Political Zionism Does Not Align With the Bible

Alice C. Linsley

The yellow shows lands in which Palestinians lived before 1917 (left)
 and their limited land holdings in 2012 (right)

All peoples have a yearning for a homeland because it defines their ethnic identity. Scots who came to North America named the places where they settled after their native land: Nova Scotia. Midlothia, Inverness, Kirkland, etc. It is natural for dispersed peoples to yearn for the homeland, be it a real or an imagined. This is especially true when the homeland has been perceived to have been lost. The earliest sentiments of yearning can be traced to the Babylonian exile when the people of Judah yearned for restoration. Yearning for a homeland is reinforced by experiences of separation and loss, be they real or imagined.

The modern state of Israel was settled mainly by Ashkenazi Jews whose ancestors settled in France, the Rhine Valley and Poland. They are descendants of non-Jewish mothers and therefore not ethnically Jews. In fact, studies reveal that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically closer to the old Welsh than to most Arab populations.

Genetic studies have revealed that many who self-identify as Jewish are descendants of non-Jewish mothers who presumably converted to Judaism. Jon Entine. "Ashkenazi Jewish Women Descended Mostly from Italian Converts, New Study Asserts." Genetic Literacy Project (October 8, 2013). Excerpts:

"[...] Professor Martin Richards, who heads the University of Huddersfield's Archaeogenetics Research Group (and who participated in the 2002 study), and colleagues sequenced 74 mitochondrial genomes and analyzed more than 3,500 mitochondrial genomes - far more data than the 2006 survey, which reviewed only a short length of the mitochondrial DNA, containing just 1,000 or so of its 16,600 DNA units, in all their subjects. [...] According to Nicholas Wade of the New York Times, Doron Behar, one of the key authors of the 2006 analysis, said he disagreed with the conclusions, but has provided no detailed critique as yet. Wade also talked to David Goldstein, who said he believed the estimate that 80 percent of Ashkenazi Jewry originated in Europe was too high considering the unpredictability of mitochondrial DNA data. [...]"

The principal justification of political Zionism is that God gave the Jews the land of Israel and therefore it should be returned to the Jews. Zionists attempt to validate the Jewish claim to the land by insisting that Jews have always been in Israel. This is expressed in Melvin Koller's book. He writes:

The Jews did not come to Israel from anywhere else at any time. They have been there from time immemorial. They became a coherent people there, discovered God there, built a kingdom there, created the Torah there, and composed much of the Talmud there. Attempts to evict them partly succeeded, but their presence there has always been significant. Wherever they were in exile they longed to go back there, and in every generation some did. Their presence there is permanent, and future attempts to evict them will incur a huge cost.

However, this justification does not find support in Scripture, history or science.  Zionism as a political and religious ideology represents the gradual building up of a belief that has little to do with the Bible or anthropological evidence. This is set forth very convincingly by Shlomo Sand in his book The Invention of the Jewish People.

Sand explains, "it was only the appearance of prenationalist Jewish historiography in the latter half of the nineteenth century that gave the Bible a leading role in the drama of the rise of the modern Jewish nation. The book was transferred from the shelf of theological tracts to the history section... Above all, the Bible became an ethnic marker, indicating a common origin for people of very different backgrounds..." (page 127).

Most important to the study of Biblical Anthropology is the Zionist insinuation that God gave the present land of Israel to Abraham. The data of Scripture makes it clear that Abraham's territory did not correspond to the present land of Israel. Abraham ruled in ancient Edom which includes parts of Israel and Jordan.

Abraham's territory extended between his two wives. Sarah resided in Hebron and Keturah resided in Beersheba. Both Hebron and Beersheba were in ancient Edom. Edom was ruled by the Horite Hebrew and many of those rulers are listed in Genesis 36. Abraham was a Horite Hebrew ruler, not a Jew. Further, the substance of Abraham's faith does not correspond to the substance of Judaism.

The Horite Hebrew were a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Ra, Horus and his mother Hathor. Hathor was the patroness of Horite metal workers. Her shrine was found at the metal working site of Timnah. The Horite metal workers of Edom used the same techniques as the Horite metal workers who lived in the Timnah Valley in the Wilderness of Paran. Esau the Elder's son Eliphaz married Seir's daughter who was named Timnah.

The Horite rulers of Edom are listed in Genesis 36. Edom was ruled by the Horite clans of Seir and Esau the Elder who married Adah. Esau the Elder was a contemporary of Seir the Horite.

Esau the Younger married Oholibamah. It is possible that Esau the Younger was Jacob's half-brother, rather than his twin. Their father was Isaac, but they would have had different mothers, as Horite Hebrew rulers had two wives.

Abraham's territory was entirely in the region of Edom. It extended between on a north-south axis between Hebron and Beersheba and on an east-west axis between Engedi and Gerar. This region was called Idumea by the Greeks which means "land of red people." Esau, Abraham's grandson, and David are described as having a distinctive red skin tone. It is a characteristic of the R1b rulers who were aggressive kingdom builders. Their point of origin is the Nile Valley during the African Wet Period.

An early population living in Wales and Cornwall were the Damoni, which means “red people.” The word Dam-oni is derived from two words found in the Bible: dam, a reference to red and blood, and oni/On, a reference to the great shrine city of Heliopolis, biblical On (Genesis 41:45). Joseph married the daughter of a priest of On. The Dam-oni may have come from Carnac (Karnac) in Brittany because the stone monoliths in Damnonia are like those in Carnac, though smaller. On the Nile, the ancient shrine at Karnak was built with huge stones by skillful craftsmen, the likely ancestors of these early inhabitants of Cornwall.

Hebron and Beersheba (where Keturah lived)
mark the northern and southern boundaries of ancient Idumea.
Abraham's territory extended between the settlements of his two wives
and was entirely in the region of Edom/Idumea.

Horite priests were attached to the rulers of many territories in the ancient world. Some are associated in ancient Egyptian records with the Shasu on Nubia and Edom. Lists of place names in Nubian temples of Soleb and Amara West record six toponyms located in “the land of Shasu.” A monument of Ramesses II claims that he “has plundered the Shasu-land, captured the mountain of Seir”in Edom; a 19th Dynasty letter mentions “the Shasu-tribes of Edom” and Ramesses III declares that he has “destroyed the Seirites among the tribes of the Shasu.” Clearly, the Egyptians regarded the Shasu as a prominent part of the Edomite population which is described in Genesis 36.

The claim that God gave Abraham the land of Israel is not supported by the biblical evidence. This ideological claim is rooted less in the Bible than in what the rabbis have written and in the political realities facing Palestinians and Israelis today.

Y-chromosome studies have shown that 2/3 of Palestinians and 2/3 of Jews share 3 male ancestors who lived about 8000 years ago. These are the descendants of Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors, some of whom who are listed in the Genesis King Lists. Anthropologists have learned a great deal about the kingdom-building activities of these archaic rulers.


