Time to Jettison Young Earth Creationism

 

100,000-year red ocher burial at Qafzeh (Israel). Red ocher was a symbolic blood covering.

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Young Earth Creationists believe that the days of Genesis 1 were six consecutive 24-hour days which occurred 6,000–8,000 years ago. They cannot explain the huge body of material evidence that proves an old earth and the presence of humans on earth for millions of years. They argue almost exclusively from geological anomalies. They believe that the surface of the earth was radically rearranged by a global flood. The extinction of species is explained by the flood. Creatures that were not preserved on Noah’s Ark perished and were subsequently buried in the flood sediments. YEC creationists believe that the catastrophic global flood was responsible for most of the rock layers and fossils. They maintain that some rock layers and some fossils were deposited before the Flood and other layers and fossils were produced in localized sedimentation events or processes.

Proponents of Young Earth Creationism include the Baptist Pastor and biochemist Duane Gish, Terry Mortenson, a missionary for 26 years with Campus Crusade, and Henry M. Morris, a civil engineer and author of several books on Young Earth Creationism.

Most who adhere to the Ken Ham view of the Bible do not care about the scientific evidence that supports biblical history because they have been taught to distrust the sciences. Nevertheless, the sciences of anthropology, archaeology, climates studies, genetics, geology, hydrological studies, linguistics, and migration studies agree on the deep history of humans of Earth.

Young Earth Creationism is criticized for lacking a scientific basis. It also should be criticized for lacking a biblical basis. Consider the following points:

If Adam and Eve were the parents of Cain, they could not be the first humans on Earth because Cain built a settlement that he named for his son Enoch (Gen. 4:17). Enoch is a royal title derived from the ancient Akkadian first-person pronoun: anāku and the Ancient Egyptian anochi, a reference to one who ascends. The word anochi is also found among African populations. Among the Igbo, anochie means "a replacer" or "to replace". Among the Ashante the word anokyi means "Ano Junior" or the "Ano who follows his father." Here we find the idea of succession from father to son. A Nigerian friend says that anochie also means "direct heir to a throne."

Clearly, Enoch is associated with royal ascendancy among the early Hebrew. One of Cain’s descendants is called Lamech, another royal title. Lamech is related to the Hebrew melech, which means king. According to the Bible scholar Umberto Cassuto, Lamech is related to the Mesopotamian word lumakku, meaning “priest.” (Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1, p. 233). Two men named Lamech appear in the Genesis 4 and 5 lists of Hebrew ruler-priests (Gen. 4:18 and Gen. 5:25).

Cain and his son cannot be among the first people on earth because they already had a royal succession and territories over which they ruled. They are among The First Lords of the Earth.

The dogmas of YEC hinge on interpretations that have been demonstrated to be inaccurate. One is Bishop James Ussher's scheme whereby he counted the generations to conclude that the creation of the Earth occurred around 10,000 years ago. Ussher did not recognize that the "begats" of Genesis are not generational. They are regnal. All the men listed are rulers and some of their reigns coincided. Tubal-Cain (Gen. 4) and Methuselah (Gen. 5) ruled at the same time over different territories.

YEC assumes, contrary to the biblical evidence, that the line of Cain was wiped out by the flood. However, analysis of the kinship pattern of Genesis 4 and 5 reveals that the descendants of Cain and Seth intermarried (caste endogamy). A feature of their marriage and ascendancy pattern is the naming of the cousin bride’s firstborn son after his maternal grandfather. The pattern is evident in this diagram.

Lamech the Elder had a daughter named Naamah. She married her patrilineal cousin Methuselah. This marriage took place c. 4300 B.C.  

One of their descendants was Nimrod, a Kushite kingdom builder (Gen. 10:6-12). He married a Sumerian princess between 3500-3300 B.C. Erech (Uruk) was one of the cities ruled by his father-in-law. Uruk was the largest settlement in Mesopotamia at that time. Settlement at that site began in the Ubaid period (c. 5500-4000 B.C.), that is 7500 years ago, about the time that Young Earth Creationists claim the earth was formed.

Around 3100 B.C. Uruk may have had 40,000 residents (See Algaze, Guillermo, 2013, "The end of prehistory and the Uruk period" in Crawford, Harriet (ed.), The Sumerian World (PDF). London: Routledge. pp. 68–95. ISBN 9781138238633.)

A Better Approach to the Biblical Material

The empirical approach of Biblical Anthropology (a science) contributes to a better understanding of biblical history. Genesis makes it clear that Abraham's ancestors lived in the land of Kush as he descended from the Kushite kingdom builder Nimrod (Gen. 10). Analysis of the kinship pattern of the early Hebrew rulers listed in Genesis 4, 5, 10, 11, 25 and 35 proves they are of the same caste and they are historical figures.

Adam and Eve lived c. 5000-4800 B.C. in a vast well-watered region called Eden. The Genesis 2 description of this region corresponds to the ancient Fertile Crescent. At this time humans were already globally dispersed. Further, humans were making tools, jewelry, and ritual objects for thousands of years before the time of Adam and Eve.

Nimrod left Kush and established his territory on the Euphrates River c. 3500 B.C. (Gen. 10). That is why we find Abraham living in Mesopotamia. After he relocated to Canaan (around 2000 B.C.), Abraham controlled the water systems at Hebron and Beersheba and had wells in Gerar. We see a gradual movement out of Africa into Mesopotamia and Canaan. (See Rulers of the Ancient Water Systems.)

We also see a span of time of at least 3000 years between Adam and Eve and Abraham. The different time periods and cultural contexts of these rulers cannot be made congruent by the final Jewish hands on the Hebrew Scriptures coming after 580 B.C. 

Consider a Native American chief with a fleet of birch wood canoes controlling trade between villages on the Mississippi in 1720. Fast forward a mere 200 years to 1920 when a river magnate controls commerce on the same river with his fleet of riveted steel ships. Same river, very different contexts. To understand biblical history, we must grapple with these contextual incongruities and the best disciplines to apply in this effort are cultural anthropology, archaeology, molecular genetics, and linguistics.


Related reading: The Roots of the Gospel are in Africa; Artifacts of Great Antiquity; Nimrod's Sumerian Wife; YEC Dogma is Not Biblical; YEC's Silence on Anthropology; Facts About Human Origins; YEC Hinders Understanding of the Bible; Think Like a Biblical Anthropologist; A Healthy Approach to the Bible

The Father of Adam and Eve

 

"Kenan was the son of Enosh. Enosh was the son of Seth. Seth was the son of Adam. 

Adam was the son of God." (Luke 3:38)

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

C. L. Crouch has made an fascinating observation about the relationship of humans to our Creator. He wrote, "The linguistic and cultural background of the words םלצ and תומד supports a reading of Gen. 1:26–7 as a statement of humanity’s divine parentage. As such it is intended to evoke the responsibilities of child to parent and of parent to child in the minds of its readers. Such an interpretation accommodates both the semantic range of the key terms םלצ and תומד and the sense that the statement is meant to be theologically significant." (From here.)

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 first-born son. This may explain the royal affix -itti- in Genesis 4: I, 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 Hebrew 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.

