Messiah's Sign in Creation

Alice C. Linsley

Stat Crux Dum Volvitur Orbis. The Cross remains constant while the world turns. Those are the words of Pope John Paul II (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 60) in a chapter addressing suffering. Often our suffering draws our focus from the Cross to ourselves and we forget that the Cross redeems all suffering ultimately.

It seems to me that the cross shape is Messiah's sign in creation because it is found everywhere. The intersecting lines between the cardinal points form a cross. The cross-shaped laminin (shown right) holds the body together (cell adhesion). The beta and alpha chains of laminin "influence pre-synaptic and post-synaptic development, thus providing a way to coordinate maturation of the sending and receiving sides of the synapse." Referring to Jesus Messiah, Paul wrote, “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17)

Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri

Before he died at age 108,  Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri left a signed note indicating Messiah's identity: Yeshua - Jesus. A few months before, Kaduri had surprised his followers when he told them that he met the Messiah in dreams and visions. Kaduri gave a message in his synagogue on Yom Kippur, teaching how to recognize the Messiah. Kaduri's manuscripts, written in his own hand, have cross-symbols painted all over the pages.

Many attempt to explain the crosses by arguing that the great Rabbi Kaduri was not a Christian. We have no reason to believe he was. Instead, it appears that he was a Jew who accepted Jesus as Messiah. Only God knows. This we may safely assume: Rabbi Kaduri was wise and prayerful, and he knew the tradition of his Hebrew ancestors. Perhaps this led him to Jesus, the Son of God, at the sacred center of our cross-shaped reality.

His ancestors were Horite Hebrew. For them the sun and the cross spoke of the Creator who had a son. The son is called Horus (Enki in Akkadian). Horus was the archetype of Jesus, the son of God. Both the sun and the cross are found on stone reliefs at the Temple of Horus in Edfu (shown below). The relief also shows the sun resting over the banks of the Nile (directly below the bird). A variation of this image is the Hebrew horned altar, an apophatic solar image. The sun resting over a place or person represents divine appointment and blessing. The Canaanite Y is another example.

Photo: Maureen Palmer

Horus was called "lord of the sky" in hieroglyphs at the beginning of dynastic Egypt (c. 3000 BC). His priest devotees were called Horites (Gen. 36) and one of the terriotries they controlled was ancient Edom, known as a seat of wisdom.

This Egyptian temple of Horus closely resembles the pillared architecture of Petra. The ancient temples of the Sun cities had many pillars, typically at least 25. Entrance pillars were often named for righteous ancestors. The entrance pillars of Solomon's temple were named from his maternal and paternal great great grandfathers.

Vertical pillars and horizontal entrance beams/stones form a cross, and as the entrances to the ancient temples faced east, the sunlight came into the sacred space through the cross.

The Horite Hebrew regarded the sun as the symbol or emblem of the Creator. They are called Ha'biru in ancient Akkadian. The word is related to the Arabic yakburu, meaning “he is getting big” and to the intensive active prefix: yukabbiru, meaning "he is enlarging." This is a reference to the morning ritual of Horite Hebrew priests who greeted the rising sun with prayers and watched as it expanded across the horizon. This is the origin of the morning ritual whereby the sun is blessed daily in every devout Hindu home (Agnihotra) and the Jewish Sun Blessing ritual (Birkat Hachama) that is performed every 28 years.

Aspects of the solar symbolism are found in the Bible and in historical texts. Psalm 92:2 describes the Lord as “a sun and a shield.” The Victory Tablet of Amenhotep III describes Horus as “The Good God, Golden [Horus], Shining in the chariot, like the rising of the sun; great in strength, strong in might…” (Tablet of Victory of Amenhotep III, J.H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Two, p. 854). At the oldest known Horite Hebrew fortress at Nekhen on the Nile, the priests greeted the rising sun and placed prayers in the crevices of the rock.

