What is a Priest?

Alice C. Linsley


The priesthood is verifiably the oldest known religious institution and appears to have originated in the Nile region. It is quite distinct from the other ancient religious office, that of the shaman. Underlying shamanism is the belief that spirits cause imbalance and disharmony in the world. The shaman’s role is to determine which spirits are at work in a given situation and to find ways to appease the spirits. This may or may not involve animal sacrifice. Underlying the priesthood is belief in a single supreme Spirit to whom humans must give an accounting, especially for the shedding of blood. In this view, one Great Spirit (God) holds the world in balance and it is human actions that cause disharmony. The vast assortment of ancient laws governing priestly ceremonies, sacrifices, and cleansing rituals clarifies the role of the priest as one who offers animal sacrifice according to sacred law. The priest was forbidden to consult the spirits of the ancestors as shamans do in trance states.

Priests are intermediaries between the Creator and the community, not between the spirits and the community. Both offices are intermediary, but their worldviews are quite different. When sickness, sudden death, or a great calamity such as flooding or plague affects the community, the shaman investigates the cause and seeks to balance benevolent and malevolent energies. When the community served by the priest experiences hardship, deprivation and loss, the priest calls the people to repentance and seeks to restore the community to the peace of God. In ancient times, this sometimes meant seeking out the offenders by using the binary system of divination represented by the Urim and Thummim. These represent numerous binary sets. The urim would have a number of associations which would be assigned the opposite meaning with the thummim. Using these tools involved more than yes-no questions. It involved deriving meaning from the directional poles, gender, numbers and reversals. The morehs or ancient prophets apparently used the same approach when rendering counsel such as that given to Abraham by the moreh at the Oak of Mamre (Gen. 12:6).

Despite what feminists and politically-correct academics might say, the priestly role was from the beginning the work of a select group of men (a caste, actually) whose devotion to the worship of the Creator involved, by today's standards, extreme asceticism. Contrary to the position of the Roman Church, these men were married and enjoyed sexual relations with their wives.  However they abstained from sex, shaved their bodies, fasted and entered periods of intense prayer in preparation for their time of service at the temple or shrine. They were known for their purity of life.

A survey of the world's religions helps us to understand the uniqueness of the priesthood.  Shinto "priests" are really shamans, not priests.  Priestesses of ancient Greek were really mediums or seers, not priests.  Anthropologically, the priesthood is defined by the caste of ruler-priests known as Horites.  These were Abraham's people and their idea of the priest was closely aligned to their understanding of blood as both potentially contaminating and potentially purifying.

The unique nature of the priesthood is inextricably linked to the nature of God.  God is the first priest (Gen. 3:21) and the priesthood, like God, is eternal. This is what stands behind the biblical references to Melchizedek. He was kin to Abraham and minister to Abraham after a time of battle. From their bloodlines came Son of God, Jesus Christ. He is our great High Priest who promises to make intercession on our behalf. He is the true Form which is reflected dimly in priests today since they have not sought purity and holiness.


The Horite Ruler-priests are Jesus Christ's Ancestors

Jesus Christ is the direct descendant of the Horite and Sethite Hebrew ruler-priests. Some of their ancestors are listed in Genesis 4 and 5. The early Hebrew had a unique marriage and ascendancy pattern which involved marriage between the ruling lines (endogamy). 

The highest ranking rulers had two wives and two firstborn sons. Their wives lived in separate settlements on a north-south axis.  So Sarah resided in Hebron and Keturah to the south in Beersheba. The first wife was a half-sister and her firstborn son ascended to the throne of his biological father. The second wife was a patrilineal cousin or niece and her firstborn son ruled in the territory of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named. This is why certain names or titles reappear in different generations. We have Esau the Elder and Esau the Younger; Sheba the Elder and Sheba the Younger; Joktan (Yaqtan) the Elder and Joktan the Younger.

In his youth, the ruler-designate married his half-sister, as did Abraham with Sarah. Before ascending to the throne, he married his second wife, a patrilineal cousin or niece, as did Abraham with Keturah. The cousin wife named her first-born son after her father, a pattern which begins in Genesis 4 and can be traced to the priestly lines of Joachim (Mary's father) and Mattai, the patriarch of Joseph's line. The pattern of ruler-priests having two wives disappeared among Jews with the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D.

The origins of the faith of Christ, the Son of God, came to Abraham, not as special revelation, but as a tradition received from his forefathers. The distinctive traits of this tradition align remarkable well with the key features of catholic faith and practice:

• Male ruler-priests who were mediators between God and the community
• A binary (versus dualistic) worldview
• Blood sacrifice at altars (sometimes falcon-shaped) for propitiation and atonement
• Expectation of the appearing of the Son of God in the flesh
• God's will on earth as in heaven - interpreted by morehs (prophets)
• Belief in an eternal and undivided Kingdom delivered by the Father to the Son.

Because of God's promise in Eden, Abraham and his ancestors lived in expectation of the Son of God and taught their children to do so. Their priestly lines intermarried exclusively in expectation that the Seed of the Woman would come of their priestly lines. The Edenic Promise was a central belief of the Horite family-tribal tradition. They believed that the son would be born of the chosen Woman (not called Eve in Gen. 3:15). They believed that he would be killed by his own brother and that he would live again.