Abraham left his father's house, and as a sent-away son he was to establish a kingdom for himself away from Terah's proper heir Nahor. Abraham needed an heir and according to the early Hebrew marriage and ascendancy pattern the proper heir was the first-born son of the half-sister wife. That would be Isaac. 

The pattern of being sent away from the father is seen with Adam and his first-born Cain. Adam was to leave his father and mother and cleave to Eve (Gen. 2:24) that he might establish a line of descendants. His descendants include Hebrew ruler-priests, Ammonites, Canaanites, Edomites, Hittites, Kushites, Midianites, and Moabites.

Cain left his father's house and established a settlement which he named after his son Enoch. the words "Cain" and "Enoch" refer to rulers. Throughout the Bible Cain is the archetype of the earthly ruler. The name Enoch is related to the Ancient Egyptian anochi which is the royal first-person pronoun. 

Among the Igbo, anochie means “a replacer” or “to replace” and among the Ashante the word ano kyi means "Ano Junior." In these cases, we find the idea of succession, suggesting royal lineages. A Nigerian philologist friend reports that Anochie also means "direct heir to a throne." Therefore, the biblical name "Enoch" is associated with royal ascendancy. 

It appears that Cain's mother believed that she gave birth to a ruler. Indeed, Cain is the archetypal earthly ruler throughout the Bible. The Book of Jude warns those who might fall prey to false teachers that God punishes those who rebel against Him. He uses these examples: Cain the ruler, Balaam the prophet, and Korah the priest.

Circles represent the wives of Cain and Seth. 

Explanation of Diagram: The left side is Cain's line (Gen. 4) and the right side is Seth's line (Gen. 5). The analysis reveals the early Hebrew kinship feature of the cousin bride's naming prerogative. The cousin bride named her first-born son after her father. Kain's unnamed daughter married her cousin Enosh and named their first-born son Kenan/Kain after her father. Irad's unnamed daughter married her cousin Mahalalel and named their first-born sons Jared/Yared/Irad after her father. Lammech the Elder's daughter Naamah married Methuselah and named their first-born son Lamech. 

Adam, Eve, Cain, Seth and all their descendants listed in Genesis 4 and 5 are rulers, like their father God. If Adam and Eve were half-siblings and the first parents of the Hebrew clans, then God is their father. The idea of the Creator being Father to the first parents is found in the stories of many pre-literate societies.

Perhaps Adam and Eve lived in close communion with the Creator for eons before Satan tempted Eve. We tend to think of Adam and Eve as callow youth. Perhaps they did not age physically, but they matured experientially. Why couldn’t they have lived for eons before the fall?

This is a fascinating aspect of the meta-historical view of Adam and Eve. In this view, they are above time and ageless. The Bible presents at least 3 portraits of Adam and this is one of them. It is less about an event in history than it is about an understanding of God that is typically African and consistent with the early Hebrew beliefs.

The late Dr. Abraham Akrong, formerly at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, explains: "God in Africa is a relational being who is known through various levels of relationship with creation. In relationship to humanity, God is the great ancestor of the human race. Therefore, all over Africa God is portrayed more in terms of a parent than as sovereign."

Understanding the Hebrew perception of God as their Great Ancestor sheds light on the interaction of Jesus with the Jews who claimed both Abraham and God as father. They said to Jesus, "Abraham is our father." Jesus replied that if they were Abraham's children, they would do the works of Abraham. "But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father." Then said they to him, "We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God." Jesus replied, 'If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.” (Jn. 8:39-42, KJV)

Related reading: The Truth of Human Exceptionalism; Three Portraits of Adam; Adam Was a Red Man; The Historical Adam; When is the Evidence Sufficient?; The Science of Biblical Anthropology

Three Portraits of Adam

Alice C. Linsley

The Bible presents Adam in at least three ways.

1) Adam and Eve are the historical first parents from whom the Horite and Sethite Hebrew clans descend. The historicity of Adam is proven by analysis of the kinship data found in Genesis 4 and 5 king lists. The historical Adam was the father of Cain and Seth who married their cousins, the daughters of a ruler named Enoch. Cain is described as an early city builder and Seth is the founder of the Sethite Hebrew who are mentioned in texts from 2400 BC. This means that the historical Adam probably lived between c.4600-4000 BC.

The historical Adam is the eponymous founder of the mound building Horite and Sethite Hebrew clans. His homeland is the vast well-water region called Eden; the part of the world where the some of the oldest human fossils have been found. In Genesis, people groups and their regions are identified with a founder or early eponymous ancestor. (An eponym is a person after whom a clan or place is named.) There are many such clans, but the earliest in Genesis are the clans of Adam and Enoch. A deep structural analysis reveals that their descendants intermarried (endogamy). 

Cain and Seth married the daughters of a ruler named Enos/Enoch/Enosh, and their brides named their first-born sons after their father. (See diagram below.) Enoch/Enosh is a royal title referring to succession. Enoch is derived from the Ancient Egyptian anochi which is the royal first-person pronoun.

Among the Igbo, anochie means “a replacer” or “to replace” and among the Ashante the word ano kyi means "Ano Junior." In these cases, we find the idea of succession, suggesting royal lineages. A Nigerian philologist friend reports that Anochie also means "direct heir to a throne." Therefore, the biblical name "Enoch" is associated with royal ascendancy. That may explain why the words Enoch and adam are paralleled in Psalm 8:4. 

“What is man [enosh] that you are mindful of him, 

the son of man [ben adam] that you care for him?”

Adam's name refers to blood (dam) and the color red. His descendants are remembered as red people. One of those descendants is Abraham who ruled in the territory of Edom. The Greeks called Edom "Idumea," which means "land of red people." The rulers, priests, and prophets of Edomite blood are described as red: Esau and David are examples. Some of the red peoples are listed in Genesis 10. They are identified by the DD biradical, which refers to the color red. In ancient Egyptian didi refers to red fruit. In Yoruba, red is diden, a variant of the biblical word Dedan (Gen. 10).

2) Adam and Eve are archetypes whose actions present us with moral and theological lessons. The story in Genesis 2 has the marks of myth, and myths speak truths in a manner different than history. Adam's time is long in the past. His place is a mythical garden where he communes with the Creator. Perhaps Adam and Eve enjoyed close communion with God for thousands of years before Eve succumbed to the serpent. Perhaps they matured experientially, but not physically. In this view, they are above time and ageless.

The archetypal layer came after the historical. Indeed, without the historical there would be no basis for the archetypal. Archetypes spring from collective memory. As N. Kershaw Chadwick and Mircea Eliade explain, "Myth is the last - not the first - stage in the development of a hero." (Eliade, Cosmos and History, p. 43.)

3) The Adam of which Paul speaks is analogical, not historical. Paul's analogy involves a typical Hebrew parallelism between Adam by whom sin and death entered and the New Adam, Jesus Christ, by whom sin and death are overcome. Clearly this analogy is not intended to be taken as history, unless we are to believe that people before 6000 years ago did not sin and did not die.