Myth and Reality

Zionism is well entrenched in American academia. Shaye Cohen at Harvard admits that the conception of Abraham as the first Jew does not represent historical reality, yet he seeks to perpetuate this "myth" instead of admit that Abraham was a Horite ruler. Cohen admits that his portrayal of Abraham as the father of the Jews lacks historical support. He says, "Historically speaking, of course, this doesn't make much sense. It's hard to talk about Jews living around the year 1800 B.C.E. or anytime near that." Cohen admits that this view of Abraham as the first Jew is of a "mythic kind". He states, "So in a mythic kind of way we can say that Abraham recognizes God and that Abraham launches the process—biological and social and cultural—that will culminate in the people of Israel, who in turn will become Jews and the purveyors of Judaism." In this statement, Cohen gets one thing right: Abraham recognized God.  So did his Proto-Saharan, cattle-herding ancestors. Some of Abraham's descendants by his nine sons can be identified as Jews, others as Arabs, and many others are of a mixed genetic heritage. Is Cohen attempting to sell the myth of Jewish purity?

When asked in this NOVA interview whether Abraham was the founder of monotheism, Dr.Cohen states, "Ancient Jewish storytellers thought the answer was yes, and following them Christian storytellers thought the same. However, reading historically, we realize monotheism is a very difficult and elusive concept to define. Again, it's far too simple to say that Abraham discovers monotheism."

Melvin Konner teaches in the anthropology, human biology, and Jewish studies programs at Emory. In his book Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews (Penguin 2004), he claims:

The great Jewish gifts to the world - monotheism, the Ten Commandments, resistance against tyranny - were born in weakness in a group of tribes, then a kingdom, buffeted between great empires; nurtured in a series of bitter exiles; and annealed in genocide. This produced allegiance to a single all-powerful God who could protect them, a code of laws that maintained decency in the face of perversions of power, and a searing sense of injustice.

It simply is not true that the Jews gave us monotheism. Monotheism existed in ancient Kush long before the Jews were identifiable as a distinct people. Archaeological and anthropological evidence indicates that the Horite priests as early as 3000 B.C. believed in a single supreme creator.

The Ten Commandments is indeed a gift from Judaism to the world, though it has antecedents in the oldest known moral code, the Law of Tehut.


Abraham ruled in Edom

Abraham's territory was in the region of Edom. Abraham was kin to the Horite rulers of Edom who are named in Genesis 36. This was the territory that Isaac received as Abraham's proper heir and in Abraham's time the Horites controlled a larger area than that identified as Edom 800 BC.

Edom about 800 BC.
 

The Bible and anthropological evidence indicate that Abraham's Horite ancestors originated in the Nile Valley. Nimrod, the son of Kush (Gen. 10), established his kingdom into the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. Nahor the Elder, his son Terah, and Abraham were descendants of Nimrod. They were ethnically Kushites and they belonged to the Horite caste of ruler-priests. The Horites controlled Edom, Southern Judah, and a large part of Arabia. Among them are people who would be identified today as Arabs. Josephus reported that the descendants of Abraham by Keturah were called "Horites" and, quoting an ancient historian, speaks of them as "conquerors of Egypt and founders of the Assyrian Empire."

The Jews claim to be descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, yet from the beginning the Habiru (Hebrew) lines intermarried, so that Jews, many Arabs, some Egyptians and Edomites share a common gene pool. Analysis of the Genesis king lists reveals that the lines of Cain and Seth intermarried, the lines of Ham and Shem intermarried and the lines of Nahor and Abraham intermarried. There was also intermarriage between these lines and the Horite rulers named in Genesis 36.

Abraham's ancestors came from the Nile Valley. Genesis 10 tells us that Nimrod was a Kushite kingdom builder. He was a sent-away son whose territory extended from Haran and Ur. According to Genesis 12, Abraham's father ruled this territory, and after his death, it was ruled by his son Nahor, Abraham's older brother. Then Abraham became a sent-away son to whom God promised a territory of his own. When it comes to yearning for a homeland, Jews might as well yearn for a homeland along the Nile. Linguistic, genetic, and anthropological evidence indicates that is their point of origin

DNA studies confirm the migration of the Nilotic Kushites out of Africa before Abraham's time. The Kushite rulers spread across a vast area of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion, but the identification of a people called "Jews" came much later, after the Babylonia captivity. In Babylon the people of Judah experienced great suffering, far greater than that endured by their ancestors in Egypt. Zionism emerges out of their experience of exile and suffering. It is an expression of a people's determination to possess and control a land that they believe they lost.

Unfortunately, political Zionism it is bolstered by Bible passages that were never intended to exclude the descendants of Abraham through all of his nine sons. These are sons to whom Abraham gave gifts. They ruled over territories as kings and viziers and all married and ascended according to the pattern of their Nilo-Saharan ancestors.

The ethnic landscape of Palestine, Judah and Edom is complex historically. Peoples mixed more than is granted by the Jewish myth of racial purity. Anthropologically, some Jews and some Arabs have Horite blood. The true Horites did not mix with people outside their caste. The Horite ruler-priest lines intermarried.

Genetics tells the story rather well. J1 and T1 have a wide dispersion: Anatolia, Yemen, north-east Africa, Saudi Arabia, Madagascar, the Fertile Crescent, and the Caucasus. These are the many places to which the archaic rulers dispersed, taking with them their royal priests. ZS227 is a subclade of J1. ZS227 includes the Kohen haplotype found among both Jews and Arabs. The Kohen modal haplotype (CMH) is the signature haplotype of the paternally inherited Jewish priesthood (Thomas et al. 1998). J1-ZS227 is one of the most common subclades among Ashkenazi people. So there is no doubt about the dominant priest lineage of the Ashkenazi, but their maternal lineage is not "Jewish" and therefore, by the accepted standard, they are not Jewish. However, they are descendants of the Horites.

Related reading:  Who Were the Horites?; The Genesis King Lists; Who Were the Kushites?; The Migration of Abraham's Ancestors; Some Jews and Some Arabs Have Horite Blood; Petra Reflects Horite Beliefs; The Daughters of Horite Priests; Sub-Saharan DNA of Modern Jews; African Religion Predates Hinduism; The Religion of the Saka; The Religion of the Archaic Rulers

12 Blogs on Creation and Evolution

Alice C. Linsley


Someone sent me a link to this list of "creationist" blogs and asked me to post it for my readers. Most of the blogs represent theistic evolution.  Unique among all the blogs on creation and evolution, Just Genesis

• takes an anthropological approach to the study of Genesis
• acknowledges the great age of the earth and of human existence
• rejects Darwinian theory on the basis that the material evidence isn't there
• asserts that Genesis interprets itself on questions of origins
• shows that the first verifiably historical persons in Genesis are kings listed in Genesis 4 and 5
• examines the material in its original cultural context, that of ancient Nilotic peoples
• argues that Genesis isn't about human origins. It is about the origin of Messianic expectation among Abraham's Kushite ancestors

Egyptian Shrines on the Horus Way

Alice C. Linsley

The Egyptian military road called the "Way of Horus" stretched approximately 350 kilometers (217 miles) across the northern Sinai desert and connected the Nile Delta to Canaan. During Egypt's imperial expansion, it gave access to routes running north into Mesopotamia and Turkey. Genesis indicates that the early Hebrew dispersed out of the Nile Valley into Arabia, Canaan, and Mesopotamia. Some would have traveled the Horus Way.