The Virgin Birth is one of many signs that the One born to Mary is the Son of God. This is not about the birth of the Sun at the winter solstice. This is not a reworking of the Egyptian tale of Horus. The Horus archetype provides the pattern whereby Abraham's descendants would recognize Messiah. It points us to the Virgin who gave birth to the Son of God under humble circumstances. In the Horus myth, Hat-Hor gives birth in a cave. In Orthodoxy, icons of the Nativity show the Theotokos with the newly born Christ in a cave.

Christianity is an organic religion that emerges out of a belief that God made a promise in Eden and that He has been busy fulfilling that promise in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The core of Christianity can be traced to the beliefs of Abraham and his ancestors. It predates all the great world religions. Christianity isn't original, but what it lacks in originality it makes up for in great antiquity, and herein rests its authority.


The Christian Priest

The Christian priest stands at altar as the person of Christ at the Last Supper.  He also represents the Father, by whose faith his spiritual children are offered up through the Spirit. The Christian priesthood is thoroughly Trinitarian.

I'd like to challenge the prevalent idea that the Last Supper must be understood as a Passover meal. We, with Isaac, should ask "But where is the lamb?" (Gen. 22:7)

It may be that the best context for understanding the Last Supper is neither the passover meal nor the chaburah meal, but the events that unfolded on Mount Moriah. There was no lamb, only the Father and the Son. After the offering up of the Son, a ram appears. The ram is the lamb come to full strength and maturity. Among Abraham's ancestors the lamb-ram sequence was associated with the rising and setting of the Sun, the symbol of the Creator. The temporal sacred center was noon, a time of no shadows. (James says He is the Father of Lights in whom there is no shadow.) The spatial sacred center was the mountain top, between heaven and earth. Perhaps the Last Supper is the sacred center where we meet God about to cross over to redoubled strength, destroying death by His death.

In relation to the sun, Horus was said to rise in the morning as a lamb or calf and to set in the evening as a ram or bull. When Abraham bound his Issac, believing perhaps that he was the Lamb of God, a ram was provided in Issac's place. To Abraham the Horite this would have meant that his offering was accepted. It would also have meant that Isaac was not the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham's ancestors in Genesis 3:15. Isaac was not the "Seed" of the Woman who would make the curse of death void, crush the serpent's head, and restore Paradise. That promise was to be fulfilled in the future, just as the ram was associated with the western horizon, the direction of the future.

On the third day Father Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off (Gen. 22:4) and again he lifted up his eyes and he saw a ram (Gen. 22:13).

St. Paul says, "For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that He would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith." (Rom. 4:13)


None of the Apostles were Priests

As far as we know none of the original 12 apostles were priests who served at the temple. That does not mean that they did not have Horite blood, however. Most Jews have Horite blood, as do some Arabs. This raises a question about the priestly charisms being passed by the laying on of hands through apostolic succession. If this is true, the source is Jesus, the Priest-King, not the apostles, seeing that none of the 12 were priests themselves. Clearly, the priesthood is of the essence of Christ as the sole mediator of salvation. This is an historically accurate statement, not only a theological statement. Historical, because Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Horite expectation first expressed in Genesis 3:15. He is the Seed that falls to the ground and dies in order to crush the serpent's head and give life to the world.

That said, there were priests among Jesus' followers. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea (of the Horite line of Matthew) are named in the New Testament. As members of the Sanhedrin they had to be in the ruler-priest caste. Joseph traveled to Cornwall as a mining expert and he would have been qualified as a member of the Sanhedrin to ordain Christian priests there. This would mean that the Anglican priesthood is easily as old as that of Rome and Constantinople.

The legend concerning Joseph of Ar-Mathea's connection to Britain has support from the sciences. Genetic studies have confirmed that the Horite Ainu dispersed widely across the ancient world. Some migrated to Hokkiado and Okinawa. Others came to the British Isles and Scandinavia. From there, some migrated to Greenland, Labrador, and Eastern Canada where they came to be called "Miqmac" by the French. The Ainu have a Nilotic origin and are described as having a red skin tone.

An early population living in the region of Cornwall were Dam-oni which means red people. Dam-oni is likely a reference to the red skin Ainu, some of whom are called "Edomites" in the Bible. They were the builders of the great shrine city of Heliopolis, Biblical On. The Horite rulers of Edom are listed in Genesis 36. Edom was called Idumea by the Greeks, which means "land of red people."


Related reading:  What is the Priesthood?; Is a Presbyter a Priest?; Growing Consensus that Women Priests Must be Addressed; Why Women Were Never Priests; Jesus: From Lamb to Ram; Who Were the Horites?; Did Abraham Believe Isaac to be Messiah?; Priests and Shamans: Two Models of Leadership; Gender Reversal and Sacred Mystery; C.S. Lewis on Priestesses in the Church

Some Hapiru Were Devotees of Horus

Alice C. Linsley


The Greek writer Homer alluded to two Kushite empires, when he wrote "a race divided, whom the sloping rays; the rising and the setting sun surveys." By Homer's time, the Afro-Asiatic Dominion that had been forged by the great rulers of old had become fragmented. These "mighty men of old" were served by warriors, priests, metalworkers, stone masons, vintners, scribes and sages. In ancient texts the ruler-priest caste is known as "Habiru," and the rulers were associated with the seven visible planets. This is evident in the Luo (Nilo-Saharan) word for seven: abiriyo. The word abir is a cognate of ha'biru, and Y is a solar symbol, as in the names of Habiru (Hebrew) rulers: Yaktan, Yishmael, Yitzak, Yosef, Yetro, Yeshua, etc.

