Abraham's Ancestors Came Out of Africa

The Biblical writers recognized that the people among them with red skin were of an ancestral line of extreme antiquity. That is why the first man's name - Adam - is related to the words for blood and the color red: dam, odom and edom.

Jeff A. Benner, an expert on ancient Hebrew, explains:

We are all familiar with the name "Adam" as found in the book of Genesis, but what does it really mean? Let us begin by looking at its roots. This word/name is a child root derived from the parent דם meaning, "blood". By placing the letter א in front of the parent root, the child rootאדם  is formed and is related in meaning to דם (blood).

By examing a few other words derived from the child root אדם we can see a common meaning in them all. The Hebrew word אדמה (adamah) is the feminine form of אדם meaning "ground" (see Genesis 2:7). The word/name אדום (Edom) means "red". Each of these words have the common meaning of "red". Dam is the "red" blood, adamah is the "red" ground, edom is the color "red" and adam is the "red" man. There is one other connection between "adam" and "adamah" as seen in Genesis 2:7 which states that "the adam" was formed out of the "adamah".  (From here.)

Alice C. Linsley

To construct an accurate picture of the ancient world of Genesis we must examine the assumption that Abraham’s people originated in the Tigris-Euphrates area. The Genesis genealogies presents a different picture: that Abraham’s ancestors migrated out of Africa, and the evidence of anthropology, genetics, archaeology, DNA studies and linguistics supports this view.

Abraham's father was Terah the Ainu.  The Nilotic Ainu had a red skin tone and their rulers were bearded.  From the Nile they spread to Japan and to southern Siberia.  They traveled as far as Ireland and Finland and from there they moved into Greenland, Labrador and eastern Canada.  These first people are found at the center of Cavalli-Sforza's genetic distance chart, as would be expected of the First People.

These ancestors were great kingdom builders and their dominion extended from Africa to India. As evidence, consider the correspondence between the Hindu heroes Adimo, Heva, Sherma, Hama and Jiapheta and their Genesis counterparts Adam, Eve, Shem Ham, and Japheth. It is argued that this correspondence is due to a westward migration of Asiatics. However, this does not align with the evidence for the northeast migrations of peoples from Africa. Add the fact that Abraham’s kingdom-building ancestors were constantly searching for new territories, and a cogent picture of the people referenced in Genesis begins to emerge.

If the migration of Abraham’s ancestors was east and north and the stories reach as far as the Indus River Valley (even Nepal), these stories must be viewed as a seedbed of a widespread Afro-Asiatic worldview. In fact, they must be the stories told from Africa to India. This may explain the duplication of creation accounts, with the Adam and Eve story being older than Genesis 1. Its closest parallels are found in Africa, not Mespotamia. Consider, for example, the account of the first parents Gikuyu and Mumbi and the presence of a tree of life.

Long before the emergence of a people called Israel, ruler-priests controlled vast areas of the ancient world. They built kingdoms and at the center of their kingdoms they built temples and shrines where they worshiped the Maker of all things in heaven and on earth. They practiced animal sacrifice and offered prayers with incense. They regarded water as the element of purification. They observed sacred laws and spread across the earth. The biblical injunction to multiply and spread across the earth was apparently taken seriously by Abraham's ruler-priest ancestors.

These were ruler-priests who married the daughters of other ruler-priests and thereby preserved their priestly bloodlines through intermarriage (endogamy). The endogamous marriage pattern is consistent throughout the Bible and can be traced from Genesis 4 to Jesus, the Son of God. The pattern ends with Jesus’ appearance, having fulfilled its purpose and the purpose of the Bible.

There is a time in Israel’s history when this information was greatly valued: the reign of David, whose ancestry is goes back to Eden. This is why some scholars propose that Genesis was compiled during the time of the Davidic Monarchy. This makes sense when we consider that commerce and cultural exchange during David’s reign was directed toward both Africa and Mesopotamia. There was a good deal of interest in pedigree at that time to validate David’s claim to the throne, since he was the youngest son of Jesse of Bethlehem and “from the least of the clans of Judah”. The same prophet adds: “whose origins go back to the distant past, to the days of old.” (Micah 5:1)

To verify the truth of the biblical account we must look for clues to help us understand the relationship between the Mesopotamian and the African contexts of Abraham’s ancestors. Making those connections will enable us to understand the Bible better and to recognize how the Edenic Promise (Gen. 3:15) binds all 66 books into a single truly Great Story.
 
The prophets speak of the rulers who go back to Eden. Amos speaks of “him who holds the scepter from the house of Eden” (Amos 1:5). Ezekiel 28:11 says: “Son of Man, raise a lament over the king of Tyre and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and flawless beauty. You were in Eden, in the Garden of God…” The king of Tyre was allied by kinship with David, which is why it was necessary for Jesus to be revealed in Tyre.  This explains why Hiram of Tyre sent skilled artisans to help David build a palace in Jerusalem. Hiram is also known as "Huram" and "Horam", which are versions of the shorter names Hur or Hor. According to Midrashic tradition, Hur was Moses’ brother-in-law, the husband of Miriam. Hur’s grandson was one of the builders of the Tabernacle. I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hur as the "father of Bethlehem", that is the patriarch of the place known as the "city of David". In other words, the king of Tyre and David were related. Their common ancestors were Horites, and as the Genesis genealogies indicate, the Horite lineage can be traced back to Eden.
 
The symbols of the ruler-priest’s authority were the shepherd’s crook and the flail. These were the symbols of the authority of the Pharaohs, but predate the Egyptian Dynasties. The crook and flail have been found on rock paintings dating to long before the Pharaohs. Hierakonpolis is the site of the most ancient temple in Egypt. It was dedicated to Horus. Of particular interest is the 4000 B.C. tomb painting of two men painted with red ochre. They carry crooked staffs with objects that look like flails, suggesting that they are ruler-priests.


Related reading:  Solving the Ainu Mystery; Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; Who Were the Horites?; The Migration of Abraham's Ancestors; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology

Mohammed and Kain's Descendants

Alice C. Linsley


Mohammed left Mecca in 622 A.D. after the Meccan chiefs of his own tribe had attempted to kill him. He went to Medina which was then called Yathrib. Compared with arid Mecca, Yathrib was a paradise with lush gardens, date-palm groves, and productive farms. It was originally a Horite settlement.  Yathrib (yt-rb) means "that which belongs to the son." The Y is a solar symbol also used to designate rulers such as Yaqtan, Yitzak, Yisbak, Yacob, Yosef, etc.

Medina is situated on the western edge of the central Arabian plateau in the heart of the region of Dedan. The Dedanites descended from Kush and from Abraham by his couisn wife, Keturah. Dedan the Younger was the son of Abraham's son Joktan.

Most Southern Arabians are descended from Abraham through Joktan, his first-born son.  He is remembered by Arabs as Yaqtan. Josephus knew him as Joctan and his name is preserved in the ancient town of Jectan near Mecca.

Medina had a population of roughly 10,000 people when Mohammed arrived. Word of his prophetic utterances had gone before him and he was greeted by the common folk as a prophet, many urging him to stay in their homes which they believed would bring a blessing upon their households. In Medina there were three clans of Kenites, descendents of Kain, the earliest ruler named in the Bible.[1] The Kenites had communities throughout the territories of Ham, Shem, Midian, Dedan, Raamah, Sheba and Joktan/Yaqtan.