The Horus Way ran through Tharu (Tjaru/Sile) in the Sinai and Rafah in Gaza, joining the Nile Valley to the Levant. There were numerous Egyptian fortifications along the Horus Way. These were under the rule of the Egyptian kings whose patron was HR, meaning "Most High One" in ancient Egyptian. The Greeks called him Horus.

Exodus 14:2 says the Israelites crossed near Migdol. Migdol refers to a fortification. This is likely the Migdol of Men-maat-re (Seti I), the third named fort along the ancient Horus Way. The Horite Hebrew would have known of this route. The place of crossing is a shallow marshy lake which recedes when the wind blows at 40-50 mph for more than 5 hours. As with all the miraculous signs described in Exodus, the miracle is in the timing.

The Egyptians had fortified settlements at many locations. During the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2200–1500 BC) as much as 70% of the populations of Canaan lived in these fortified towns. Tell el-‘Ajjul is one example. Another is the fortified city of Gezer with its gate, tower, and protected water system. These would have been built under the direction of the ruler of the area, probably a vassal of the Pharaoh. The Judean high places were under the control of Egypt from about 2000 to 1178 BC. The tenth century BC Gezer Calendar appears to reflect Nilotic farming practices. The Gezer Calendar is a small limestone tablet listing seasonal agricultural activities in seven lines of uneven letters. Christopher Rollston contends “there is no lexeme or linguistic feature in the Gezer Calendar that can be considered distinctively Hebrew” and Joseph Naveh says that “No specifically Hebrew characters can be distinguished.” (From here.)

The Egyptians built shrines and temples wherever they went. The first New Kingdom temple ever found in northern Sinai has been located at Tharu. There was a shrine dedicated to Horus with the image of a lion.

On Seti I's relief at the Karnak complex, a map of the Horus Way shows 11 forts and a north-south reed lined waterway called “ta denit” (the dividing waters). Likely, there were Horus shrines at all of these forts, and these would have been attended by Horus priests, some of whom were Horites Hebrew and Sethite Hebrew. The Hebrew priest caste is identified by various names, including Habiru, Hapiru, Abrutu, Abhira, ‘Apiru, and Abiru. These are derived from the ancient Akkadian word Abru, meaning "priest". This Wikipedia article is about the Abiru caste of "royal ritualists" found in Rwanda.

A part of Seti I's relief shows him herding captives before his chariot. He approaches a north-south canal or waterway with reeds and crocodiles and Egyptian buildings. Some believe that Tharu was on the east side of this waterway. Max Muller said that "no town of the eastern delta frontier has a greater importance than Tharu [i.e. Tjaru], which was not only its largest town, but also the principal point for the defense of the entrance to Egypt, therefore also for the military and mercantile roads to the East." (James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition, 1997: 184.)

The Egyptians also built Horus temples in their administrative centers such as Beit She’an on the Jordan.  A large Canaanite temple excavated by the University of Pennsylvania Museum may date from about the period as Thutmose III’s conquest, but excavations done by The Hebrew University indicate that this temple was built upon an older one. The excavation included three monumental basalt stelae with inscriptions from the reign of Seti I and Ramsess II, a life-size statue of Ramsess III, and numerous other Egyptian stelae and inscriptions, which constitute the most significant assemblage of Egyptian monuments ever  found in Israel. Of special interest is the discovery near the temple of a basalt relief depicting two combat scenes between a lion and a dog.

Beit She'an was called Scythopolis by the Greeks. Beit She'an was also called Beth-abarah (House of the Ford) because it was opposite the ford in the Jordan. The Arabic word for ford is abarah. Sir George Grove in Dictionary of the Bible identifies Bethabarah as Beth Nimrah, a few miles above Jericho. Jesus was probably baptized here by John.

If this is the water shrine where Jesus was baptized, we have another connection to the Horite Hebrew expectation of the Son/Seed of God (Gen. 3:15). Could it be that He is the Lion of the shrine in Tharu on the Horus Way and the Lion on the stela found near the most ancient temple in Beit She'an? Horus, called the son of Ra, was often shown as a man with the head of a lion or a falcon. Sometimes he is shown as a solar disk between two guardian lions, one looking east and the other looking west.

Among the Nubians the sun was a central symbol of life and was often shown as a red orb. This lent the additional association with the red eye of Horus. In this ancient Nubian relief we see baboons facing the sun. Baboons chatter at the rising sun. In other versions two lions or two leopards face away from the sun. They are sentinels or guards. The ankh or cross symbol is found over the heads of the baboons.

Between the baboons is the dung beetle or scarab. Among Abraham's Horite caste the heart was the single organ that was not extracted from the mummified body. All the other organs were removed and stored in canopic jars. The heart was the essential organ when it came to resurrection of the body, as it would be weighed in the afterlife. The body of the pure heart would rise from the dead, as the sun rises in the morning. This is the significance of the dung beetle scarab placed over the mummy's heart.

Some claim that this image represents Duat which they interpret as the cycle of reincarnation or the transmigration of souls. However, the Duat of ancient Egypt is not the same as Samsara. It is about the mirror image of the cosmos patterned on the Sun's rising and setting. The long expected ruler rises from death with the sun on the third day.

Oh Horus, this hour of the morning, of this third day is come, when thou surely passeth on to heaven, together with the stars, the imperishable stars. (Pyramid Texts Utterance 667.1941b)

The body of the dead ruler was carried in procession to the tomb or pyramid, his retinue following behind. The procession to the tomb was the earthly journey that would be continued beyond the grave at the deified ruler's resurrection. This stands behind Paul’s description of Jesus Christ leading captives from the grave to the throne of heaven. This is why it says: When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men. (Eph. 4:8)

In the image above, the eyes of Horus are seen to the right and left of the rising sun. This establishes the theological context as Horite. Abraham's ancestors were devotees of Horus, the seed or son of Ra. He was born of Hathor, who conceived by the overshadowing of the sun. Her totem was a cow and she is shown overshadowed by the sun, the symbol of the High God among the early Hebrew. Here we have evidence of the early Hebrew expectation that a virgin of their ruler-priest caste would conceive by divine overshadowing, as happened with the Virgin Mary (Luke 1:34).

One of the shrines on the Horus Way was at Timnah. Aome of the copper mines here are at least 6,000 years old and there are about 10,000 shafts. The oldest mines were worked almost continuously until the Roman Period. There are ancient rock carvings showing Kushite warriors in chariots, holding axes and shields. A temple dedicated to Hathor, the mother of Horus, was discovered at the southwestern edge of Mt. Timnah by Professor Beno Rothenberg of Hebrew University.


Related reading:  Of Dung Beetles and Red Herrings; Solar Imagery of the Proto-Gospel; Abraham's Complaint; The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative; Science and Miracles

What's Lost When Women Serve as Priests?

Alice C. Linsley


The short answer: the very integrity of the divine office.

Savvy, a reader of Just Genesis, has asked this question after reading The Origins of the Priesthood: "Are you saying that men carry blood guilt and women do not? So a priest representing Christ has to be male, to atone for this guilt. But, did Jesus not come to save both men and women."