Among the Habiru there were many peoples, including the Shasu, the Ainu and the Anakim. The last two words are related. Anak and his people the Anakim dwelt in the region of Hebron, where Sarah resided. They are associated with the Nephilim (Num. 13:33), with the Raphaim (Deut. 2:10) and with the Calebites (Josh.15:13). Supposedly, Caleb drove the Anakim out of the region, but there is much evidence that they remained well established in Canaan after the time of Caleb. Other related peoples are the Zumim and the Emim. Shrine cities, such as Hazor, were governed by Ha'biru, so the attempts of Joshua and Caleb to take these settlements indicates a power struggle between kinsmen rather than strangers. The ethnicity of all these peoples is Proto-Kushite and Kushite.

Homer recognized the Kushite cultural continuity that stretched from the Nile Valley to India. The religion of this ancient world spread through the agency of ruler-priests known as 'Apiru, Hapiru or Habiru (Hebrew). They served rulers who controlled water systems at a time when the Sahara, Mesopotamia, Pakistan and India were wetter.

Some of these ruler-priests were known as "Horites" because they were devotees of Horus, the son of Re. They regarded the sun as the emblem or symbol of Ra and Horus. Ha-biru and Ha-piru are derived from O-piru, meaning house or temple of the sun. The Arabic yakburu means “he is getting big” and with the intensive active prefix: yukabbiru means "he is enlarging." Likely this is a reference to the morning ritual of the Horite priests who greeted the rising sun as it expanded across the horizon.

The Egyptians called the temple attendants ˁpr.w, the w being the plural suffix. The Dravidian east-facing temple was termed O'piru, meaning Sun House.

Many Dravidian settlements and monuments are now submerged under the sea, but originally they were on a land bridge between the Arabian Peninsula and Southern Pakistan. This is sometimes referred to as the "Har-appa" civilization.  Har refers to Horus and "appa" is the Dravidian word meaning father. The origin of Dravidian religion was apparently Egypt and ancient Kush.

The oldest known center of Horite worship is Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) in Sudan. Votive offerings at the temple of Horus were up to ten times larger than the normal maceheads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine. Horite priests placed invocatins to Horus at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose.

In the ancient world, a temple was considered the mansion—hâît, or the house—pirû—of the deity. The Creator Râ lived in Heliopolis on the east side of the Delta; Hat-Hor, the virgin mother of Horus had her principal temple in Memphis to the south of Heliopolis and on the west side of the Nile. Horus, who was said to be one with his Father, lived further south in Hierakonpolis and Edfu on the west side of the Upper Nile.

Râ, Hathor-Meri and Horus represent the typical Egyptian triad, but to properly understand the relationship of the three, we must consider the relative locations of the temples. Hat-Hor represents the Feminine Principle, and as such is located to the south (the direction associated with birth).  Râ is to the north, and as his symbol is the Sun, his temple is on the east side of the Nile. Horus is to the southwest, the direction associated with the future and with birth. Against those who claim that Abraham's Horite ancestors were polytheists, we must note that only Horus and Hathor-Meri are ever shown in human form, and usually together.

The Horite ruler-priests were kingdom-builders, such as Nimrod, one of Abraham's ancestors. This meant they engaged in war, as did Abraham when he battled the kings who had fought against his Horite people (Gen. 14:6) and taken Lot captive (Gen. 14:12). One of Abraham's nephews was named Thahash or Tahash, meaning skins. Tahash probably tanned the hides of sacrificed animals.  Exodus 25:5 speaks of "five rams' skins dyed red, and tahash skins..." 

Diffusion of the Horite belief system was driven by three factors: migration out of ancient Kush, commerce, and the marriage alliances of the ruler-priests whereby each ruler had two first-borns sons. The son of the half-sister wife ascended to his father's throne, and the son of the patrilineal cousin bride ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather. The pattern is one of double descent with bloodline traced through the wives, while the son's status as ruler came from his father.

Consider Abraham's two wives, by which he had seven sons. Isaac and Joktan both became rulers. Isaac ruled over Abraham's territory between Hebron and Beersheba when Abraham died. Joktan ascended to the throne of his mother's father, who was also called Joktan. If each son had two wives, the population of the Horite or Hapiru nobles would have expanded very quickly. Each chief had to locate where he could establish his own territory. Kush's two sons moved east of the Nile. Ramaah established a kingdom in northern Arabia and intermarried with the people of Dedan, where the largest number of Old Arabic texts have been found. These are the Afro-Arabians. Nimrod moved farther east to the region that would become the homeland of the Arameans. This eastward migration of first-born sons drove the expansion of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

This is why the Horites and Hapiru were found throughout the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. Carol A. Redmont has noted that Hapiru influence was felt "from the Tigris-Euphrates river basins over to the Mediterranean littoral and down through the Nile Valley during the Second Millennium, the principal area of historical interest is in their engagement with Egypt."  (See Carol A. Redmount, 'Bitter Lives: Israel in and out of Egypt' in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed: Michael D. Coogan, Oxford University Press: 1999, p.98)

In ancient Egypt, some priests were called harwa, a word related to Horus.  The Harwa served in the temples and shrines along the Nile. They were clean shaven and lived rather ascetic lives. Moses's two brothers were harwa. Both were named for Horus. Aaron in Arabic is Harum, and Korah means shaved one, indicating that he was a Horite priest of the Nile. Later, both Jews and Arabs used kohen to designate a priest.

