The Relationship of John the Baptist and Jesus Messiah

Alice C. Linsley

Kinship analysis provide insight into the relationship of John the Forerunner and Jesus Messiah. It helps us to identify the relationship between of the priestly lines from which both are descended. Understanding how Jesus and John were related helps us to grasp more fully John's testimony concerning Jesus Messiah.

There have been many attempts to reconcile the genealogical information given in Matthew 1 and Luke 3. These lists are used by the writers for different narrative purposes. Nevertheless, once we understand the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the Horite Hebrews we can recognize the historical validity of the biblical claim that John and Jesus were blood relatives and both of the Horite Hebrew priestly lines.

A fruitful approach to investigating the relationship of Jesus and John is to look for the repetition of patterns such as two wives, three sons, the cousin-bride's naming prerogative, etc. The first step to understanding the marriage and ascendancy pattern of John and Jesus is to diagram the Biblical data, such as I have done in the diagram of Moses's ancestry.

John and Jesus come from the priestly lines that descend from Amram. One line is traced through Aaron, Moses's full-brother, and the other is traced through Korah, Moses' half-brother. According to Numbers 26, Korah's claim to be priest was supported by the Hanochites (descendants of Jacob's first born son, Reuben). Korah the younger is named by his mother Ishar after her father, according tot he cousin-bride's naming prerogative. Ishar is derived from the Hebrew isha, meaning "woman." Women are sometimes listed as "sons" in Genesis and Exodus if the ruling line is traced through them, which is the case with Ishar (Ex 6:17), and Anah and Oholibamah (Gen. 36). The last two women are Horites of Edom, of the house of "Seir the Horite."

The priestly lines of Aaron and Korah were ruler-priest clans before they became divisions. One division, the line of Matthew (Mattai/Mattan) resided in Bethlehem. Joseph of Ari-mathea was in the priestly line, something that qualified him to be a member of the Sanhedrin.

Following the kinship pattern of his ruler-priest forefathers, Amram had two wives. One was a half-sister, as was Sarah to Abraham, and the other was a patrilineal cousin, as was Keturah to Abraham. Ishar was Amram's cousin bride, and Jochebed was his half-sister.

According to Holy Tradition, John was a cousin of Jesus through his mother Elizabeth who was sister to Ana (Anah). Ana was Christ's maternal grandmother (as the Anah shown in the diagram was Korah's maternal grandmother). In the relationship of John and Jesus, we find intermarriage between lines of priests according to the ancient pattern of their ruler-priests forefathers. John’s mother Elizabeth was of the “daughters of Aaron,” meaning that she was the daughter of a priest. According to Holy Tradition, Mary was also a daughter of the priest, Joachim. According to the custom of the Horite Hebrew ruler-priests, she married into a priestly line when she married Joseph, grandson of Mattenai (Matthew 1:16).

John's father was a priest of the division of Abijah (Luke 1:5, 8). Abijah's was the eight division of priests which apparently resided in Bethlehem. Bethlehem was a Horite settlement according to I Chronicles 4:4 which names Hur (Horite) as the "father of Bethlehem" and Rahab's husband Salmon, the son of Hur is called the "father of Bethlehem" in 1 Chronicles 2:54. Nazareth was also a Horite Hebrew settlement.
The eighteenth division of ruler-priests, called ha·pi·TSETS (Happizzez), resided in Nazareth. In 1962 excavators discovered a small piece of a list of the twenty-four priestly divisions. This third to fourth-century marble fragment is inscribed with the names of the places where four of the divisions resided, including Nazareth, the residence of Happizzez. The name of the division is of Nilotic origin. Happizzez is related to the ancient Egyptian word for the life-sustaining Nile which was Happi.

John's mother, Elizabeth, married into the priestly line of Amram when she married Zechariah, a descendant of Abijah. Mary married into the line of Amram/Korah when she married Joseph, son of Asaph. I Chronicles 26:4-8 tells us that among "Korah's descendants there were Obed Edom's sons Shemaiah (the firstborn), Jehozabad (the second), Joah (the third), Sachar (the fourth), Nethanel (the fifth), Ammiel (the sixth), Issachar (the seventh), and Peullethai (the eighth). God had blessed Obed of Edom. His son Shemaiah had sons who ruled their families because they were soldiers. Shemaiah's sons were Othni, and Othni's skilled brothers Rephael, Obed, Elzabad, as well as Elihu and Semachiah. All of these people were Obed Edom's descendants. They, their sons, and their relatives were skilled and had the ability to perform the service. Obed Edom's family included 62 men."

