What Paradise Must Have Been

Alice C. Linsley


Christ came to restore Paradise according to ancient Church teaching. It is said that by His Cross and Resurrection the “curse is made void,” “Adam is renewed” and “Eve is set free.”

So what was Paradise like? How can we best describe it?

Some believe that Paradise is a metaphysical concept intending original or primal innocence. That may be true, but Genesis maintains that Paradise was also a physical reality experienced by Abraham’s earliest ancestors.

The Paradise of Eden is described as a well-watered garden. If you are a gardener (as I am), you know how welcome water is, especially in hot weather. The text says that springs came up from the earth and there were rivers.

There were many trees and shrubs. Some believe that the earliest of Abraham’s ancestors were forest dwellers. This pushes those ancestors to a time before memory, and yet the Paradise they enjoyed is remembered. Jung might suggest that the Paradise of Genesis reflects the collective memory of Abraham’s people who originated in ancient Kush.

Today much of ancient Kush is desert. It is hard to believe that the region was ever a well-watered area but many discoveries, such as the 8000 year old Dufuna boat in the Sahara, provide considerable evidence that it was.

Today those who dwell in the region labor hard to sustain their families. They sweat under a crushing sun. The water is mostly gone. There is little rest. The infant mortality rate is high and many women die in childbirth or are ostracized because of fistulas. Death is commonplace and familial; its immediacy disturbing to those of us who try to hide it in clinics, hospitals, hospices and nursing homes.

Yes, the curse is real and most immediately felt in the very place that the Bible claims the Fall took place. So we have no reason to doubt that Paradise was likewise real.

What do you think Paradise must have been like? That’s something to ponder because Christ came to restore Paradise and you might want to consider what that will be like.

I'd love to read your thoughts! Leave a comment.

Who was the Bigger Liar, Abraham or Issac?

Alice C. Linsley


It is commonly believed that Abraham lied to Pharaoh and Abimelek when he said that Sarah was his sister. In fact, Sarah was Abraham’s half-sister as well as his wife. Abraham explained this to Abimelek, “She is the daughter of my father, but not of my mother” (Gen. 20:12.)

The text doesn’t actually say that Abraham lied. It indicates that he asked Sarah to lie when he said to her “say that you are my sister so that it might go well with me.” The explanation given was that Sarah was very beautiful and that it might cost Abraham his life to fight for her (Gen. 20:11).

The key to understanding this ploy is to place these stories in the proper cultural context. Sarah was a high-ranking woman and as such was valuable. Women such as Sarah were prized not simply for their beauty, but also for the political leverage that they could bring. The sister-wife narratives of Genesis 12, 20 and 26 involve a powerful ruler who unknowingly takes the patriarch’s wife as his own. This action appears to be motivated not by lust but by the desire for status and territorial ambitions.

The interest in Sarah is explained when we remember that she was the daughter of Terah, a great Kushite ruler who vast Mesopotamian territory extended from Haran to Ur, virtually the entire length of the Euphrates River.

It is also significant that both rulers recognized in Sarah a woman who was not to be violated. In both accounts the rulers are portrayed as righteous leaders who do not wish to bring evil upon their people by committing adultery. The rulers of Egypt and Philistia (who were kin) were bound by a common moral code. They recognized in Sarah not only a beautiful woman of high standing, but also a devotee of Horus, the deity to whom these rulers showed devotion.

E.A. Speiser writes, “All three passages [Gen. 12:10-20; Gen. 20:1-13; Gen. 26:1-14] give essentially the same story: a patriarch visits a foreign land in the company of his wife. Fearing that the woman’s beauty might become a source of danger to himself as the husband, the man resorts to the subterfuge of passing himself off as the woman’s brother.” (Anchor Bible Commentary on Genesis, p. 91)

This is a troubling picture of Abraham and Sarah. Yet both rulers respond positively to their ploy by giving gifts to Abraham and making provision for them to move safely or dwell safely in their territory. In other words, the information which Abraham provided the rulers enabled them to see that Abraham and Sarah were Horite kin, as this kinship pattern was unique to the Horites.

The Patriarchs married according to the pattern of their Horite ruler-priest caste. The half-sister wife held the rank of the first wife. So Sarah held a higher social rank than Keturah, Abraham’s cousin bride. Only through her was Abraham going to establish a territory to pass on. The firstborn son of the sister wife was the heir-designate to the throne of his biological father.

This raises an interesting question. Was Isaac the biological son of Abraham? Nowhere in Genesis does it say that Abraham “knew” his wife and she conceived. It is provocative that the story of Sarah conceiving comes immediately after her dismissal from Abimeleh’s court. Genesis 21:1 says “Now YHWH took account of Sarah as he had said, YHWH dealt with Sarah as he had spoken. Sarah became pregnant and bore Abraham a son…” There is a suggestion here that Sarah was overshadowed by the Lord. This aspect of the story is important because there is evidence that Abraham believed that Isaac was the promised “Seed” of Genesis 3:15 whose coming the Horites anticipated. This belief puts the story of Isaac's "sacrifice" in a very different light.

Genesis has fewer narratives involving the sister-wife than the cousin/niece wife. Isaac’s sister wife isn’t even named. She is hidden in the text and only discovered through analysis of the Horite kinship pattern whereby all the rulers had two wives by the time they ascended to the throne.

In Genesis 26:7 we are told that Isaac attempted the same ploy as his parents, only in this case he tried to pass off his cousin/niece wife as his sister. If anyone can be called a liar, it is Isaac, since Rebecca wasn’t his sister wife.

 
Related reading: The Cousin Bride's Naming Prerogative; The Pattern of Two Wives; Did Abraham Believe Isaac to be Messiah?; Terah's Nubian Ancestors

The Afro-Asiatic Dominion

The Afro-Asiatic Dominion

(Image: Dr. Clyde A. Winters)

Alice C. Linsley

Archaeogenetics has shown conclusively that a vast dispersion of Proto-Saharan peoples dominated the archaic world. Their range extended from the Benue Trough and Lake Chad, to the Nile Valley, the Indus Valley, and Southern Europe during the African Aqualithic Period. I have termed this the “Afro-Asiatic Dominion” because the languages spoken by these peoples would be classified in the Afro-Asiatic language family.

The term "dominion" is appropriate because these territories were ruled by kingdom builders who shared a common religious tradition and common ancestors. They also had a common conception of divine appointment of rulers by the overshadowing of the sun, the emblem of the Creator God.

These are the earliest rulers on earth. They are called the "mighty men of old" in Genesis and are described as "heroes" and "men of renown." They built shrine cities at high elevations, temples, palaces, pyramids and circles of standing stones. Their burial practices reflect a common conception of the body and spirit, and the hope for immortality.

The Afro-Asiatic Dominion is older than the Vedic Age (1700-800 BC) and much order than the Axial Age. These peoples maintained settlements at sheltered high places (tamana or kar) near water sources. These settlements became the Sun Cities of the ancient world. At the center of these royal cities were the temple, the palace, housing for priests, and quarters for the royal guard. The temple typically was aligned to the solar arc, with the doors opening to the rising Sun. They were called O'piru, which means "Sun house" and the royal priests who served at these temples were called 'apiru, ha'piru or Ha'biru. The English word Hebrew is a variant of Ha'biru.

Abraham is called "Hebrew" (Ha'biru) in Genesis 14:13. The Harris papyrus speaks of 'apriu of Re at Heliopolis, the shrine of the Sun. Plato, who studied under a Horite priest at Memphis for thirteen years, wrote "Tell me of the God of On, which was, is and shall be."