It appears that there were orders among the priests, some serving at higher levels than others. Some were called sarki. Sarki still live in the Orissa region of India. They are responsibile for flaying animals before the sacrifice. The word sarki also refers to red ochre which was ground into power and used as a symbol of blood in the burial of nobles as early as 60,000 years ago. Here we find a clear connection between the priesthood and blood, and between blood as a symbol of life and ritual burial. God acts as the first priest when He sacrifices animals to make coverings for the man and the woman (Gen. 3:21).

The work of the priest involved blood sacrifice for atonement. According to priestly law, the blood of a sacrificed animal was to be sprinkled seven places on the altar. Christians note that Jesus Christ bled from seven places and his blood is said to give “life to the world” (John 6:52-56).  The Christ is already present in ancient Nilotic mythology which holds that life is in the blood. The priesthood and circumcision also originated among the Nilotic peoples. Abraham's Kushite ancestors were the first to belief the Eden Promise that a woman of their ruler-priest lines would bring forth the Seed who would crush the serpent's head and restore Paradise.


Related reading:  Ha'piru, Ha'biru, 'Apiru or Hebrew?; The Re-Horus-Hathor Narrative; Moses' Wives and Brothers; Who Were the Horites?; Who Were the Hapiru?; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology, Christian Faith Emerges from the Faith of Abraham

2,400 B.C. Tomb of Purification Priest

Rudj-Ka, a purifier, and his wife

More images of the tomb paintings can be seen at National Geographic.

Note the priest's darker skin (symbolizing the Sun) and
his wife's pale skin tone (symbolizing the Moon).

According to this October 18 press release, Egyptian archaeologists discovered a 4400-year-old tomb, south of the cemetery of the pyramid builders at Giza. It is the tomb of a high ranking priest Rudj-ka, who served as a purification priest for Khafre (2520-2494 BC).

In a statement, Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosny, said the ancient Egyptian tomb was unearthed during routine excavations supervised by the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) near the pyramid builder's necropolis.

The recently discovered tomb belongs to a priest named Rudj-Ka (or Rwd-Ka), and is dated to the 5th Dynasty - between 2465 and 2323 BC. Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the SCA, said that Rudj-Ka had several titles and would have been an important member of the ancient Egyptian court.

The tomb’s walls are decorated with painted reliefs featuring Rudj-ka with his wife in front of an offering table filled with gifts of bread, goose and cattle. Daily life scenes depicting Rudj-ka fishing and boating are also shown.

One role of the royal purifier was to ritually "cleanse" people who had been involved in bloodshed. This pertained to warriors after battle and to hunters after the kill. Blood was viewed as having the power to bring blessings or curses so people turned to the purification priests for spiritual protection. Priests like Rudj-Ka purified those who became contaminated through contact with blood.

Read it more here.

Related reading: Binary Sets and the Binary Worldview; The Sun and Moon as a Binary Set

The Horite Conception of Priesthood

Alice C. Linsley


Most people think of Christianity as an off-shoot of Judaism. However, the core of Christianity can be traced back to Abraham and his Kushite ancestors, long before there were Jews and Judaism. In this sense, Christianity isn't original. What it lacks in originality, it makes up for in antiquity and herein rests its authority.

Abraham and his people were Horites, a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of the mythical Horus who was called the "Son of God" and "Horus of the Two Crowns". The sacrificing priesthood may not have begun with the Horites in the Nile region, but this group's conception of the priesthood shaped the Jewish and later the Christian conception of the priesthood.

Horite priests were asked to pray for people because they were recognized as especially holy people.  Abraham was asked to pray for Abimelech's household and Job was asked by God to pray for his friends. So the Horite priest's work involved intercessory prayer, fasting and sometimes blood sacrifice. Righteous Job offered sacrifice on behalf of his whole family.

The men named in Genesis are Horite ruler-priests. The Horites were a caste. One trait of castes is strict endogamy. The Horites exclusively intermarried. These are the rulers who are listed in the Genesis genealogies.

The marriages were arranged between the sons and daughters of 2 main priestly lines.

Each ruler had 2 wives at the time of his ascent: one was a half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham) and the other was a patrilineal cousin wife (as was Keturah to Abraham). There are numerous examples of exactly this pattern in Genesis and Exodus.

The priestly lines are traced from brother patriarchs: Cain and Seth; Ham and Shem; Peleg and Joktan, and Nahor and Abraham.

It is by the cousin bride that the ruler-priest lines are identified. The cousin wife names her firstborn son after her father. So Namaah’s firstborn son Lamech is named after her father Lamech the Elder. This pattern continues throughout the Bible to Joseph and his cousin bride, Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Son of God.


