Cutting Through the Textual Layers

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

A reader has asked: If there are several "layers" of "Adam", would there also be several layers of Eve, Eden, Tree, and Serpent?

The term "layers" is helpful if we imagine the growth rings of a tree. The oldest rings are near the center of the tree. The layers are visible when we cut through the tree. That is what the discipline of Biblical Anthropology does using the canonical Scriptures. It seeks to identify the oldest layers and to use that data to gain a clearer picture of the social structure of the early Hebrew.

Biblical anthropology asks about antecedents. It explores what comes before what is described in the text. What events preceded the events recounted? It seeks to understand the cultural context of the earliest persons named in Genesis: Adam, Eve, Cain and Seth, etc. It is concerned with ancestors and received traditions. From what earlier context did certain practices develop? What traces of ancient memory can be uncovered?

The biblical text always speaks of something older, some prior action that solicits a response from later generations. The later generations are enjoined to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There is a thick cultural web surrounding the God of the early biblical Hebrew. 

That context is not apparent to the casual reader because it is hidden behind layers of Jewish midrash, denominational interpretations, and theological typologies. The tree in the midst of the garden is taken as a type of the Cross or as the Tree of Life. The serpent is taken as the usurper of God's authority, the Devil, or God's adversary, Satan. 

The tree of life and the serpent are ancient mythological motifs and are found in many of the world's religions. They are clues as to the riverine contexts of the early Hebrew, devotees of God Father and God's son. The early Hebrew believed that a woman of their ruler-priest caste would bring forth the Son/Seed of God who would crush the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15). The enemy of God bruises the foot of the Woman’s Son, but the Son crushes his head. That expectation that was expressed around 4000 years ago: "Horus has shattered (crushed) the mouth of the serpent with the sole of his foot" (The Pyramid Texts, Utterance 388). Horus is the Greek for the ancient Egyptian HR, meaning "Most High One".

Biblical anthropology insists that the texts be read empirically. The reader identifies data that makes the earlier contexts clearer. The mythological Adam and Eve are posed as the first parents (apical ancestors). This is consistent with many African origin stories. Among the Gikuyu, the first man and women were called Gikuyu and Mumbi. However, these are not the first humans on earth, but the founders of the Gikuyu people. Likewise, Adam and Eve are the founders of the clans that come to be identified as Horite and Sethite Hebrew. These are Abraham's ancestors. 

Abraham is the father of many peoples, an icon of faith, and a sent away son to whom God delivered a territory in ancient Edom. The sending away of non-ascendant sons is a feature of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the biblical Hebrew. That feature drove their dispersion out of Africa. 

The Bible designates Abraham a Hebrew, but he was not the first Hebrew. The Hebrew ruler-priest caste existed before Abraham's time (c.2100 B.C.). The term "Hebrew" comes from the ancient Akkadian word for priest, Abru. Akkadian is the oldest known Semitic language and the language of Nimrod's territory. Genesis 10 designates Nimrod as a Kushite kingdom builder. Here we have evidence for the movement of the early Hebrew out of Africa into Mesopotamia. 

The early Hebrew named in the Genesis 4, 5, 10 and 11 lists were rulers over territories in Eden. The term Eden derives from the Akkadian term edinu, which refers to a fertile plain or a flood plain. In Genesis 2:11-14, Eden is described as a vast well-watered region that extended from the sources of the Nile River in Ethiopia and Uganda to the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Some of the world's oldest cultures are found in this Fertile Crescent. However, the biblical description of Eden comes long after the time of Adam and Eve. It is a kindling of ancient memory.

In Genesis, Adam's wife is called Hava (חוה) which is descriptive of her role as the birther (Gen. 3:20). Adam describes Eve as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, suggesting that she and he have the same father, as did Sarah and Abraham.

As Adam's half-sister, Eve would have produced Adam's heir, which is Cain, the firstborn son. This may explain the royal affix -itti- in Genesis 4:1, where Eve claims to have acquired a man or a ruler with God's help.

E. A. Speiser (Anchor Bible Commentary on Genesis, p. 30) believes that the word qaniti (Gen. 4:1) is in assonance with "Cain" (Qayin). However, the word that appears in Genesis 4:1 is Akkadian, not Hebrew. Iti or itti is an Akkadian affix that appears with rulers’ names, and in reference to deities. For example, itti šarrim means "with the king." Another example: itti-Bel-balatu means "with Bel there is life."