The biblical data indicates that many peoples and clans comprised the Afro-Asiatic Dominion. Among them were Sumerians, Nubians, and other Nilotes, Sudra, Ainu, Canaanites, and peoples of Mesopotamia and the Indus River Valley. Linguistic and archaeological evidence suggests that the religion of the ancient Dravidian priests reflects Proto-Saharan beliefs and practices.

Abraham is a descendant of the Kushite kingdom builder Nimrod. In the Bible the term "Kushite" refers to Nilotic and Proto-Saharan peoples, and in particular to the ruler-priest descendants of Noah by his grandson Kush (Gen. 10:6-11). Kush was the father of Nimrod who established his kingdom in the Euphrates Valley and established the city of Akkad. This explains the linguistic connections between the Nile and Mesopotamia. The Akkadian script of Nimrod's kingdom is linguistically Afro-Sumerian and Sanskrit is closely related.

Václav Blažek believes that Elamite is an Afro-Asiatic language, and David McAlpin finds a genetic relation between the Elamite and Dravidian languages. Both are languages of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion which extended from the Nile to the Indus River Valley and into ancient Anatolia and Bactria.

The Greek writer Homer alluded to the vastness, diversity, and unity of the Kushite empires when he wrote, “a race divided, whom the sloping rays; the rising and the setting sun surveys.” Before Homer's time (ca. 8th century BC) there was but one vast dominion that stretched from West Africa to India and it was dominated by rulers and priests who were ethnically Kushite.

A common worldview and religious practices related to the deity Horus are found from west central Africa to India and as far as Cambodia where they established Horite shrines at Anghor Wat (ankh-Hor means "May Horus Live!").

Proto-Saharan nobles were buried with red ochre at Nekhen in Sudan (3500 BC). Nekhen was a Horite shrine city dedicated to Horus whose totem was the falcon or hawk. Early dynastic Egypt adopted the Horite religion and never practiced cremation, as in the religions that seek to escape physical existence (samsara). Abraham's ancestors believed in the resurrection of the body and awaited a deified king who would rise from the grave and deliver his people from death.

Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) is the oldest known Horite shrine center. At the temple of Nekhen, votive instruments were ten times larger than the mace heads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine. Horite priests placed invocations to Horus at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose. This is the likely origin of the sun blessings in Hinduism (the Agnihotra morning ritual) and in Judaism (the Birka Hachama or “Sun Blessing” ritual performed every 28 years).

There is evidence that the Horite priests dispersed throughout this ancient world. The word sarki designates a priestly ruler from Africa to Nepal. In ancient Egypt sarki and harwa referred to orders of priests. In Hausa sarki means king. The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who spread their religious beliefs far and wide.

They were called Hapiru or Habiru (Hebrew). The Egyptians called these temple attendants ˁpr.w, the w being the plural suffix. This has been rendered '*wap'er' by the Afro-Asiatic expert Christopher Ehret. The *wap'er exercised significant authority alongside the high king. They presided over the rituals directed toward the High God and acted as intercessors and prophets. The Hapiru were devotees of Horus, whose worship originated in what is today Sudan.

The Dravidian east-facing temple was termed O-piru, meaning Sun House or House of the Sun. The sun was the emblem of the creator God. 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 and watched as it expanded across the horizon.

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 Indian historian and anthropologist Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has written: "We have to begin with the Negroid or Negrito people of prehistoric India who were the first human inhabitants. Originally they would appear to have come from Africa through Arabia and the coastlands of Iran and Baluchistan."  According to the Matsya, an ancient book from India, the world belonged to the Kushites (Saka) for 7000 years. 

In the ancient Afro-Asiatic world, a temple was considered the mansion—hâît, or the house—pirû—of the deity. The Horites and Hapiru maintained temples and shrines 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." (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)


Comparative Linguistics Tells the Story

A comparison of the languages of Saharan Africa, Semitic languages, Sanskrit and Dravidian suggests that the Horites dispersed among many peoples and their presence cemented a vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago. Afro-Asiatic languages include Accadian, Amharic, ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, Babylonian, Berber, Chadic, Kushitic, Ethiopic, Hahm, Hausa, Hebrew, Omotic, Phoenician, and Ugaritic. These “cognate languages" appear to share a common ancestor language. Because this is so, linguists are able to compare the languages and draw conclusions about the older “proto” Afro-Asiatic language and dialects spoken before 10,000 years ago.

One expression of the common worldview of the Afro-Asiatics is the linguistic affinity of their languages. Consider the following examples:

The Hebrew rison adam = ancestral man is adamu orisa = ancestral Adam in Hahm/Hausa languages of Nigeria and Niger. The Hausa word for human being is dan adam. Related is the Babylonian word for blood: dhama. The Sanskrit word for male human is manu which resembles the African word adamu.

The Hebrew bara = to begin, is related to the Yoruba/Hahm word bere = to begin. There is a relationship between the verb "to begin" and the Hebrew word for Creator which is Bore and the African Twi dialect is Borebore = Creator. The Sanskrit kr = ‘to create/to make is related to the Igbo kere = created.

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

The Hebrew hayah = "Let there be…" is rleated to the Igbo haa ya = "Let it be…/let there be"

The Hebrew amar = "commanded" is related to the Igbo hamara = "commanded"

The Hebrew abba = father, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm baba = father, to the Dravidian appa/appan = father, and to the Mundari apu = father. The original root is likely AP.

The Hebrew ha’nock = the chief, corresponds to the Hahm word nok = “first ancestral chief”. The original root is likely NK.

The Semitic word wadi = river, corresponds to the Sanskrit nadi = river. The original root is likely AD.

The Semitic root mgn = to give, is the same as the Sanskrit mgn = to give.

The Hausa word for hunter is maharba. Compare this to the Hebrew word that appears in the Targum nah shirkan = hunter, and note the similarity to the Hausa word sarkin maharba = lead hunter.

The Sanskrit svah = sky or heaven, corresponds to the Semitic svam or samyim = sky or heavens. The Semitic resembles the Proto-Dravidian word van = heaven. The Arabo-Spanish desvan (attic or upper room) is likely related to the root SVN.

The Hebrew yasuah = salvation, corresponds to the Sanskrit words asvah, asuah or yasuah = salvation. Yashua means salvation in the Urdu language also.

The Hebrew root thr = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm toro = clean, to the Amarigna (Ethiopia) anatara = pure, and to the Tamil tiru = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian tor = blood. In some Kushitic languages mtoro means rain and toro refers to God. The Egyptian ntr = deity is probably related.

The Hebrew echad or ehat = one, corresponds to the Luo (Nilo-Saharan) achiel, the Syrian eka, the Sanskrit eca, and to the Gonga ikka. The Gonga languages are spoken in southeast Ethiopia. In the Proto-Saharan, ikki is a directional element, meaning toward or to, and has the Creator as the reference. In the ancient world, the first position or number one was reserved for or assigned to the deity. This is evident in the Luo word for one: achi-el. El is a very ancient reference to God.

The number six in Proto-Dravidian is caru. This correlates to koro in Proto-Saharan, a directional element (the cardinal poles were associated with numbers); to karkia in some Chadic Languages; and to korci in Meidob (a language of eastern Sudan). The most striking similarity is between the Kanembu (another language of Sudan) araku and the Dravido-Tamil aarru.

We can verify the connection between the Nile and Indus Valley by comparing the Egyptian and Indus pottery inscriptions in which 17 figures are virtually identical (see below).

In addition to the linguistic evidence for the spread of Kushite beliefs there is evidence from ethno-astrology, number symbolism, and in analysis of the kinship pattern of Abraham's Horite people, using the geneologies of Genesis. My research shows that the marriage pattern of Abraham’s Kushite people drove Kushite expansion and the diffusion of the proto-Gospel. Diffusion of the belief concerning the miraculous birth of an eternal King-Priest was driven by four historically identified factors: Kushite migration out of Africa, Kushite commerce, Kushite conquests, and marriage alliances between the Kushite ruler-priests.