In Medina, Mohammed built an open-air mosque with a shaded area to the south called the suffah and he aligned the prayer space facing north towards Jerusalem. The qibla (prayer direction) was later changed to face Mecca, to the south. Adjoining this mosque were homes for Mohammed’s two wives Sauda and Aisha. Aisha lived long after Mohammed died and was regarded as a prophet in her own right. Later Mohammed added other apartments for his many concubines. One of these was a Jewish girl named Safiya, who had been betrothed to the chief Kinana, who was slain when Mohammed’s raiders attacked the Khaibar Jews in their settlement six days journey northeast of Yathrib.

Among the people in Medina, there was a small community of Jews, a three-clan confederation who had resided in this area from before recorded history. These Jews agreed to protect Yathrib alongside Mohammed were the Meccans to attack. The agreement, called the Constitution of Medina, stated that “The Jews shall be responsible for their expenses and the Believers for theirs. Each, if attacked, shall come to the assistance of the other.” It also stated that “The Jews shall maintain their own religion and the Muslims theirs.” The nature of this treaty is the subject of dispute among historians. Many maintain that it is a cobbling together of oral and written agreements, and likely reflects different periods.[2]

The Banu Kainuka (بنو قينقاع‎) was one of the Jewish clans living in Medina. In 624, they threatened Mohammed's political authority by rejecting his claim to be The Prophet of Allah. Around this time, a Moslem girl visited a goldsmith shop owned by one of the Kainuka Jews. As she sat in the shop a mischievous Kainuka pinned her skirt behind her to her upper dress. When she arose she cried out in shame at her exposure. A Moslem then slew the offending Jew, whose brothers retaliated by killing the Moslem. For fifteen days, Mohammed blockaded the Kainuka Jews in their quarter until they surrendered. He then ordered them to leave Medina without their possessions.

These Jews were descendants of Kain or "Kenites" who had intermarried with their Arab brothers for many centuries. They numbered about 700, and their principal occupation was metal work. They resided in two fortresses in the south-western part of the city and they had Arabic names. Old Arabic, sometimes called "Dedanite" was in use in this region since the 8th century B.C.[3] 

Mohammed considered himself at war with the rulers of Mecca and felt justified in removing hostile elements living in Medina. He attacked the Banu-Nadhir Jews, charging them with helping his enemies and plotting against his life. After a three-week siege, these Jews were forced to leave Medina. This time, each family was allowed to take as much as a camel could carry.[4]

Mohammed appropriated their date orchards to support his household, and distributed other lands among his supporters.

Arab historians identify twenty Jewish clans living among the Arabs, including two priestly lines. These priestly lines are traced back to Abraham's Afro-Arabian ancestors. The priestly lines intermarried, with priests marrying the daughters of priests. This intermarriage began long before Jews can be identified as a separate group in about 580 BC. The ruling ancestors of Jews and Arabs intermarried so that the two groups are blood kin.


NOTES
 
1. Kain is associated with metal smiths and one of his descendents – Tubal-Kain – is said to be the “father” of smiths. Smiths held a high social status in the ancient world. Early in the Upper Nile, Badari smiths smelted copper. These are the same people who used ritual flint knives for circumcision, such at that used by Zipporah.

2. Ibn Ishak, an 8th century A.D.,  historian wrote a history for Muslims which includes genealogies representing the Islamic tradition. He appears to be the principal source of information about the Constitution of Medina.
 
3. The highest concentration of Old Arabic texts has been found in the region of Dedan. Genesis 10:7 tell us that Dedan the Elder was a grandson of the Kush by his son Raamah.
 
4. A large bull camel can carry up to 1323 pounds (600 kg) and smaller camels up to 882 pounds (400 kg). To read about Abraham's camels, go here.


Related reading: The Shock of Mohammed Atta's Afterlife; Some Jews and Some Arabs Have Horite Blood

Some "Cousin" Brides Were Nieces

Alice C. Linsley


The rulers among Abraham's people married cousins, nieces and half-sisters. The patrilineal parallel cousins are of special interest because they named their first-born sons after their fathers, thus enabling us to trace descent through many generations.

A patrilineal parallel cousin bride is a first cousin who is in the same descent group as her husband. In other words, she and her cousin husband have a common male ancestor.  This appears to have been the preferred marriage arrangement for rulers among Abraham's Horite people whose religion was Egyptian/Nubian. These rulers had two wives living in separate households on a north-south axis. One wife was a cousin and the other was a half sister.  In Abraham's case, Keturah was his cousin bride and Sarah was his sister bride.

This arrangement doesn't seem to have been the practice among common people, as evidenced from excavations such as Deir El Medina where the average housing indicates monogamous marriages. Yet multiple wives was common among kings and ruler-priests in ancient Nubia and Egypt.  Also, the tradition of brother/sister marriages was confined to the royalty until the Greek period.

Brother/sister marriage was a common feature of the deities in Egyptian mythology, although these siblings often have different mothers. It may be that Egyptian kings, who were regarded as deities, married according to the mythogical deities.

Brother/sister, uncle/niece, and patrilineal cousin marriages also strengthened the king's control over his territory.  It is also possible that the rulers believed that the Son of God, who they called Horus, would be born of their royal priestly lines and therefore they married only the daughters of royal priests.

Cousin marriage and uncle/niece marriage was common among ancient Egyptian rulers and priests, although it appears that nieces were considered cousins. Half-sister marriage was also common and there is some evidence that the first wife was a sister bride.  This was the case with Abraham who married Sarah before he married Keturah.  It appears to have been the case with Isaac also (see diagram below). This explains the youthful sexual forlicking described in the Song of Songs where the groom addresses his bride as "my sister" (see 4:9-12). The sister wife is the bride of the man's youth. She is described as having been "made white" (8:5) while her beloved has skin as dark "as the tents of Kedar" because he was made to work in in the Sun by his older brothers (like David).  Gen 25:13 tells us that Kedar was a son of Ishmael and his Egyptian wife.

The second wife, a cousin or niece, would be taken at the age that the man was to take over the rule of his father's territory.  This explains Abraham's urgency to fetch a cousin bride for Isaac before his death (Gen. 24).

It was through the cousin/niece brides that throne names were passed to first-born sons. I call this the cousin-bride's naming prerogative, although it sometimes pertains to nieces as in the case of Isaac's first wife, a daughter of his brother Yisbak.  See below.

Related reading:  The Genesis King Lists; The Cousin Bride's Naming Prerogative; Half Sister Wives and Cousin Wives; Lamech Segment Analysis; Two Named Esau

The Jewish Myth of Racial Purity

Alice C. Linsley


Who are the Jews? By definition a Jew is someone whose mother is Jewish or someone who properly converts to the religion of Judaism. But who are the Jews racial? They are a mixed people like the Arabs. The Semitic word for Arab is ereb meaning "mixed peoples." By this definition, Jews are also ereb.

Genetic studies have revealed that many who self-identify as Jewish are actually descendants of non-Jewish mothers, perhaps 80 percent of Ashkenazi Jewry. (Jon Entine. "Ashkenazi Jewish Women Descended Mostly from Italian Converts, New Study Asserts.")