Consider how the boundary markers of Abraham's territory suggest intersecting lines that form a cross. First, the placement of his wives in separate households on a north-south axis. These settlements marked the northern and southern boundaries of the his territory. Sarah resided in Hebron and Keturah in Beersheba. For Abraham, the east-west boundaries were marked by water sources: Engedi to the east, and wells in Gerar to the west.

Our experience of earth and the heavens suggests a geometrical quality of lines, angles and boundaries. The boundaries fixed by the Creator can be observed in genetics (horotely), climate cycles, and in time and space. Abraham's people respected the boundaries since they perceived of them as having been established by the Creator. Their religious and social practices reflect concern to distinguish the values of entities in the binary sets of Heaven-Earth; God-Man, Pure-Defiled, and Life-Death, and to serve the greater value.

Consider how the residences of the prophets reveal the vertical and horizontal lines that form a cross. Abraham visited the prophet (moreh) at a great oak half way between the cities of Ai and Bethel (east-west axis). Deborah judged from her nut palm tree halfway between the cities of Bethel and Ramah (north-south axis).

In our cross-shaped reality, there is always a sacred center. In the ancient world the sacred center of a territory was usually the shrine city, an elevated fortification near a water source. For the ancient Nilotes the sacred center was depicted in this image of the lions and the sun. 

We also may speak of a metaphysical sacred center. After his many years of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida concluded that there is a center and that there is a "presence" at the center. He claimed that throughout the history of philosophy this metaphysical presence is called by different names, including God. Materialists are baffled and perhaps frightened by this metaphysical presence since it must be of greater power and authority than they. There is existential angst about the possibility that expressions of authority depend on God's existence (Romans 13:1). A Facebook friend recently wrote that there are many ways to kill people, but the most certain way is to persuade them that there is no God, no Truth, and no morality. 

Pope John Paul II said that "the Cross remains constant while the world turns." Were we to investigate with seeking hearts, we would see Messiah's sign everywhere.

Related reading: Reality is Cross Shaped; The Sun and the Moon in Genesis; The Swelling of Sun and River Speak of God; The Rabbi Who Found Messiah

Binary Sets and Gender Distinctions

Alice C. Linsley

The ancient biblical writers saw a binary pattern in the order of creation. Binary refers to perceived sets of opposites like dark-light; male-female; Creator-creature; life-death, etc. Not everything that we regard as opposites represents a binary set in the Biblical sense, however. Tall-short; hot-cold are relative to the person judging. At 5 feet 5 inches, I would be considered short by a Watusi warrior, but a Pygmy would consider me to be tall.

The difference between the binary view and dualism is significant. In dualism the entities in the set are regarded as equal. Think of the philosophy of Yin-Yang. However, the biblical writers understood that one entity in the fixed binary set is superior in some way to the other. Males are larger and stronger than females. The Sun is greater than the moon. In Genesis we read that God created two great lights in the heavens: the greater (Sun) to rule the day and the lesser (moon) to rule the night. The superiority of the male and the Sun are not value judgments. These represent empirical observation of a universal pattern. The binary worldview is found throughout the Bible and is especially evident in Genesis. Sometimes the binary distinction is rather subtle and easy to miss. Consider, for example, the binary set of hot and cool encounters with God. Abraham was visited “in the heat of the day” by God in three Persons (Gen. 18:1). The binary opposite is “in the cool of the day”, the time of God’s visitation to Adam and Eve in Paradise (Gen. 3:8). We have encounters with God described as hot and cool. We must always pay attention to such distinctions. In the first God has come to punish Sodom and Gomorrah, and in the second God has come to enjoy fellowship with the Man and the Woman.

Men and women are ontologically equal in that they are both created in the image and likeness of the Creator. Nevertheless, it is universally observed that males are larger and stronger than females and that they naturally perform quite different tasks. The male-female binary set was employed by Paul in his exploration of the nature of the relationship between Christ and his Church. It is like the relationship of the sun and moon. In the ancient world the sun represented the masculine principle and the moon the feminine principle. These gender assignments are evident, for example, in Spanish - el sol and la luna, and in other languages that share a common proto-Afro-Asiatic system of roots. When Genesis 1 describes the sun as the greater light this pertains not only to its size, the strength of its light and the intensity of its heat. The reality is that it is the source of all light and warm. The moon merely reflects the light of the sun (refulgence). This is another way to describe the relationship between Christ and his Church. Paul says that he is exploring a mystery. Christ is the great light and source of life. His people reflect His light and life. Heaven is greater than earth. God is greater than humans. Were it not so, God could not stoop to save us. In emptying Himself (kenosis) Jesus Christ shows Himself to be the greater and the only one able too save. Without the binary view the Gospel would be meaningless. Christ's kenotic act would be senseless.