Itti appears in royal names such as Nefertitti. Even today among the Oromo of the Horn of Africa the affix designates persons of high social standing: Kaartuumitti, Finfinneetti, and Dimashqitti.

Eve apparently recognized her firstborn son as a ruler. Yet Cain was banished or sent away from his parents' homeland. Genesis 4:15 states that he moved "east of Eden". If his homeland was in the Nile Valley, that means Cain moved into Arabia. His descendants are found in the land of Kenan/Kenites, which is the land of Canaan, or כנען, pronounced kena'an.

His brother Seth ruled over a territory in the Nile Valley which was called the Land of Seti. Cain and Seth built cities, had musical instruments, worked stone and metal, and worshiped the High God. Their descendants intermarried (as shown in the diagram) and dispersed widely as early kingdom builders.

Lamech the Elder with his two wives (Gen. 4) and Lamech the Younger, his grandson (Gen. 5).

The biblical data identifies the historical Adam and Eve as founding parents of the early Hebrew lines descending from Cain and Seth. Because the descendants of Cain and Seth intermarried (caste endogamy), all their Hebrew descendants could claim them and their unnamed wives as their common ancestors (cognatic descent). 

The ascendant rulers took half-sisters as their first wives and later in life took patrilineal cousins as their second wives. Sarah was Abraham's half-sister wife (Gen.  Sarah enjoyed the life of a wealthy, highborn woman. Her name is derived from the Akkadian word for queen: šarratum. In Genesis 20:12, Abraha explains that he and Sarah had the same father but different mothers. Their father Terah had two wives, as did many Hebrew rulers.

Keturah was Abraham's cousin bride. She bore him six sons and an unknown number of daughters. The two wives lived in separate settlements and those settlements were instrumental in maintaining territorial boundaries. However, the birth of two firstborn sons raises the question: “Which is the ruler’s proper heir?” Among the early Hebrew the proper heir was the firstborn son of the first wife, usually a half-sister. That is why Isaac was Abraham's proper heir, and like his father, Isaac was a man of great wealth. He ruled over his father's territory in Edom (Idumea), the land of red people.

Analysis of the early Hebrew kinship pattern provides verification that these were historical persons. Their kinship pattern is authentic. If it were not so, it could not be diagrammed, and that kinship pattern would not be consistent through the biblical texts. Some have offered the proofless argument that the structure of the king lists of Genesis 4 and 5 reflects a literary device. Biblical anthropology has demonstrated that the kinship of Genesis 4 and 5 "begets" is the same pattern found with Ham and Shem, Abraham and Nahor, and many other Hebrew rulers named in the Bible.

Kinship patterns are highly resistant to change, especially among castes. The early Hebrew were a ruler-priest caste with a distinctive marriage and ascendancy pattern. That pattern can be discerned by cutting through the layers, using an empirical method.

Related reading: Genesis in Anthropological Perspective; Three Portraits of Adam; Horite and Sethite Mounds; The Father of Adam and Eve; The First Lords of the Earth: An Anthropological Study; Contextual Incongruities in Genesis

Biblical Evidence of an Old Earth

Alice C. Linsley

As discussed in Evidence of an Old Earth - Part 1, the Bible reveals a gap of time between the first created humans, represented by Adam and Eve, and the first rulers listed in Genesis 4 (Cain's line) and Genesis 5 (Seth's line). If Adam and Eve were created around 4 million years ago, and Cain and Seth lived around 3500 BC, that gap involves millions of years.

The age of the Earth is estimated at 4 billion years. The first archaic humans appeared suddenly on the Earth about 3.8 million years ago. The rulers of Genesis 4 (Cains' line) and Genesis 5 (Seth's line) lived during the Holocene Wet Period (the Neolithic Subpluvial) between 7500 and 3000 BC.

In Evidence for an Old Earth - Part 2, I presented but a very small portion of the evidence from archaeology and paleontology for the presence of humans of the Earth from 160,000+ years ago. (For more on this, see "Facts About Human Origins.")

It is clear from scientific analysis of the "begats" in Genesis 4 and 5 that these lists represent established royal lines that practiced endogamy (marriage between the lines). The lines of Cain and Seth intermarried according to a distinctive pattern involving two wives, as shown in the diagram below. This pattern can be traced throughout the Bible, so that there is no doubt that Jesus is a direct descendant of these early rulers.