That said, it is clear that in drawing this analogy, Paul believed Adam to be historical because both Adam and Jesus Christ acted in ways that had lasting consequences in human history. However, Paul also admits that his presentation of Adam involves typology. He writes that Adam “was a type of the one who was to come.” (Rom. 5:14)

Paul's analogy identifies Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. This is depicted in the icon of the resurrection above. Adam is representative of the first humans created by God and unique among all creatures in that he is created in the image of the Creator.

This view poses Adam is the father of all humanity in order to make the analogy work. By the first Adam sin and death enter and by Christ the second Adam the curse of sin and death is reversed.

Conclusion

To speak of the biblical Adam requires making distinctions between the portraits drawn by the biblical writers. We must not confuse or conflate the historical Adam (an eponymous ancestor of the early Hebrew rulers) with the mythical/meta-historical Adam, or the analogical Adam.

Related reading: Adam Was a Red Man; The Genesis 10 Ethnography; The Royal Descendants of Adam and Enoch; The Hebrew Were a Caste; Adam and Estrangement from God

Image of God Means Imaging God

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." (Genesis 1:26)

What follows is the abstract for IMAGING GOD: A theological Answer to the Anthropological Question? by Alistair McFadyen (University of Leeds). The full text may be read here.

Traditionally the central trope in Christian theological anthropology, ‘the image of God’ tends to function more as a noun than a verb. Whilst that has grounded significant interplay between specific Christian formulations and the concepts of non-theological disciplines and cultural constructs, it facilitates the withdrawal of the image and of theological anthropology more broadly from the context of active relation with God. Rather than a static rendering of the image a more interactionist, dynamic and relational view of ‘imag ing God’ is commended as a key anthropological term. Engaging with Psalm 8 suggests that, biblically, asking the anthropological question (what is humanity?) is tied to the answer to the theological question: who is God? This locates theological anthropology securely within the interactive context of being related to by God and suggests that theological anthropology might be a matter of performance, rather than definition: actively imaging God.

McFadyen's article makes sense of the theological context of this Biblical figure of speech - "the image of God" and he rightly asserts that the theological and the anthropological meanings are inextricably entwined. He uses the term "anthropological" in a theological sense, i.e., as related the biblical view of human nature, and this helps his argument. On the other hand, he fails to explore the trope as an anthropologist would and that weakens his case. 

The weakness comes from failure to see that the structure of Psalm 8:4 is parallel to the structure of Genesis 4-5. Adam and Enoch are paralleled, as are their descendants whose lines intermarried. In this diagram of Cain's line (Genesis 4) and Seth's line (Genesis 5) are shown parallel. They represent two ruling houses that intermarried. Naamah, the daughter of Lamech the Elder, married her patrilineal cousin Methuselah. She named her first-born son Lamech, after her father. This is one of many examples of the cousin bride's naming prerogative found in the Bible.

Analysis of the diagram enables us to see that Enoch and Adam are rulers whose descendants practiced endogamy, that is, their royal lines intermarried. Endogamy is a universal trait of castes. Their descendants represent the oldest known ruler-priest lines, and it is from them that the Son of God came in the person of Jesus Messiah.

On a fundamental level "imaging" God is what the deified ruler is to do. To miss this is to lose sight of the connection between dominion and the divine image. There is a Messianic dimension as the One who has ultimate dominion is the Son of God. Jesus Messiah is the icon of God the Father and this icon is not a static picture, but a living image.

McFadyen writes:

"Because God’s relating – and therefore God – are already oriented towards the human; indeed, oriented and seeking the human in its fullest realization. Psalm 8 has a shorthand code whereby it rolls up the whole history and future directedness of God’s relating in its orientation towards human well-being, flourishing and consummation: God’s mindfulness (v.4). And it is in the context of wondering acknowledgment of the status that affords human beings that it articulates the anthropological question in a specifically and definite theological register."

Adam was made in the image of God and this expresses a God-Man relationship, but beyond that we must consider the claim of Abraham's ancestors that they are the royal descendants of Adam. In other words, they claim a historical link to the divine image through their Horite Hebrew ancestors and this constitutes their work as ruler-priests who are to image God.

Psalm 8:4 is reveals an important theological and anthropological understanding of the God-Man relationship. Adam parallels Enoch/Nok, the father-in-law of Cain and Seth . In this sense, Genesis poses two founding fathers: Adam and Enoch/Nok/Anochie. They are founders of the ruler-priest lines described in the Genesis 4, 5, 11, 25 and 36. These are not genealogies. They are King Lists.

Note that Enoch and Adam are paralleled in Psalm 8:4:

What is man (Enoch/ha-noch) that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man (ben adam) that you care for him?

Psalm 8:4 connects the Adam and Enoch and highlights their historicity and meta-historical significance. The historical ruler Enoch parallels the "son of man", Jesus' favorite description of Himself. There is a sacred mystery here concerning Christ that places Him at the nexus of the meta-historical and the historical. Both Adam and Enoch point to the fully human Son of God, the very "image of God" shown to us perfectly and fully in the person of Jesus Messiah. 

The Psalmist parallels two deified rulers: Adam and Enoch. He regards both as "fathers" of the Hebrew people whose roots are in Eden. Perhaps this is why Jesus' ruler-priest identity was recognized in Tyre in Mark’s Gospel, not on a mountain, as in Matthew's account of the Transfiguration. For Mark, the Messiah’s appearing means the beginning of the restoration of Paradise. Mark likely had in mind this passage from Ezekiel 28: 

"Son of Man, raise a lament over the king of Tyre and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and flawless beauty. You were in Eden, in the Garden of God; every precious stone was your adornment... and gold beautifully wrought for you, mined for you, prepared the day you were created."

Likewise Amos 1:5 speaks of “him who holds the scepter from the house of Eden."

Genesis connects "image of God" with dominion over all the earth. Consider this from Genesis 1:26:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

In the beginning, Adam did not have to work for his dominion. God bestowed to him a territory to rule over. The suggestion that Man is to enjoy status as a deified or righteous ruler who "images" the Ruler of the universe is quite evident. This is a bestowed ontology.

The Fall did not remove the image and likeness of God, nor did it remove the responsibility to "image" God. Adam's descendants spread abroad and they ruled over territories from Africa to India and beyond. As they dispersed, they took their expectation that a Son who would be born of their ruler-priest lines. He is called the "Seed" of God in Genesis 3:15. Of this Seed, Paul writes in Galatians 3:

"Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He saith not, and to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy Seed, which is Christ… And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise."

Jesus referred to Himself as the promised "Seed" when He foretold his death in Jerusalem. He told his disciples "Unless a seed fall into the ground and die, it cannot give life." (John 12:24)

The phrase "image and likeness" suggests a royal seal which holds the image or likeness of the king. There is a sense of divine appointment. Adam, Enoch, Cain, Seth and all appointed rulers after him are to "image" on earth the righteous rule of God. Yet all failed, save Jesus Christ beneath whose feet God will subject all things. 

McFayden writes, "Engaging with Psalm 8 suggests that, biblically, asking the anthropological question (what is humanity?) is tied to the answer to the theological question: who is God?

Psalm 8:4 does indeed speak of who God is. However, it does so using parallelism of historical persons and it places the Son of God as the culminating figure of the biblical narrative and the Messianic Faith.