The study of philosophy tells us that the binary feature of reality allows for greater complexity. The human anatomy, for example, has a bilateral feature which allows for greater range of motion. The human brain has a binary feature - two chambers - which allows for greater complexity of thought. Binary language is the basis of the enormous complexity that has become possible with computers. Binary points us to a greater mystery. It seems to be God's way of inviting us to come closer and discover!

Here are two binary sets that pertain specifically to male-female distinctions: Deborah sitting under her tamar tree. A tamar is a date nut palm and was associated with the female principle. (Many Old Testament women were named Tamar.) The prophet or "moreh" consulted by Abraham sat under an oak. This tree was associated with the male principle.

There are two "passovers" in the Old Testament. The passover associated with Moses involving the lamb's blood streaked on the lintel and door posts. Because of this blood, death passed over these houses. Likewise the scarlet cord hanging from the window of Rahab's house preserved all those within when death came to Jericho. It is interesting that the blood and blood symbol in these two stories: the horizontal streak on the lintel, and the vertical red cord form a cross. The two narratives point us to Christ whose blood brings deliverance.

Trees and Crosses at the Sacred Center

We have a cross also when we consider the location of the two trees. Judges 4:4-6 says that the Palm of Deborah, was between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim (a north-south axis). Genesis 12 that tells us that the Oak of the Moreh was between Bethel and Ai (an east-west axis). The intersection of east-west and north-south provides another image of the cross. The two narratives must be taken together to gain this picture. 

The point of intersection of the north-south axis and the east-west axis was regarded as the sacred center. In the ancient world, sacred centers were often marked by trees. Genesis 2:9 says that the Tree of Life was in the sacred center of the garden. The Church fathers understood this to be an allusion to the cross upon which Christ died to give life to the world. The cross is called a “tree” in Scripture. Deuteronomy 21:22-13 is an example: “If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and you hang him on a tree, you must not leave the body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is a curse of God. You must not defile the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.”

So Jesus, the Son of God, became a curse for us. He died, was buried on that same day, and rose again on the third day, proving that He is the Righteous Ruler long expected of His faithful Horim (Horite ancestors).

Related reading: The Story of Ontology; Binary Distinctions of the Horites; Blood and Binary Distinctions; The Importance of Binary Distinctions; Rethinking "Biblical Equality"; Levi-Strauss and Jacques Derrida on Binary Oppositions; Trees in Genesis; The Bible as Woman's Story

History Channel Scores a C

Alice C. Linsley


Dramatic and conventional in its portrayal... that's how I characterize the History Channel's presentation of Genesis and Exodus. Did it present Abraham's Horite people faithfully? Not at all. This was a rehash of old interpretations that fail to tell the whole story. In other words, a missed opportunity.

The program clearly stirred interest because after it aired this blog had over 300 reads in less than 30 minutes. The higher traffic continued the following day. People arrived from different search engines with questions like "Who was Abraham's firstborn son?" and "What color was Abraham?"

If you watched the program, try to imagine these changes:

Cain establishes a city and so does his brother Seth. These are great rulers over fertile lands in what is today the Sudan and central Nile Valley.

Noah's ark has a wooden frame and is covered with bundles of reeds. No Siberian tigers on the ark. The ark floated in the area of Lake Chad and came to rest on a mountain in East Africa.

Abraham, the youngest of Terah's three sons does not look like a European Jew, but instead has a reddish brown to black skin tone because he is of Kushite ancestry. Lot, Abraham's nephew, would have a similar look.