A distinction should be made between Arabs and Islamic non-Arabs. Not all people who speak Arabic are Arabs. Many are non-Semitic peoples who came to adhere to Islam about 200 years after the time off Jesus. 

Some Arabs and Jews are descendants of Abraham's ancestors with the mixture of other peoples, both Semitic and non-Semitic. The only people who might rightfully claim to be "pure blood" descendants of Abraham are those who stand in the royal priestly lines. These lines are found among both Jews and Arabs, as the Hebrew ruler-priests of Shem and Ham's lines intermarried.

J1 and T1 have a wide dispersion: Anatolia, Yemen, north-east Africa, Saudi Arabia, Madagascar, the Fertile Crescent, and the Caucasus. Where J1 and T1 are found in high frequency, mtDNA haplogroups HV, N1 and U3 are also present. ZS227, a subclade of J1, includes the Kohanim (priest) haplotype found among some Jews and some Arabs.

Abraham's people were a caste of ruler-priests, who were organized into to ritual groups (moieties): the Horite Hebrew and the Sethite Hebrew.  The Horite Hebrew were the more dominant group, and this may explain why Jews call their parents and ancestors Horim. 

The Horim included royal priest lines of Southern Arabia long before the time of Islam. However, after Islam, the Arab conquerors of Israel did not marry women from the local population. David Ben-Gurion and Yitzak Ben-Zvi wrote a book Eretz Israel in the Past and in the Present (1979) in which they noted this fact on page 196:

"The fellahin are not descendants of the Arab conquerors, who captured Eretz Israel and Syria in the seventh century CE. The Arab victors did not destroy the agricultural population they found in the country. They expelled only the alien Byzantine rulers, and did not touch the local population. Nor did the Arabs go in for settlement. Even in their former habitations, the Arabians did not engage in farming... They did not seek new lands on which to settle their peasantry, which hardly existed. Their whole interest in the new countries was political, religious, and material: to ruler, to propagate Islam and to collect taxes."

Some of the Egyptian heritage residents of Palestine were likely the descendants of Abraham by Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian handmaid. Some were likely the descendants of Abraham by his cousin-wife Keturah. Keturah bore Abraham six sons. These are related to the Joktanite tribes of southern Arabia. The Bible tells us that these people intermarried with the offspring of Abraham’s other sons, Ishmael and Isaac. One of Abraham's sons by Keturah was Yisbak and Yisbak's daughter married Isaac.  She was Isaac's first wife and a half-sister, just as Sarah was Abraham's first wife and his half-sister.

Arabic, like the languages of Hebrew and Aramaic, is classified in the Afro-Asiatic family. Old Arabian script appears as early as the eighth century BC, with regional dialects across the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant. The greatest concentration of Old Arabic texts are found at Dedan. According to Genesis 10:7 and Genesis 25:3, Dedan descended from Kush and from Abraham by Keturah. Dedan's father was Abraham's first-born son Joktan. Dedan's brother was Sheba the Younger. So the Old Arabic script called Dedanite is the language of Abraham's descendents and Dedan was their ancestral homeland. Dedan extended the length of the Red Sea to the northern boundary of Ophir. It corresponds to the territory of the ancient Horites, devotees of Horus who was called "Son of God."

Isaiah 21:13 alludes to the "caravans of Dedanites" in Arabia, and Ezekiel 27:20 speaks of Dedan as supplying Tyre with precious things.  Dedan is associated with Uz in the hill country of Edom. Uz was the homeland of Job. Uz was Nahor's son by Milcah (Gen. 22:20). This is Uz the Elder whose grandson was Uz the son of Dishan (I Chron. 1:42). Dishan was a son of Seir the Horite and the brother-in-law of Esau the Younger. Here is Seir's Horite family:

 

In other words, long before we can speak of Jews as a people (umah, le'om or am), Abraham’s people were Horite Habiru (or Hebrew Horim). The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who practiced endogamy. They were ethnically Nilotic, sometimes called Kushites. The early Hebrew priests were devotees of Ra, Horus (HR), and Hathor. Ra is derived from the ancient Egyptian word Re, meaning "father". Horus is the Greek for the ancient Egyptian HR, meaning "Most High One". Hathor is portrayed as the mother of HR who conceived by divine overshadowing (cf. Luke 1:35).

In ancient texts the ruler-priest caste is known by various related names: Opiru, Hapiru, and Habiru (Hebrew). The number seven was sacred to them because it referred to the seven heavenly bodies which were viewed as ruling the heavens. This is evident in the Luo (Nilo-Saharan) word for seven: abiriyo. The word abir is a cognate of habiru. The Y suffix is a solar symbol that indicated divine appointment, as in the names of these Habiru rulers: Yaktan (Joktan), Yishmael (Ishmael), Yitzak (Isaac), Yosef (Joseph), Yetro (Jethro), Yeshua (Jesus/Joshua), etc.

Within this caste of ruler-priests there were sub-castes dedicated to stone work and metal work. Tutu was a high ranked priest in the service of Akhenaten. Tutu's titles included:

Overseer of all the craftsmen of the Lord of the Two Lands (Upper and Lower Nile)
Overseer of all the works of His Majesty
Overseer of silver and gold
Chief spokesman of the entire land

The king of Tyre was allied by kinship with David and sent skilled artisans to help David build a palace in Jerusalem. Hiram is also known as "Huram" and "Horam", which are versions of the shorter names Hur or Hor. According to Midrashic tradition, Hur was Moses’ brother-in-law, the husband of Miriam. Hur’s grandson was one of the builders of the Tabernacle. I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hur as the "father of Bethlehem", that is the patriarch of the place known as the "city of David". In other words, the king of Tyre and David were related. Their common ancestors were Horites, and as the Genesis genealogies indicate, the Horite lineage can be traced back to Eden.

The Horites believed that the Son of God would be born of their blood. They expected Him to come to visit them. This was fulfilled when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, visited Tyre (Matt. 15:21-28; Mark 7: 24). Here the Markan mystery is revealed, for we are told that in Tyre Jesus "could not pass unrecognized."

The king of Tyre was allied by kinship with David and sent skilled artisans to help David build a palace in Jerusalem. Hiram is also known as "Huram" and "Horam", which are versions of the shorter names Hur or Hor. According to Midrash, Hur was Moses’ brother-in-law, the husband of Miriam. Hur’s grandson was one of the builders of the Tabernacle. I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hur as the "father of Bethlehem", that is the patriarch of the place known as the "city of David". In other words, the king of Tyre and David were related. Their common ancestors were Horites, and as the Genesis genealogies indicate, the Horite lineage can be traced back to Eden, a vast well-watered world of the late Holocene.


Related reading:  Religion of the Archaic Rulers; Some Jews and Some Arabs Have Horite Ancestry; Abraham was a Descendant of Both Ham and Shem; Who Were the Horites?; Jesus' Kushite Ancestors; Nicholas Wade. "Genes Suggest European Women at Root of Ashkenazi Family Tree." The New York Times (October 9, 2013); Ha'biru, Ha'piru, 'Abiru or Hebrew?; Y Chromosome Profile of 64% of European Men

Biblical Anthropology is Scientific Study of the Bible

Alice C. Linsley


“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.” --Stephen Hawking

Hawking's statement has been criticized as an absurd opposition between religion based solely on authority and science based solely on observation. However, Hawking is correct in asserting this distinction. All religions claim textual authorities or, in the case of pre-literate societies, oral tradition. Science does well to the degree that empirical approaches are necessary to verify laws, patterns and substances of the material world.  However, true religion and true science are not so different in their method.  Both make assertions based on observation.  They simply observe things differently.  The scientist must work with the material world, so I work with the biblical text.  Religion observes the material world and its metaphysical extension.