 Related reading: The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Cain as Ruler; Enoch: Angelic Being or Deified Ruler?; Horite Hebrew Deified Sons; The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ: The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative; Adam Was a Red Man; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection

Enoch: Angelic Being or Deified Ruler?

Alice C. Linsley


There is much interest and speculation concerning "the Watchers" mentioned in the books of Enoch and Daniel. Are these angels or are these robed elders (deified rulers/"sons" of God) who appear in Revelation 19?

The oldest section of I Enoch - "The Watchers" - dates between 300-220 BC. Here we read:

"And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His holy ones to execute judgment upon all, and to destroy all the ungodly: and to convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." (1 En 60:8). Compare to Deuteronomy 33:2, also a source later than Genesis.

In the Book of Daniel the Aramaic term that denotes angels is "watchers" (`îrîn). Each is called "watcher and holy one" (`îr weqadîsh). The term "watcher" implies that angels act as God's sentinels, watching and guarding, as in the case of the angels appointed to guard the entrance to Eden.

Watchers appear in literature that post-dates the earliest material in Genesis. They are mentioned in Vedic (Sanskrit) texts that speak of gods begetting children with humans. They appear in the Gilgamesh Epic, in the Lamech scrolls, and in the Book of Enoch which states that 200 "Watchers" descended to earth in the time of Jared, son of Mahalalel, and instructed men in the arts and sciences.

The term "watchers" appears in the book of Daniel which has a Babylonian context with its emphasis on the sacred number seven. This tradition is later than the material found in the parts of Genesis that emphasize the binary feature: male-female (Gen. 2), "two of every sort" on the Ark (Gen. 6) vs. the narrative requiring Noah to bring seven sets of clean animals onto the Ark.

Is Enoch, who did not taste death, a deified elder or an angel? If it can be proven that the deified elders and angels alike were understood to be watching the activities of humans, the confusion can be resolved very nicely. A deified ruler may at times be regarded as an angelic being.

The deification of righteous rulers was a common practice in the ancient world, especially among the early Hebrew.


Enoch and Adam

Analysis of the kinship pattern of the Genesis king lists points to an older, less mystical, tradition that places Adam and Enoch in the same generation as founding "fathers" of the Hebrew ruler-priest lines. This is evident in Psalm 8:4 which parallels Enoch and Adam:

What is man (enoch) that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man (ben adam) that you care for him?

The question is which Enoch? Because this Enoch is poses as a contemporary of Adam, it is likely that this Enoch is the unmentioned father-in-law of Cain and Seth who married their cousins. As has been confirmed through analysis of the kinship pattern of the Genesis kings, the cousin bride named her first born son after her father. This is shown in the diagram below.

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 firstborn son Lamech, after her father. This is called the "cousin bride's naming prerogative." This feature identifies the ruler-priest 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 number seven is associated with the priesthood in the Babylonian tradition. Enoch as the "heavenly priest" is the topic of this paper by Andrei A. Orlov, Enoch as the Heavenly Priest.

Enoch is a royal title that means "heir to the throne." Variant spellings such as hanock, anochi, enock, suggest that this is a title referring to the imperial or royal first person. It corresponds to the Hebrew first person singular pronoun forms anoki and ani, and to the Akkadian first person singular pronoun anaku. (In ancient Egyptian the equivalent first-person singular pronoun is ink.)

Cain is portrayed in Scripture as the archetypal earthly ruler. He married into a royal house, a family to which he was related. Adam is the representative of the whole of created humanity in the analogical framework of the Apostle Paul, but Enoch is the representative of the oldest known line of king-priests in the Bible. That is the likely explanation for the Psalm 8:4 parallelism: What is enoch that you spare a thought for him, or ben' adam that you care for him?

Analysis of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the Genesis rulers indicates that Cain and Seth married the daughters of a ruler named Enoch/Enosh/Enos. Their wives named their firstborn sons after their father according to the cousin bride's naming prerogative.

Cain's firstborn son and heir is Enoch (Gen. 4:17). Seth's firstborn son and heir is named Enos or Enosh (Gen. 5:6), the linguistic equivalent of the title Enoch. This means the hidden or unmentioned Enoch was a contemporary of the historical Adam. 

Questions about Enoch

There are questions to consider when approaching the figure of Enoch. As there are 3 men with that title, which Enoch is the focus of the Babylonian myth? If we recognize that the name of Seth's successor Enos or Enosh is the linguistic equivalent of Enoch, there are 3 rulers who hold this title: The sons of Cain and Seth, and the son of Jared (Irad). 

The Enoch under consideration is Enoch, the seventh from Adam, who was taken (translated) to heaven according to Genesis 5:24. His name, which comes from anochi, has a double meaning. It means one who ascends to the throne and the one who is heir. Enoch ascended to the throne of his father Lamech who lived 777 years, and he ascended to heaven where he offers prayers with incense. He represents the righteous elders who constitute the heavenly council.

There are problems also with the mystical symbolism surrounding Enoch. Emphasis is placed on the number seven in association with Enoch. However, it is Lamech to whom the most sacred number is applied: 777. Genesis 5 presents this information:

Seth – 912 years
Jared – 962 years
Kenan – 910 years
Methuselah – 969 years
Lamech the Younger, Methuselah's son and heir – 777 years (The grandson of Lamech the Elder whose conversation with his 2 wives is described in Genesis 4:22-24.)

The different numbers pertaining to Lamech the Younger are (Septuagint) 753, (Samaritan) 653, and (Masoretic) 777. No other man in the Genesis king lists has such a discrepancy in the total number of years. Again, Lamech, not Enoch, is the lightening rod who draws our attention and provokes questions. Blessed saint John of the Golden Tongue noticed this.

Lamech is a variant of the Akkadian and Egyptian word la-melech, meaning "priest of the King."The word la-melech has been found inscribed on hundreds of seals. La-melech seals typically had the image of a scarab (dung beetle) or a sun disc. Both were emblems of the Creator. The sun disc and scarab were used as a royal seal by the Kings of Judah. Hezekiah's seal is an example.

Lamech the Younger and a Message of Hope

Lamech the Younger, the father of Noah, is assigned 777 years in Genesis 531: "And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy seven years." Here we have a message of hope.

The number 7 represents new life, mercy and renewal. Cain murdered and tried to hide his crime from God. Cain deserved death, yet God showed him mercy by sparing his life. Cain was exiled from his people and God showed him grace by placing a mark on him as a protecting sign. Reflecting on this great mercy shown to his ancestor, Lamech challenges God to show him greater mercy. If grace was shown to Cain (7), then Lamech, the Elder, by confessing his sin, claims a double measure of grace (77). He claims that God avenges him "seventy and sevenfold" (Gen. 4:24). Lamech, the Younger is assigned a triple measure of grace because he is said to have lived 777 years.

John Chrysostom commented on the unfathomable grace expressed through the story of the Elder Lamech. Here is what he said: “By confessing his sins to his wives, Lamech brings to light what Cain tried to hide from God and by comparing what he has done to the crimes committed by Cain he limited the punishment coming to Him.” (St. John Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis, Vol. 74, p.39. The Catholic University Press of America, 1999.)