Cultural Diffusion and the Afro-Asiatic Dominion

How is it that people living across this vast expanse share so many important words? Genesis 11:1 tells us that the descendants of Noah who are listed in the Table of Nations (Gen. 10) were one people and spoke one language. In fact, all the peoples listed in the Genesis 10 are Afro-Asiatics and at one time they used virtually the same words, that is to say, they spoke closely related languages that shared a common system of roots.

One explanation for this is cultural diffusion over a large area resulting in common features. Diffusion is the process of spreading knowledge, skills, and technology from one culture to another. Cultural diffusion explains the linguistic affinities between languages as different the Asian Tamil and the African Hausa. The diffusion process begins when different cultures initiate regular contact through migration, commerce, marriage alliances and conquests. Let us consider the evidence for each of these aspects of diffusion.


Kushite Migration

Archaeogeneticists employ genetics, archaeology and linguistics to examine the origin and spread of people groups. Haplogroup R-M173 is of particular significance because this pertains to the ancient Kushite and Nilotic peoples who are genetically related.

At least three migrations out of Africa have taken place in the past 120,000 years. The first that has been documented took place in the Late Pleistocene (120,000-12,000 B.C.). Here the movement was from the Upper Nile Valley and the Horn into the coastal areas of Arabia. Evidence indicates that Nilotic peoples moved out of Africa in several directions. Thomas Strasser and his team have found hundreds of stone Age tools of African origin on the island of Crete. Others have been found on the Iranian plateaus, helping experts trace the steps of an Nilotic tribe that passed through the region on their way to India where it settled in the Andaman Islands. The tribe has all the physical features of black East Africans. Their ancestors are believed to have migrated out of East Africa about 60,000 year ago. According to Hamed NasabVahdati, a member of the archeological society at Iran's Cultural Heritage Center, the Stone Age artifacts found in Iran are very similar to those found in East Africa.

Many moved across land as the sea level was lower during of the ice age. However, for many the final stage of the journey would have been by sea. Dr. Richard Klein, an archaeologist at Stanford University, believes that the population discovered at Lake Mungo, in southeastern Australia, was originally from Africa. The Lake Mungo site holds the remains of an adult man who was sprinkled with copious amounts of red ochre in a burial ritual common among early humans. These humans would have had to cross 50 miles of ocean between the nearest point of Southeast Asia and the landmass of New Guinea and Australia, which were then attached.

The most recent involved the African population known as Kushites. In a study conducted under the direction of Clyde A. Winters at the Uthman dan Fodio Institute in Chicago, data from archaeology, linguistics, genetics and craniometric studies were used to explore the role of the Kushites in the spread of haplogroup R from Africa to Eurasia. Here we find evidence of the Dravidian connection to the ancient Kushites:

There is genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence pointing to the African origin of the Dravidian speakers in India (Aravanan 1980; Winters 2007). The Indian archaeologist B.B. Lal (1963) believes that the Dravidian speaking people may have belonged to the C-Group. The C-Group people spread culture from Nubia into Arabia, Iran and India as evidenced by the presence of Black-and-Red Ware (BRW). Although the Egyptians preferred the cultivation of wheat, many ancient C-Group people (Nubia/Kushite) were agro-pastoral people who cultivated millet/sorghum and maintained large herds of cattle which were used for sacrifice and food. Bovine skulls were used to decorate their graves.

The C-Group people lived in northern Nubia, southern Egypt, and southward to the modern Sudan between 2300-1500 B.C. Winters believes that the Dravidian speakers of C-Group took millet to India (C. Winters, 2008b). B. B. Lal contends that the Dravidians came from southern Egypt and Sudan (Nubia/Kush). This would explain their dark complexion. Lal writes: "At Timos the Indian team dug up several megalithic sites of ancient Nubians which bear an uncanny resemblance to the cemeteries of early Dravidians which are found all over Western India from Kathiawar to Cape Comorin. The intriguing similarity extends from the subterranean structure found near them. Even the earthenware ring-stands used by the Dravidians and Nubians to hold pots were identical."

The Nubian megaliths of which Lal speaks date to about 3000 years before the present.

There is evidence that ancient peoples of Africa migrated in many directions. The Ashante moved west from Sudan to what is today Ghana. Some went eastward to the Near East, to Iran, to India and to Indonesia. This explains the correspondence of names like Orissa in Nigeria and northern India and the correspondence between the wedding ceremony of the Agharias of Orisha, India and that described in Genesis among Abraham's people.

Kushite commerce

Diffusion is common among groups whose homelands are geographically contiguous. However, the land area of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion is so vast that the diffusion of the Afro-Asiatic worldview must have been driven by traveling merchants as well as migration. In other words, the Sahara was not a barrier to travel before 10,000 years ago because there were water routes to follow and the central part of the Sahara was wetlands (see map below).

Anne Osborne, lead author of a Bristol University paper on this topic has said: “Space-born radar images showed fossil river channels crossing the Sahara in Libya, flowing north from the central Saharan watershed all the way to the Mediterranean. Using geochemical analyses, we demonstrate that these channels were active during the last interglacial period. This provides an important water course across this otherwise arid region.”

Dr Derek Vance, senior author on the paper, added: “The study shows, for the first time, that monsoon rains fed rivers that extended from the Saharan watershed, across the northern Sahara, to the Mediterranean Sea. These corridors rivaled the Nile Valley as potential routes for early modern human migrations to the Mediterranean shores."

Cultural diffusion was aided by caravans that moved back and forth between west central Africa and Asia. This explains the appearance of ancient African artifacts in China. Wild donkeys were domesticated by the Kushites between 6500 and 4000 BC. The wild donkey was native to the Red Sea Hills and the arid Ethiopian highlands. Kushites used both camels and donkeys as beasts of burden. These hearty creatures enabled the transport of cargo across the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia and Pakistan. As Roger Blench has noted, "The spread of the donkey across Africa was linked with the proliferation of long distance caravans."

The region of Sheba in southern Arabia was famous for horses. The people of Sheba were close kin to Abraham and ethnically Kushite. The high-spirited, high-stamina Arabian horse is one of the oldest breeds, dating back 4,500 years. They were valued for breeding across the ancient Middle East and among Japheth’s Magyar descendants. Today Arabian bloodlines are found in almost every modern breed of riding horse. The world's oldest saddles are from Nubia and the Upper Nile region.

The region of Dedan in northern Arabia was famous for trade and commerce. Isaiah 21:13 speaks of the “caravans of Dedanites” and Ezekiel 27:20 speaks of Dedan as supplying Tyre with precious things. They traded in spices, ivory, incense, and cotton with lands as distant as India, Cambodia and China. They traded in copper from the 4000 B.C. mines in the Air region of Niger where there are rock drawings of chariots, and evidence of early copper smelting and copper weapons. The Dedanites were ethnically Kushite and kin to the people of Sheba.

The Sudanese Kushites were the first to domesticate wild sorghum and millet. These became staple grains in Egypt and were taken to Pakistan and India between 3000 and 1000 BC, probably by the Dravidians. The Dravidians also mined gold in southern Africa in 1000 B.C. and it is likely that they transported both grain and gold by ship from northwestern Africa to India.

Migration and commerce do not sufficiently explain how peoples living across such a vast expanse of land should have a common worldview and linguistic heritage. The evidence suggests a more complex picture of migration, commerce, and alliances among peoples located around the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Peninsula and the Dead Sea.