As a biblical anthropologist, I apply science to the study of the Bible.  I'm seeking data on the pages of the biblical text that either confirm or disprove my hypothesis. When it comes to analysis of the kinship patterns of Abraham's Horite people the results are replicable by anyone and the results would be the same regardless of who, where and when the analysis was done. When something is both replicable and universal it is authoritative.

The ancient Afro-Asiatics layed the foundation for many branches of science.  They made discoveries in animal husbandry, plant cultivation, the discovery of antibiotics, metal work, astronomy, geometry and algebra. For the ancient Afro-Asiatics, who were both scientists and deeply religious, there was never a conflict. They observed patterns in the heavens and on earth and what they observed spoke to them about the Creator. St Paul says that this is how God designed things.  He wrote that God's eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived by means of what God created. In other words, the order of creation reveals the invisible qualities of the Godhead (Romans 1:20).  Hawking is a very bright man, but he doesn't hold a candle to the Apostle Paul when it comes to understanding of the natural world and antecedents.

Even Jacques Derrida, an Arabic-speaking Jew from Algeria, identified a constant metaphysical presence which has been called by different names. Derrida wrote, “It would be possible to show that all the terms related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the center have always designated the constant of a presence, ... essence, existence, substance, subject, ... transcendentality, consciousness or conscience, god, man, and so forth.”

False science will never succeed in being authoritative because it ignores "the constant of a presence" or makes Man that constant. We might argue with Hawking over the significance of human existence, but his assertion that religion is based on authority and science on observation is mostly true. Ultimately, both true religion and true science seek to encounter and describe what is real and true.  Both bow to "the constant of a presence" at the center.  Unlike religion, however, western science grows frustrated by the necessity of negative definition.  It is an approach more comfortable to the eastern mind. Saying "something isn't" is also a statement about presence, and this is how God's divine nature is most often described in the Semitic world.

Related reading:  Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin; What Does a Biblical Anthropologist Do?;  Is Biblical Anthropology an Oxymoron?; Genesis and Jacques Derrida; Biblical Anthropology and Antecedents

The Kingdoms of Cain and Seth

The dark red spot in central Africa marks Noah's homeland near Lake Chad.

Noah is a direct descendant of both Proto-Saharan rulers Cain (Gen. 4) and Seth (Gen. 5). 

Alice C. Linsley

Analysis of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of Abraham's ancestors indicates that Cain and Seth married the daughters of a chief named Nok/Enoch. These brides named their first born sons Enoch after their father, which is why both Cain and Seth have first born sons named Enoch.

The naming prerogative of royal cousin brides permitted them to name their first-born sons after their fathers. This naming evidence indicates that Cain and Seth married patrilineal cousins. This prerogative did not pertain to half-sister brides. 

If we read the first 5 chapters of Genesis chronologically, we might conclude that Adam and Eve are the parents of Cain and Seth. This is not what the text actually tells us, however. Eve's declaration upon giving birth to Cain was qanitti (as E.A. Speiser notes), suggesting that she believed she had brought forth a ruler with God's help. Cain or Kain is a variant of the words kahn and king and throughout the Bible Cain stands as the archetypal earthly ruler.

Genesis 4 and 5 provides data about the royal lines of Cain and Seth. Their first-born sons were named for their maternal grandfather, a ruler in the well-watered region of Eden which is described in Genesis 2 as extending from the sources of the Nile in Uganda and Ethiopia to the Tigris and Euphrates.

The ancients understood the difference between historical and metahistorical and often paralleled the two. This is why the names Adam and Enosh are paralleled in Psalm 8, which in Hebrew reads:

                                        What is Man (Enosh) that you are mindful of him,
                                        the son of Man (ben Adam) that you care for him?


The parallelism suggests that both Adam and Enosh should be viewed as eponymous fathers: Adam is to the Edomite Hebrew what Enoch is the Anakim of Hebron. Analysis of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of Abraham's ancestors indicates that Cain married a daughter of Enoch, a patrilineal cousin. The latter appears to be the case since it was the cousin bride who named her first born son after her father. Likewise, Seth married a daughter of Enoch.

That pattern is evident in the Lamech segment analysis below. Methuselah married Naamah, his cousin, the daughter of Lamech the Elder. Naamah named their first-born son Lamech, after her father. The two different Lamech are designated Lamech the Elder and Lamech the Younger.
This pattern is found also with Esau the Elder and Esau the Younger.

Possibly Enoch was the patrilineal cousin of a daughter of Set the Nubian.This means that Enoch and Set were brothers and there is a connection to the 8th century B.C. Napatan rulers of Nubia who conquered Egypt. Set was a royal name among the Napatan Nubians.

Bronze figure of Napatan ruler

Cain and Seth are rulers and their royal lines are traced in the Genesis 4 and 5 king lists. Throughout the Bible Cain is posed as the archetype of the earthly ruler. He was a sent-away son who established his territory in the land of Nod/Nok "east of Eden" (Gen. 4:16). This places Cain in the Nile Valley or in southern Arabia where the name Cain/Kain/Kayan/Qayan is commonly found. The name Set is found among peoples living in the Upper Nile or ancient Nubia.

There is evidence for this in 1 Chronicles 1:50 which mentions an important Horite bride - Matred - which is equivalent to Menmaatre, the throne name of Seti I. 

Seti is a name associated with Piye which 1 Chronicles identifies with the "city of Pai" (1 Chronicles 1:50). Piye's son was called Hor, a reference to Horus, the son of the Creator. King Piye of Egypt installed a black granite falcon head image of Horus at his capital in Napata.

The ruler-priest devotees of the Creator and Horus were called Horites. Genesis 36 lists the Horite Hebrew rulers of Edom.


Related reading: Royal Names in Genesis; The Nubian Context of YHWH; Abraham's Habiru Ancestors; From Cain to Jesus Christ; Was the Land of Nod Enoch's Territory?; Genesis on the Ancient Kingdom Builders

Neanderthal Humans

 Photo credit: P. Saura, Breuil et al.

The term "Neanderthal" has taken the connotations of a hairy, toothy ape-like creature. This is far from the reality. Homo neanderthalenis is the term coined in 1863 by the Irish anatomist William Kin. This human population was named after the Neander Valley in Germany where the first skeletal remains were discovered. The bones of the original Neandertal from the Neander Valley are well within the range of modern human anatomy.

The Neanderthals began to spread across Europe and Asia around 400,000 years ago.

The oldest human fossils are millions of years older than the Neanderthal fossils. The archaic humans walked upright, had opposing thumbs, short fingers, human ankle bones, and human dentition. In humans, the back teeth are larger than the front teeth (not so with apes), and the canines are not pointed. Humans also lack the characteristic diastema, or tooth gap, found in apes.