The Priesthood and Purity

Horite priests define the priesthood.  The Hebrew root "thr" = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm "toro" = clean, and to the Tamil "tiru" = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian "tor" = blood. The Horite priest was to be purified before entering the temple. His purification involved fasting and an intense period of prayer. The purification ritual involved bathing and shaving the head. Korah, Moses' half-brother, was a priest. His name means "shaved head" and according to Numbers 16:17-18, he carried the censor to offer incense before God.

Horite priests served in the temple, probably on a rotating schedule. It is from the Horite priesthood that the priesthood of Israel developed.  Moses' two brothers, Korah and Aaron, were both Horite priests before there was a nation known as Israel.


Devotees of the "Son of God"

Many have noted the uncanny correspondence between the myth of Horus and the story of Jesus. Both were born the only begotten Son of God under miraculous and humble circumstances.  Both were slain by their own kin.  Both rose to life again.  Both inherit the Father's kingdom, uniting 2 peoples, which is symbolized by the wearing of two crowns.  This is references in the book of Job, who was himself a Horite.  The trial of Job, in which Satan acts as the accuser, parallels Zechariah 3:2-6 where Satan accuses the High Priest Joshua (Yeshua). In Yeshua's trial God acquits Yeshua and commands that he be clothed in clean garments and crowned with 2 crowns (ataroth). This points to Jesus who as the Son of God would wear 2 crowns, one representing those who have died in faith and the other representing the Church.

The correspondence between the Horus Myth and the story of Jesus can be explained in two ways. Either Christians borrowed the Horus myth or Christianity emerges in an organic way from the belief system of Abraham and his Horite people. If we decide that Christians borrowed the Horus myth, we must explain why they should have selected this one in particular. There are other great world myths that could have served as the pattern for the story of Jesus. I know of no other religions that prefigure Jesus Christ, the Son of God, other than the faith of Israel as it emerges out of the faith of Abraham's Horite people. 

This is the meaning of John 8, where when the Jews called Abraham their father, Jesus said to them, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day.” 

“Then the Jews said to Him, ‘You are not fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was I AM.”

Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He will receive an eternal kingdom from the Father. The citizens of this eternal kingdom must themselves be eternal beings and that is why Jesus alone offers eternal life to all who believe that He is the Son of God, the fulfillment of the Edenic Promise of Genesis 3:15. He is able to do this because He alone has conquered death and can deliver sinners from the curse of death. This is the core of Christian belief. Surrounding this core are attendant beliefs which logically follow. One is that to receive eternal life, we must acknowledge our need for mercy, forgiveness and salvation. Another is that God does this for us out of His boundless love. John wrote, "This is the revelation of God's love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him." (1 John 4:9)

God told Abraham to leave Haran and go to a place where He would establish him as the father of many peoples. God had plans for Abraham and there was nothing for him in Haran, since his older brother Nahor ruled in Terah's place when Terah died. This does not indicate that Abraham abandoned the religion or marriage pattern of his Horite people. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that Abraham continued to believe that the Seed of the Woman would be born of the bloodlines of the ruler-priests because he married his half-sister (Sarah) and his patrilieal cousin (Keturah), following the pattern of his Horite ruler-priest ancestors.

The story of Horus and the story of Jesus correspond in great detail, though Horus never existed in the material sense. He was the prefigurement of the One who would wear 2 crowns and unite 2 peoples. The Horites worshiped the Creator who emblem was the Sun when many other peoples were worshipping false gods. They anticipated the coming of the Son of God to earth and believed that He would be born of their royal-priest bloodlines. That is why the lines of priests intermarrried exclusively and why unchaste daughters of priests were burned alive (Lev. 21:9).  Sexual impurity was not tolerated. 

Joseph, Jacob's first-born son by Rachel, married Asenath, the chaste daughter of a priest of Heliopolis (city of the Sun). Heliopolis, which was called Lunu by the Egyptians, was a shrine city of Horus. Lunu means place of pillars because the temples of Heliopolis were constructed with many pillars.

We have no evidence that Horite priests performed the Canaanite practices condemned by the prophets, who were their descendants. These priests were very concerned about purity, expecially when preparing for their time of service in the temple.  In the ancient world the Horite priests were known for their purity and devotion to the High God. Plutarch wrote that the “priests of the Sun at Heliopolis never carry wine into their temples, for they regard it as indecent for those who are devoted to the service of any god to indulge in the drinking of wine whilst they are under the immediate inspection of their Lord and King. The priests of the other deities are not so scrupulous in this respect, for they use it, though sparingly.”


Related reading:  Who Were the Horites?; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology; God as Male Priest; The Genesis King Lists

Avoiding Heresy and Syncretism

Alice C. Linsley


Many heresies spring from failure to apply basic critical thinking skills. Such is the case with the Episcopal Church's sexual ethics, with most feminist biblical interpretation, and with gender-neutral Bibles. These represent erroneous and non-biblical anthropology in that they fail to preserve, and even obfuscate, the celestial pattern that is universally observed in the order of creation and which presented throughout the Bible.