Chrysostom’s interpretation is consistent with what is communicated throughout the Bible about God’s love and mercy, yet his view is not referenced in any Bibles. Instead, most Bible footnotes stress that God wiped out Cain’s line in the flood, a view which is not supported by the regnal information in Genesis 4 and 5 which reveals that the lines of Cain and Seth intermarried. Scientific analysis of the king lists supports Chrysostom's interpretation, as shown by tracing the increase from the number 7 assigned to Cain to the number 777 assigned to Lamech the Younger.

St. John Chrysostom recognized that the story of the Lamech the Elder and Lamech the Younger is about God’s mercy shown to sinners. He placed the emphasis exactly where it should be.


Related reading: God's Mercy and Cain's Demise; The Life Spans of Methuselah and Lamech; Who Were the Watchers?; The Mighty Men of Old; The Seventh Seal and Silence in Heaven; Does the Binary Feature Signal Greater Complexity?; Number Symbolism and the Bible; The Pattern of Two Wives; Adam Was a Red Man; INDEX of Topics at Just Genesis

Royal Names in Genesis

Alice C. Linsley

A reader has asked if Enoch is the founder of the sciences. He cites this:


"Sages affirm that all antediluvian sciences originate with the Egyptian Hermes [Tehuti], in Upper Egypt (namely Khmunu (Hermopolis). The Jews call him Enoch and the Moslems Idris. He was the first who spoke of the material of the superior world and of planetary movements...Medicine and poetry were his functions... [as well as] the sciences, including alchemy and magic." [Cf. Asin Palacios, Ibn Masarra, p. 13]

Sufficient historical, anthropological, and archaeological evidence exists to justify the hypothesis that astronomy, mathematics, binary thought, triangulation (pyramids), metal work, stonework, animal husbandry, cultivation, the earliest priestly writings, and the earliest known trade records are found among the Proto-Saharans of the Upper Nile. However, these cannot be identified with any one figure of history. Instead, these sciences and technologies are identified with a group of rulers identified as the "mighty men of old" in Genesis. Enoch/Anoch is a royal title found among these Proto-Saharan and Saharo-Nubian rulers.

Enoch is related to the word Anoch, a royal name found among Abraham's cattle-herding ancestors. The people of Anoch are called "Anakim" in the Bible. The Anakim were organized into three-clan confederations, as were many other groups living in Canaan. The three Anakim clans were named for the three highest ranked sons of Anak whose names are Sheshai (Shasu?), Ahiman and Talmai (Josh.15:14). The Shasu are found in ancient Nubia and among the Horites of Edom.

Two hieroglyphic references dating to the New Kingdom period refer to “the land of the Shasu of YHW.” These are the oldest references to YHWH outside the Bible. The "Shasu of YHW" is found on inscriptions from the Nubian temples of Soleb and Amara West, and corresponds to the tetragrammaton.

Anochi refers to the royal first-person pronoun and is derived from the Akkadian first person pronoun anāku. It is likely that Anoch, Enoch, and Hanock (Reuben's first-born son) are variant spellings of the same word, and all refer to rulers.

The word anochi is also found among peoples who migrated from the Nile westward, such as the Igbo and the Ashante. Among the Igbo, anochie means “a replacer” or “to replace” and among the Ashante the word anokyi means "Ano Junior" or the "Ano who follows his father." In both cases, one finds the idea of succession from father to son, suggesting a line of descent. A Nigerian friend reports that anochie also means "direct heir to a throne."

The name Enoch is clearly associated with royal ascendancy. It means "one who ascends after his father" and there are several who hold this title in the Genesis King Lists. Masarra does not specify which Enoch is identified as Hermes/Tehuti. However, he is correct in the association of the royal name with Tehut. The oldest known code is the Law of Tehut which dates to about 3200 B.C. It is associated with Menes who made Memphis the capital of a united Nile Valley. He issued edicts that were designed to improve food production and distribution, guard the rights of ruling families, improve education, and enhance knowledge of the natural world through geometry and astronomy.

The first Enoch of the Bible is not easily identified because his royal name must be reconstructed using the marriage and ascendancy pattern of these archaic rulers. He is the father-in-law of Kain and Seth. His daughters named their first born sons Enoch (Kain's son) and Enosh (Seth's son) after their father. The names Enoch and Enosh are linguistically equivalent. This feature of the marriage and ascendancy pattern is called "the cousin bride's naming prerogative" and the practice continued among the ruler-priests to the time of Jesus Christ.

The cousin bride's naming prerogative is evident in analysis of this Lamech segment. We note that Naamah named her fist born son Lamech, after her father.

In addition to Enoch, the son of Kain (Gen. 4:17-18), there is also Enoch, the father of Methuselah (Gen. 5:21-13). He was a contemporary of Lamech the Elder who bragged to his two wives.

Lamech is another royal name. It is related to the Hebrew melech, which means king. According to Umberto Cassuto, Lamech is related to the Mesopotamian word lumakku, meaning “priest.” (Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1, p. 233). Two named Lamech appear in the Genesis King Lists. There is Lamech the Elder (Gen. 4:18-24) and Lamech the Younger (Gen. 5:26-31). Likewise there are two ruler-priests named Esau.

Esau is a royal name associated with the Horites of Edom. There is Esau the Elder and Esau the Younger. The Horite rulers of Edom/Edo/Idu are listed in Genesis 36.

To further complicate matters, we have seemingly conflicting claims about these great clan chiefs who built great territories in the ancient world. Consider the case of Irad, Kain's grandson (Gen. 4:18). The name has these variants: Jared (Gen. 5:18-20) and Yared. Yared is the best rendering of the ruler's name as it has the initial Y - a solar cradle - indicating divine appointment by the overshadowing of the Sun, the Creator's emblem. This Y symbol is found among the Canaanite rulers before the development of Hebrew: Yitzak, Yishmael, Yacob; Yaqtan, Yosef, Yared, etc.

The Igbo identify Yared as the founder of their writing system. He is among numerous archaic rulers identified with Biblical figures by the Igbo who originated in the Nile Valley. According to the Igbo apologist, Dr. Catherine Acholonu:

Sumerian texts say that the first city built by the gods on earth was called Eridu. There they placed the members of Adam’s family. Adam’s great grandson was named Yared, meaning ‘He of Eridu’, ‘person from Eridu’. Its Igbo equivalent, with the same meaning, is Oye Eridu. The father of Yared was Enosh/Enu-Esh. His name meant ‘Master of humankind’, for the first people were called Esh, Adam too was called Esh in vernacular Hebrew. In Sumerian this sacred word Esh means ‘Righteous Shepherd’. All Sumerian kings bore the title Esh. Equally in Igbo land Esh/Eshi/Nshi is a sacred word implying divine origins of the first people, who indeed were wielders of supernatural powers.

The Sumerians and the Igbo have a common point of origin in the Nile Valley thousands of years before either group emerged as a separate ethnicity. Eridu is also spelled Eredo and simply means "Ur of the Idu/Edo" and there were two places with this name. One was in Mesopotamia and the other in what is today Nigeria.

