Are Zionism and the Bible in Agreement?

Alice C. Linsley


Zionism represents the gradual building up of a tradition which has little to do with the Bible or anthropological evidence. This religious ideology is rooted less in what the Bible says than in what the rabbis have written over the centuries.

Zionism is traceable to the Babylonian exile when the people of Judah yearned for restoration of the glory of Jerusalem. Once they returned to Palestine, they determined that they would never again be separated from the land.  The Jewish yearning for a homeland has been reinforced by repeated experiences of separation and loss.
 
Zionism is well entrenched in American academia. Shaye Cohen at Harvard is one example. Melvin Konner at Emory University is another. 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 isn't true that the Jews gave us monotheism. Monotheism existed in ancient Kush and Egypt before the Jews were identifiable as a people.

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

Zionists attempt to validate the Jewish claim to the land by insisting that Jews have always been in Israel. This is expressed in 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.

The Bible and anthropological evidence indicate that Horites lived in the area know as Judah and Northern Arabia and that Abraham's people were Horites, a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Horus, who was called "son of God." The Horite caste appears to be Nilotic in origin.
 
The Jews claim to be descendants of Abraham, but in fact, Abraham's ancestors came out of the Nile region of Africa. This is what Genesis tells us both explicity and through analysis of the Genesis king lists. 
 
Genesis 10 tells us that Nimrod was a Kushite who built a kingdom in the area of Haran and Ur where, in Genesis 12, we find Abraham's father is a ruler. It is certainly true that the Kushites spread across a vast area of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion, but this can't be said of the Jews, whose identity as a people emerges after their experience in Babylon.
 

Related reading:  Who Were the Horites?; The Genesis King Lists; Who Were the Kushites?; The Migration of Abraham's Ancestors

Adam's Bad Dream

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 Horus Way was the southern section of the Way of the Sea (derek hayyam) mentioned in Isaiah 9:1.  It was a military road that 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, and 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.

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 expectation of the Son of God. 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 lions, one looking east and the other looking west.

What's Lost When Women Serve as Priests?

Alice C. Linsley


Savvy, a reader of Just Genesis, has asked this question: "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.


Related reading:  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.

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 Pharoah'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.  It is more likely that their names indicate their high status in a ancient society that valued hierarchical order.

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 established order included Jacob's son Joseph who married the daughter of the high priest of Heliopolis (On). Asenath, Joseph's wife, was raised at Heliopolis on the Nile. She 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).

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).

Reproduction of the 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.


Related reading:  The Enigma of Joseph; The Joseph Narrative; Who Were the Horites?; The Daughters of Horite Priests

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. You can be an Anglican and believe just about anything. Some Anglican clergy have actually been Muslims and Druids, though these were eventually defrocked.  Then there was the falsely reported story about Bishop Bruno giving communion to Hindus in his Los Angeles cathedral.  It was believable because, like William Swing, Gnostic Bruno wants to dialogue with Hindus. Probably he 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 is justifiably frustrated with the American leadership of the Episcopal Church, but he ought not to blame wrong interpretation of the Bible on the Americans. Wright says that Americans have more difficulty interpreting Genesis than people in England because Americans tend to bundle biblical literalism with conservative social values. This makes it difficult to speak with precision about what the text actually tells us. On this point I fully agree. That said, Wright needs to face the historical fact that his own Church of England has been far from faithful to the text. The 1922 Commission on Doctrine wasn't willing to 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.

Besides the tone of superiority, one notes that the Church of England was quite ready, ahead of the facts, to embrace evolutionary theory although the binary distinctions evident in Genesis do not permit the view that one species can change into another.  Instead, Genesis presents a worldview in which the boundaries between all created "kinds" are fixed.  Genetics has in fact shown this to be true. Further, there is no physical evidence to support the macro-evolutionary theory, especially as this touches on human origins.

It is time for Christians on both sides of the Atlantic to set aside assumptions and look more closely at what Genesis tells us about our world. 


Related reading:  Anglicanism on the Doctrine of Creation; Genesis and Genetics; The Importance of Binary Distinctions; John Walton's Lost World of Genesis One; Hierarchy in Creation: The Biblical View; Rightly Reading Genesis 1-3; The United Religions Initiative, A Bridge Back to Gnosticism; Russian Church Seeks End to Darwinian Monopoly in Education; The Oldest Human Fossils; Q and A on Creation and Evolution

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

The 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 had become fragmented and so didn't recognize that there had been but a single empire stretching from ancient Kush to India. In part this is because the land that bridged Arabia and southern Pakistan and southwestern India had subsided below the ocean, burying the evidence of Kushite expansion out of Africa.

The religion of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion spread through the agency of ruler-priests who controlled water systems at a time when the Sahara, Mesopotamia, Pakistan and India were wetter. These ruler-priests are called Horites because they were devotees of Horus, who was called "son of God."  They are related to the Hapiru (Akkadian) and Habiru (Kushitic). 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.

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, Hat-Hor 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 Hat-Hor 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:  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 because the rulers among Abraham's people were related to the rulers of Egypt. While in Egypt, Abraham and Sarah were present in Pharaoh's court which is how Pharaoh's officials noticed Sarah's great beauty. This also explains Abraham's audience with Pharaoh (Gen. 12:18).  