The Bible has a binary framework. The binary feature is evident in the binary sets: sun-moon; male-female; heaven-earth, east-west, and life-death.This worldview emerges out of the acute observations of Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors. The binary distinctions are observed universally in nature and experienced on the most fundamental level of existence. The biblical worldview is not concerned with relative or subjective opposites such as tall-short, talented-untalented, dark skin-light skin, intelligent-unintelligent, etc., but rather speaks about what is real ontologically. There is no fantasy world where women serve as priests. The notion of women priests is antithetical to the Biblical worldview.

The Horite ruler-priests honored many realities, and were careful not to violate the boundaries they perceived to have been established by Horus, the Seed of God. The ancient priests saw boundaries in earth's geometry. From the tops of high mountains they noted the curvature of the Earth at dawn and dust. They "oriented" themselves by facing east as the Sun rose. Ancient towers and temples reflected the sacred geometry and cosmology of their builders. The differing geometric shapes of the temples of the Horite Sabians (Afro-Arabian Dedanites) associated the hexagon with Saturn, the triangle with Jupiter, the rectangle with Mars, the square with the Sun, the octagon with the Moon, and a triangle within a quadrangle with Venus

Abraham's Nilotic ancestors conceived of the cosmos as God's sacred pyramid or temple. As the Sun rose, God entered the temple from the east. As the Sun set, God left the temple toward the west. Rulers were buried in pyramids with the hope that they would rise with the Sun and lead their people in procession to immortality. St. Paul refers to this belief when he writes about how Christ rose from the grave, leading captives in his train. (Ephesians 4:7-9)

This is the symbolism of the sand scarab, which comes out of the sand when the Sun rises and returns to the sand as night approaches. The sand scarab represents the Sun's journey and life after death (repose). The female sand beetle lays her eggs in the sand and when the eggs hatch, she is no longer, because she gives her body to be eaten by her newborn young (cf. Jesus' words, "This is my Body given for you...").

For Abraham's Horite ancestors, the Sun and the scarab spoke to them of their deity, HR (Horus in Greek). He was regarded with his father Ra as the marker of boundaries. Horos (oros in Greek) refers to the boundaries of an area, or a landmark, or a term. From horoscome the English words hour, horizon and horoscope. The association of Horus with the horizon is seen in the word Har-ma-khet, meaning Horus of the Horizon. Today the word horoscope connotes astrology, but the word original meant "observer of the hours", from hora (time or hour) and skopos (observer or watcher).

In the time of Abraham's ancestors, the priests of Horus (called "Horites") were dedicated to observation of the planets and constellations. They observed that the planets and the constellations have an orderly clock-like movement. They conceived of this order as fixed and established by the generative force which makes existence possible (logos, nous, ruach, etc.) The Horite priests were the earliest known astronomers and it is likely that horo is a reference to their celestial archetypes surrounding Horus, the son of Ra, born to Hathor-Meri. Hathor-Meri's animal totem was a cow. She is shown at the Dendura Temple holding her newborn son in a manger or stable.

The Horites were devotees of HR (Hor, Hur, Har or Horus) whose mother Hathor-Meri conceived miraculously by the overshadowing of the Sun (the Creator's emblem). Horus is the archetype by which Abraham's descendants would recognize Jesus as the promised Seed of the Woman (Gen. 3:15). His authentication was His rising from the dead on the third day, in accordance with Horite expectation. In a 5 day ceremony, the Nilotic peoples fasted as a sign of grief for the death of Horus at the hand of his brother. On the third day the priests led processions to the fields where grain was sowed as a sign of Horus' rising to life. Jesus described his death as a seed of grain falling into he ground and dying (John 12:20-26). St. Augustine noted that the Egyptians took great care in the burial of their dead and never practiced cremation, as in the religions that seek to escape physical existence. Abraham's ancestors believed in the resurrection of the body and awaited a deified king who would rise from the grave and deliver his people from death.

Horus marked the boundaries and established the "kind" (essences). He guarded the four directional points and controlled the water and the wind. The Harmattan trade wind that blows from the northeast and east across the Sahara was named for Horus. The word is comprised of the biradicals HR for Horus and MT meaning order. The Nilotic peoples were probably the first to invent the sail because the prevailing wind blows south while the Nile (Hapi) flows north. Horus was invoked to send favorable wind. The four winds sometimes appeared as birds at the four quarters of the heavens announcing the accession of Horus' deified ruler on earth. On the walls of Amenemhat's burial chamber at Hawara Horus is depicted at the cardinal points and associated with the resurrection of the ruler. The four forms of Horus top the canopic jars holding the ruler's organs.

The male-female distinction

One of the most important binary distinctions upheld by Abraham's people is the male-female distinction. They associated maleness with the Sun and femaleness with the Moon. This association extended to semen and milk. The Sun inseminates the earth with its light and warmth and the Moon, which influences tides and body fluids, stimulates female reproduction and lactation. The ancients observed a relationship between the lunar cycle and the periodicity of the menstrual cycle. In France, menstruation is called le moment de la lune.

The binary distinctions were the basis for law and religious practice in the Afro-Asiatic Dominion. Both law and religion recognized that one of the opposites is always greater in some way. The Sun’s light is greater than moonlight. Males are stronger and larger than females. Heaven is more glorious than earth, and life is superior to death. Only in this last category is the feminine greater than the masculine, because the blood of menstruation and childbirth speaks of life, whereas the blood drawn by men in war, hunting and animal sacrifice speaks of death.

