethnic group.

Accordingly, though limited on number of aDNA samples, there is enough data to suggest and to tally with the historical evidence of the dominance by Nilotic elements during the early state formation in the Nile Valley, and as the states thrived there was a dominance by other elements particularly Nuba/Nubians."
 

Kinship and a caste system

Among the Afro-Asiatic peoples kinship was the basis of all social and political interaction. People married within their clan and traced their lineage through both the father's line and the mother's line. The concept of lineage involved both blood line and caste. Blood line was traced through the mother, while caste or status was inherited from the father. Suspicion of outsiders was such that meetings took place at neutral sites such as wells or shrines.

There were many industries, including metal work, farming, textiles, pottery, carpentry, mining and boat building. Herbal medicines were used to treat diseases and the anatomy of animals and humans was apparently well known. There is evidence of brain surgery among peoples living 8,000 years ago in the Congo Basin.
The various regions of this vast Kushite dominion were ruled and protected by chiefs who controlled the rivers, channels and ports. The chiefs were related by blood or marriage. Chiefs recieved tribute from their subjects and from those who crossed through their territories or moved cargo on their parts of the rivers. Each chief retained an army of trained warriors who fought with swords, clubs and bows. God was the King over all and the Great Spirit whose holiness required that humans be purified through animal sacrifice. Sacrifices were offered by heads of household and by male priests consecrated to God's service. In additon to blood sacrifice, priests attended daily to the shrine or temple, though they served on a rotational schedule. The priests received a portion of the offerings or other payment for their services.

Priests were the intellectuals of society and were responsible for sacred ritual, for interpreting sacred law, and for ministering to the needs of the ruler. In an Egyptian painting from the 12th century B.C., a priest with a shaved head plays his harp for the ruler and his queen. Among the Kushites the priest caste was dedicated to Horus and are known as "Horites."

The priest community was also responsible for setting the dates of sacred festivals. This is why calendars became important. Accurate calendars required watching the heavens. Afro-Asiatic priests were guided by both the solar year and lunar phases. The priest that observed only the solar year would be at greater risk of inaccurate calculations. If he didn’t perform the rituals on exactly the right days, he would be blamed for everything that went wrong the following year. If the chief died, or the crops failed, he was to blame. Afro-Asiatic priests may not have been executed, as happened to Chinese astronomers who failed to predict the solar eclipse in 2134 B.C., but they were still highly motivated to refine their astronomical calculations. Time was divided into year, month and day based on the observations of the sun, the moon and the constellations.

Counting and metaphysical speculation were an important aspect of the Priests' work. Their knowledge was considered beyond the average person. Through apprenticeship, a young man could hope to be enlightened. This focus on the institution of the priesthood is a distinctive characteristic of traditional religions of peoples from West Africa to India.

In ancient Egypt the priesthood involved orders of priests who were circumcised and clean shaven. There was great emphasis on their ritual purity which included being circumcised and bathing in cold water several times a day. The Egyptian priest entered the sacred area of the temple or shrine to offer food and drink. Incense was also offered. There appear to have been orders of priests long before the Aaronic priesthood. The Horite caste of ruler-priests were devotees of Horus who spread their religious beliefs far and wide. Genesis indicates that Abraham and his people were Horite ruler-priests.


The Linguistic Evidence for the Afro-Asiatic Dominion

Besides a religion centered in the priesthood and sacred law, we find a binary astrological and mathematical conception of time and the cosmos. This was especially refined by the Egyptians who developed a calendar of 12 months of 30 days, plus 5 = 365 days. We also find the concept of sacred mountains such as Mt. Hor and Mt. Harun (Aaron's Mount), and the stylized mountians of ziggurats in Babylon. However, one of the most interesting expressions of the common worldview of the Afro-Asiatics is the linguistic affinity of their languages.

Consider the following examples:

The Hebrew "rison adam" = ancestral man is "adamu orisa" = ancestral Adam in Hahm/Hausa languages of Nigeria. The Hausa word for human being is "dan adam." The Sanscrit word for male human is "manu" which resembles the African word "adamu" more closely than the Hebrew word.

The Hebrew "adamah" = red clay/ground and the related Semitic words "dam" = blood and "adom" = red, are related to the Hahm/Hausa word "odum" = reddish brown.

The Hebrew "bara" = to begin, is related to the Yoruba/Hahm word "bere" = to begin. There is an apparent relationship between the verb "to begin" and the word Creator which in Hebrew is "bore" and in the African Twi dialect is "Borebore" = Creator.

The Hebrew "hay" = “living being”, is related to the Hausa/Hahm word "aye" = life, created world. Likewise, the Hebrew "iya" = mother, corresponds to the Dravidian "ka ayi" = mother, and the Hausa/Hahm "eyi" = gave birth.

The Hebrew "abba" = father, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm "baba" = father, to the Dravidian “appa” = father, and to the Mundari "apu".

The Hebrew "ha’nock" = the chief, corresponds to the Hahm word "nok" = “first ancestral chief”

The Semitic word "wadi" = river, corresponds to the Sanscrit "nadi" = river.

The Semitic root “mgn” = to give, is the same as the Sanscrit “mgn” = to give.

The Sanskrit “svah” = sky or heaven, corresponds to the Semitic “svam” or “Sam-yim” = sky or heaven. The Semitic resembles the Proto-Dravidian word "van" = heaven. This is probably the significance of the Ja-van tribe (Gen. 10:2). Ja is an ancient name for God, usually rendered "the LORD."

The Elamite word for king is sunki, a cognate of the Hahm/Hamitic sarki, meaning king. The Sarki are found in Orisha, Nigeria and in Orissa, India. They are also in Nepal and parts of South Asia (see map.)