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.

Related reading:  The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; Missionary Horite Priests; Egypt in the Christmas Narrative; Locating Biblical Ur

What Color Was Abraham?

Alice C. Linsley


As a descendant of the Ainu (royal priestly caste of Onn), Abraham probably had a red skin tone, typical of Egyptians, such as the man dressed in red in the photo below.

In his younger years, when he probably traveled more in the sun, Abraham might have been a darker reddish brown like these men:

Beja Metalworker of Sudan

In his later years, after he was very wealthy and had many servants and sons and had retired to Beersheba, his skin tone was probably lighter, though still reddish, closer to the skin tone of this man:

Egyptian ruler 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 Ham and Kush, through Nimrod, and he resided most of his life in Egypt, Canaan and Arabia. Abraham was also a descendant of Shem, but since the lines of Ham and Shem exclusively intermarried, their descendants would have had similar skin tone.

To answer the question, "What color was Abraham?" I suggest that his skin color was like that of the Beja of Sudan, most Egyptians, and the Dravidians of India.  All of these peoples are ethnically Kushite. We are not talking about race here, only skin tone. Genetically humans are 99.7% the same and the term "race" is biologically meaningless.


Abraham's Kushites Spread Far and Wide

Abraham's Kushite people spread across vast areas of Africa, the Middle East, the Levant, Europe, India and as far as India, Nepal and Cambodia.

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 Abraham and his people were of Kushite or Nilotic origin, we can call them Africans.  Here is what we must remember when we consider African populations: Geneticist, Kenneth Kidd, was said, “In almost any single African population or tribe, there is more genetic variation than in all the rest of the world put together."

 “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.)

As the Kushites and Nilotic peoples spread across the Afro-Asiatic Dominion and married with other populations the genetic variation became less. This is true with the exception of the Horite ruler-priests who exclusively intermarried.


Horite Social Structure

Among Abraham's Horite people social status and occupation were passed from father to son, but the son's ethnicity was that of his mother. It is important to know the ethnicity of the mothers to understand the ethnic complexity of Abraham's descendants.

By Sarah, Abraham had Isaac, the father of Israel. By Keturah, he had six sons and the first-born was Joktan, an Arabian with ties to the people of Sheba. The Joktanite Tribes of Arabia are his descendants. By his concubine Hagar, he had Ishmael of Al-Paran, an Egyptian, and by his other concubine Masek, he had Eliezar. Masek 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 genealogies list only first-born sons, those who would rule.

The Hebrew form of Abraham is Avraham. A variant of the name – Abram – means high father, indicating a man of high estate, a fact recognized by the Hittites who referred to Abraham as “a prince among us” when he approached them about buying land to bury Sarah (Gen. 23:6).

The most likely explanation for the name Abraham is the most obvious. Ham in Arabic means burnt. Abraham means “burnt father” and refers to his skin color. The Nilotic peoples were referred to as burnt. Abraham was a descendant of Ham and Shem because the royal lines of Ham and Shem intermarried exclusively. These ancestors of Abraham were Kushites and their skin color ranged from black to reddish brown.


All of these types lived in ancient Egypt.  There was greater genetic diversity there than most other places in the world because the Upper Nile Valley was apparently the birthplace of Humans.

King David, one of Abraham’s most famous descendants, was said to be of a burnt skin color.  He is described as ruddy, which means that he had a reddish skin tone like that of Egyptians who work in the sun (I Sam. 16:12; 17:42). The Hebrew word for ruddy is adom and it is related to the word edom and to the word adam. God formed the man "Adam" from the red clay which swept down into the Nile Valley from the Ethiopian highlands.

The Hebrew adam is related to the Hamitic/Hausa word odum, meaning red-brown. The story of the creation of the first man comes from the Nile and probably dates to the time before the Kushite rulers.  It indicates that Abraham and his Ainu people had a red skin tone.

One of Abraham's descendants was called "Edom" (Esau) because he was red. The people of Seir the Horite (Gen. 36) were callled "Edomites" because they had a red skin tone. All the Horites had this skin tone since, as a caste, they practiced endogamy.

The Horite of the Nile were the descendants of the Ainu who spread abroad and eventually settled in Japan and the Northeastern seaboard of Canada.  This has been documented by living descendants of the Ainu.


Related reading:  Who Were the Horites?; Rekindling Ancient Memory; Who Were The Kushites?; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology; Abraham's Concubines; Who Was Eliezar of Damascus?; Race and the Bible

Byzantine Church Found in Central Israel

Amir Ganor of the IAA (Israel Antiquities Authority) stands at the archaeological site where an ancient church was found in Hirbet Madras, central Israel, Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011. Israeli archaeologists say they have uncovered a 1,500-year-old church, including an unusually well-preserved mosaic floor with images of lions, foxes, fish and peacocks. According to Ganor the church in the hills southwest of Jerusalem was active between the fifth and seventh centuries A.D.

The Byzantine church located southwest of Jerusalem, excavated over the last two months, will be visible only for another week before archaeologists cover it again with soil for its own protection.

Read the full story here