The Eredo of Nigeria (shown above) has 70-foot high ramparts that extend for 100 miles. This Eredo is associated with the royal House of Sheba, to which Abraham's cousin wife, Keturah, belonged. She is the mother of another great ruler, Yaqtan (Joktan) who she named after her father, Yaqtan the Elder. These are the ruling peoples of the Joktanite clans of Southern Arabia and the royal ancestors of Mohammed, the founder of Islam.

These rulers evidently dispersed very widely in the ancient world because Edo/Idu was the Ainu name for the capital of Japan. The original name of Tokyo was Edo.

Many of the rulers of the ancient world had names that began with Ar. This is likely an abbreviation of Har, a Horus name.


Related reading: The Ar Rulers; Edom and the Horites; Who Laid the Foundations of Science and Technology?; Ancient Moral Codes; Cousin Brides and their Ruler Sons; The Genesis King Lists; The Nubian Context of YHWH; Two Named Esau; Andrei A. Orlov, Enoch as the Heavenly Priest

Objections to the Fundamentalist Reading of Genesis

Alice C. Linsley
Objections to the Fundamentalist Reading of Genesis 1-5

This essay follows A Scientific Timeline of Genesis

God created the primal elements, and the Ruach of God brought order to the primal elements.

Here is the Fundamentalist reading of Genesis 1-5.

God created the world between 6000 and 10,000 years ago.
God created Adam and Eve, the first human couple.
Eve gave birth to a son named Cain (Kain/Qayan/Kayin/Kenan/Kahn).
After Cain killed Abel, God granted Eve another son, Seth (Set/Seti/Ta-Seti).
Cain's line was cursed and died out in a worldwide flood.
Only Seth's line survived and no other peoples were on the surface of the Earth.
Noah and his 3 sons and their wives are descendants of Seth only.
The Earth was re-populated after the flood by Noah's 3 sons.


If humans have been on the surface of the Earth for over 3 million years, and Adam and Eve represent the first created humans, then there is a gap of time between Adam and Eve and Cain.  How then are we to interpret Genesis 4:1? Fundamentalists insist that Cain is Eve's offspring. The Hebrew text suggests that Cain is Eve's royal descendant.

Here is what Genesis actually reveals:

The creation stories of Genesis 1 and 2 have a specific historical-cultural context and should be understood in that context. These stories come from the ancient Afro-Asiatics who believed that the first substance on Earth was chaotic water and the Breath (ruach) of God moved over the water establishing order. The Breath or Spirit of God separated the waters above from the waters below and the dry land from the seas. They also believed that blood (dam in Hebrew) is what constitutes Being. The word Ha-dam means the blood or the Being, and this is the likely etymology of Adam (Human Being/First Man).

Fundamentalists calculate the Earth's age at 6000 years on the basis of ages assigned to the rulers in Genesis. They accept Bishop James Ussher's chronology, which has been shown to be inaccurate. Ussher assumed that Cain was the biological son of Adam and Eve and that the men listed in the so-called "genealogies" are the first people to live on Earth. However the lists in Genesis 4, 5, 10 and 11 are not genealogies. They are King lists. These lists represent a time in the past when established kingdoms, laws, armies (warriors), weapons, settlements, strongholds (cities) and numerous technologies existed that are associated with the Neolithic Period (the new stone age). This places the earliest rulers of Genesis between 10,200 and 3000 B.C. (It is possible, however, to narrow this considerably using the Biblical data, as we see here.)

Neolithic cooking utensils

The earth is about 4.5 billion years old. This is based on radiometric age dating of meteorite material and the earth's oldest rocks, and is consistent with lunar samples. Fundamentalists argue that radiometric dating is not reliable because it contradicts what they believe the Bible says about the age of the Earth. For the sake of argument, let us consider that radiometric calculations are off by 50%. Were this the case (and it is not), the earth would still be over 2.2 billion years old. The oldest human fossils are about 3.6 million years. Again for the sake of argument, let us consider that the carbon dating of the oldest human fossils is off by 50%. These humans would still have lived over 1 million years ago.

Bishop James Ussher's scheme did not recognize that the "begats" of Genesis are not generational, but regnal. All the men listed are kings and the reigns of some kings coincided. For example, Tubal-Cain (Gen. 4) and Methuselah (Gen. 5) ruled at the same time over different territories.

Further, the names of these rulers are not proper nouns; they are honorific titles. Terah means priest. Cain/Kain means king. The female equivalent is Kandake/queen, which is rendered in English Bibles as the proper name Candace. Enoch means "one to ascends to the throne." Lamech is a variant of la-melech which appears on several thousand Egyptian seals. It means "of the King" or "for the King." Lamech the Elder's daughter was Naamah, another word associated with Abraham's ruler-priest ancestors and descendants. Naamah is a royal name as attested by the connection to King David. The royal mother of one of David's grandsons was Naamah (II Chron. 12:13).

Cain as Ruler

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, "I have gotten/gained (qa-nithi) a man with the help of the Lord." Genesis 4:1; The Hebrew Study Bible

Here is another rendering from The Schocken Bible, Vol. 1:
The human knew Havva his wife, she became pregnant and bore Kayin. She said: Ka-niti (Qanithi)/ I have gotten a man, as has YHWH.

E.A. Speiser noted that Qany(ty) or Qan-itti shows close affinity to the Akkadian itti, as in itti šarrim which means "with the king".  Cain is associated with the concept of rule or dominion among ancient Nilotic peoples.

Genesis 10 tells us that Nimrod was a Kushite, so it is not surprising to find that Akkadian shares many words with Nilotic languages. Among the Oromo of Ethiopia and Somalia, itti is attached to names. Examples include Kaartuumitti, Finfinneetti and Dimashqitti. That itti is associated with Nilotic rulers is evident in the name Nefertitti.

If we take Eve to be the first woman created by God, we must place her creation before the oldest human fossils at about 3.8 million years. This poses a problem. Is it possible that Genesis 4:1 is speaking of Eve as the ancestral mother of the kings (ka-ntr) listed in Genesis 4, 5, 10 and 11? Is this another prophecy concerning the King who was expected to overcome the grave; a parallel to Genesis 3:15 concerning the Seed born of the Woman (not Eve)? Among Abraham's ancestors the ka was provided by the mother. It refers to life or essence. The word ntr refers to ruler or king. It appears from Genesis 4:1 that Eve is declaring that she has given life to a king, such as is the Lord.

The Epistle of Jude alludes to Cain as a king, along with the prophet Balaam and the priest Korah (verse 11). Kings, prophets and priests were the three highest offices in Biblical times. Further, Genesis provides many anthropologically significant details that point to Cain's status as a ruler.

He was a tiller of the soil (Gen. 4:2) which means that he controlled an area of land, as did Noah, one of his descendants, who planted a vineyard.

He was a city builder (Gen. 4:17) as was his descendant Nimrod who built cities in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. These cities were shrine cities or sacred centers within the ruler's territory.

Cain is associated with metal working. One of his descendants, Tubal-Cain, is said to be the “father” of smiths. In the ancient world, Smiths were a caste with high social status. They were in the service of the rulers. In the Upper Nile, Badari smiths smelted copper during the Chalcolithic or Late Neolithic Period (about 4000-2,800 B.C.). However, the Badari smiths used ritual flint knives for circumcision, as did Moses' wife, Zipporah, when she circumcised their son. Relics of this period found at Al-Badari include necklaces, beads, copper pins, fine linen cloth, and elaborate grave offerings. Al-Badari is on the Upper Nile at the border of Egypt and Sudan.