The Kushite marriage pattern drove the Kushite expansion out of Africa

My research into the genealogical material in Genesis involves analysis of the Horite kinship pattern. This kinship pattern is unique and makes it possible to trace Kushite rulers.

The Horite pattern involved two wives and at least two concubines. The ruler's first wife was a half-sister and the second wife was a patrilineal cousin or niece. The marriages of firstborn sons contributed to the diffusion of Horite religion. The firstborn son of the half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father. The firstborn son of the patrilineal cousin or niece bride ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather. All other sons were given gifts of camels, jewelry, flocks, herds and servants and sent away to conquer settlements and build territories for themselves. The importance of these "sent-away sons" as a driving factor in Kushite expansion should not be overlooked.

This pattern is evident in the case of the Kushite kingdom-builder Nimrod. Nimrod, one of Abraham's ancestors, is an example. He was ethnically Kushite but was probably sent away from his older brother Ramah whose territory was in northern Arabia. This explains why he regarded his mother as "lowly." She would have been a woman of less wealth and status than the wife of Ramah, Kush's the firstborn son. After numerous conquests, Nimrod’s territory was far greater than his brother’s. It extended the length of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and within this territory there were three principal cities: Babel, Erech and Akkad in the plain of Shinar (Gen. 10:10). The script used to communicate across Nimrod’s empire Akkadian is Afro-Sumerian.

The conquest of the Sumerian city states by Kushites rulers is well-documented. Sargon the Great lived from about 2290 to 2215 BC, which is when his son Rimush (Ramesh) by his sister-wife ascended the throne. Alternative dates for Sargon the Great are 2360-2279, but these dates likely refer to his maternal grandfather after whom he was named. It was Sargon the Elder, not Sargon the Great, who conquered Nippur in 2340 B.C. and established his capital in Accad.

Sar-gon is the name by which Nimrod of the Bible is remembered in history. Sargon is a title meaning High King or King of Kings. The Elamite word for king is sunki, a cognate of the Hahm/Hamitic sarki, meaning king. The Sumerian word for king is sar and the Chadic word for ruler - gon.

The researcher on African Culture, Dr. Catherine Acholonu, reports that in Nigerian lore Nimrod is known as Sharru-Kin which is interpreted to mean “the righteous King.” Nimrod's Accadian name was Šarru-kīnu, which is usually translated “the true king.”

Many of the place names of Sargon’s kingdom in Kur-gal match places names in ancient Kush. For example, Accad is Agade, which is the original name of a river settlement in Odukpani, Nigeria. (Its geographical coordinates are 5° 29' 0" North, 7° 58' 0" East.) The name Accad is also related to the name of the city of Agadez in Niger, with a long association with metalworkers. Sargon’s territory was called Kish, which is Kush. One of the cities of his territory was Mari which is the Egyptian word for Mary. Another was Yar-muti (Old Arabic) which means Obedient (muti) Friend (yar).

A seventh century Assyrian text says that Sar-gon's birthplace was a city on the banks of the Euphrates called Azu-piranu. It was a Horite shrine as evidenced by the word piranu. The Hapiru devotees of Horus called a temple O-piru, meaning "House of the Sun." Azu is an East African name for God - Asa. Azu-piranu means “House of God” and is equivalent to the Hebrew word Beth-el. Hur-azu was a title for Horus and the Babylonian word for gold.

Kushite rulers, like Egyptian rulers, did not name their biological fathers in their king lists. This is because they believed that the ruler-priest was the son of Re whose emblem was the sun. The Pharaoh was called "son of Re" which is why Egyptian texts never mention an earthly father of the king. Kingship was rather a manifestation of the solar deity's overshadowing of noble women. Sargon the Great (probably Nimrod) claimed not to know his father. He based his authority to rule on the suggestion that he was conceived according to the Horite myth of miraculous virgin conception.

The evidence is conclusive that the Afro-Asiatic Dominion was essentially Kushitic and a vehicle for the diffusion of Horite worship. Dr Christopher Ehret has expressed this succinctly in his treatise "History in Africa." He writes, "The linguistic, genetic, and archaeological evidence combine in locating the origins of this family far south in Africa, in Eritrea or Ethiopia, and not at all in Asia. A complex array of lexical evidence confirms that the Proto-Afrasian society belonged to the pre-agricultural eras of human history." (p.4)

Related reading:  Boats and Cows of the Proto-Saharans; The Kushite-Kushan Connection; Sent-Away Sons; The Kushite Marriage Pattern Drove Kushite Expansion; Who Were the Kushites?; Features of Afro-Asiatic Religion; Nimrod: Afro-Asiatic Kingdom Builder; The Genetic Unity of Black African Elamite, Dravidian and Sumerian Languages by Clyde A. Winters; False Correlations; Phoneme Study Pinpoints Origin of Modern Languages

A.S. Haley Series: Did Adam and Eve Exist?

A.S. Haley has a very interesting series at his blog on whether Adam and Eve existed.

The Introduction is here.

Part I is here.

Part II is here.

Part III is here.

The Conclusion is here.

You don't want to miss this fascinating presentation!

Nimrod was a Nilo-Saharan Ruler

Alice C. Linsley

The term "Kushite" is a general term for people who lived in the region of Kush at a time when the Nile was much wider. This included many peoples. Among the Kushites were the Ainu, red and black Nubians, Horites, the Ar or Aro, and the Beja.

The Kushites were the first to unite the Upper and Lower Nile and their influence is seen on the earliest dynasties of Egypt.

The point of origin of Kush is likely the Sudan and the region of Lake Chad and must date to at least 2200 B.C. Kush is listed as one of Noah's grandsons and Noah lived about 2490-2415 B.C. Kush was the father of Nimrod, another great kingdom builder of the ancient world. Wherever the Kushite rulers went they took their royal priests and scribes. The Kushite religious life diffused through the agency of these ruler-priests. They built their shrines and temples along the major water systems and were instrumental in collecting taxes for commerce along the waters they controlled.

Before the Kushites were the Nilo-Saharans and among them was a hunter-gatherer king called Nimrod. Luo scholar Wander Salmon has connected his name to the name of a Luo price who is the ancestor of the Luos in Tanzania. His name was Kadhirondi, which means go and gather, fetch, collect, or hunt in Luo. Rondi and rod are cognates. So, in the Nilotic context, Nimrod's name fits his Biblical description as a great gatherer or hunter for the Lord.

Anthropologically speaking, we might describe Nimrod as a great hunter-gatherer chief who left his home and established a territory in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. He is "En-Meru" in Sumerian, the chief hunter, or the lord/master/leader (En) of hunters. In Akkadian, the chief or ruler is called sar. Compare this to the Hebrew word that appears in the Targum nah shirkan = hunter, and note the similarity to the Hausa word sarkin maharba = lead hunter.

He would have been served by warriors and priests. Some of these priests were Hapiru or Habiru (Hebrew). The designation is a reference to the Sun. The Arabic yakburu means “he is getting big” and with the intensive active prefix: yukabbiru means "he is enlarging."  This refers to the morning ritual of Horite priests who greeted the rising sun with prayers and watched as it expanded across the horizon.

The oldest known center of Horite worship is Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) in Sudan. Votive offerings at the Nekhen temple were ten times larger than the normal mace heads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine. Horite priests placed invocations to Horus at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose. This is the origin of the morning ritual whereby the sun is blessed daily in every devout Hindu home and the Jewish Sun Blessing ritual (Birkat Hachama) that is performed every 28 years.

The Egyptians called the temple priestly attendants ‘pr.w, the w being the plural suffix. This has been rendered *wap'er by the Afro-Asiatic language expert Christopher Ehret. The *wap'er had significant political authority alongside the ruler. They presided over the rituals directed toward the High God Ra and acted as intercessors between Ra and the community.