Blood guilt and anxiety is in all people. It was very acutely felt by people in earlier times because they believed in the Creator and knew that the One who gives life is the only One who can take life. Since they associated blood with life, any shed blood was a cause for anxiety and had to be accounted for.

The priest stands at the altar as the icon of the Great High Priest, of which there is really only one: Jesus Christ. All priests are mere reflections of Him. The reflection is marred when priests are not pure. The reflection is corrupted when a woman stands at altar as a priest.

Further, women were never priests because the priest took the life of the animal. The life-taking work of the priest and the life-giving work of women are binary opposites and the life-giving work is superior. This understanding is lost when women serve as priests.

Jesus is the only way to salvation for both males and females. Jesus' kenotic act was to join himself fully to the human creature, and the human creature - both male and female - is "other" in reference to the Trinity.

In the biblical worldview, the Creator is always number one and the Referent by which all other entities derive meaning. The oldest system of communication probably employed only 1 and 2, allowing for mutual understanding before the development of more complex languages built upon a binary foundation. This would include the Divine and Other, and would apply to fixed observable entities that are binary opposites. This is suggested by comparison of the spelling sign language systems for the deaf used worldwide in which the first and second signs are almost universally the same.

For example, in Japanese signing, two index fingers held up with the palms facing represent two people facing each other.  Slowing bending the fingers toward each other makes the sign of two persons bowing to each other in the typical Japanese greeting. There is a universal logic to the first and second positions in the various sign languages for the deaf.

The universal application of the binary sequence, whether it be letters (A-B) or numbers (1-2), suggests an inherent logic common to all human communications.

The greatest love is shown when A submits to B or when 1 bows to 2. Whether that love is reciprocated matters not. So it is the great love of God that is demonstrated in the incarnation of  Christ our Lord. It goes against every message that the world declares and it goes against the instinct of the individual ego. Our Lord Jesus showed the full extent [eis telos] of his love when He stooped to become human, when He bowed to the creature, when He washed the disciples' feet. There can be no question that His condescension was an expression of divine love for all both males and females.

The Creator condescends to grant to the lesser a greater role. So it is that a young maiden, from the least of the tribes of Israel, should become the unwedded Bride of God and the ever-virgin Mother of Christ.

The biblical revelation of Jesus, whose coming as the Seed of the Woman was promised to Abraham's ancestors (Gen. 3:15), has a definite pattern.  The first to sin or to be lost are the first to recieve the message of redemption. The woman, who with the man was created just beneath the Creator, lowered herself to the status of a creature that goes with its belly on the ground. In doing so, she caused the inversion of the hierarchy of creation. God restores the original hierarchy in the incarnation of His Son by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.  God redeems the whole creation and gives life to the redeemed through the Blood of His Son.



Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest


The the sacramental work of the priest at the altar was instituted by Christ our God and Priest when He broke bread and shared the cup with his disciples before His death and resurrection.  None of the disciples were of the ruler-priests lines, as far as we know from Scripture and Tradition, so none of them would have been qualified to institute the Euchartist.  We call it "the Lord's Supper" because it is exactly that. It must be taken on the grounds and according to the tradition that it respresents, which included the all-male priesthood to which Jesus belonged.

Nazareth was the home of the eighteenth priestly division, ha·pi·TSETS (Happizzez). In 1962 excavators discovered in the ruins of a synagogue at Caesarea a small piece of a list of the twenty-four priestly divisions. This marble fragment is inscribed with the names of where four of the divisions resided, including Nazareth, the residence of Happizzez. Joseph's family lived in Nazareth, the home of the priestly division of Happizzez (1 Chronicles 24:15).

The Virgin Mary's full title would have been "Miriam Daughter of Joachim Son of Pntjr (Panther) Priests of Nathan of Beth Lehem." From the earliest predynastic times, ntjr designated the king among Abraham's Horite people. The name Panther or p-ntjr means "God is King."

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

The words happi and ntjr originate in the Nile Valley, as do the names of many of the ruler-priests listed in the genealogies in Luke and Matthew. Melchi, a name that appears twice in Mary's ancestry, means "my image" in Amharic and refers to the Creator King.

Mary's father was Joachim, a shepherd priest from Bethlehem. I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hur (Hor) as the "father of Bethlehem." The author of Chronicles knew that Bethlehem was originally a Horite settlement in the heart of Horite territory. The prophets foretold Bethlehem as the birth place of the Son of God.  Children were registered according to the clan of their mothers, just as today Jewish identity is traced through the mother, not the father.

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... (Lk. 1:5, 8)

Mary and Elizabeth were of the ruler-priests lines, as were their husbands Joseph and Zachariah.  Priests only married the chaste daugthers of priests.  This endogamous practice originated with their Nilotic ancestors who are listed in Genesis 4 and 5.  There are many rabbinic traditions attesting to this practice. For instance, Rabbi Tarfon states that when he was a boy he stood on the steps outside the sanctuary to participate in the priestly benediction with "Shimshon, his mother's brother" (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:11). This indicates that his uncle Shimshon was a priest, and that Tarfon's mother was also of priestly stock.

The historical importance of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, according to the tradition He received from his Horim must not be overlooked or minimized.  The Christian priest stands at altar as the icon of Christ and that image is distorted when the form at the altar is that of a female.


Related reading:  Mary's Priestly Lineage; Gender Reversal and Sacred Mystery; The Importance of Binary Distinctions; Blood and Binary Distinctions; God as Male Priest; C.S. Lewis' Priestesses in the Church?

Potiphar, Son of Horus

Alice C. Linsley


Potiphar bought Joseph as a slave. Potiphar's wife attempted to seduce Joseph. Potiphera was Joseph's father-in-law and a priest of the Temple in Heliopolis. Heliopolis is Biblical On and was an Ainu shrine.

A reader has asked whether Potiphar and Potifera might be the same person. I think not. There is no reason to assume that the officer of Pharaoh's guard, whose wife attempted to seduce Joseph, is the same man as Joseph's father-on-law who was a priest. The men are ascribed different roles. One is a priest and the other is a warrior. It is more likely that their names indicate their high status in a ancient society that valued hierarchical order. Both names relate to the deity Horus. This is evident from reading the Potiphar Stela which has this designation "Putiphar son of ‘Ankh-Hor".

Potifra is the likely form of the name and it suggests a title. Referring to Proverbs 8:33, Ibn Erza holds that the phrase al-tifra-u means something like "don't change the order."  The verse says: "Listen to my instruction and become wise. Don't change the order." This suggests that the name Potifra was not uncommon among ranking men who were part of the established order in Egypt.

The widely accepted interpretation of Potiphera is that it is derived from the Egyptian Pa-di-Pre, “the gift of the Re.” This seems less likely than my suggestion that the name is related to the word tifra, meaning order. The view that the names Potiphar and Potiphera refer to men of high rank is supported by the stela of Potiphera in Cairo Museum. This is the single extra-Biblical occurance of the name. It dates to the 21st Dynasty (ca. 1070–945 BC).