Lot's choice to move to the plain was motivated by greener pastures for his flocks, but it was regarded as a bad decision because it broke with the pattern of his Horite ancestors who inhabited the higher terrain. This was not a conflict between rural and urban dwellers, as presented in the dialogue.  Horites also lived in the shrine cities which were on hills or mounds (tells).

Abraham and Sarah are much richer than portrayed. He is recognized as a "prince" among the Canaanites (Gen. 23:6). They are of the ruling class.  Hagar and Masek, though concubines, are royal handmaids.

JOE ALBLAS / © LIGHTWORKERS MEDIA / HEARST PRODUCTIONS INC.

Abraham is played by Gary Oliver and Sarah by Josephine Butler

Abraham is not a nomad. He does not move seasonally with his entire tribe. His two wives reside in semi-permanent settlements on a north-south axis. Sarah resides in Hebron and Keturah in Beersheba to the south. These settlements mark the northern and southern boundaries of Abraham's territory. The wives, children, and herds rarely move location. Abraham and his personal band of warriors are the ones who move within the territory.

Before Sarah loses hope and gives Hagar to Abraham, he has already married his second wife, Keturah. She gives birth to Abraham's first born son Joktan (Yaqtan). Joktan is the "father" of the Dedanite traders and scribes.

God's promise that Abraham will have descendants more numerous than the stars finds fulfillment through his 9 sons, some of whom are Egyptians (through his concubine Hagar), Arabians (through his cousin wife Keturah), Arameans (through his concubine Masek) and Jews (through his half-sister wife Sarah).

Here is a list of the sons born to Abraham by his two wives and his two concubines:

Sarah, daughter of Terah (Gen. 20:12)
Isaac (Yitzak)

Hagar the Egyptian
Ishmael (Yismael), who was Egyptian since race/ethnicity was traced through the mother, as is true even today among Semitic peoples.

Keturah, daughter of Joktan the Afro-Arabian (Gen. 25)
Yishbak
Joktan (Yaqtan) – probably Keturah’s first born son
Midian
Zimran
Medan
Shuah

Masek, the Aramean
Eliezar of Damascus


The Sign of the Cross

One detail that the producers did get right is the T-shaped mark on Sarah's forehead. These are called Tilakam, Tikuli, Tilak, Tikli, and Tilaka among Kannada, Tamil and Telugu peoples and were worn by married Dravidian and Afro-Arabian women in Abraham's time. However, because of Sarah's high status her mark would not have been a smudge, but a well executed scar raised on the forehead by applying ashes to the original wound. (Dravidian is related to the languages of Chad, Sudan, Egypt and Somalia. Read more here.)

The T was a sacred symbol of the oversight of the Creator. The Tau and the cross are already evident among Abraham's Horite people who expected a woman of their blood lines to conceive by the overshadowing of the Creator whose emblem was the Sun. She would bring forth the "Seed" of God in fulfillment of the Edenic Promise (Gen. 3:15). This is the origin of Messianic expectation.

Another mark on the married woman's forehead was a solar tattoo. The oldest evidence of this is found on the mummy of Amunet, devotee of Hathor (2160-1994 BC). Hathor was the virgin mother of Horus. As Abraham and Sarah were Horites, it is likely that Sarah's mark was like that of Amunet. This mark on Sarah, their Horite beliefs, and the miraculous events surrounding Isaac's birth, suggest that Abraham may have believed Isaac to be the promised Seed. Here again we glimpse the solar imagery of the Proto-Gospel.


Related reading:  History Channel's Bible: Episode 2; Episode 3: The Messiah Appears; The Ethnicity of Abraham and David; What Language Did Abraham Speak?; Reality is Cross Shaped; The Pattern of Two Wives; Kushites Wives; Abraham's Sons; Was Keturah Abraham's Wife?; The Afro-Arabian Dedanites; The Conversion of Hagar; Lot's Story; Sarah's Story

Tracing Origins by Comparing Cosmologies

Alice C. Linsley


I've been attempting to understand the cultural context of Genesis for over 30 years. It is important to understand what the material meant to the people who are named in Genesis so that we do not misinterpret and misrepresent their worldview.  Their worldview was passed to the Jews and then to Christians. Before we can identify a people called "Jews" Abraham's Kushite ancestors were sharing your worldview with peoples from the Sahara to Cambodia, and even Japan.