When Jeremy DeSilva, a British anthropologist, compared the ankle joint, the tibia and the talus fossils of human ancestors ("hominins") between 4.12 million to 1.53 million years old, he discovered that all of the ankle joints resembled those of modern humans rather than those of apes. Chimpanzees flex their ankles 45 degrees from normal resting position. This makes it possible for apes to climb trees with great ease. While walking, humans flex their ankles a maximum of 20 degrees. The human ankle bones are quite distinct from those of apes.

The discovery of a complete fourth metatarsal of A. afarensis at Hadar that shows the deep, flat base and tarsal facets that "imply that its midfoot had no ape-like midtarsal break. These features show that the A. afarensis foot was functionally like that of modern humans." (Carol Ward, William H. Kimbel, Donald C. Johanson, Feb. 2011) The Ward, Kimbel and Johanson study is very interesting. Donald Johanson was the person who announced to the world that Lucy was "ape of the South," or Australopithecus. He has since reconsidered that assessment.

The Neanderthals are posed as a recent stage of evolution from ape-like hominids to modern humans, but there is no evidence to support this theory. In fact, the evidence indicates that the Neanderthals were our European and Near Eastern ancestors. They were hardy and well-adapted to the challenging environmental conditions of their time.

The sequencing of the Neanderthal genome reveals that Neanderthals and modern humans are virtually identical. Here's the report:

After years of anticipation, the Neanderthal genome has been sequenced. It’s not quite complete, but there’s enough for scientists to start comparing it with our own.

According to these first comparisons, humans and Neanderthals are practically identical at the protein level. Whatever our differences, they’re not in the composition of our building blocks.

However, even if the Neanderthal genome won’t show scientists what makes humans so special, there’s a consolation prize for the rest of us. Most people can likely trace some of their DNA to Neanderthals.

“The Neanderthals are not totally extinct. In some of us they live on a little bit,” said Max Planck Institute evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääbo.

It took four years for Pääbo’s team to assemble a working sequence from DNA in the bones of three 38,000-year-old Neanderthal women, found in Croatia’s Vindija Cave. The sequence, published May 6 in Science, covers about 60 percent of the entire genome.

Read it all here.

Neanderthal humans walked upright, had human dentition, opposing thumbs, hunted in groups, fabricated artistic articles such as jewelry, performed religious ceremonies, ritually buried their dead (usually in red ochre), were organized in clans with leaders, made tools, built shelters, and controlled fire. They used carbon and red ochre to paint the walls of their rock shelters. See the paintings above, found in La Pasiega rock shelter in northern Spain. The ladder shape dates to at least 64,000 years and is the work of Neanderthals.

By every indicator, Neanderthals were fully human, and most modern humans have Neanderthal ancestry. Indigenous sub-Saharan Africans have little to no Neanderthal DNA because their ancestors did not migrate through Eurasia.

Holloway (1985: 320) has stated "I believe the Neanderthal brain was fully Homo, with no essential differences in its organization compared to our own." 

Neanderthal anatomy is identical to humans: same number of bones which function in the same manner (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992).

Related reading: Spinners of Evolutionary Fictions; Effects of Neanderthal DNA on Modern Humans; The Dispersal of Archaic Humans

The Horite Confederation of Uz, Buz and Huz

Alice C. Linsley

Dedan: Horite Territory at the heart of Eden

According to Genesis 10:7 and Genesis 25:3, Dedan was descended from Kush and from Abraham by his cousin wife, Keturah. Dedan's father was Abraham's first-born son Joktan.  Dedan's brother was Sheba the Younger. Diagrammed, Dedan's immediate family looks like this:


                                                              Abraham ∆ = O Keturah
                                                                             Joktan
                                                                         O = ∆ = O
                                                                 Dedan ∆     ∆ Sheba the Younger


Isaiah 21:13 alludes to the "caravans of Dedanites" in Arabia, and Ezekiel 27:20 speaks of Dedan as supplying Tyre with precious things. Dedan is associated with Uz in the hill country of Edom. Uz was the homeland of Job. One of Job's inquisitors, Elihu, was a descendent of Nahor by Buz.  Buz and Uz were Nahor's sons by Milcah (Gen. 22:20). This is Uz the Elder whose grandson (by his daughter) was Uz the son of Dishan (I Chron. 1:42). Dishan was a son of Seir the Horite and the brother-in-law of Esau the Younger. Uz the Younger was Seir's grandson. Here is Seir's Horite family:

When there are two names that are very close, there is usually a third,  That third is Huz, so that Uz, Buz and Huz represent another 3-part confederation based on kinship.  I Chronicles 5:14 mentions that the son of Buz was Jahdo and Jahdo's son was Yeshishai, the Aramaic form of Yeshua/Jesus.  This connects the name of Jesus with the devotees of Horus, who was called "Son of God".

Buz is related to Uz and is grouped with the peoples of Dedan and Tema in Jeremiah 25. This is probably why this Horite confederation is not identified as Uz, Huz and Buz, but rather as Dedan, Tema and Buz. The oldest Arabic script emanated from the Afro-Arabian oases of Tema and Dedan in the Hijaz. Tema is known by Arabs as Taima and lies about 70 miles north-east of Dedan. Tema, Dedan and Dumah were caravan stops along the trade route from Babylon to Sheba.

These peoples shared appearance and life style. They dwelt in hills and built shrines in caves (such as seen at Petra) and the men shaved their heads (Jeremiah 25:23), as did Horite priests. This suggests that this was a confederation of Horite priestly families.  Genesis 36 confirms this, listing Uz's grandson Dedan as a Horite ruler.  Here we also find reference to Huz or Husham of the land of Tema (Gen. 36:34).

Other 3-part familial confederations are suggested by the names Sab-tah (Gen. 10:6) and Sab-teca (Gen. 10:7), and Le-hab (Gen. 10:13), Le-sha (Gen. 10:19) and Le-tu (Gen. 25:3). Letu was an eighth generation descendent of Noah through his sons Shem and Ham whose lines intermarried.

The prominence of the Horites is attested by the detail of the geneological information provided in Genesis 36 and I Chronicles 1. Here we discover that a people that have been regarded as tangentially related to Abraham were in fact Abraham's people. Isaac married Horite brides. Rebekah (his cousin bride) was a descedent of Na'Hor and Terah, and his half-sister bride (living in Beersheba) was a descendant of Sheba. Jacob also married Horite brides in Rachel and Leah, both descendants of Na'Hor and Terah. Genesis 36 tells us that Esau the Younger married a Oholibamah.


Related reading:  Abraham and Job: Horite Rulers; Abraham's Nephews and Niece; Who Were the Horites?

Russians urged to set aside "monopoly of Darwinism"

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Russian Orthodox Church called Wednesday for an end to the "monopoly of Darwinism" in Russian schools, saying religious explanations of creation should be taught alongside evolution.

Liberals said they would fight efforts to include religious teaching in schools. Russia's dominant church has experienced a revival in recent years, worrying rights groups who say its power is undermining the country's secular constitution.

"The time has come for the monopoly of Darwinism and the deceptive idea that science in general contradicts religion. These ideas should be left in the past," senior Russian Orthodox Archbishop Hilarion said at a lecture in Moscow.

"Darwin's theory remains a theory. This means it should be taught to children as one of several theories, but children should know of other theories too."

Read it all here.