Lamech Segment Analysis: Genesis 4 and Genesis 5
© 1998 Alice C. Linsley

Explanation of Symbols
O Female
Δ Male
= Marriage
/ Line of descent
_ Siblings

Note that Lamech's daughter Naamah married her patrilineal cousin Methuselah and named their first born son Lamech, after her father. This is called the "cousin bride's naming prerogative." This feature identifies the ruler-priests lines of the Bible, making it possible to trace the ancestry of Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David and Jesus back to these earliest Biblical rulers.

The oldest named rulers were Nilo-Saharan and Sahara-Nubian. Because this is so, often it is necessary to investigate these peoples and their languages and practices to understand very old material in the Bible. Consider the first three words of the Ten Commandments are: Anochi, Havayah Elohecha, meaning "I am God, your Ruler." The Talmud (Shabbat 105a) questions the word anochi (I) because it is an unusual form of the pronoun, as opposed to the more commonly used ani. The point of origin of this unusual pronoun is the Nile Valley. In the ancient Egyptian language anochi refers to the royal first person.

Hebrew does not have the letter V (see chart.) However the letter V, which appears in other Biblical words, is found in the Nilotic languages such as ancient Egyptian and Luo. An example is Havilah (Gen. 2:11), which refers to a region in the Upper Nile Valley. This is further evidence that the words Anochi Havayah are not originally Hebrew.

The word anochi is found among other African peoples also. Among the Igbo, anochie means “a replacer” or “to replace” and among the Ashante anokyi means "Ano Junior." In both cases, one finds the idea of succession from father to son, suggesting a royal line. A Nigerian reports that "anochie means 'direct heir to a throne'." The words Anoch and Enoch are clearly associated with royal ascendancy. They may also be related to the Biblical word Anakim (Gen. 23:2).

Cain married his patrilineal cousin, a daughter of Enoch. Enoch is a royal title and means "heir to the throne." Cain married into a royal house, a family to which he was related. Adam is the representative of the whole of created humanity in the Bible, but Enoch is the representative of the oldest known line of kings in the Bible. That may be why these two are paralleled in Psalm 8:4: What is man (Enoch) that you spare a thought for him, or the son of Man (ben' adam) that you care for him?

Cain and Seth were great rulers in Africa. Cain's territory probably extended between Kano and Nok in modern Nigeria. Seth or Seti is a name found among the ancient Nilotic rulers. Ta-Seti was one of 42 administrative divisions (nomes) along the Nile and is the earliest Nubian Kingdom, dating to 5,900 BC. So Cain and Seth were African rulers whose lines intermarried.

Further, as is evident from the diagram below, both rulers married daughters of another African royal house.

Again we find the cousin bride's naming prerogative. Cain and Seth married the daughters of Enoch, a royal title. Those daughters named their first born sons after their father. Clearly, Cain and Seth are not the literal sons of Adam and Eve, but rather their distant royal descendants.

Cain is also a royal title. The following words are related to the word Cain or Kain: King, Khan, Kandake (Candance in English Bibles), and the Greek for hunter - κυνηγος (kinigos). The kings of the archaic world were great hunters, like Nimrod, "a mighty hunter before the Lord" (Gen. 10:9). These "mighty men of old" are also called "nephilim" which comes from npyl in Aramaic, meaning "great one" and is equivalent to nfy in Arabic, meaning hunter.

By the time of Jude's epistle (c. 68 AD), Cain was solidly established as the archetype of an earthly ruler. Jude warns those who might abandon Christ because God punishes those who rebel against Him. He uses three men as examples: Cain, the ruler, Balaam, the prophet, and Korah, the priest. These were the three most sacred offices among Abraham’s people and often they were filled by people corrupted by the world.

Related reading: Theories of Creation: An Overview; The Genesis "Begats" Speak of Archaic Rulers, Jesus Christ; The Dispersion of Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; Kushite and Horite Rulers Linked; A Scientific Timeline of Genesis; On Gaps and Overlaps; Evidence of an Old Earth - Part 1; Evidence of an Old Earth - Part 2; Sodom, Gomorrah, and the Seismic History of the Dead Sea: Support for Biblical History – Yes! Support for a Young Earth – No!