What are the distinctive characteristics of the worldview of Abraham's ancestors? It is a question that deserves closer investigation.

Using the genealogical data, I have identified Abraham's ancestors as originating in Africa.  Genesis tells us that they were Kushites. But Genesis 4 and 5 suggest that earlier ancestors came from the region of Northern Nigeria and Lake Chad. Nok, Kano and Bor-No (land of Noah) are in Nigeria and Nubia and Kush were Nilotic civilizations that included Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. There is also the genetic marker of the Nubians of the Nile which indicates that they migrated from further south in Africa. This supported a long-standing suspicion on mine and stirred me to investigate cosmologies that might link rulers of west central, eastern and sub-equatorial Africa.

The spread of ideas required contact between peoples. The widespread nature of the cosmology of Abraham's ancestors from Africa to southern India can be explained only by the movement of people. The Genesis genealogical data indicates that Abraham's ancestors were rulers of territories in Nigeria and Sudan. These rulers and their priestly lines intermarried in a unique pattern.  Genetic research that shows that the ancient Nubians migrated to Sudan from southern Africa. They continued their migration all the way to southern India where they are called the "Sudra." [2] They spread the cosmological ideas that we term "biblical." In a sense, they were the first missionaries.

What are the most fundamental elements of their cosmology?  The evidence suggest 2 things:  crosses and blood [3]. Let us look are 3 specimens that would support this view.

Specimen 1:  80,000 year old iron ore ochre plague from the Blombos Cave (southern Africa) carved with geometric patterns. [4] This symbolic artifact has xxx shape crosses around the rim. Lithic industries of the African Middle Stone Age have been found in a handful of caves in South Africa. 

The red ochre came from mines that were in operation between 80,000 to 100,000 years ago in the Lebombo Mountains. We are not speaking here of small hallows in the earth, but of major mining operations.

“One of the largest sites evidenced the removal of a million kilos of ore. At another site half a million stone-digging tools were found, all showing considerable wear. All of the sites in fact produced thousands of tools and involved the removal of large quantities of ore; and while some were open quarries, others had true mining tunnels.” (From here.)

What was the significance of this red ore that was ground to powder and used to paint ritual objects and to bury dead rulers? It is generally agreed that the red ochre was a symbol of blood, the liquid of life. Stan Gooch explains:

Everyone, both heretic and orthodox, and including the present-day users of ochre themselves, agree that it represents blood. A very common interpretation, and one that we can readily accept here, is that just as a new baby comes into the world covered with blood, so the corpse must also be covered with blood to facilitate, or perhaps cause, the re-birth of the deceased in the spirit world beyond. Birth blood is therefore one very probable meaning.

A further significance (borne out also by much other evidence) is given by the Unthippa aboriginal women. They say that their own female ancestors once caused large quantities of blood to flow from their vulvas, which then formed the deposits of red ochre found throughout the world. So we can say that red ochre also represents menstrual blood: in both cases therefore female blood connected with the birth process. (We shall later be able to be even more precise and say that ochre is the menstrual blood of the Moon Mother; or more properly, the placental blood which covered the Earth when She gave birth to it.)"

The priesthood emerges out of this primeval perception of blood as the substance of life and a substance which can both pollute and purify. The Hebrew root "thr" = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm "toro" = clean, and to the Tamil "tiru" = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian "tor" = blood. These are cognate languages in the Afro-Asiatic language group and it is from these peoples that we receive the institution of the priesthood.

It appears that the cosmological concern with crosses and blood was carried into the Nile region by people migrating from southern Africa. DNA analysis in ancient Nubians supports the existence of gene flow between sub-Sahara and North Africa in the Nile valley. [5]


Specimen 2:  The Phoenician Alphabet.  Note that the Tau is a cross within a sphere. The Tau often serves as a symbol of the Cross in Christianity.