"Obed-Edom" refers Korah's descendants who were rulers in Edom. These Horite Hebrew rulers are listed in Genesis 36. Seir the Horite ruled in the territory where Abraham lived between Hebron and Beersheba. Seir's granddaughter is Anah, the maternal grandmother of Korah the Elder, whose daughter Ishar married her patrilineal cousin Amram, the father of Moses, Aaron, Miriam and Korah.

There were twenty-four priestly divisions after the construction of the Second Temple. Nineteen of these divisions are listed in Nehemiah 12:10-22. In this list we find these names of particular interest: Eber, Joachim, Joseph, Abijah, and Mattenai. These are the names of priests who married the daughters of priests and from these lines came John the Baptist, Joseph, Mary and Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God.

John the Forerunner's testimony concerning Jesus as "the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29) springs from direct knowledge of the tradition of his Horite Hebrew forebearers among whom Messianic expectation originated.

Related reading: Edom and the Horites; Who Were the Horites?; The Genesis Record of Horite Rule; Matthew's Testimony Concerning the Empty Tomb; The Cousin Bride's Naming Prerogative; Samuel's Horite Hebrew Family

Moses's Wives and Brothers

Analysis of the marriage and ascendancy structure of Moses' family reveals the distinctive pattern of the Horite Hebrew ruler-priest caste.

Moses had two wives. His Kushite wife was his half-sister, as was Sarah to Abraham. The pattern of Moses's family is identical to that of the rulers listed in Genesis 4, 5 and 11 and to that of Abraham's father Terah and Samuel's father Elkanah. One of the sons of Korah the Younger (Ishar's son) was named Elkanah. This is the name of the prophet Samuel's father who also had two wives. Samuel's family was also Horite.

It appears that all of these great men of Genesis and Exodus were Horite Hebrew rulers. Many are designated as divinely appointed by the initial letter Y in their Hebrew names, a solar cradle.

Moses’ father was Amram. He had two wives, following the pattern of his forefathers who were Horite Hebrew priest-scribes. Exodus 6:20 indicates that Jochebed was probably Amram's half-sister, and if so, she was Amram's principal wife. Her name is also spelled Jacquebeth and refers to the African homeland, probably ancient Kush. The Horite Hebrew were originally from the Nile Valley.

Amram's relationship to Jochebed parallels Abraham's relationship to Sarah. Both were first wives, married at a young age. The ruler's second wife was usually a patrilineal cousin or niece. Such was the case with Amram's second wife Ishar and Abraham's second wife, Keturah. This pattern is characteristic of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of Horite ruler-priests.

Ishar is a woman's name, derived from the Hebrew isha, meaning "woman." Women are sometimes listed as "sons" in Genesis and Exodus if the ruling line is traced through them, which is the case with Ishar (Ex 6), and Anah and Oholibamah (Gen. 36). The last two women are Horites of Edom, of the house of "Seir the Horite."

Likewise, Ishar was a descendant of Seir the Horite. She was either Amram's half-sister or his patrilineal cousin (as was Keturah to Abraham). Ishar was the mother of Korah the Younger (Num. 26:59), who she named after her father Korah the Elder. Korah the Younger is the one who opposed Moses' authority.

Exodus 6:17 lists Ishar and Amram in the same generation. These were Kohath's children by two different wives. A characteristic of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the Horite ruler-priests is that they had two wives.

 
According to Numbers 26, Korah's claim to be the ruler-priest was supported by the Hanochites (descendants of Ha'nock, the first born son of Jacob's firstborn son Reuben). As the first born son of the cousin/niece bride Korah was to rule the territory of his maternal grandfather.

Korah's descendants are praised in 1 Chronicles 26. Here the Chronicler classifies them with the gatekeepers of Obed-Edom. Obed was the name of David's grandfather and Edom is the traditional homeland of the Horites. Petra, the capital of Edom, reflects Horite architecture.

The Pattern of Two Wives

Following the custom of his Hebrew forefathers, Moses had two wives. The first wife would have been a half-sister, the wife of Moses' youth. It is likely that he married her while in Egypt. She is said to be Kushite (Numbers 12) and for some reason Moses' siblings didn't approve of the marriage, although the marriage was probably arranged by Amram. 

Zipporah, Moses' cousin bride, is mentioned in Exodus 2:15-16 and in Exodus 18:1-6. Moses met her while she at a well where she was drawing water for her father’s flocks. Priests were also shepherds who maintained shrines near wells, springs or other bodies of water. Zipporah was the daughter of "the priest of Midian". In other words, her father was a descendant of Abraham by Keturah who bore him a son named Midian.