Horus was regarded as the Deity who established the order in creation and none were to attempt to change that order. Horus set the boundaries of the horizons, the directions of the winds, and the currents of the seas. Horos (oros in Greek) refers to the boundaries of an area, or a landmark, or a term. From horos come the words hour, horizon, horoscope and Horologion (both the book and the wind tower). The association of Horus with the horizon is seen in the word Har-ma-khet, meaning Horus of the Horizon. The association of Horus with the wind is seen in the word Har-mat-tan, referring to the dry wind that seasonally blows across the Sahara.The word horotely describes the rate and boundaries of evolutionary change for a given group of plants or animals.


Societal structure among the ancient Horites

Societies of the ancient world were characterized by castes. The ruler was the highest in rank and those who served him were next in rank. This included scribes, priests, metalworkers and warriors.

In the hierarchical order Joseph would have held a very high rank. This is evident in his marriage to the daughter of the high priest of Heliopolis. Asenath, Joseph's wife, was probably a cousin to Joseph and her first born son belonged to her father's shrine. Ephraim, the younger son, belonged to the House of Jacob. This explains why Jacob gave him the blessing that pertained to the first-born (Gen. 48:14). In 1949, Claude Levi-Strauss recognized that in system where ruling lineage is traced through the fathers the mother and son do not belong to the same household.

Asenath or Asnat combines two ancient Egyptian words: As or Asa, a name for God, and nt meaning Lord, as in tera neter, priest of the Lord. Her name means As or Asa is Lord. The name appears in association with the Divine Name Yahu in Judah (Asayahu). Anath was also called Mari-Anath and many water shrines were dedicated to her. These were places where women came to ask the Creator for children. These were also places of healing (compare to story in John 5). It is likely that Mari-Anath is the same deified mother as Hathor-Mari, the mother of Horus.  

Reproduction of Stela of Potiphera

The stela has four lines of large hieroglyphs written from right to left. They say:

A boon which the King gives Osiris, the Spirit of his Olive-tree, that he may give offerings consisting of bread, beer, oxen, fowls and every good and pure thing on which the god lives to the Ka of the revered, the guardian of the chamber of Ptah who is under his olive-tree, Putiphar son of ‘Ankh-Hor [born of....] mistress of reverence for ever.

Here we find a direct connection between the name Potiphar and Horus. Potiphar is said to be the son of Ankh-Hor. Anhk-Hor means "Horus, may He live forever."  The story of Joseph, like the story of Abraham, winds around Horite belief and practice. In fact, all the rulers listed in the Genesis King Lists were Horites. The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Horus and his father Ra.


Related reading:  The Enigma of Joseph; The Joseph Narrative; Who Were the Horites?; The Daughters of Horite Priests; The Nilotic Origin of the Ainu; Jesus Fulfills the Horus Myth

The Jordan River

Nehar haYarden (Hebrew)
Nahr al-Urdun (Arabic)

 Alice C. Linsley


The Jordan's source is near the northern most point of Palestine and issues from the cave of Paneas, about one hour's distance south of the town of Banias. The Hebrew and Arabic names are Yarden and Urdun, meaning "descender" because the river flows down from a higher altitude.

The Jordan River is mentioned only three times in Genesis. The first is Genesis 13:10 where the Jordan Plain is described as well watered, "Like the garden of the Lord or the land of Egypt." Today the Jordan cuts so deep into the earth that it is difficult to imagine much of a plain. Most places along the Jordan are not suitable for cultivation. This suggests that Abraham and Lot dwelt where the land had a gentler slope down to the river. This would be closer to Jericho, probably the longest continually inhabited city in the world.

The second mention of the Jordan is in Genesis 32:11.  Here Jacob speaks of crossing the Jordan to go to his mother's people in Padan Aram. Genesis doesn't tell us how Jacob crossed the river, but he likely paid a boatman to take him across at the place where the Jordan meets the Jabbock River, an eastern tributary. He would have continued by boat as far east as the ancient Jabbock allowed.  In Jacob's time the region was wetter and more of the water systems connected.

The Jordan River is mentioned again in Genesis 50:10 which speaks of Joseph and the Egyptians mourning for Jacob who was buried, not at Machpelah, but somewhere on the east side of Jordan. He was probably buried among the Horites living around Jabal Harun in Jordan.

The Jordan in Abraham's Time

Abraham and Lot are said to have gone separate ways, with Lot electing to live in the watered plain near Sodom and Abraham keeping to the higher ground along the ridges between Hebron and Beersheba. Genesis therefore tells us nothing of Abraham's experience of the Jordan. However, in Abraham's time the water level would have been higher due to greater run off in a less arid climate.  For example, 1 Kings 17:3 mentions a eastern tributary that flowed into the Jordan which no longer exists. It was called the Cherith.

We don't know what the Jordan was called in Abraham's time.  His people may have used the Egyptian word for river ar (similar to the Arabic nahr). In ancient times rivers and lakes were often called "seas" either because the people had no conception of a real sea or because many of the major water systems were connected. The peasants of ancient Egypt spoke of the Nile as a sea. The Sea of Galilee, which is a lake, is another example.

The Jordan River is ony 156 miles long (251 kilometers). It becomes wider and deeper as it flows southward to the Dead Sea (1,300 feet below sea level). Modern Jericho is only about six miles north of the Dead Sea and five miles west of the Jordan, but the earliest neolithic peoples settled there because it was a natural oasis, with a powerful natural spring and was near the Dead Sea. This earliest settlement at Tell es-Sultan was excavated by Kathleen Kenyon between 1952-58. She gave it the name of Ariha al-Ula, the first Jericho. In biblical times, this part of the Jordan was referred to as the "Jordan of Jericho" and there would have been a sizeable fertile plain in Abraham's time. It had palm trees and fields under cultivation most of the year.  It would indeed have been like Egypt.

Today the dry climate, diversion of tributaries, and massive salt evaporation projects in the southern part of the Dead Sea have caused dramatic drops in the sea’s level. However, photos taken from space (such as image on left) show that the ancient shorelines of the Jordan and the Dead Sea expanded beyond where they are today.

Related reading:  Genesis and Climate Change; Decline of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion; When the Sahara Was Wet; Water Systems Connected Nile and Central Africa; Water Cycles and Noah's Flood

N.T. Wright Should Admit His Own Church's Failing

Alice C. Linsley


The 1922 Report of the Commission on Doctrine in the Church of England is full of ambiguity when it comes to the question of Creation. The report states: "There are systems of Catholic Theology and of Protestant Theology. To them we have, of course, owed much. But there is not, and the majority of us do not desire that there should be a system of distinctively Anglican Theology." (p. 25)

No worry there. It seems that one can be Anglican and believe just about anything these days. In the USA some Episcopal clergy have been Muslims and Druids, though these were eventually defrocked.

Then there was the report about Bishop Bruno giving communion to Hindus. Like Episcopal bishop William Swing who promotes syncretism, Bruno wants fellowship with Hindus. He likely never read the Anglican statement that maintains that the Christian doctrine of Creation "is not to be confused with any doctrine which represents finite individuality as illusory or tends to blur moral distinctions... that both finite individuality and moral distinctions are lost in the Absolute."