The sphere with the cross could represent the precession of the equinoxes. This would have been observed by primitive peoples who studied the heavens carefully. For Plato, the "perfect year" is marked by the return of the planets and the fixed stars to their original positions.
He wrote: "And so people are all but ignorant of the fact that time really is the wanderings of these bodies, bewilderingly numerous as they are and astonishingly variegated. It is none the less possible, however, to discern that the perfect number of time brings to completion the perfect year at that moment when the relative speeds of all eight periods have been completed together and, measured by the circle of the Same that moves uniformly, have achieved their consummation."

The cycle takes between 25,000-28,000 years to complete and is called a "Great Year." According to Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend there are over 200 myths from ancient cultures that refer to a Great Year.

Specimen 3:  Note the movement of the vernal points, called the "precession of the equinoxes."

The changing relationship between the moving vernal axis and the fixed galactic axis creates the cycle of earth's precessional cross. When the vernal point (VP) resides at the 3/4 point (270°) in its cycle, the vernal axis is exactly perpendicular to the galactic axis (GEN), creating a perfect cross in the ecliptic. The last time this occurred was July1998 (and since that time, earth's weather patterns have been changing).

The precession of the equinox is observed as the stars moving across the sky at the rate of about 50 arc seconds per year, relative to the equinox. Conventional theory holds that this phenomenon is due to the gravity of the sun and moon acting upon the oblate spheroid of the earth causing the axis to wobble (the lunisolar theory). The alternative binary model holds that most of the observable is due to solar system motion, causing a reorientation of the earth relative to the fixed stars as the solar system gradually curves through space. (Read here about the binary model, and here about the lunisolar model.)

As we consider these 3 specimens we can't help but be struck by the vast time periods.  It is apparently true that "In the beginning God..." and in every age God has communicated concerning His plan of salvation. That's something to ponder.

NOTES

1. There can be no doubt that Abraham's African ancestors understood themselves to be receiving the Word of God. The concept is found outside the Bible. While the creation stories of Genesis are often likened to the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, they have much closer affinity to the creation stories of Africa. This is evident in motif and in theological detail. Consider the motif of the generative Word of God whereby all things came into being. The bards of the Bambara Komo Society of Uganda recite this:

The word is total:
it cuts, excoriates
forms, modulates
perturbs, maddens
cures or directly kills
amplifies or reduces.
According to intention
it excites or calms souls.

The phrase "In the beginning was God" is not found in Babylonian prose, but it is found in Africa. The following is a song of the BaMbuti Pygmies:

In the beginning was God
Today is God,
Tomorrow will be God.
Who can make an image of God?
He has no body.
He is as a word which comes out from your mouth,
That word! It is no more,
It is past and still it lives!
So is God.

2. B. Pfaffenberger, Caste in Tamil Culture: the religious foundations of Sudra domination in Tamil Sri Lanka, reviewed in JSTOR, Dec. 1983, pp. 805-806.

3. Humans yearned for the death-defeating benefits of the Pleromic Blood as early as 80,000 years ago. Sophisticated mining operations in the Lebombo Mountains of southern Africa reveal that thousands of workers were extracting red ochre which was ground into powder and used in the burial of nobles in places as distant as Europe. Anthropologists agree that this red powder symbolized blood, and its use in burial represented hope for life after death.

4. Blombos Cave is near the southern Cape shore of the Indian Ocean, about 200 miles of Cape Town, South Africa. Researchers have concluded that the artifacts date to between 70,000-85,000 years.

5. To read the Abstract of Lucotte's study of the Y chromosome haplotypes in Egypt go here. There has been no immigration into the lower Nubia area from Asia according to Lycotte's Y chromosome study. The singular Nubian haplotype would be the expected result of the unique marriage pattern revealed by the Genesis genealogical data.


Related reading: Tracing Ancestry Using Totems; Artifacts of Great Antiquity; Kathu Tool-Making Site; On Blood and the Impulse to Immortality