Cain offered sacrifice to God (Gen. 4:5). In the ancient Afro-Asiatic world only ruler-priests offered sacrifice.

Cain married a royal daughter of the House of Enoch (Nok). Only rulers married the daughters of rulers. She was his cousin as evidenced by the following analysis of the Genesis 4-5 marriage and ascendancy pattern.

We see from this analysis that Cain as a "son" of Adam and Eve must refer to the fact that kings came from the first created couple, but this particular Cain/King lived long after Adam and Eve. The founding father of the lines of Cain and Seth was Enoch/Nok. Enoch comes from the African word anochie, meaning one who is to ascend to the throne. The Nok civilization is found in the part of Africa from which Abraham's ancestors came. It is associated with the ancient Kushites. Kush (Cush) was Noah's grandson. According to the Matsya, an ancient book from India, the archaic world belonged to the Kushites (Sa-ka) for 7000 years.

Nok figurine, found at Nok on the Jos Plateau of Northern Nigeria

As can be seen from the diagram above, Seth was a great ruler also. He married a royal daughter of Enoch/Nok. As is characteristic of royal families, the lines intermarried, as is shown in the diagram below.

This segment reveals that the rulers had 2 wives. The first wife was the bride of the ruler's youth and his half-sister. Abraham's half-sister wife was Sarah. The second wife was a patrilineal cousin or niece and this marriage was consummated shortly before the heir ascended to the throne. Abraham's cousin wife was Keturah, who gave birth to 6 sons (Gen. 25).

With two wives, there were two first-born sons. They ascended to different thrones. The first born son of the sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father. So Isaac became Abraham's heir.  The first born son of the cousin wife became a ruler in the territory of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named.  Lamech the Younger ruled in the territory of Lamech the Elder, not in the territory of his biological father Methuselah. Bishop Ussher was not aware of this unique marriage and ascendancy pattern.

The Genesis "begats" and the material in Genesis 10 are annals of ancient royal lines that intermarried. Ruler priests married the daughters of ruler-priests. Only some sons could ascend to the throne. Other sons were sent away to establish territories for themselves. These sent-away sons drove the Kushite expansion out of Africa, an expansion that has been verified by DNA studies.


Expansion Out of Eden

Genesis 2:10-14 says that Eden was watered by four rivers: the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Pishon and the Gihon. The first two are in Mesopotamia and the last two are in East Africa. This is the heart of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion and the place of origin of the ruler-priests and of "him that holds the scepter from the house of Eden" (Amos 1:5).

The description of Eden as a well-watered region is supported by climate and geological studies. These four rivers encompass the heart or "Eden" of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion which was ruled by a network of ruler priests. They controlled the major water systems and built shrines along the rivers.  From Eden Cain's descendants spread far and wide; his line did not die out in the flood.

The lines of Cain and Seth intermarried, as did the lines of Ham and Shem. Abraham, King David and Jesus Christ are descendants of these great ruler-priests. Perhaps this is why Jesus' King-Priest identity was recognized in Tyre in Mark’s Gospel, not on a mountain, as in Matthew's account of the Transfiguration. For Mark, the Messiah’s appearing means the beginning of the restoration of Paradise. Mark was probably thinking of this passage from Ezekiel 28: "Son of Man, raise a lament over the king of Tyre and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and flawless beauty. You were in Eden, in the Garden of God; every precious stone was your adornment... and gold beautifully wrought for you, mined for you, prepared the day you were created."

Related reading: YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical; Between Biblical Literalism and Biblical Illiteracy; Lamech Segment Analysis; The Life Spans of Methuselah and Lamech; Kushite Wives; Genetics Confirms Biblical Migrations; The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ; Abraham Was a Descendant of Both Ham and Shem; Abraham and Job: Horite Rulers; Genesis Through the Lens of Anthropology

Enoch's Rapture

Alice C. Linsley


A reader recently made this comment:

What are your thoughts about Enoch's "removal". I've been perusing your site and I don't see it as having been covered before - not to say it hasn't (I just don't find it if it has).

Gen. 5:24 "and Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him."

I realize you deal with data, facts and research, extrapolating from there, but this would certainly seem to be an intriguing passage, yes?

The common interpretation is that Enoch was translated into heaven/paradise like Elijah. Certainly, in the genealogical listings of early Genesis, Enoch's life stands out.

Sure, they're pointing out his strong faith and relationship with God, but his "death" or "end of life" is put differently than the other ancestors. Is this because his faith and walk with God was that set apart, or do you accept the interpretation that he was indeed "translated" in some fashion and this was the early author's way of trying to grasp/understand it and relate it for posterity?


Thanks.


I appreciate this question and the reader's understanding of my interest in facts. This is a topic I have avoided because it necessarily involves speculation. That is not to say that I haven't given this some thought.  I have considered three possible explanations.

1. Enoch was a deified ruler whose death was never recorded.  I don't see much biblical support for this view.  The days of Enoch are said to be 365 years (Gen. 5:23).  Whether he died or was translated to heaven, the time of his leaving was noted.

2. Enoch was a sent-away son and his death was never reported to his people back home.  Most of the heroes of the Old Testament were sent-away sons: Cain, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and David are examples. These biblical figures point to Jesus, God's sent-away Son, who came to conquer and establish and eternal kingdom.

3. Enoch was a hermit ruler who lived in the wilderness and disappeared. His ermitic life began after his son Methuselah was born.  Having secured an heir to his throne, Enoch withdrew to the wilderness.  This is suggested by Gen. 5:22: "And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methusaleh."

Probably Enoch was "raptured" as was Elijah. This is said to happen to some hysechasts. It is called "stepping into the Light" and is something akin to the transfiguration of Jesus, or the glorified Jesus in the individual becoming all in all. This speaks of transcending this world.

I am not attached to one of these possible explanations. However, I believe that Enoch's righteousness and his disappearance should be taken literally.

The phrase "walked with God" is reminiscent of Genesis 3:8 where we are told that God walked in the garden to commune with the Man and the Woman.  To walk with God suggests the simpliest life, where the main thing - perfect communion with God - is kept the main thing.

St. Ephrem the Syrian expressed how Christ makes transcendence possible in a Hymn on the Nativity (VIII.4). He wrote:

Blessed be the Merciful One
who saw the sword beside Paradise,
barring the way to the Tree of Life;
He came and took to Himself a body
which was wounded so that,
by the opening of His side,
He might open up the way to Paradise.

At the end of his Ladder of Divine Ascent, St. John Climacus speaks of this as "ascending to Jerusalem, the vision of the perfect peace of souls" and encourages the monks to fix "your eye upon Heaven, you have set your foot upon its base and run, and gone up, and been exalted, and mounted the cherubim of the virtues; you have taken wing and ascended in jubilation, vanquishing the enemy. You have gone before us on the road and led the way, or rather, even now you lead us, and go on before us all, ascending with a light step to the very pinnacle of the holy Ladder, uniting yourself to love; and love is God, to Whom be glory unto the ages. Amen."