Because the Creator wants the distinction between life and death to be clear at all times to all peoples, He established this distinction between the “blood work” of women and men. This distinction between the two bloods is important for understanding the origins of the Christian priesthood, an office ontologically exclusive to males, since only men were priests.

There is no ontological difference between male and female. Both are human and both are fully in the image of God. Both crown the Creation, being created on the 6th day. Yet it is obvious that men and women are different. The Bible understands the difference as supplementarity. To understand the biblical worldview we must grasp its binary feature and the concept of supplementarity. These must be held together to avoid heresy and understand what the Bible teaches us about the created order and about the Creator.

In a sense, the woman is the gemstone of the crown of creation. This explains the gravity of Eve's sin. She who was created as the crown of the creation, the peak of the pyramid, inverted the order of creation when she submitted herself to the will of a creature who slithers along the earth. That is Eve's sin. Yet the Creator redeems the situation through The Woman (Gen. 3:15) from whom Christ became flesh by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. If we say that the woman is of a substance different from the man, we fall into heresy, because that would mean that the substance of Christ is different from the substance of men.

The Faith we've received from the Afro-Asiatics through Abraham recognizes a distinction and supplementarity between male and female when it comes to the order of creation. The man was made first, then the woman. The headship of males was expressed in the blood work of hunting, war, execution of lawbreakers, and in animal sacrifice by the ruler-priest. Anglicans who ordain women as priests, but not as bishops, on the "principle of headship" are missing the point! The pattern is about the blood work. The priest takes the life of the animal in sacrifice to make atonement for sin.

The blood work of women is distinct and speaks of life. Women sacrifice blood in first marital intercourse. They bleed in their monthly cycle and in childbirth. The blood shed of women is distinct yet supplementary to the blood shed by men in hunting, war and animal sacrifice.

The prohibition against mixing types, be they fibers, seeds or blood, is like the prohibition against confusing the holy with the unholy, or blurring the distinction between life and death, such as happens when a baby goat is boiled in its mother's milk (forbidden 3 places in Scripture). That is why each seed is to go to its own kind. As plants are born from the earth, so the seeds of plants return to the earth. As the man is born from the woman, so the seed/semen of man is to return to woman. The spilling of seed called 'onanism' is regarded as an unrighteous deed, a violation of the order of creation. So obviously is homosex.

Bloods were never permitted to mix or even to be present in the same space. And of course, this is what Orthodox and Catholic Christians say about the Eucharist, where Christ's Blood alone is to be present. That is why, according to ancient instruction in the Priests' Manuals, the priest must immediately leave the Holy Place should he in inadvertently cut himself and bleed. This is why women never can be priests and why they are "churched" after childbirth, following the ancient custom.

God's ordering of creation is for the benefit of those who would know God's Nature (as St. Paul tells us in Romans). As male and female alike are in God's Image, and God is not divided, neither can we divide in substance the male and the female. In marriage the two are able to become one because they are of the same "kind" and supplementary. Supplementary means that one cannot be perceived to exist without the other. This is a picture of the Godhead - for the Father and the Son (Logos) can't be perceived to exist one from the other. To say that the Word became flesh is to say that the Son of God became human in order to redeem and restore believing humanity to our original state. We fall into heresy when we leave out the part about the "Son" of God. The language of Father and Son is not coincidental to what God is revealing to us. The Father delivers the Kingdom to the Son. The Father presents the Church as a pure and radiant Bride to the Son.

The supplementarity of opposites is evident only when their distinctions are maintained. Satan directs a good deal of effort to blurring distinctions by encouraging androgenous dress, homosex, the ordination of women to the priesthood, and by fanning the flames of feminist rhetoric. However, if we attend to the binary distinctions of the created order which God declared "good" and we affirm their supplementarity, we are less likely to stray from path of life, which is not a path so much as it is the person of Jesus Christ.


Related reading: The Binary Aspect of the Biblical Worldview; Genesis on Homosex: Beyond Sodom; The Importance of Binary Distinctions; God as Male Priest; Mary and the Origins of Life; Ideologies Opposed to Holy Tradition; The Biblical Meaning of Eve; Impressions of the New American Anglicanism

Is a Presbyter a Priest?

Alice C. Linsley


Before reading this article, I recommend that this article be read first: What is a Priest?


In the New Testament the word "presbyter" is used to designate the one who presided when the body gathered for worship.  This probably didn't mean a priest, as only men born in the priestly lines would be considered priests and among these only some would have been sacrificing priests.  So the terms "presbyter" and "priest" do not represent the same concept. 

Some of the Apostles were likely born of the priestly lines, but that hardly matters since the Church's High Priest is Jesus and he was born of the priestly lines on his mother's side and Joseph's side.  Mary and Joseph were of priestly lines and cousins. Mary's father was the shepherd priest Joachim, and Joseph was of the priestly line of Mattai.

Ken Collins writes: “In the New Testament, the Temple has hierarchs and the church has presbyters. Most translate hierarch as priest, which is really incorrect, because priest is just an English contraction of the word presbyter. But if the translators put down priest for presbyter, it looks like they are discrediting churches that do not call their clergy priests. But if they put down presbyter, which is the untranslated Greek word, or elder, which is the word’s meaning, they discredit the churches that are so old that the word presbyter turned into priest as the language of their members changed.”