Moses’ Kushite wife is not named, but she was likely a woman of high rank and his half-sister. Moses's first wife would have been a half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham), if Moses married according to the pattern of his Hebrew ruler-priest ancestors. HIs second wife would have been a patrilineal cousin (as was Keturah to Abraham). Moses likely had children in Egypt by his first wife before he fled to Jethro in Midian and married Zipporah.

The criticism of Moses' marriage to the first wife is related in this passage: “When they were in Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married: “He married a Kushite woman!” They said, “Has the Lord God spoken only through Moses? Has God not spoken through us as well?” (Numbers 11:35-12:2)

We don’t know why Aaron and Miriam criticized Moses for marrying the Kushite woman, but it is was not racially motivated since all these people were descendants of Noah by Kush (Ham's son) and Aram (Shem's son) since the two lines intermarried. Likely, Moses’ siblings were angry that he asserted authority over Aaron, his older brother, by marrying Korah's sister and then marrying a Midiante wife. His marriage to Korah's sister strengthened the alliance with the Kushites and his marriage to Zipporah strengthened the alliance to the Midianites. This led to the formation of a powerful alliance of peoples related by blood and marriage and strengthened Moses' position as ruler.

In order for Moses to rule, he had to have two wives. This pattern of rulers having two wives is first found in Genesis 4 which mentions Lamech and his two wives. It continues through the generations with Nahor, Terah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and as we have seen with Moses. [3] This also explains Abraham's urgency to fetch a cousin wife for Isaac so that Isaac could rule after Abraham's death. This suggests that we should look in the biblical text for clues as to who Isaac's first wife would have been. We know that she would have been a half-sister, since Rebecca was the cousin bride. Likely, Isaac's first wife was a daughter of Yishbak, another son of Abraham by Keturah.

Here we find the 3-son pattern with Yishmael, Yishbak and Yitzak.  It is like other 3-son tribal units that we have seen: Uz, Buz and Huz; Og, Magog and Gog. The pattern corresponds to the 3-son Kushite rulers Sheba-qo, Shebit-qo and Ta-Har-qo. Here we find the Meroitic honorary suffix qo. The first two names are linguistically equivalent to the biblical name Sheba, an ancestor of Abraham and his cousin-wife Keturah. Ta-Har-qo is a Horus name.


The Youngest Son Rules

Isaac was the younger of the 3 first-born sons and he was chosen to rule over Abraham's territory after Abraham's death. The theme of the youngest son as ruler runs throughout the Bible. However, he never rules without objection from his siblings who express jealousy such as Miriam and Aaron. Cain’s jealousy of his younger brother overturns his natural affection to the point that he commits fratercide. Likewise, the jealousy of Joseph’s older brothers overturned their affection and they sold him into slavery. Neither was David, the youngest of the 12 sons of Jesse, treated well by his brothers. They left him to tend the flock while they returned home to feast with the Prophet Samuel. We have an allusion to this in the opening of the Song of Songs, which says that beloved’s skin is as dark "as the tents of Kedar" because he was made to work in the sun by his older brothers.

Zipporah and the Flint Knife

There is a strange story about Zipporah circumcising Moses’ son using a flint knife. As far as we know women didn’t circumcise males. This would have been a violation of the gender role distinctions practiced among Abraham's people. Women circumcised females and men circumcised males. This has led some to wonder if perhaps Moses was uncircumcised and Zipporah circumcised him in an urgent situation, but the Egyptians practiced male circumcision and Moses would not have been permitted to appear before Pharaoh had he been uncircumcised.[4]  Besides, the text specifically says that Zipporah circumcised her son.

“On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the LORD met him and tried to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin, and touched Moses' feet with it, and said, “Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” So he let him alone. It was then she said, “A bridegroom of blood by circumcision.” (Exodus 4:24-26)

Here we see Zipporah acting as a priest in applying the blood of the son to save her (uncircumcised = ritually impure) husband. This is the only written record of a woman involved with male circumcision and Zipporah clearly was not happy to be put in that situation. In her cultural context performing an act reserved for men would have diminished her femininity. She sacrificed an aspect of her womanhood in performing this act to save her husband.


Related reading: Were the Shasu Related to Moses?; The Nubian Context of YHWH; The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ; The Ethnicity of Abraham and David; The Genesis Record of Horite Rule; Who Were the Horites?; Lamech Segment Analysis; Abraham's Nephews and Nieces; The Eyes of Horus Speak of Jesus; Abraham and Job: Horite Rulers; God's African Ancestors; Moses and Abraham: Different Origins of Israel?


NOTES

1. The name “Korah” means shaved head. This was the custom for priests in Egypt preparing for their terms of service in the temples. See Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2007, p.37.