Related reading: Is Enoch a Royal Title?

The Ruler Seth

Alice C. Linsley

TIMELINE

Late Neolithic period (ca. 4000-3000 B.C.)
          - Nilotic pastoralists who were sedentary for part of the year
          - Dead buried with their faces toward the rising sun
          - Hierakonpolis, the most ancient Nilotic temple; dedicated to Horus. Here a 4000 B.C. tomb painting of two red ochre men. They carry crooked staffs and flails, suggesting that they are pre-dynastic ruler-priests.
          - Wine making equipment found in the tomb of the Scorpion I (c. 3150 B.C.)

Noah was drunk with wine on at least one occasion and the outcome wasn't good. Likewise, Lot's drunken stupor led to unfortunate events. Genesis is critical of excessive wine consumption.


The Saharan Wet Period (c. 4000-2000 B.C.)
          - Noah (ca. 2490-2415 B.C.)  Saharan Late Holocene (Karl W. Butzer 1966)
          - The Great Pyramid, aligned to the Dragon Star on the Vernal Equinox in 2141 B.C.
          - Lake Chad was much deeper and covered an much larger area
          - The Nile waters flooded more widely, with drainage channels extending west into the desert
          - Stronger monsoonal circulation throughout sub-tropical regions increased rain in Sudan

Analysis of deposited sediments in the Nile delta shows this period had a higher proportion of sediments coming from the Blue Nile, due to higher rainfall also in the Ethiopian Highlands.


Kingdom of Kush (ca. 2000-1500 B.C.)
          - Kushite rulers built pyramids for elite burials and ruled Egypt as its 25th Dynasty
          - Pan Grave burials of Nubia and Egypt of the Medjay/Beja people, about 1700 B.C
          - King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep (c. 2043-1992 BC) married Ashait, a Medjay princess


The Napatan Period (ca. 1575-525 B.C.)
          - King Kasta ("the Kushite")
          - King Piye named his firstborn son Hor (Horus)
          - King Sheba-qo 


Origin of the Name Seth

Seti was a royal name among the Nilotic peoples.  The name is associated with the territory of Ta-Seti, meaning the "Land of Set." Set and the biblical word Seth are cognates. Ta-Seti is also translated as "Land of the Bow" and attests to the skill of the Nubian archers, a skill for which the later Kushites were also famous.

I Chronicles 1:50 mentions an important Horite bride - Matred. Her name is related to Menmaatre, the throne name of Seti I. Seti is a name associated with Piye, which is identified with the "city of Pai" in I Chronicles 1:50. Queen Piye was a Nubian queen.

The great Nubian king Piye (780 B.C.) installed a black granite falcon head image of Horus in Napata, his capital.  Piye's brother and successor, Sheba-qo, moved the royal residence to Memphis. Sheba-qo (716-702 B.C.) and his successors Shebit-qo (702-690 B.C.) and Tahar-qo (690-664 B.C.) thought of themselves as God's earthly representatives and it was probably during their time that the rulers came to wear the double crown of Horus.

The biblical Seth lived before the emergence of the Kushite Kingdom, probably around 3000 B.C. He was an ancestor of Noah and Noah's son Kush. Director of museum of the University of Chicago Oriental Institute, Geoff Emberling reports that excavations at Kerma and the Fourth Cataract, "suggest that the early Kingdom of Kush was larger than previously believed, and that its raids into Egypt in about 1650 B.C. were a serious threat to the capital at Thebes. Compared with other civilizations of the region, such as Mesopotamia, early Kush controlled a vast area and was able to amass significant military power."

Thirty Palaeolithic sites were discovered in the region by a team of archaeologists led by Henryk Paner between 1996-2003. At seven Mesolithic site shards of wavy line and dotted wavy line pottery were found. Paner believes that these reflect an older decorative tradition. He reports, "The Neolithic witnessed a boom in settlement evidence. Of the total number of 711 sites recorded over 240 yielded ceramic, stone and flint artefacts dating from this period. Some Neolithic settlements tended to be located on higher terrain within natural hollows. Oval and circular stone structures up to 1.5m in diameter probably represent hearths. Larger concentrations of stones (also circular in plan but with larger diameters) may possibly mark the remains of dwellings which were made from organic materials.Querns and grinders were also found at these sites. Agate was among the raw materials used for making tools, with white quartz becoming increasingly popular on late Neolithic sites." (From here.)

At Hosh el-Guruf in Sudan, Emberling's team found a Kushite gold-processing center along the middle Nile. Gold was processed here between 2000 and 1500 B.C. This may be the biblical land of Havilah (Gen. 2:11), known for gold. The Gihon wound through the entire land of Kush (Gen. 2:13) and was connected to the Pishon which wound through the entire land of Havilah. The identification of this area with the Nile is further supported by the claim that aromatic resin (amber) is found there (Gen. 2:12).  The Gihon and Pishon appear to be sections of the Nile, probably between the 4th and 6th cataracts. As Northern Sudan is geologically active, the Nubian Swell has diverted the Nile's course to the west, making it difficult to definitively locate these waterways of Eden.


The Biblical Seth

Having established that the name Seth comes from the Nile region of ancient Nubia and Kush,we must now explore the biblical information that sheds light on this royal person.

Genesis tells us that Seth was Cain's younger brother. (Cain is also spelled Kenan, Qayan, Kano).  According to Genesis 5:6, Seth's firstborn son was Enosh. There has been some debate as to whether Enosh is equivalent to Enoch, the name of Cain's firstborn son (Gen. 4:17). I believe that both names are derived from the Nilotic or Proto-Saharan word anochie, meaning "one who is to follow" as heir to the throne. The word anochie is found among peoples who migrated westward from the Nile, such as the Ashante. Among the Igbo, anochie means “a replacer” or “to replace.” A Nigerian biblical anthropologist reports that "Anochie also means 'direct heir to a throne'."  The biblical word Enoch is clearly a royal name or title, as is the name Seth.

Genesis provides more detailed information about Cain's line (Gen. 4) than about Seth's line (Gen. 5). Likely this is because the Canaanites, Cain's descendants, were the dominant people in the land where Abraham became established as a ruler. It is possible that the majority of Seth's descendants remained in the area of Nubia, though the lines of Cain and Seth continued to intermarry, as is common among royalty. The women of these royal lines married their patrilineal cousins or uncles and named their firstborn sons after their fathers.  Naamah, the daughter of Lamech, is an example.

© 1995 Alice C. Linsley

Another royal title of Nubian origin is Terah, the name of Abraham's father. It means "devotee" and is found on the Tera-neter tile, shown below.

Tera-ntr was a ruler of the Anu people, pre-dynastic inhabitants of Egypt. Abraham’s father, Terah, is named after this line that comes out of the Nile Valley. They are the earliest known to worship Horus, the prefigurement of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Another name for Heliopolis is On (Gen. 41:50). Joseph married a daughter of the high priest of On. The residents called it iunu, meaning "place of pillars" due to the many pillars of the temple.

Related reading: The Daughters of Horite Priests; Abraham's Nubian Ancestors; The Ethnicity of Abraham and David; The Saharan Origins of Pharaonic Egypt