The Dravidian temples

The Dravidian east-facing temple was termed O-piru, meaning “Sun House” or “House of the Sun.” Sar-gon I (Nimrod) is said to have been the son of a virgin queen who was overshadowed by the High God. He was born in an O-piru. His home city was called Azu-piranu, meaning House of God (Azu in Akkadian, Asa in Chadic, Asha in Kushitic, Ashai in Hebrew; a Jerusalem priest was named Am-ashai in Neh. 11:13).

Many Dravidian shrines and monuments are now submerged under the sea, but originally they were on land that bridged the Arabian Peninsula and southern Pakistan and southwestern India. These settlements are 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 from which the Horites came. Har-appa means Horus is father, just as today a Jew might refer to his father as "horeh" and to his ancestors as "horim" (Horites).

In the ancient world, a temple was considered the mansion (hâît) or the house (pirû) of the deity. The Creator Re is associated with the temple in Heliopolis (City of the Sun) on the east side of the Delta. Hat-Hor, the virgin mother of Horus, had her principal temples in Dendera and Memphis to the south of Heliopolis and on the west side of the Nile. The principal temples of Horus were further south in Nekhen and Edfu, and on the west side of the Upper Nile. Doubtless, the position of these temples relative to one another is significant and entails research beyond the scope of this essay.

Re, Hathor and Horus represent the Egyptian Triad, in which Horus and his father were said to be “one.” Christians will recognize that Jesus makes this same claim concerning Himself in John’s Gospel, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). He says this in the context of a shepherd-priest. Horite priests kept flocks and sacrificed animals from these flocks. This is why their shrines were always located near sources of water such a river, a well or an oasis.

Against those who claim that Abraham's Horite ancestors were polytheists, we note that among the many divine powers (baals) of the Egyptians only Horus and Hathor are ever shown in human form, and usually together, as the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child are shown together in Christian iconography. Re’s presence is symbolized by the Sun, but he is never shown in human form.

Kushite rulers, like Egyptian rulers, did not name their biological fathers in their king lists. This is because they believed that the ruler-priest was the son of Re whose emblem was the sun. The Pharaoh was called "son of Re" which is why Egyptian texts never mention an earthly father of the king. Kingship was rather a manifestation of the solar deity's overshadowing of noble women. Sargon the Great (Biblical Nimrod) claimed not to know his father.  He based his authority to rule on the suggestion that he was conceived according to the Kushite myth of miraculous virgin conception.

Nimrod, one of Abraham's ancestors, was a great kingdom builder. He was ethnically Kushite but was probably sent away from his older brother Ramah whose territory was in northern Arabia. This explains why he regarded his mother as "lowly." She would have been a woman of less wealth and status than the wife of Ramah, Kush's the firstborn son. After numerous conquests, Nimrod’s territory was far greater than his brother’s. It extended the length of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and within this territory there were three principal cities: Babel, Erech and Accad in the plain of Shinar (Gen. 10:10). The script used to communicate across Nimrod’s empire is called “Akkadian.”

The conquest of the Sumerian city states by Kushites rulers is well-documented. Sargon the Great lived from about 2290 to 2215 BC, which is when his son Rimush (Ramesh) by his sister-wife ascended the throne. Alternative dates for Sargon the Great are 2360-2279, but these dates likely refer to his maternal grandfather after whom he was named. It was Sargon the Elder, not Sargon the Great, who conquered Nippur in 2340 B.C. and established his capital in Akkad.

I do not believe that Sargon of Akkad and Nimrod are the same person. Nimrod lived well before the time of Sargon the Great. He was the son of Cush, Noah's great grandson (Gen. 10). Sargon lived closer to the time of Abraham. 

The title Sar-gon is comprised of two words meaning king. The name is really a title that probably should be translated "king of kings". Nimrod's Akkadian name was Šarru-kīnu, which is usually translated “true king”. Akkad was one of the settlements established by Nimrod (Gen. 10). Nimrod was a Kushite. Sargon's ethnicity is Babylonian. Similarities between the two kingdom builders are due to the fact that rulers of the Ancient Near East had much in common. For example, they were viewed as having authority from the High God to govern the people, to collect tribute, to enforce sacred law codes, and to expand their territories.

The Igbo researcher, Dr. Catherine Acholonu, reports that in Nigerian lore Nimrod is known as Sharru-Kin which is interpreted to mean “the righteous King.” The Akkadian title Šarru-kīnu was also used by Sargon of Akkad.

A seventh century Assyrian text says that Sargon's birthplace was a city on the banks of the Euphrates called Azu-piranu. It was a Horite shrine as evidenced by the word piranu. The Habiru devotees of Horus called a temple O-piru, meaning "House of the Sun." Azu is the East African name for God - Asa. So Azu-piranu means “House of God” and is equivalent to the Hebrew word Beth-el.

Nimrod's birthplace was in the Nile Valley.


Related reading:  Hittite Religion; The Afro-Asiatic Metalworkers; The Tower of Babel, Kushite Kingdom Building, Calculating the Dates of the Patriarchs; The Hapiru Were Devotees of Horus; The Legend of Sargon; The Afro-Asiatic Dominion

Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers

Alice C. Linsley


Here are photos of related peoples whose ancestry is Kushite or Proto-Saharan. Both photos are of BJA people. Some Beja are nomadic. Linguist Penelope Aubin notes, "In Demotic sources they are called Brhm while in classical sources they are the Blemmyes, ancestors of the modern Beja."

Beja of Sudan

Beja of Pakistan



In ancient Egypt the Beja were called "Medjayu." These metalworking nomads from the eastern Nubian desert were recognized for their military skills. They served as mercenaries in the Egyptian army and policed the desert in the late Old Kingdom. At the end of Egypt's Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1640–1550 B.C.) they played a role in expelling the Hyksos from the Nile Delta. The Medjayu buried their dead in a distinctive way in circular "pan graves" which they marked with the decorated skulls of bulls, gazelles and goats. These have been found in cemeteries of Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia beginning in the Second Intermediate Period. (Source: Sudan, 2000–1000 B.C., Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art) They brought gold to Egypt from mines deep in the heartland of Nubia and Kush.

The Beja (Arabic: البجا‎) are Kushitic people who live in parts of Sudan, Egypt and the Horn of Africa. Their name comes from the ancient Egyptian word for meteoric iron - bja (metal from heaven), and they were metalworkers. Beja corresponds to the Sanskrit word bija, meaning semen or seed. Meteoric iron was used in the fabrication of iron beads in Nubia about 6000 years ago. These beads may have been perceived as seeds from heaven which brought divine power to the wearer. Meteoric iron was used in the fabrication of crooks and flails, the symbols of the Egyptian and Kushite pharaohs. These symbols were believed to give the ruler powers from heaven.

Prehistoric painting of warrior-priests carrying crooks and flails, found in Sudan.
In other paintings from Hierakonpolis figures are shown wearing beads around their necks.

"Around 4000 BC small items, such as the tips of spears and ornaments, were being fashioned from iron recovered from meteorites." R. F. Tylecote, A History of Metallurgy (2nd edition, 1992), page 3.

Meteoric iron was prevalent on the Arabian Pensinsula due to iron meteoroids which caused hypervelocity cratering. Iron meteoroids are able to pass through the atmosphere intact. The so-called Wabar craters of Rub' al Khali or the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia were caused by iron meteoroids. These were discovered in 1932 by a British explorer, Harry St. John "Abdullah" Philby, father of Soviet spy Kim Philby. Buried fist-sized iron balls and smooth sand-blasted fragments at the site indicated a meteorite impact, as there are no iron deposits in the region. Storzer's fission-track dating analysis of glass fragments found at the site suggested the Wabar impact took place thousands of years ago.