2. Many of the rulers in Genesis and Exodus met their wives at wells. That is because they married the daughters of priests who tended shrines where there were either natural springs or wells.

3. All of these royal priests married two wives and maintained them in separate households on a north-south axis. These settlements marked the north and southern boundaries of the ruler’s territory along the water system he controlled. The pattern of ruler-priests having 2 wives continues throughout the Bible. Elkanah is a later example, with his two wives Hannah and Penninah.

4. Circumcision was a sign of purity among the Egyptians and none who were uncircumcised were permitted to appear before Pharaoh. Circumcision applied to females also. Read about Pharaonic circumcision here.

The Enigma of Joseph

Painted wooden stela showing the deceased (right) making an offering to Re-Harakhty. From the tomb of Aafenmut in Thebes. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Alice C. Linsley


Joseph (Yosef), the favored son of Jacob, is an enigma. Joseph's elevation to a high position in Egypt and his marriage to Asenath of Heliopolis, a Horite Hebrew shrine city, suggest that he was a rightful heir to something back in Egypt. However, everything in Genesis about Jacob points to a late attempt to reshape the material to fit the Jewish narrative. We are told that Jacob's 2 wives, Leah and Rachel, were sisters. How did that affect the status of their first-born sons: Reuben and Joseph? Certainly, in the narrative's present form, Joseph does not fit the pattern of a sent-away son. He fits the pattern of a cousin bride's son who goes to serve as a high official in the territory of his maternal grandfather.

How likely is it that this high-born youth was sold as a slave? He was familiar enough with the customs of Egyptian nobility to adapt to life in Potiphar's house, and he went from slave to influential ruler. 

To understand the enigma of Joseph we must consider the finer details of his story.

He was the son of a Horite Hebrew ruler, Jacob/Yacob.

He was designated to rule, as evidenced by the Canaanite Y in his name - Yosef, a sign of divine appointment to rule.

He was already Egyptianized before going to Egypt. Egypt's cultural influence and military control of Canaan lasted from c. 2000 to 1200 BC. Joseph lived in Canaan during that period.

He married Asenath, a daughter of a Horite Hebrew priest of On (Heliopolis). Heliopolis was a prestigious temple complex.

In Moses' time, Zelophehad's daughters inherited property after petitioning Moses to render a judgement on this dispute connected to a land holding of Manasseh, the oldest son of Joseph and Asenath (Num. 27). In the Book of Chronicles, Zelophehad is listed as a son of Manasseh whose original land holdings were in Egypt.

The present account of Joseph likely comes from a source dating to the later Neo-Babylonian period (c.700-300 BC). The purpose is to explain the assignment of land holdings in Canaan. However, this story of Zelophehad's daughter petitioning Moses for their inheritance comes before the Israelites entered the Promised Land. Zelophehad's holdings were with the clan of Manasseh which had deep roots in Egypt. However, this does not serve the Deuteronomist's narrative. This later source would have us believe that all the Hebrew people left Egypt, never to return there.

Joseph's Saga

Joseph's story serves as the transition from the patriarchal narratives to the Exodus. After his death, he was mummified as a high-ranking Egyptian and buried in Goshen, adjacent to Avaris. Avaris was founded by Amenemhet I, the first king of the 12th dynasty. Archaeological and anthropological evidence indicates that the settlers of Goshen were people from Canaan who shared many features of Egyptian culture. This would be expected if Abraham's people were Horites, a priesthood devoted to Horus of the Two Crowns.

During the Second Intermediate Period, coinciding with the time of biblical Joseph, the Egyptians experienced an influx of Canaanites. These Semites had settlements in Tanis, Avaris and el-Yehudiya. The Egyptians called the chiefs of these settlements "Hyk Khase", the origin of the term Hyksos.

Horite ruler-priests were careful to marry chaste daughters of priests. It is not a coincidence then that Joseph married Asenath, daughter of the "priest of On" (Gen. 41:45), called Heliopolis (city of the Sun) by the Greeks. Asenath's father was a Horite Hebrew priest and the Horite priestly lines intermarried.  If the sons of Horite priests married the daughter of Horite priests, their sons were also in the caste of priests.

Asenath, Joseph's wife, was probably Joseph's cousin. Her first-born son likely belonged to the Heliopolis shrine, whereas Ephraim, Joseph's younger son belonged to the House of Jacob. This explains why Jacob gave him the blessing (not birthright) that pertained to the first-born (Gen. 48:14).