Jesus Christ's Kushite Ancestors

Alice C. Linsley


The name Seth (Set) is associated with ancient Kush in the Upper Nile in what is today southern Egypt and Sudan. In Egyptian writings this land was called Ta-Seti, meaning "Land of the Bow," referring to the weapon used by warriors and hunters of that part of Africa. Khaem-wa-set, the brother of King Seti I (1302-1290 B.C.), was the Chief of the bowmen of Kush. 

Pharaoh Seti I was likely named for an earlier Seti. While it may not be possible to trace him back to Seth, Kain’s brother, it is possible to trace Seti's Kushite origins.

In Genesis 5 we read the list of rulers who descended from Seth. The tenth from Seth is Kush, a son of Ham. African story tellers (griots) generally recount lists of rulers and ancestors to the depth of 10, so the line of Seth would look like this:

Seth
Enosh
Kain (Kenan), grandson of Kain
Mahalalel
Jared (Irad or Yared)
Enoch
Methuselah
Lamech the Younger, son of Naamah and Methuselah
Noah
Ham
Kush

The Kushites began to achieve greatness around 5,000 B.C., about 2,000 years before Noah, whose homeland is called Bor-No (Land of Noah). The oldest Kushite culture to have undergone extensive excavation is that at Kerma.[1] A funerary temple in Kerma illustrates Kush’s connections to kingdoms at its northern/Egyptian and southern/Nigerian boundaries. One interior wall depicted Egyptian fishing boats, bullfights, and an enormous crocodile. Another wall showed rows of giraffes and hippopotamuses, wildlife characteristic of the territories to the southwest of Kush/Nubia. Naqada pottery dating to about 4000 B.C. is adorned with realistic images of ostriches and ibexes, animals not found near the Nile.

The Kushites traded with kingdoms to the north and to the south. There is evidence that the clans herded cattle from the grasslands to a communal gathering place at the Nile each year. [2]  Some settled during the Chalcolithic Period on the edges of the Beersheba Valley where they lived in subterranean dwellings carved out of the limestone wth metal tools. An ivory workshop was discovered in one of these houses at Bir es-Safadi.  The Bible refers to these as Dedanites.[3]  The men shaved their heads (Jeremiah 25:23), as did Horite priests. This suggests that a confederation of Horite families lived in the Beersheba Valley. Genesis 36 confirms this, listing Dedan as a Horite ruler. Genesis 10 tells us that Dedan's father was Raamah, son of Kush. His brother was Nimrod who established a vast kingdom in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley.

There is still much to discover about ancient Kush. Unfortunately, many Kushite artifacts were destroyed when the Aswan Dam was built. Over 45 Nubian villages were washed away along the banks of the Nile south of Aswan. Twenty-four monuments were dismantled and relocated and many others were documented before the area was flooded.

This makes the biblical record even more valuable as a tool to reconstruct a picture of ancient Kush. And that biblical record is proving to be reliable. For example, Genesis 11:3 tells us that the towers in Mesopotamia were built of fired brick, an innovation which began in Kush around 2500 B.C. Fired bricks were not used for royal buildings which were always made of stone, but was used for common houses and to build walls. The use of fired brick to build towers in Mesopotamia suggests that this advancement moved eastward from Kush into the land of Shinar. All the Mesopotamian ziggurats were built with a core of mud brick and an exterior covered with baked brick. Ziggurats were stepped temples built in Sumer, Babylon and Assyria from about 2200 until 500 BC.

Kush was the father of Nimrod. Between 1100 and 800 B.C. the name Nimrod was a popular name in Egypt, according to Chaldean Genesis.  (Jesus was baptized at an ancient Egyptian river shrine on teh Jordan. The place was called Nim-rah, meaning the waters of God.) Nimrod built cities in Mesopotamia and he probably introduced the use of fired brick. We meet Nimrod’s descendents later in the persons of Nahor and Terah, Abraham’s father. Ramaah settled in the Arabian Peninsula, south of Dedan. We meet Ramaah’s descendents later in the person of Seir the Horite.[4]

What we have here is further evidence that the lines of Ham and Shem intermarried so that the ancestors of Christ our God were Nilotic peoples.


Related reading:  Who Were the Kushites?; Who Were the Horites?; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology



NOTES
1. Kerma was excavated by the Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonnet. To read Bonnet's chronology of Kerma, go here.