Was Genghis Khan the Last Afro-Asiatic Kingdom Builder?

Alice C. Linsley


Genghis Khan (c. 1162-1227) was born "Temujin" in Mongolia. He united warring clans to become leader of the Mongols in 1206. After his death, his descendants expanded his empire until it stretched from China to Hungary. His grandson Kublai Khan expanded the Mongol empire to southeast Asia and became the first emperor of China's Yuan Dynasty.

Genghis may have been the last Afro-Asiatic kingdom builder. Among his people, Genghis was known as a skilled smith. The nomads of Central Asia highly esteemed the trade of the metal smith. Genghis probably made metal arrow heads with holes.These holes made the arrows "sing" as they were launched through the air. The whistling arrows had the added benefit of frightening the enemies' horses.

There is a strong linguistic connection between the Yuan and the Nilo-Saharan languages. Y was a solar symbol among the Nilo-Saharans, some of whom were Anu (Ainu), so Y-an might refer to the Ainu who moved out of the Nile into Mongolia. This connection is confirmed by DNA studies. Genghis Khan and his descendants are in Haplogroup C-M217 which comprises more than ten percent of the total Y-chromosome diversity among the Manchus, Koreans, and Ainu. The ruling families of the Ainu of Northern Japan and the elders of the Ainu (Micmac) of Eastern Canada are kin, as I have demonstrated through my research.

Further, Khan is a variant of Kain/Cain or Kayan/Qayan, and it means king. The descendants of Cain are noted to have been metal smiths (Genesis 4). Genghis may be the last of the "mighty men of old" described in Genesis. These dispersed out of the Nile Valley and Southern Arabia and became the rulers over territories in the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

Genghis Khan followed the kingdom-building pattern of Nimrod and may have been a descendant of Nimrod. Hungarian origin stories suggest that he was a descendant of Noah through Japheth, and he was allied with the Keraits, a Jewish sect that rejected the authority of the Talmud (Oral Torah). Many Keraits became Christians. These may have been the only Christians native to Central Asia. Several Kerait women became influential in the Mongol court. Chinggis Khan’s mother had converted to Nestorian Christianity. Toghrul or Ong Khan was a Karait leader.

Sorghaghtani Beki married a son of Genghis Khan, and they had four sons. Two sons, Kublai Khan and Mongke Khan, were prominent leaders of the Mongolian Empire which formed a cultural and religious bridge between the East (especially Tibet) and the West. In their youth, these sons may have looked much as this Mongolian warrior.

His hair, red skin tone, and dress resemble that of the Nabataean warriors of Edom,
one of the ancestral homes of the Biblical Horites (Genesis 36).

Genghis Khan means King Genghis. Khan is related to the biblical words Kain and Kandake (Candace in English), meaning king/queen. He was like his namesake Cain in that he killed his half-brother Bekhter during a fight over hunting spoils. This incident cemented his position as head of the household.

Like Cain, Genghis Khan built an empire with settlements at sacred locations marked by stone structures and sacred heaps of stones. He named his first-born son Jochi which is a variant of the biblical name Joktan (Yaqtan), the name of Abraham’s first-born son.

Names common among the Uralic, Turkish, Pashtun and Mongolian peoples include Jochi, Beri, Malik and Khan. Today Khan is a common surname in Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Mongolia. It is equivalent to Kayan, a spelling that resembles Qayan in the Hebrew. Genghis Khan’s name is more accurately spelled Činggis Qaγan. Here we see a connection to the Arabic word for a metalworker, which is qayin.

Some of the Pashtun clans adopted Malik as the ruler's title instead of Khan. Malik is equivalent to the Afro-Asiatic Melek, meaning king.

At age 16, Genghis married a woman of the Olkut Hun, meaning Hun Tribe. (In the Mongolian language, Hun means adult male, or man, and Hunij means human being.) This marriage was arranged to consolidate an alliance between Genghis’s people and the Olkut Huns of Central Asia. Genghis’ mother encouraged him to form many alliances through marriage.

The word ogur also means clan, community or tribe, and appears to be equivalent to the Pashto word orkut, meaning community. So, the words ogur, orkut and olkut seem to be linguistically related. Possibly Ogur Hun means the Hun clan or the Hun community of Og. Og is one of the clans in the three-clan confederation of Og, Gog and Magog. These names are found in Hungarian narratives, as well as in the Bible.

The languages of the Huns and Hungarians are classified in the Uralic group, not the Afro-Asiatic group. The Uralic family includes the languages of western Mongolia, Finnish and Hungarian. The Hungarian call themselves the "Magyar" and claim to be descendants of Noah through Noah's son Japheth.

Drawing found in Hungary showing the symbols of the Sun, Cattle and the Tree of Life

In the Hungarian origin stories, Nimrod had two sons: Magor and Hunor. Magor is the equivalent of the Afro-Asiatic name Magog. The word Magyar is linguistically related to Magog and is the name for the Hungarian people. Some Magyar still live in the Upper Nile area where they are called the Magyar-ab, the Magyar tribe. Typical of Nilotic people, important symbols among the Magyar are the Sun, cattle, and the Tree of Life.

Though Hungarian is a Uralic language, it has connections to the Afro-Asiatic language family, suggesting that Japheth’s descendants moved north toward the Ural Mountains. Here they developed a different religious practice – shamanism, which preserves some elements of the older Afro-Asiatic priest-religion, but which is significantly different. Priests and shamans serve similar functions in their communities but have different worldviews. (For the difference between priests and shamans, go here.)

While there is evidence of syncretism between the shamanic and priestly worldviews, the element of the Sun as an emblem of the Creator appears in both. Solar discs or solar boats are found on artifacts from ancient Egypt, Nubia, India and Mongolia.

Some rulers among these peoples are designated by an initial Y - a solar cradle indicating divine appointment. Yaqtan (Joktan), Yishmael (Ishmael), Yitzak (Isaac), Yetro (Jethro), Yacob (Jacob), Joseph (Yosef) and Yeshua (Joshua/Jesus) are examples. Solar symbols appears on the deer stones of western Mongolia shown below.

Deer stones mark burial ground at Ulan Tolgoi in Mongolia

Deer stone with Sun symbol in western Mongolia

Related reading: Ket-Navajo Linguistic Connection;  Noah's Sons and Their Descendants; Abraham's Ainu Ancestors; The Kushite-Kushan Connection; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; Kushite Kingdom Building; A Tent for the Sun; Ido, Edom and Idumea

Afro-Arabian vs Aryan Religion: The Horse as Example

Alice C. Linsley

India was at the crossroads of the ancient world, connecting Africa to China and Southern Europe. The oldest known civilization in India is represented by the Harappa and Mohenjo Daro settlements (2500-2000 B.C.) Artifacts found in these locations suggests an early influx of cattle-herding Nilotes and Proto-Saharans. Indeed, their religion appears to predate Hinduism by thousands of years.

This bronze figurine of a dancing girl found at Mohenjo Daro reflects Kushite traits.

The oldest Vedic texts reveal many points of contact with the ancient Afro-Arabian or Kushite religion which maintains binary distinctions between heaven-earth; male-female and human-animal, as is done in the biblical worldview. In this worldview there is a fixed order in creation and reverence for the divinely-established boundaries between heaven and earth, between male and female, and between humans and other animals.