Metal Work and Serpent Symbolism

According to II Kings 18:4, King Hezekiah destroyed the Nehustan, the bronze serpent on Moses' wand. “He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it [dismissively] Nehushtan.”

When bitten by vipers in the wilderness the people who looked upon the rod/wand or staff with the serpent were saved. Jesus compared his crucifixion to Moses raising up the rod with a brass serpent: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:14,15). Why the comparison? Because Moses’ staff was a symbol of Horus, who was called the "son of God."

Biblical anthropologist Susan Burns reports, "Jewelry work requires coils of metal. Coiling makes the metal stronger and easier to work. I have a picture of a bronze coil with a flattened nose resembling a snake from the Neolithic."

The flat part was where the metalworker held the coil to work it. Such coiled bronze serpents have been recovered at Neolithic metal working sites in the Arabah.

Mining operations were always under auspices of Hat-Hor, the virgin mother of Horus, as at the Timna Valley copper mines near Eilat.


A Hausa Legend

BJA is likely the root of the Hausa name Bayajidda. He too is associated with metalworkers.

Bayajidda (also known as Tu-peshe) is a legendary character of the Hausa of Nigeria. The root his name is bja. Bayajidda's closest biblical counterpart is Cain. Cain was sent away from his father, married a princess who he met at a well, and was involved with metalworkers. Most of the heroes of Genesis met their wives at sacred wells or springs. Abraham married Keturah at the Well of Sheba (Beersheva). Issac (Yitzak) found a wife at a well in Aram. Moses encountered his wife at a well sacred to the Midianites and won her had after he delivered the women and flocks from Egyptian raiders.

The antiquity of the Hausa legend is attested by the role which water plays in the story. In the ancient world shrines were built along rivers and at wells or springs from west central Africa to the Indus River Valley. Serpents inhabited these places and were both venerated and feared. In Sanskrit serpent is “naaga”, in Hebrew “nahash”, and in Hausa “naja.”

Bayajidda then went to the town of Daura in Katsina State, where he asked an old woman for water. She informed him that a serpent named Sarki (Hausa word for emir) guarded the well and that the people were allowed to draw water only once a week. Bayajidda went to the well and beheaded the serpent with the knife the blacksmiths had made for him. The well has since become a tourist attraction.

In the story of Bayajida we note again the association of the serpent with metalworkers. The original root for serpent is probably NS and the same root was likely used for all things serpentine: rivers, veins, sinew, lightening, and veins of ore. According to the Monier-Williams' lexicon ka 'ns means "to shine." The Sanskrit word for bronze or copper-tin alloy is kansa. If the first metal workers were Nilotic peoples, as the evidence suggests, this suggests an older association of KA+NS.  Ka represents Kain, the first ruler in the Bible and the "father" of metal workers. N refers to the Deity and S was originally a pictograph of a serpent. It is easy to see how prehistoric peoples might have regarded lightening as God's serpent connecting heaven and earth.


The Beja were Devotees of Ra and Horus

Until the 6th century the Beja were devotees of Horus and his mother Hathor. They were associated with different Horite temples, especially on the island of Philak (image below) and at Thebes. Today many are Christians and others are Sufi Muslims.

Panaramic view of the ruins of the Temple at Philak

It appears that there were famous ruler-priests among the Beja, and the rulers of the priestly lines intermarried.

Pinedjem I was the High Priest at Thebes from 1070 - 1032 B.C. He was the son of the High Priest Piankh and probably ruled over the southern portion of Piankh's territory beginning in 1054. Pinedjem's mummy was found at Deir el-Bahri. Pinedjem I married Duathathor-Henuttawy (“Adorer of Hathor; Mistress of the Two Lands”), the daughter of Ramesses XI.

Horu-Pasibkhanut I was the second king of the Twenty-first dynasty of Egypt who ruled from Tanis (Biblical Zoan) from 1047 BC to 1001 BC.  His intact tomb was discovered in Tanis.  Here is a description of his funerary mask which is presently housed at the Cairo Museum:  "it proved to be made of gold and lapis lazuli and held inlays of black and white glass for the eyes and eyebrows of the object." Horu-Pasinkhanut I's mask is "one of the masterpieces of the treasure of Tanis" and his "fingers and toes had been encased in gold stalls, and he was buried with gold sandals on his feet. The finger stalls are the most elaborate ever found, with sculpted fingernails. Each finger wore an elaborate ring of gold and lapis lazuli or some other semiprecious stone." (From here.)  His sister bride was named Mutnedjmet, a daughter of Pinedjem I the high priest of the temple at Thebes.

3000-year old gold funerary mask of Horu-Pasinkhanut I discovered in 1940 by Pierre Montet

Afro-Asiatic Metalworkers in Service of their Rulers

The extraordinary quality and workmanship of the ancient metalworkers has been attested repeatedly by finds such as those buried with the Egyptian and Kushite pharaohs. The Kushite metalworkers dispersed wherever their overlords established territories. In Sumeria they were called the "Bira" or "ti-bira." At an ancient city in southern Iraq there is a place call "Bad-tibira" which means "Wall of the Copper Worker." This ancient site appears among antediluvian cities in the Sumerian King List. Its Akkadian name was Dûr-gurgurri. 

Akkadian, the oldest known Semitic language, was used throughout the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. A kingdom builder of this period was of Nimrod. According to Genesis 10:8, Nimrod was ethnically Kushite.

The Asian Beja of Pakistan and India achieved extraordinary metallurgical feats. An example is the 1600 year old pure iron pillar (shown right) near Qutub Minar at New Delhi which has never rusted. There is a long-standing connection between pillars, mountains and shrines. Genesis 28:10-22 tells of how Jacob set up a pillar and called that place Beth-el (House of God). Then Jacob anointed the pillar, as Hindus anoint the lingam.

In Urdu (a language of Pakistan) the word "beja" means inappropriate or incongruous. This suggests that the blacksmiths in ancient Pakistan, like the Gypsy tinkers of Europe, were regarded as a lower class/caste. There is evidence that they once were in the service of rulers and chiefs and as such held high status. However, as with Sarki of Nepal, once royal craftsmen, they were enslaved to ensure that their unique skills were retained by the ruler.

The word sarki designates a priest-ruler from Africa to Nepal. In ancient Egypt, sarki and harwa referred to orders of priests. In Hausa, sarki means king. The term is related to these ancient Akkadian words: šarrum - king, šarratum - queen, and šarri - divine.

The metalworking Inadan of Niger suffered a similar fate. They are subservient to their Taureg overlords. The metal working chiefs of the Inadan who live in the Air Desert maintain two wives in separate households on a north-south axis (National Geographic, Aug. 1979, p. 389). This is the pattern found among the rulers of Abraham's Horite Hebrew people.

The word for blacksmith in Sanskrit is lohakara and in Pali (spoken by the Buddha) it is lohara. The Egyptians did not have the letter L (Barton, "Archaeology and the Bible," 4th ed., note on p. 335.) The Sanskrit lo designates a male who "moves to and fro" and suggests that the smiths of Pakistan and India were itinerant metalworkers like their African counterparts.


The Beja of Ancient Kush 

There has been a good deal of speculation about whether the BJA metalworkers came to Pakistan and India from Africa or came from Pakistan and India to Africa. Genesis indicates that there was a Kushite migration out of Africa. Nimrod, a Kushite, built a kingdom in Mesopotamia. Recent DNA studies have confirmed the Biblical picture of a Kushite migration by demonstrating fairly conclusively that the Beja are originally Kushites.