The Sumerian word for king is sar. Sar-gon conquered Nippur in 2340 B.C. and established his capital in Akkad. His name probably means King of Kings. He is said to be the ruler of Kish, which may mean that he was Kushite. This is suggested by the Chadic word for king - gon lere.

The Hebrew "yasuah" = salvation, corresponds to the Sanscrit words “asvah”, “asuah” or “yasuah” = salvation. The Priests who came out of Egypt, which included Korah and Aaron, prayed for "Thy salvation among all .... (Exodus 2:3). Writing on the tomb of a noble named Herkhuf claims that he “gave bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and ferried him who had no boat.” It expresses hope of salvation in these words: “that it might be well with me in the Great God's presence.”

The Hebrew root "thr" = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm "toro" = clean, and to the Tamil "tiru" = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian "tor" = blood. There is certainly a relationship to the injunction that the ancient Egyptian priest be pure (w'b) before entering the temple. All Eyptian priests shaved their heads. Korah, Moses' half-brother, was a priest. His name means "shaved head" and according to Numbers 16:17-18, he carried the censor to offer incense to the deity. This suggests that "kor" and "tor" are cognates. Here we find a very early connection between blood, purity and holiness.

The Hebrew "echad" or "ehat" = one, corresponds to the Syrian "eka" and to the Sanskrit "eca" = one. It is a cognate to "ikka" = one, in the Gonga languages of south east Ethiopia.

The Egyptian word for meteoritic iron "bja" (metal from heaven) corresponds to the Sanskrit word "bija", meaning semen or seed".

As many ancient Afro-Asiatic peoples used base 6 in counting and as the basis for their calendars, the number six is a significant indicator of related languages. Consider the following:

The number six in Proto-Dravidian is "caru". This correlates to "koro" in South Africa; to "karkia" in some Chadic Languages; and to "korci" in Meidob (eastern Sudan). The most striking similarity is between the Kanembu (Sudan) "araku" and the Tamil "aarru."
In the Vishveshvaran and Indological Journal (1976), Madan Mohan Shukla claims that the Hebrew religion is a branch of Aryan Brahmanism. I agree that they share a common origin, but that origin is more likely to be in Africa than in Pakistan or India. Shukla also sees the strong linguistic affinity and similar cosmological view between the Semitic peoples and the Aryans of India. He is not alone in assuming that the explanation must be that the ancient Hindis brought their ideas to the ancient Africans.

Paul W. Roberts postulates in Empire of The Soul: Some Journeys in India that, "Recent research and scholarship make it increasingly possible to believe that the Vedic era was the lost civilization whose legacy the Egyptians and the Indians inherited. There must have been one. There are too many similarities between hieroglyphic texts and Vedic ones, these in turn echoed in somewhat diluted form and a confused fashion by the authors of Babylonian texts and the Old Testament."

Dr. Roberts sees the connections between the ancient Indus River Civilization of the Harappa period and Africa, but fails to recognize that the connection is due to the existence of a vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion ruled by kings and nobles who controlled the waterways. This dominion extended from the Atlantic coast of modern Nigeria to the Indus River Valley. The authority of the Afro-Asiatic rulers eroded gradually as the climate changes caused rivers and lakes to dry up.


Satellite Evidence for this Great River Civilization

The Afro-Asiatic rulers were related so that the ruling houses shared a common worldview and similar customs. These rulers lost influence as the Earth’s climate changed. For example, the Sarasvati River, mentioned in the Rig-Veda, was regarded as a mythological river until its ancient 5-mile wide basin was identified using satellite photos. Today central Africa, Palestine, much of Mesopotamia and India is dry, but 10,000 to 12,000 years ago it was wet, fed by great rivers. Other great bodies of water that have disappeared have been identified through satellite photography in Mesopotamia and in central Africa. Lake Chad's waters once covered about 957,000 square miles. Because of the abundance of water these systems were in some places connected and navigable.


The Eastern Extreme of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion

The Indus Civilization is one of the oldest known. Archeologists have identified over 2600 sites along the Indus and Sarasvati rivers in Pakistan and India. This civilization extended from the Baluchistan highlands in the west to the Punjab deserts in the east. From north to south the region stretches from the Himalayan foothills to the coastal region of Pakistan. This is an area of about 100,000 square miles. The largest known site is Ganweriwala, on the bank of the Sarasvati River in India dating to about 3000 BC. Another site is the prehistoric town of Kalibangan in the northern part of the Rajasthan desert.

During the Neolithic period (ca. 7000-5500 BC) Indus River valley peoples grew food and domesticated animals. They had large ceremonial baths for ritual cleansing, wells and reservoirs. There is also evidence of a centralized government as early as 2800 B.C. at Harappa. The Indus peoples had kings, priests and specialized elders such as traditional healers, astronomers and prophets. There were farmers, artisans and brick makers.

This civilization includes cities dating to the time of Abraham and surrounded by walls made of mud bricks. Port cities on the Karachi Bay supported trade between India, Arabia, East Africa and Egypt. One material moved through this region was lapis lazuli, a blue semi-precious stone that was mined in the region of Badakhshan, Afghanistan and traded throughout Mesopotamia, East Africa and Egypt.

This ancient Indus Valley civilization was supported by an enormous river that flowed south from the Himalayas in the northwestern region of India until about 4000 years ago. Using satellite photographs, scientists have discovered the outline of the ancient riverbed. At its widest point it was five miles across. The region today is mostly arid, evidence of global climatic changes that led to the disappearance of the Afro-Asiatic rulers.


Related reading:  Kushite Diversity and Unity; The Nilotic Origins of the Ainu; Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; The Importance of Binary Distinctions; Peleg: Time of Division; Decline of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion; Migrations Out of Africa