 Horse parade at Machad Mamagam Festival

In the earliest Vedic texts there warnings about transgressing these boundaries. One such boundary involves the distinction between humans and animals, The ancient texts contain moral warnings against sexual relations with animals (bestiality).

Hindu beliefs and practices emerging out of the Axial Age are characterized by syncretism, a blending of many traditions: some from the earlier Kushites and some from the Aryans.  How different are the Afro-Arabian and Aryan worldviews? Very different, as illustrated by the example of the horse.


The Horse in Afro-Asiatic Religion

The earliest breeding of horses appears to have taken place in the area that is today eastern Sudan along the Upper Nile. The horse was bred and trained as a royal mount well before 800 B.C. Robert Merkot reports that the people of Sheba were famous for the horses they breed and that those horses were exported widely throughout the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion.[1]  The world's oldest saddles are from Nubia and the Upper Nile region.

When the Kushite (Sudanese) ruler, Piye, conquered the palace city of King Nimlot, he discovered that the royal horses had been neglected and he was extremely angry about it. It is recorded that “His majesty went to the stable of the horses, and the quarter of the foals. When he saw that they had been left to hunger he said: As Re loves me … that my horses were made to hunger pains me more than any other crime you committed in your recklessness...” Piye reigned over eastern Sudan and Egypt from 752-721 B.C.

The horse while regarded as noble, was never deified in Afro-Asiatic religion. Sexual relations with a horse (or any animal) was an unthinkable violation of the boundaries set by God in creation. Not so in Hinduism after the Aryan invasion.


The Horse in Aryan Hinduism

In ancient times Hindu priests sacrificed horses. The Ashvamedha was offered only by kings seeking to gain strength or to expand their territories. The basis for selection of the horse that was to be sacrificed was the Krittika, the Pleiades, on his forehead. After the horse was sacrificed, the carcass was cut into sections and the priests burned the sections on outdoor altars.

There was a fertility ceremony attached to horse sacrifice. If the King also wasn’t to insure that his wives gave him many sons, he paid the priests to perform an elaborate year-long ritual. A fine horse was selected at the beginning of the year and allowed to wander freely while guarded by royal soldiers. Everywhere the horse wandered was claimed to be under the King’s jurisdiction. If the horse entered the territory of another ruler, that ruler had to submit or engage in combat. During the year the horse was not allowed to mate and at the end of the year it was returned to the city where it was sacrificed in a 3-day ceremony.

The royal fertility ritual called Asvamedha yajna involved the king’s principal wife in a nightlong copulation with the dead horse. The priests and all royal wives and their four hundred attendants spent the night insulting each other. The insults go something like these:

To the wives the insulter says: “Lift up her thighs… she is like…” (insulting remark)

The attendants shout back to the insulter: “Your penis is like a…” (insulting remark)

The story is told that Rama’s mother and co-mothers performed the ceremony to guarantee the birth of sons to King Dasaratha. All three of the king’s wives were united with the carcass, but his principal wife, Kausalya, spent the entire night with the dead horse regarding this as her sacred duty. The account speaks of 300 beasts being sacrificed, including snakes and birds, in addition of Dasaratha’s “jewel of a horse” which was cut by his principal wife with 3 knives. The ceremony was costly as it involved paying a year’s salary to priests (Brahmans), the invoker (hotr), the chief priest (adhvarya) and the singer/cantor (udgatr).[2] There is a similar ritual known among the ancient Celts, only in reverse. In the ceremony of enthronement, the king ritually coupled with a mare that was then sacrificed and cooked, being then eaten in a communal meal. The horse fertility ritual comes from the Indo-European-Aryan worldview and is contrary to the older Afro-Asiatic layer which maintains strict distinction between human and animal.

It appear that there was a parting of ways theologically and it may be represented by different names of God.


Az or Yahweh

The Asvamedha yajna gives the name As (or Az) for God. The name appears in ancient Akkadian texts. A 7th-century text says that Sargon city on the bank of the Euphrates was called Azu-piranu, meaning temple or house of Az. O-piru means house of the Sun. Azu is also a variant of the African name for God - Asa. Azu-piranu is equivalent of the Hebrew word Beth-el, but there appears to have been distinct conceptions of God.

Variants of this name for God include: Azu in Akkadian, Asa in Chadic, Asha in Kushitic, and Ashai in Hebrew.  A Jerusalem priest named Am-ashai is mentioned in Neh. 11:13.

The Sakās of the Behistun inscription [3] of Darius I (521-486 B.C.) were made up of four tribes, the foremost of which were the Asii.[4]

Related reading:  7000 BC Horse Burial Linked to Sheba; 700,000-Year-Old Horse Found in the Yukon Permifrost; The Murky Waters of Insanity; Genesis on Homosex: Beyond Sodom


NOTES

1. See Morkot’s book The Black Pharaohs. Sheba was an ancestor of Abraham, according to Genesis 10:28.

2. Goldman, Robert P. The Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of Ancient India. Balakanda (vol.1). Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-06561-6, pp. 151-152.

3. I have visited the site of this inscription. It appears in these images and scripts that the binary worldview of the Horites later morphed into the dualism that characterizes much of Asian religions. Ahura Mazda is likely a variant of Hor-Az or Hormazd. Ahura Mazda's dualistic counterpart is Angra Mainyu, the creator of evil.

4. Hans Loescher provides an excellent presentation of the Asii-led confederation that penetrated China.

Connecting Magog, Gog and Og

Alice C. Linsley

End times writers Hal Lindsay and Timothy LaHaye have made much of Gog and Magog as the archetypal enemies of God in Reveltaion 20:8. End times publications profit at the expense of good biblical exegesis, so in this essay we look into the identity of Gog and Magog.[1]

The first thing to note is that Gog and Magog are joined by a third - Og - mentioned in Numbers 21. Og, Gog and Magog comprise a tribal unity, as do each of the three-son confederations listed in Genesis. Magog is the best known, being claimed as the ancestor of the Kushitic (Kushan/Kurgan) Scythians. Magog is named in the Table of Nations (Gen. 10) as a descendant or son of Japheth.

Dispersed clans of royal tradesman

Gog, Magog and Og are not places. They are clans confederation pertained to the Horites who dispersed widely across the ancient world. They would have been found in many places and often lived among others peoples.

The Schythians were called Kurgans and this suggests that they were link to the Horite caste. The kr/gr root refers to ancient tradesmen and traders who moved from place to place. The Horites have been identified with references to Khar, a unit of measurement used in trade in the Egyptian inscriptions (See James Orr, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, page 1421.)

The word khar is a variant of the word gur. In Akkadian gurguri means metalworkers or copper smiths. In Oromo gurguru means to sell (gurgurtaa = sale, gurguraa = seller). In Somali gur- means to collect something and gurgure means one who Collects and Keeps Collecting. The Gurgure clan of the Dir refers to traders who collect wares and resale them. Among the Dir guri means stick, rod or firearm.

The Persian and Urdu word Saudagar means trader. This contains the gr root in connection with Arabia. Horite traders dispersed across the ancient world. The association of the roots gr (traders) and hr (Horites) is evident in India in place names such as Gurgaon Haryana.

A linguistic connection to the Horites is retained in the name Horowitz (also spelled Hurwitz or Gurvich), a surname found among Jews of Sephardic ancestry.