2. In 1986, cattle burials were found at Qustul, south of Abul Simbel, in the heart of Kush.

3. Dedan, Tema and Buz comprized a Horite confederation. The oldest Arabic texts have been found around the Afro-Arabian oases of Tema and Dedan. Tema, known by Arabs as Taima, lies about 70 miles north-east of Dedan. Tema, Dedan and Dumah were caravan stops along the trade route from Babylon to Sheba.

4. The term Horite can't be taken anachronistically when speaking of Abraham's ancestors, who were devotees of Horus, who they regarded as the “Son of God.”


Related reading:  Biblical Anthropology and Antecedents; Who Were the Kushites?; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology; Who Were the Horites?

The Kingdoms of Cain and Seth

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

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

Alice C. Linsley

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Bronze figure of Napatan ruler

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

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

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

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


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

First Verifiably Historical Persons in Genesis

Alice C. Linsley


Just Genesis addresses a wide range of topics related to the first book of the Bible. You will find all the articles here listed alphabetically by topic in the INDEX.

To get us started, we'll consider some common questions. 
Where do readers of Genesis first encounter historical persons in Genesis?

The first cerifiably historical persons in Genesis are the men and women listed in the Genesis 4 and 5 king lsists.  These are the lines of Cain and Seth which intermarried. Cain and Seth married cousins who were the royal daughters of Enoch I.

Adam and Eve are likely ahistorical represenstations of the first human couple created by God. As such, they would have lived at least 3 million years ago and were fully human and in the divine image. In the Kushite context of Abraham's ancesotrs they are archetypal first ancestors of the Nilotic peoples. It is common among Nilotic tribes to have names for the founders of their tribe. The Gikuyu, for example, call their ancestral heads Gikuyu and Mumbi. 

The first historical persons in the Bible are ruler-priests of the lines of Cain (Gen. 4) and his brother Seth (Gen. 5)  Cain and Seth are the progenitors of the people who God would later call into covenant with Him. Their lines intermarried. Only first-born sons are listed and one daughter, Naamah (Gen.4:22), suggesting that she is important. Indeed, she is key to understanding the kinship pattern of Abraham's ancestors.

Naamah married her patrilineal cousin, Methuselah (Gen. 5:26), and named their first-born son Lamech after her father.  This is but one of many examples in the Bible of what I have termed "the cousin bride's naming prerogative."  The naming of the first-born son of a ruler by his cousin or niece bride reflects an ancient Nilotic custom of giving a throne name.  The cousin bride's son does not ascend to the throne of his biological father.  He is the heir to the throne of his maternal grandfather.


What is the nature of the information found in Chapters 4 and 5?

The “begets” of Genesis 4 and 5 present a very old kinship pattern which I have diagrammed and analyzed using E.L. Schusky’s Manual for Kinship Analysis, probably one of the most important books of the 20th century. Kinship patterns are like cultural signatures. Once a pattern is identified, it can often be used to trace the original homeland of a people or peoples. This means that analysis of the kinship pattern presented in Genesis 4 and 5 can direct us to the probable homeland of Abraham’s ancestors. Since the pattern is distinctly Nilotic, we can safely consider that Abraham's ancestors came out of the Nile region.  Genesis tells us that this is so.  Abraham is a descendant of Kush and Kush designates a vast territory that ran the length of the Upper Nile and extended during the Late Holocene Wet Period into what is today the Sahara of west central Africa.

Abraham never lived in west central Africa because he was a descendant of Nimrod who had left Kush to establish a territory in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley between Haran and Ur.  That is where we first meet Abraham in Genesis 12.


What does analysis of the genealogical information reveal about Abraham’s ancestors?

Analysis of the kinship pattern of Abraham and his ancestors reveals that these rulers maintained two wives in separate households on a north-south axis. Before a man could ascend to his father's throne, he had to take his second wife. The first wife was a half-sister, as was Sarah to Abraham.  The second wife was a patrilineal cousin or niece, as was Keturah to Abraham.  The wives' separate households marked the northern and southern boundaries of the chief’s territory. By his two wives, the ruler had two first-born sons whose lines intermarried. By this means the ruler-priests maintained purity of their lines. The pattern continues throughout the Bible and appears to end with Joseph, of the ruler-priest line of Mattai, and his cousin bride Mary, daughter of the shepherd priest Joachim.


Related reading:  Nimrod: Afro-Asiatic Kingdom Builder; Who Were the Kushites?; The Migration of Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; The Cousin Bride's Naming Prerogative