Moses' two older brothers - Aaron and Korah - would also have married the daughters of priests. Korah's descendants are praised in 1 Chronicles 26, where they are grouped with the gatekeepers of Obed-Edom. Obed-Edom is a connection to Ruth, who named her first-born son Obed. Obed was the father of Jesse, the father of David. This picks up the Messianic thread, pointing us back to the Horite expectation of the Son of God who was coming into the world.


Joseph's Horite Hebrew Ancestry

Horite Hebrew ruler-priests married the daughters of Horite Hebrew priests. About 75% of the women named in the Old Testament are daughters of priests. This was the practice among the royal priestly lines of Abraham’s people. By every indication, Joseph was as thoroughly immersed in the Horite Hebrew religion as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses.

The Horite caste of ruler-priests was devoted of Horus, the son of the High God, whose emblem was the sun. His queen mother was Hathor, the patroness of metal workers. Heliopolis was one of the shrines dedicated to Ra and Horus or Re-harakhty, that is, Horus of the Two Horizons (East and West). During the New Kingdom (c. 1539–1075 BC) the great temple of Re at Heliopolis rivaled that of Amon at Thebes, and the Horite Hebrew priesthood of Heliopolis wielded great influence.

Horite ruler-priests married two wives and placed them in separate households on a north-south axis. The bride of the man's youth was his half-sister, as was Sarah to Abraham. The second bride was a patrilineal cousin, as was Keturah to Abraham. Sarah resided in Hebron and Keturah resided to the south in Beersheba. There is no biblical record of Joseph taking more than one wife. However, it is significant that of his two sons - Manasseh and Ephraim - the first belonged to the house of Asenat's father, and the second was claimed by the house of Jacob (Gen. 48:20). This suggests that Manasseh and Ephraim were the first-born sons of different wives.

Traditions Concerning Joseph's Burial

In Goshen/Avaris, Joseph had a large Egyptian-style palace built over Jacob's dwelling. The palace enclosure had a garden tomb, the largest sepulcher found in Goshen. Joseph's body would have been mummified and wrapped in cloth. He may have been buried according to the custom of his Nilo-Saharan ancestors, with the body on its left side, head to the south, facing west.

According to Scripture Joseph requested that his body be removed to Canaan. Most claim that his tomb is near Nablus in Palestinian territory, a site regarded as holy by Jews, Christians and Muslims. The Tomb is located at the eastern entrance to the valley that separates Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. It is about 750 feet north of Jacob's Well, on the outskirts of Nablus, near biblical Shechem.

There is another Islamic tradition that places Joseph’s tomb in Haram al-Khalil in Hebron, in the tomb of the Patriarchs. This is the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a heavy rectangular building that encloses the underground Cave of Machpelah which was explored in 1967. This is the land and cave in Mamre that Abraham purchased for the burial of Sarah.

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Joseph's Tomb at Nablus was to be accessible to Jews and Christians. However, following peace talks at Camp David in September 2000, Arafat initiated his intifada in the West Bank. In October 2000, Fatah gunmen attacked the tomb repeatedly, killing two and injuring dozens, prompting Israel to evacuate Judaism's third holiest site on October 6, 2000. The attackers burned Jewish prayer books and repainted the white dome roof Muslim Green, transforming Joseph's resting place into another Muslim holy site and anachronistically pronouncing Joseph a Muslim.

Joseph does not fit the typical picture of an Israelite or an Arab. He was Horite Hebrew, a ruler-priest caste of devotees to Re, Hathor, and Horus. He married Asenath, the daughter of a Horite Hebrew high priest. She grew up at Heliopolis on the Nile.

Priest's daughters were raised at water shrines or river temples where their fathers served as priests. These were women of high rank but they did not live pampered lives. Zipporah was drawing water for livestock when she met Moses. Rebekah was likewise engaged when Abraham’s servant arrived to contract a marriage between her and Isaac. It is important to note that these priestly daughters had two sons:

Rebekah – Esau (oldest) and Jacob (youngest)
Rachel – Joseph (oldest) and Benjamin (youngest)
Asenath – Manasseh (oldest) and Ephraim (youngest)
Tamar – Zerah (oldest) and Perez (youngest)

In each case, the younger son was tagged as an ancestor of the Messiah. However, this does not mean that the older son was not an ancestor of Messiah since the Hebrew priestly lines intermarried. The elevation of the youngest son is a common theme in the Bible: David was the youngest son of Jesse. Abraham was the youngest of Terah's 3 sons; Haran, Nahor, and Abraham. 


Related reading: Joseph and Judah: Instruments of Deliverance; Ancient Canaanite Inscriptions; The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y; Moses' Horite Hebrew Family; The Pattern of Two Wives; Hebrew, Israelite, or Jew?; Sent-Away Sons