The Gir-gam tells the story of Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors Cain, Seth and Noah. All were trader-rulers who controlled the water ways of West Central Africa.

Likely gr is also the root of the Japanese (Ainu) word guruma, meaning wheel. The Ainu originated in the Nile. The royal burials of the Schythians also suggest a connection to the Horite rulers. The men were bearded and their appearance reminds me of the Ainu.

Legends surrounding Magog are found in countries as distant as Russia and Denmark, and are associated with Marco Polo, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and even King Arthur. The most credible claim involves Magog as the ancestor of the Hungarians through the Afro-Asiatic kingdom builder Nimrod.  Genghis Khan married into the Olkut Hun (Hun Tribe) so the connection to that historical figure can be verified.[2]

The following biblical references identify Magog with the people of Japheth, Kush and Shem, whose lines intermarried.

Genesis 10:2-4 tells us that "The sons of Japeth: Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan: Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim."

Here we note the blood relationship of Magog with two names that help us to make connections to Kush and Shem.  The name Tubal is a Hamitic or Kushitic name and Meshech is a Semitic name.  The names Meshech and Tubal appear in Assyrian inscriptions as Muschu and Tabal.

Here is how the relationship of the peoples is explained in the Hungarian Legend of the White Stag:

The Legend of the White Stag ascribes the origin of the Hungarians to the merging of three peoples: Huns, Magyars and Alans. Since the Alans, together with the Yazyg and Roxlans are classified as Massagetas in early records and as Sarmatians in later ones, henceforth the terms "Alan", "Yazyg", "Roxlan" and "Massageta" will be mentioned as "Sarmatian" in order to make this essay more intelligible, avoiding synonymous or quasi-synonymous terms (unless specification is required). They are identified with the Moshkhi of the Assyrian chronicles and Meshekh of the Bible. (From here.)

The connection of the three strands descending from Noah are also mentioned in Ezekiel 38:1-4: The word of the LORD came to me: Son of man, set your face toward Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him and say, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal; and I will turn you about, and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you forth, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed in full armor, a great company, all of them with buckler and shield, wielding swords . . .

Ezekiel 39:1  "And you, son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal . . ."

By the time of the prophet Ezekiel, Gog appears to have gained prominence over and is regarded as chief of the sons of Japeth. Notice that the name Gog doesn’t actually appear in Genesis 10:2-4. Yet the Prophet recognized that Gog and Magog are associated.

When encountering two names that are related it is necessary to look for a third related name because Genesis presents familial units in groups of three. We find the third name, Og, in Numbers 21:33, so that we are able to speak of the familial confederation of Magog, Gog and Og, with Gog having prominence by the time of Ezekiel (593-571 B.C.).

Because Ezekiel specifically prophesies against this confederation, the names Gog and Magog came to represent forces that oppose God and God’s people. Consider this reference from the book of Revelation.

Rev. 20:6-10 “Blessed and holy is he who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years. And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison, and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the earth, that is, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city; but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

Before 500 AD, references to Gog and Magog occur in the preserved sermons and letters of St. Jerome and other early Christians. These references indicated that the names had become associated with threats to Christendom. In other words, the names were used allegorically to represent invasion of Christian lands and/or oppression of Christians. Gog and Magog are used, as Rome and Babylon are used in the book of Revelation, as archetypes of worldly rebellion against God and God’s kingdom. This is the time when the Roman Empire was seriously weakened by invaders from the north.  However, to equate the Huns and Magyar (Magog) with anti-Christ goes too far since there were Christians among these northern peoples. The Keraits, allies of Genghis Khan, converted to Christianity in the 11th century. One of their leaders, Toghrul, gained fame as far west as France and Spain for his victories over the Muslims.

The name Og is mentioned in Numbers 21:33. According to the Bedouins, Og is the town of Koraki, about 2 days journey from the Jordan River. According to the Archimandrite Joachim Spetsieris, Og (Koraki or Horaki) had about 400 families of both Muslim and Orthodox Arabs in 1890. In the late 1800s, an ascetical monk, Fr. Kallistratos, lived for 3 years in a cave across the Jordan near Koraki and the people of the village lowered food to him using ropes from above the cave.

An ancient legendary hero, Csaba, (from whom the Hungarian Scholar Hagrita Csaba is descended) is said to trace ancestry back to the Horites. Csaba was a shepherd priest who was a guardian of the people. He married a Khwarezmian woman, and Khwarezm was founded by the Horites. This is evident in the Old Persian word Huwarazmish which is related to the Ancient Horite word for ruler-priests (Harwa) who controlled the major waters systems in the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.  Various versions of khwar/khar/khor/hor are used around the Persian Gulf for tidal flats, marshlands, or tidal bays (e.g., Khor Musa, Khor Abdallah, Hor al-Azim, Hor al-Himar, etc.). There are also Indian Scythians of the Csaba tribe from Khwarezm who migrated eastward and settled in India.

The Magyar-ab, or Tribe of Magyar (Magog), still live along the Nile River in Egypt and Sudan. Their ancestors moved east and north during the time of the Afro-Asiatic expansion under Nimrod the Kushite and the Sudra (Sudanese) and Dravidians.

Magog, Gog and Og are Afro-Asiatic peoples who settled along the Ural and Atlas Mountains.  This explains why Hungarian is not an Indo-European language.  It is in the same language family as Finnish, Samoyed, and languages of western Mongolia.

Magog, Gog and Og are one of many 3-part confederations based on kinship. Consider this list:

Cain Abel Seth (Gen. 4-5)
Ham Japeth Shem (Gen. 5-9)
Og Gog Magog (Gen. 10 and Nu. 21:33)
Haran Nahor Abraham (Gen. 11-12)
Ishmael Jokshan Isaac (Gen. 16, 21, and 25)
Jeush Jalam Korah (Gen. 36: 4-18)
Korah Moses Aaron  (Ex. and Nu.)
Dedan Tema Buz (Jeremiah 25)

Conclusion
The biblical material we have examined has a specific cultural context and is very old. Although allegory and legends have developed around Gog and Magog, there is no reason to doubt the historicity of these peoples or of any of the peoples mentioned in the Table of Nations (Gen. 10). However, the textual evidence does not support the notion that all the peoples of the earth come from Noah since all the peoples listed in Genesis 10 are in only two of the 17 languages families: Afro-Asiatic and a few in the Altaic-Uralic group. Nor should Gog and Magog be regarded as anti-Christ forces destined to play a role at the end of time. Instead these represent a 3-clan confederation of peoples whose worldview is essentially Afro-Asiatic and who have blood connections to Abraham and his Horite people.

NOTES

1. Two trends among American Evangelicals undermine good Biblical interpretation:  Dispensational End Times theology and Young Earth Creationism.

2. There appears to be a linguistic connection between the words olkut, ogor and orkut, words meaning tribe, clan or community. These are not close to the Nubian word for tribe which is ab, so I suspect they are related to the Kandahar dialect, which is related to Tir-hari. Tir is a form of the name Tiras, mentioned in Genesis 10 and hari is a form of the word for Horite.


Related reading: The Kushite-Kushan Connection; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection: The Mighty Men of Old; Kushite Kings and the Kingdom of God; The Descendants of Noah