Biblical Kush was a vast region that included Sudan, southern Egypt, ancient Nubia, the coastal areas of the Horn of Africa and the populations living in the Nile Valley. DNA studies of the Sudan show "genetic unity and linkage" between the Sudanic, Egyptian, Nubian and other Nilotic peoples, as well as some populations of the Horn of Africa. (Yurco (1996), Keita (1993, 2004, 2005) Lovell (1999), Zakrewski (2003, 2007) et. al). The data shows that the Copts are one of the oldest Egyptian populations. This is based on the relatively high frequency of the B-M60 marker, indicating early pre-dynastic colonization of Egypt by Nilotics.

The Copt Y-DNA profile, the genetic strain passed through the male line, suggests that they "represent a living record of the colonization of southern Egypt" by Nubians, something that conforms to recorded history and to Egyptian mythology. See Hisham Y. Hassan 1, Peter A. Underhill 2, Luca L. Cavalli-Sforza 2, Muntaser E. Ibrahim 1. (2008). Also see Y-chromosome variation among Sudanese: Restricted gene flow, concordance with language, geography, and history. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2008.

Haplogroup E-M78, is thought to have an origin in eastern African, is more widely distributed. This haplogroup has been found to depict several well-established subclades with defined geographical clustering (Cruciani et al., 2006, 2007). All clades and subclades correspond to Afro-Asiatic speakers. Although haplogroup E-M78 is common to most Sudanese populations, it has exceptionally high frequency among populations whose ancestral home is the heart of Biblical Kush, including the Beja in eastern Sudan.

The Beja and Amhara from Ethiopia are in one sub-cluster based on shared frequencies of the haplogroup J1, and the distribution of M78 subclades indicates that the Beja are also related to the Oromo living in the Horn of Africa (Cruciani et al., 2007).


Related reading: Archaic and Ancient Symbols of Authority; Iron Seeds from Heaven, Who Were the Horites?; Who Were the Kushites?; African Religion Predates Hinduism

The Myth of Israel's Dual Origins

Alice C. Linsley

In Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible, the Swiss Bible scholar, Konrad Schmid, argues that the Genesis ancestor narratives and the story of Moses present competing pictures of Israel's origin. This is a common idea, but one which is not supported by analysis of the kinship patterns of both men.  In fact, analysis of their kinship patterns reveals that they are identical in every detail.

The myth of dual origins appears to be true until one investigates the genealogical information and finds that the kinship pattern of Abraham and Moses is the pattern identified with and unique to the Horites. This should not surprise us since the Bible claims that Moses is a descendant of Abraham and Abraham's people were Horites whose cultural context was that of Egypt and Kush.

Schmid notes that “Explicit literary connections between Genesis and Exodus appear only in Priestly texts or in texts that presuppose P.” This is an important observation because both Abraham and Moses are of the ruler-priest lines. These lines exclusively intermarried, so we should not be surprised to find that a comparison of their kinship patterns reveals that both were Horites.

Moses’ father was Amram. His name means Ruler (ram) of the People (am). He had two wives. Abraham’s father was Terah, also a great ruler, and he had two wives.

By his cousin-wife Amram had a son Korah and daughter Miriam. By his cousin-wife Terah had a son Haran and a daughter Sarah.

By his half-sister wife Amram had two sons: Aaron (which is Harun in Arabic, a Horite name) and Moses. By his half-sister wife, Abraham had a son Isaac and according to Horite law, Ishmael by Sarah’s surrogate Hagar.

Amram’s youngest son was Moses and he was sent away. Terah’s youngest son was Abraham and he too was sent away. (See the essay “Sent-Away Sons.”)

It is clear from analysis of the kinship patterns of Moses and Abraham that they are the same and that both figures of Israel's history were Horites.
 
 
Related reading:  The Genesis Record of Horite Rule; Who Were the Horites?; Two Named Esau; Who Was Oholibamah?

Biblical Sheba and Nubians Linked

Alice C. Linsley


German archaeologists working in the Ethiopian highlands have identified the remains of settlements from the first millennium B.C. that show cultural and religious connections between Southern Arabia and East African settlements. Excavations and surveys focused on the ancient towns of Yeha and Wuqro indicate that this region in the northern Abyssinian highlands was on the ancient trade routes and connected to ancient Axum.

Yeha altar at the Almaqah temple 

Since 2008, archaeologists excavating at Yeha and surrounding sites have uncovered buildings, burials and pottery that indicate Ethiopian-Yemen connections. Among the discoveries was a perfectly preserved sacrificial altar with a royal inscription in Old South Arabian (Dedanite) bearing the name Yeha. The discovery by Ethiopians archaeologists of the sacrificial altar was made in Meqaber Ga’ewa, a previously unknown location near the city of Wuqro in the region of Tigray.

According to Kebede Amare, head of the Tigray Cultural Department, this civilization had sophisticated irrigation plans, made use of plows, grew millet, and made iron tools and weapons.

The Almaqah temple was built in the 8th to 6th centuries BC on the ruins of an earlier building. It resembles the early South Arabian temples. The sacrificial altar was dedicated by a king named W'RN. The inscription, dating to the 7th century BC, proves the ancient name of Yeha for the first time and reveals a connection between the ruler-priests of South Arabia and the ancient Upper Nile. 

Among the votive artifacts were found incense burners inscribed in Sabaean (Dedanite), the language of Sheba. The inscription stated that the area had been ruled jointly by three kings. They ruled over a population of red and black Nubians as shown on ancient Egyptian monuments. This may be the point of origin of the three-clan confederations that have been identified in Genesis.

Detail from drawing by Ippolito Rosellini (1828)

Related reading:  Who Were The Kushites?; The Afro-Arabian Dedanites; The Sabaean Temple of Almaqah

C.S. Lewis, Evolution, and Atonement

Peter Barnes

There would be a strong case for the assertion that C.S. Lewis (1898–1963) has been the most celebrated Christian apologist of the second half of the twentieth century. Even into the twenty-first century Lewis’s popularity shows no sign of diminishing. His war-time radio broadcasts, which aired in 1942–1944, were published in book form as Mere Christianity, which has proved enormously influential. His other books have also found themselves onto the bookshelves of many Christians, notably The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, Miracles, The Four Loves, The Abolition of Man, and Letters to Malcolm, as well as the seven Chronicles of Narnia and his science fiction trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength). Even The Pilgrim’s Regress, which Lewis later came to regret somewhat, is applauded by J. I. Packer as ‘the freshest and liveliest of all his books’, and the one that Packer has reread more often than any other.1 For logic, beauty of expression, command of the English language, honesty, earthy wit, and imagination, few writers can equal Lewis—or come near him.

C.S. Lewis as theologian

Theologically, Lewis described himself as an Anglican who was ‘not especially “high,” nor especially “low,” nor especially anything else.’ He is often regarded as suspect in his views, especially regarding the doctrines of revelation and the atonement. Certainly, Lewis retained some liberal elements in his thinking. For example, he was open on the possibility of persons of other religions belonging to Christ without knowing it. Regarding revelation, he declared in an interview conducted in 1944 that ‘The Old Testament contains fabulous elements.’ He considered that the accounts of Jonah and of Noah were ‘fabulous’, whereas the court history of King David was probably as reliable as the court history of King Louis XIV. ‘Then, in the New Testament the thing really happens.’ It is the sort of view that rightly needs to be criticized by evangelical believers. Lewis held quite a high view of Scripture, but it remained somewhat vague and elusive in places. Not long before his death, he commented that as Christians ‘we still believe (as I do) that all Holy Scripture is in some sense—though not all parts of it in the same sense—the Word of God.’