The British theologian N.T. Wright may be frustrated with the American leadership of the Episcopal Church, (and rightly so), but he ought not to blame Americans for Bible literalism. Wright says that Americans have more difficulty interpreting Genesis than Brits because we tend to bundle Biblical literalism with conservative social values. I fully agree. Fundamentalist approaches are not helpful in forming a right understanding of Scripture and even less helpful as a basis for informed political views. Young Earth Creationism, for example, is neither Biblical nor scientific but it shapes many Americans' views on politics, family, and education.

Wright received a good amount of criticism for his remarks about the Americans and later stated at this blog, "My only real point was that as a Brit who spends a fair amount of time in America I find the American debates — including those reflected in this blog — to work with a completely different set of assumptions to those elsewhere, including Europe. This doesn’t mean Americans are wrong in the way they line things up and the rest of us are right, but it ought to give us all some critical distance on all of our polarizations."

That said, Wright needs to face that his own Church of England has been far from faithful in applying objectivity. Where is critical distance on the question of women priests and bishops?  Or on homosexuality? Or on the Nilotic parallels in Genesis creation stories?

The 1922 Commission on Doctrine certainly did not do the hard work of sorting out the threads of Genesis 1-3, opting instead for the briefest treatment on the question of Creation (not even 2 full pages) and the dismissal of the material with these words:

No objection to a theory of evolution can be drawn from the two Creation narratives in Gen. i and ii., since it is generally agreed among educated Christians that these are mythological in origin, and that their value for us is symbolic rather than historical.

One notes that the Church of England was quite ready, ahead of the facts, to embrace evolution in its earlier stages. We might agree on the facts of mutation and adaptation, but natural selection and survival of the fittest are hardly uniform laws of nature.

Such quick acquiescence to Darwin suggests that the Church of England had not investigated the binary distinctions evident in Genesis, or the question of a fixed order in creation, or the essentialism of the Biblical kinds. The Genesis claim is that genetic boundaries exist by which the kinds are fixed in essence. In genetics, this is called "horotely" and it aligns with the belief of Abraham's Hebrew ancestors that the Seed of the Creator - HR in ancient Egyptian, or Y-Shu - is the fixer of all boundaries. Within the kinds, there may be change in form, but not in essence. This is the view of a good number of great philosophers and should not be dismissed.

According to the early Nilotic Hebrew (4000-2000 BC), the first act of the Creator at the beginning was šw (Shu), meaning light. This is not the light of day. It is the eternal, uncreated light associated with the High God's son Y-shu (Yeshua), as proclaimed in John's Prologue.

There is also the concern that the labels "mythological" and "symbolic" in reference to Genesis 1 and 2 permit the Church of England to sidestep the philosophical and anthropological significance of this material. Not a single C or E scholar has acknowledged the binary reasoning of the biblical Hebrew, a pattern of thinking that underlies the whole of the Bible.

It is time for Christians on both sides of the Atlantic to set aside assumptions and look with greater objectivity at what Genesis tells us about the early Hebrew and their pervasive influence on the ancient world.


Related reading: Philosophers' Corner: Two Types of Binary Reasoning; Theories of Change and Constancy; Anglicanism on the Doctrine of Creation; Why the Name Jesus?; Rightly Reading Genesis 1-3; The United Religions Initiative, A Bridge Back to Gnosticism; Russian Church Seeks End to Darwinian Monopoly in Education; Binary Sets in the Ancient World

Anglicanism on the Doctrine of Creation

Alice C. Linsley


The following is from the 1938 publication of Doctrine in the Church of England, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. This is the report of the Commission on Christian Doctrine appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1922.  It is the closest thing to an Anglican statement of doctrine in modern times, but note the title: Doctrine in the Church of England, not Doctrine of the Church of England. The report reveals the considerable ambiguity of Anglicanism on central points of Christian doctrine. One such point treats Creation. What follows is the text of that portion, found on pages 44 and 45.


Part I: The Doctrines of God and of Redemption

Section III.  Creation

Christianity is committed to the doctrine that the world depends upon God as His creation.  Historically, this has been affirmed by the Fathers in the doctrine of creation "out of nothing" (εξ ουκ οντων), in opposition to the idea of creation out of an independent ύλη or matter.

On the relation of Creation to the time-process three main views have been put forward:
1) Many Christian teachers have held that the world had a beginning in time.
2) Augustine took over from Plato's Timaeus the suggestion that the world was created cum tempore - i.e., that time and the world are due to a single creative act.
3) Origen's view that Creation is an eternal process was generally rejected in the Ancient Church, but this view in a different form is now held by many Christian thinkers.

Christianity is not specifically committed to any of these views.

The universe depends upon the creative will of God. Any such view as that the finite universe proceeds by emanation from the Divine nature, as opposed to the view that it originates in the creative activity of the Divine will, is non-Christian.

It is to be recognized that the Christian doctrine of Creation as thus generally stated leaves abundant room for a variety of theories as to the evolution of the world. There is in any case a sense in which, on the Christian view, the creative activity of God must be regarded as continuous. No objection to a theory of evolution can be drawn from the two Creation narratives in Gen. i and ii., since it is generally agreed among educated Christians that these are mythological in origin, and that their value for us is symbolic rather than historical.  It is to be noted that a non-literal interpretation of these chapters is to be found in some ancient Fathers.

The Christian view excludes Pantheism. That God should be all in all is in the Christian view the ultimate goal of the creative process, but this is not to be confused with any docrtine which represents finite individuality as illusory or tends to blur moral distinctions, or which, while leaving these indeed in their own sphere, declares that this sphere is part of Appearance only, and that both finite individuality and moral distinctions are lost in the Absolute.

END


My response to this vacuous statement is here:  N.T. Wright Should Admit His Own Church's Failing

Some Hapiru Were Devotees of Horus

Alice C. Linsley


The Greek writer Homer alluded to two Kushite empires, when he wrote "a race divided, whom the sloping rays; the rising and the setting sun surveys." By Homer's time, the Afro-Asiatic Dominion that had been forged by the great rulers of old had become fragmented. These "mighty men of old" were served by warriors, priests, metalworkers, stone masons, vintners, scribes and sages. In ancient texts the ruler-priest caste is known as "Habiru," and the rulers were associated with the seven visible planets. This is evident in the Luo (Nilo-Saharan) word for seven: abiriyo. The word abir is a cognate of ha'biru, and Y is a solar symbol, as in the names of Habiru (Hebrew) rulers: Yaktan, Yishmael, Yitzak, Yosef, Yetro, Yeshua, etc.

Among the Habiru there were many peoples, including the Shasu, the Ainu and the Anakim. The last two words are related. Anak and his people the Anakim dwelt in the region of Hebron, where Sarah resided. They are associated with the Nephilim (Num. 13:33), with the Raphaim (Deut. 2:10) and with the Calebites (Josh.15:13). Supposedly, Caleb drove the Anakim out of the region, but there is much evidence that they remained well established in Canaan after the time of Caleb. Other related peoples are the Zumim and the Emim. Shrine cities, such as Hazor, were governed by Ha'biru, so the attempts of Joshua and Caleb to take these settlements indicates a power struggle between kinsmen rather than strangers. The ethnicity of all these peoples is Proto-Kushite and Kushite.

Homer recognized the Kushite cultural continuity that stretched from the Nile Valley to India. The religion of this ancient world spread through the agency of ruler-priests known as 'Apiru, Hapiru or Habiru (Hebrew). They served rulers who controlled water systems at a time when the Sahara, Mesopotamia, Pakistan and India were wetter.

Some of these ruler-priests were known as "Horites" because they were devotees of Horus, the son of Re. They regarded the sun as the emblem or symbol of Ra and Horus. Ha-biru and Ha-piru are derived from O-piru, meaning house or temple of the sun. The Arabic yakburu means “he is getting big” and with the intensive active prefix: yukabbiru means "he is enlarging." Likely this is a reference to the morning ritual of the Horite priests who greeted the rising sun as it expanded across the horizon.

The Egyptians called the temple attendants ˁpr.w, the w being the plural suffix. The Dravidian east-facing temple was termed O'piru, meaning Sun House.

Many Dravidian settlements and monuments are now submerged under the sea, but originally they were on a land bridge between the Arabian Peninsula and Southern Pakistan. This is sometimes referred to as the "Har-appa" civilization.  Har refers to Horus and "appa" is the Dravidian word meaning father. The origin of Dravidian religion was apparently Egypt and ancient Kush.

The oldest known center of Horite worship is Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) in Sudan. Votive offerings at the temple of Horus were up to ten times larger than the normal maceheads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine. Horite priests placed invocatins to Horus at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose.

In the ancient world, a temple was considered the mansion—hâît, or the house—pirû—of the deity. The Creator Râ lived in Heliopolis on the east side of the Delta; Hat-Hor, the virgin mother of Horus had her principal temple in Memphis to the south of Heliopolis and on the west side of the Nile. Horus, who was said to be one with his Father, lived further south in Hierakonpolis and Edfu on the west side of the Upper Nile.

Râ, Hathor-Meri and Horus represent the typical Egyptian triad, but to properly understand the relationship of the three, we must consider the relative locations of the temples. Hat-Hor represents the Feminine Principle, and as such is located to the south (the direction associated with birth).  Râ is to the north, and as his symbol is the Sun, his temple is on the east side of the Nile. Horus is to the southwest, the direction associated with the future and with birth. Against those who claim that Abraham's Horite ancestors were polytheists, we must note that only Horus and Hathor-Meri are ever shown in human form, and usually together.

The Horite ruler-priests were kingdom-builders, such as Nimrod, one of Abraham's ancestors. This meant they engaged in war, as did Abraham when he battled the kings who had fought against his Horite people (Gen. 14:6) and taken Lot captive (Gen. 14:12). One of Abraham's nephews was named Thahash or Tahash, meaning skins. Tahash probably tanned the hides of sacrificed animals.  Exodus 25:5 speaks of "five rams' skins dyed red, and tahash skins..." 

Diffusion of the Horite belief system was driven by three factors: migration out of ancient Kush, commerce, and the marriage alliances of the ruler-priests whereby each ruler had two first-borns sons. The son of the half-sister wife ascended to his father's throne, and the son of the patrilineal cousin bride ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather. The pattern is one of double descent with bloodline traced through the wives, while the son's status as ruler came from his father.

Consider Abraham's two wives, by which he had seven sons. Isaac and Joktan both became rulers. Isaac ruled over Abraham's territory between Hebron and Beersheba when Abraham died. Joktan ascended to the throne of his mother's father, who was also called Joktan. If each son had two wives, the population of the Horite or Hapiru nobles would have expanded very quickly. Each chief had to locate where he could establish his own territory. Kush's two sons moved east of the Nile. Ramaah established a kingdom in northern Arabia and intermarried with the people of Dedan, where the largest number of Old Arabic texts have been found. These are the Afro-Arabians. Nimrod moved farther east to the region that would become the homeland of the Arameans. This eastward migration of first-born sons drove the expansion of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

This is why the Horites and Hapiru were found throughout the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. Carol A. Redmont has noted that Hapiru influence was felt "from the Tigris-Euphrates river basins over to the Mediterranean littoral and down through the Nile Valley during the Second Millennium, the principal area of historical interest is in their engagement with Egypt."  (See Carol A. Redmount, 'Bitter Lives: Israel in and out of Egypt' in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed: Michael D. Coogan, Oxford University Press: 1999, p.98)

In ancient Egypt, some priests were called harwa, a word related to Horus.  The Harwa served in the temples and shrines along the Nile. They were clean shaven and lived rather ascetic lives. Moses's two brothers were harwa. Both were named for Horus. Aaron in Arabic is Harum, and Korah means shaved one, indicating that he was a Horite priest of the Nile. Later, both Jews and Arabs used kohen to designate a priest.

It appears that there were orders among the priests, some serving at higher levels than others. Some were called sarki. Sarki still live in the Orissa region of India. They are responsibile for flaying animals before the sacrifice. The word sarki also refers to red ochre which was ground into power and used as a symbol of blood in the burial of nobles as early as 60,000 years ago. Here we find a clear connection between the priesthood and blood, and between blood as a symbol of life and ritual burial. God acts as the first priest when He sacrifices animals to make coverings for the man and the woman (Gen. 3:21).

The work of the priest involved blood sacrifice for atonement. According to priestly law, the blood of a sacrificed animal was to be sprinkled seven places on the altar. Christians note that Jesus Christ bled from seven places and his blood is said to give “life to the world” (John 6:52-56).  The Christ is already present in ancient Nilotic mythology which holds that life is in the blood. The priesthood and circumcision also originated among the Nilotic peoples. Abraham's Kushite ancestors were the first to belief the Eden Promise that a woman of their ruler-priest lines would bring forth the Seed who would crush the serpent's head and restore Paradise.


Related reading:  Ha'piru, Ha'biru, 'Apiru or Hebrew?; The Re-Horus-Hathor Narrative; Moses' Wives and Brothers; Who Were the Horites?; Who Were the Hapiru?; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology, Christian Faith Emerges from the Faith of Abraham

Egypt in the Book of Genesis

Alice C. Linsley

Grieving Egyptian. Note the reddish-brown skin tone

Egypt is mentioned more than 300 places in the biblical narratives. It is often the place to which people escape  trouble: famine, political persecution, and war. What was considered Egypt in Abraham's time has never been established. Egypt's cultural and political influence extended far beyond the borders of present-day Egypt.  

The Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 B.C.) used the Greek term for the Red Sea to encompass the Gulf of Suez, the Gulf of Aqaba, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. This is because he understood that the major bodies of water were controlled by the Hamitic Afro-Arabian and Semitic Afro-Asiatic rulers. These rulers were related by marriage. The water ways were the great highways of that time and it was along these rivers that the Horite priests spread their religious beliefs concerning Horus, who was called "son of God."  Horus is the pattern by which Abraham's descendants recognized the Messianic identity of Jesus of Nazareth. The primitive shape of messianic expectation is found among the Nilotic peoples. Their sea (bahr) was the Nile, the longest river in the world.