Regarding the atonement, Lewis was equally as vague and disappointing. He declared that what matters is that it works, not how it works: ‘The central Christian belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter. A good many different theories have been held as to how it works; what all Christians are agreed on is that it does work.’

Read it all here.

Related reading: C.S.Lewis on Women Priests; C.S. Lewis and the Road to Orthodoxy

Where Abraham Spent his Old Age

Alice C. Linsley



Abraham's territory extended from Hebron in the north (where Sarah resided) to Beersheba in the south (where Keturah resided). Abraham would have traveled back and forth between his two wives as he attended to his various enterprises. These would have included diplomatic matters such a water treaties and mutual defense pacts, defense of his wells, the movement and care of his sheep and cattle, collecting tariffs for the movement of cargo through his territory, and probably metal working since at Beersheba copper was smelted and abundant.

Genesis 22:19 tells us that after his offering of Isaac at Mount Moriah, Abraham didn’t return to Sarah in Hebron but instead went to live on a permanent basis with his cousin-wife Keturah in Beersheba. There he had built an altar and planted a terebinth. In other words, Beersheba was both a shrine and a border settlement. A terebinth marker grew at the north end of Abraham's territory in Mamre (Gen. 12:6) and after Abraham's formed a treaty with Abimelech at Beersheba, he planted a terebint there at the south end of his territory. 

Many Bibles render terebinth as oak tree, but the word that appears in the Hebrew is terebinth, which might indicate the Pistacia terebinthus, also called turpentine tree. It is a small deciduous tree related to the pistachio and the earliest known source of turpentine. However, it is more likely that in the original telling of this story, terebinth meant the "tree of the daughter of Terah." Terah was the father of both Abraham and Sarah. This is a reasonable explanation and it suggests that when Abraham and Sarah left Haran they went first to a place where they had kin on their father's side. Arabic is older than Hebrew and the Arabic word bint (بنت) means "daughter of" and tera is the name Terah. Trees were commonly used as landmarks and border markers.



Beersheba was a Shrine in Abraham's Time

At the time that Abraham would have settled permanently in Beersheba it was a settlement of between 300 and 400 residents who depended on the well to sustain them. “Beer” means well, so Beersheba means the Well of Sheba. It was also a region where very sophisticated metal work was being done.

In Abraham's time wells were considered sacred places and neutral ground for combatants. Shrines were built at wells and these shrines were tended by priests who used the water to tend their flocks. This explains why many of the men of the Horite priestly lines met their future wives, the daugthers of priests, at wells.  This includes Abraham, Jacob, Isaac's Rebecca, and Moses' Zipporah.  Zipporah was the daughter of Jethro a priest of Midian.

Beersheba is first mentioned in Genesis 21. Here the meaning is given “well of seven” or “well of the oath.” The word sheba might refer to the seven lambs sacrificed in the covenant between Abraham and Abimelek, if we are willing to acknowledge that the word sheba is from the older Arabic word sab’a, meaning seven. However, this is a latter interpretation that pertains to covenant theology which developed during the time of Josiah and Hezekiah. It is more likely that the well was named for the person who maintained it as a shrine, and that would have been Sheba, a Horite ancestor of both Abraham and Keturah who is mentioned in Genesis 10:7. Sheba is the son of Ramah and we know that there was an ancient priestly line living in Ramah because that was the hometown of the priest Elkanah and his 2 wives: Hannah and Pennianah. Hannah was the mother of Samuel the Prophet. Penninah was the mother of Am-asi (I Chron. 2:25, 35) which is a Kushite name. The name is found among the Ashante of Ghana. Nte means "people of" and Asha is a proper name. The Ashante are the people of Asha, a Kushite ruler who established a kingdom in West Africa.

Asha is a priestly name in the Bible. A Jerusalem priest was named Am-ashai (Neh. 11:13). One of Jesse's grandsons was named Asah-el, which means "made by God." This suggests that the origin of the priesthood of Israel is to be traced to the older Kushite civilization, which makes sense since this is where Abraham's ancestors originated.

Josiah and Hezekiah were instrumental in turning the religion of Israel from its Kushite antecedents to a Jerusalem cult. During Josiah’s reforms, he “defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba; and he broke down the high places of the gates which were at the entrance of the gate…” (II Kings 23:8).

Archaeologists have found Edomite and Midianite pottery here which indicates that these related peoples lived here together and at different times throughout the Iron Age. A four-horned brazen altar identical in structural to the altar used later by the Israelites was uncovered in 1973. This discovery was made by a team under the direction of Yohanan Aharoni and Ze'ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University. The team first encountered an ancient storage wall that contained the stones of the altar. Three of the stones still had large horns projecting from them, but the horn of the fourth stone had been broken off. Yet still another stone had the carved image of a serpent, probably indicating Kenite construction. The stones, which had been incorporated into a wall, were reassembled to assume their former shape and dated to the time of the Patriarchs. It is believed that the altar was destroyed during Hezekiah’s attempts to eradicate all shrines outside Jerusalem.

Beersheba had strategic importance because it was the largest settlement in the Negev. It guarded the trade routes between Mesopotamia and Egypt and between the Nile Delta and Southern Arabia. Its fortifications in the late Iron Age were impressive and included a moat that encircled the city and a steeply-sloped earthen rampart. Beyond the rampart the city was surrounded by thick stone walls. The gate was a chambered type, and inside the gate archaeologists found an incense altar at the high place, just as described in II Kings 23:8.

Archaeological discoveries indicate that Beersheba culture was from the earliest time associated with a ruler class.  This explains the discovery of crowns and specters, and objects of ivory and copper of exquisitive craftsmanship.


Related reading:  The Pattern of Two Wives; A Woman at a Well; Wells and Brides

28,000-Word Akkadian Dictionary Finished

Love notes and divorce papers. Accounting ledgers and legal briefs. Omens, letters between kings, thoughts on the benefits of flaxseed and the fortune-telling properties of sheep livers.

All were carved in stone or written in cuneiform on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia — the cradle of human civilization — between 2500 BC and AD 100. Scholars at the University of Chicago have worked for nearly a century on a comprehensive guide for those reading the ancient language in which some of the earliest days of human history were written.

Ninety years in the making, the 21-volume, 28,000-word Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is complete. Started in 1921, the dictionary was created over the years by about 85 employees writing on millions of index cards in up to five large offices at the school’s Oriental Institute at University Avenue and 58th Street.

Read it all here.


Akkad was one of the "cities" founded by Abraham's ancestor Nimrod according to Genesis 10: 8,9:  "Kush fathered Nimrod who was the first potentate on earth... the mainstays of his empire were Babel, Erech and Akkad."

Nimrod is probably Sargon I who lived from about 2290 to 2215 BC.  It is assumed that he died in 2215 BC because that is when his son Rimush (Ramesh) by his sister-wife ascended the throne.  Nimrod was ethnically Kushite.

Akkadian cuneiform script was used to write Sumerian, Elamite, Hurrian, and Hittite. The University of Minnesota Classical and Near Eastern Studies Department provides this explanation: "Akkadian is attested in writing from the mid-third millennium BCE until the early first millennium CE, and during this long span of time it became the vehicle for literature and scholarship as well as for practical record-keeping, legal documents, correspondence, and public inscriptions. The Akkadian language and the cuneiform script were adopted as the international medium of written communication throughout the ancient Near East, from Iran to Egypt, during the second millennium BCE."

In other words, Akkadian was the script of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion and it was a simplified system which made communication across a vast empire easier. For example, all of the 29 Proto-Semitic consonants are preserved as distinct sounds in the ancient Southern Arabian languages (the languages of Sheba and Dedan), but Akkadian has only 18 consonants.