As notes Egyptian author Galal Amin:  "... These villages were, by communications standards of that time, very far away from the sea [i.e. Mediterranean, Gulf of Suez and Red Sea]. Their inhabitants still sang the praises of the summer breeze, and went in search of it, finding the breeze that came from the direction of the sea available to them on the banks of the Nile and the many canals that branched out of it. As a matter of fact, when most Egyptians referred to the 'sea,' bahr, it was the Nile and its canals they were talking about. As for the real sea, they called it 'the salty one,' and it was something that inspired great awe, provoked presumably by ignorance of it and a lack of any direct experience with it, and no realistic hope of ever seeing it. (Galal Amin, Whatever Happened to the Egyptians, p. 121)

Amin is describing the average villager, not the rulers whose territories were much vaster than is generally recognized. Abraham's father, for example, controlled almost the entire length of the Euphrates since his principal cities were Haran at its extreme north and Ur at its extreme south.

The Horites and Ancient Egypt

Abraham and his ancestors were Horites, a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Horus, the Divine Seed of Ra. This is the origin of Messianic expectation. Jesus Christ fulfills the Horus myth. The  oldest Horite shrine was the city of Nekhen in Sudan. Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors appear to have been associated with Nekhen.

It was the Proto-Saharan rulers who first united the peoples of the Upper and Lower Nile. The first Pharaohs were Kushite kingdom builders who venerated of cattle and Hathor-Meri whose totem was the cow. She is the archetype of the Virgin Mary who gave birth in a stable. Hathor was said to conceive when she was overshadowed by the Sun.

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 Crosscannot 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."

Related reading:  The Nazareth-Egypt Connection; The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; Moses' Horite Family; Egypt in the Christmas Narrative; Samuel's Horite Family; The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ; The Conversion of Hagar the Egyptian

What Color Was Abraham?

Alice C. Linsley

A question that is often asked concerns Abraham's appearance. The best answer, based on the biblical data, is that Abraham resembled his Nilo-Saharan cattle-herding ancestors whose skin tone was reddish brown. Further, he was a descendant of Adam, a red man. God formed the man "Adam" from the red clay which swept down into the Nile Valley from the Ethiopian highlands.

Abraham was a Hebrew. That means he was a member of the Hebrew ruler-priest caste. The point of origin of the Hebrew ruler-priest caste was the Nile Valley, a place of great genetic diversity. “Africans have the broadest spectrum of variability, with rarer versions at either end of the bell curve distribution. If everyone in the world was wiped out except Africans, almost all human genetic variability would be preserved.” (From here.)

Geneticist Kenneth Kidd further explains, “In almost any single African population or tribe, there is more genetic variation than in all the rest of the world put together."

However, the Hebrew caste practiced endogamy so there would have been a frequent recurrence of the reddish skin tone. Endogamy is a trait of all castes.

Abraham ruled in ancient Edom which the Greeks called "Idumea". The words Edom and Idumea refer to the color red. The Greeks referred to Idumea as a land of red people. Abraham's territory was entirely in the region of Edom. It extended between the settlements of his two wives, Sarah and Keturah. Sarah resided in Hebron in the north and Keturah resided in Beersheba in the south.

Edo, Edomite, Idoma and Idumea are related words. A variant of Edo is Idu. Idu was the progenitor of the Edo or Idoma of Benin. The ruler of the Edo is called Oba and the first ruler of Petra in Edom was Obodas. Among the red, bearded Ainu of Hokkaido, the regional ruler is called obito and the original name of Tokyo was Edo. There is evidence that the Ainu of Japan and eastern Canada share common ancestry, but much more research needs to be done. Might there be a relationship to the Nilotic Annu?

One of Abraham's descendants was Esau who is described in Genesis as red and hairy. One of his wives was Oholibamah, a great granddaughter of Seir the Horite Hebrew (Gen. 36). 

Abraham's grandson Esau inherited his grandfather's red skin tone. We do not know Jacob's coloring, but he may have been darker skinned than Esau. King David is described as ruddy, and as a boy he may have looked like this young man. David's skin tone was probably reddish brown like that of Egyptians who work in the sun (1 Sam. 16:12; 17:42). 

Having a red skin tone indicates a very ancient genetic lineage, going back at least 18,000 years. The biblical writers appear to have been aware of this. The term "red' involves a range of tones from red-brown to brown-red.

In his later years, after he was very wealthy and had many servants and sons and had retired to Beersheba, Abraham's skin tone was probably lighter, though still reddish. He may have appeared like this Nilotic official:

Egyptian high official and his wife

That said, none can be certain as to Abraham's skin tone, but it is evident that he was not a white European. He was a descendant of Cain and Seth, and Ham and Shem, and Nimrod the Kushite. 

Abraham's Hebrew People Spread Far and Wide

The point of origin of the biblical Hebrew was the Nile Valley. The oldest known site of Horite Hebrew worship is Nekhen (4000 BC). From there, the Hebrew dispersed widely, and wherever they went they influenced the populations among whom they lived.

The Hebrew people spread across areas of Africa, the Middle East, the Levant, Southern Europe, and as far as India, Nepal and Cambodia. Kushites also came to live in Mindanao in the Philippines.

Genesis 17:5 says that Abraham means “father of many” or “father of a multitude.” Abraham was indeed the father of many since he had many children by his two wives and his two concubines.

As the Nilotic peoples spread across the ancient Near East, and married with other populations the genetic variation became less. The farther the population is from Africa, the less genetic diversity. This is not necessarily true, however, for the biblical Hebrew because they married only within their caste (endogamy).  


Hebrew Social Structure

The social structure of the Hebrew ruler-priests is complex. It is characterized by these features: endogamy, the Horite and Sethite moieties, two wives, a hierarchy of sons, the cousin bride's naming prerogative, and the sending away of non-ascendant sons.

Among Abraham's people social status and occupation were passed from father to son, but the son's ethnicity was that of his mother. All the mothers were Hebrew since Hebrew men married only within their caste.  

By Sarah, Abraham became the father of Isaac. Isaac was Abraham's proper heir, and he became a wealthy ruler in Edom. Isaac's proper heir was Esau. Isaac's son Jacob was sent away to serve the household of his maternal uncle (avuncular residence). Jacob was the head of the Israelites, but the Israelites were only one of many Hebrew clans. 

By Keturah, Abraham had six sons. One was Joktan. The Joktanite clans of Arabia are his descendants.

By his concubine Hagar, Abrahan had Ishmael, an Egyptian, and by his other concubine Mesek, Abraham had Eliezar. Mesek was Keturah's maidservant, just as Hagar was Sarah's maidservant.

We are not told how many daughters Abraham had, but it is certain that he had daughters as well as sons. His daughters are not named because the Genesis king lists list only first-born sons. Though a few especially important females are also named. Lamech' daughter Naamah is an example. She married her cousin Methusaleh and named their firstborn son Lamech, after her father, Lamech the Elder.

Related reading: The Hebrew were a Caste; Hebrew Rulers with Two Wives; Hebrew Sent-Away Sons; The Edomites and the Color Red; Abraham's Concubines; Who Was Eliezar of Damascus?; Abraham's Authority and Ancient Law Codes; Why Nekhen is Anthropologically Significant