When did this morphing happen in history? Where do we find this expressed in Scripture? Clearly, there was a disjunction when the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. thus bringing the sacrificial system to an end. However St. Paul and St. John clearly believe that there is an eternal priesthood (in the Platonic sense) that nothing can destroy. They see it as a fixed ordinance in the Kingdom of God, derived from the one True Priest, Jesus Christ. In other words, the priesthood lives in Jesus Christ, the Sacrifice once offered who is to be the focus of every gathering. 

HE is the continuation of the only priesthood that the Apostles knew, a priesthood that maintained itself through a particular kinship pattern among Abraham' s Horite caste. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born of Abraham’s ruler-priest bloodline.

Collins is right that many churches don’t have priests. These are churches removed from the Holy Tradition concerning the Christ received by the Apostles. Most are products of the Reformation and the many subsequent divisions that characterize churches that don’t hold to the sacramental center of the faith symbolized by the priesthood.

Now to Collins’ most provocative suggestion: that the oldest churches somehow morphed the word “presbyter” into "priest" over time. This is simply not the case.  Presbyter refers to elders, not priests.  There is no need to substitute priest for presbyter.  The early church had gatherings which were not presided over by priests.  No surprise there.  Many of the priests were hostile to Christians.  Yet some of those ruler-priests, men such as Nicodemus, came to believe and through them the Church recieved its priests after the order of Melchizedek, the prefigurement of Jesus Christ.

The true meaning of priest is defined by the Son of God whose Blood was shed for the life of the World. This Jesus was born to a long line of ruler-priests who are identified with the “order of Melchizedek” as an eternal priesthood. Presbyter means elder and not all elders are priests. But this is no reason to insist that the ancient churches which have priests have got it all wrong.


Related reading: The Priesthood in England (Conclusion); Who Were the Horites?; What is a Priest?; Growing Consensus that WO Must Be Addressed

Why Women Were Never Priests

The Tradition concerning the all-male priesthood is about the Blood. This is why a male may stand at the altar, but not a woman. The blood work of Jesus Christ is the work of the dying and rising God. The blood work of Mary is about giving life and humanity to the Son of God. The priesthood originated among archaic peoples who observed the binary distinction of male and female blood work.


Alice C. Linsley

In the Episcopal Church USA, the innovation of women priests has caused great confusion and division. This has spread throughout the whole Anglican Communion. This innovation is contrary to the binary pattern of Holy Scripture whereby the "blood work" of women and of men is distinct and never confused. A female standing as a priest at the altar is as confusing as a male image intended to represent the Virgin Mary.

If the priest is an icon of Jesus Christ, then the priesthood is a Christological matter, and as such, it necessarily touches on soteriology. It cannot be a matter of secondary importance. Anglicans, even bishops, have no authority to change the received tradition concerning Jesus Christ, our Priest who offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice for the salvation of the world.

Arch-heretic Schori

C.S. Lewis is correct that when it comes to received Tradition, "We cannot shuffle or tamper so much. With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us." (From Priestesses in the Church?)


Priests or shamans?

It is obvious that women are not strong enough to lift large animals and to restrain them long enough to slit their throats for sacrifice. It is also a fact that there is no anthropological evidence of women priests in the ancient world. The so-called "priestesses" of the pagan shrines such as the Pythia at Delphi, were not priests, but shamans. Priests and shamans represent different worldviews. Themistoclea of Delphi represents the shamanistic approach and Deborah represents an approach in which consultation of spirits and drug-induced trance states is forbidden. Both women were consulted by their people, but their methods and the sources of their information were very different.[1]

The priesthood originated among Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors and from the beginning was a sign pointing to the one true Form of Priest, Jesus Christ.[2]  Every priest, either living before Christ or after Christ’s appearing, stands as a sign pointing to Him and receives the priesthood from Him.

The priesthood is a unique office and it is impossible to change it in any essential way. All attempts to change the priesthood, such as developed out of Protestantism or the ordination of women "priests", corrupt the sign so that it no longer points to the Jesus the true Priest, who is the fulfillment of the Horite expectation of the Divine Seed (Gen. 3:15). The Church has no authority to change the ontological pattern since the priesthood existed before the Church. The priesthood was not established by the Apostles, nor even by Jesus Christ Himself, but is an historical reality with a point of origin among Abraham's Kushite ruler-priest ancestors (Horites/Horim).

The first ruler-priest mentioned in the Bible is Melchizedek who lived during the time of Abraham. It is clear from Genesis 14 that Melchizedek and Abraham were well acquainted. Both belonged to the Horite ruler-priest caste which practiced endogamy. In other words, Abraham and Melchizedek were kinsmen. It is likely that Melchizedek was the brother-in-law of Joktan, Abraham's father-in-law.

The author of Hebrews tells us that Melchizedek points to Jesus as the true Priest: “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 6:13-20)

Melchizedek represents the Messianic priesthood, but he does not represent the beginning of the priesthood. Cain and Abel acted as priests when they offered sacrifices in Genesis 4. This means that the priesthood was not established by the Apostles, it existed long before them. According to Saint John Chrysostom, a Church Father, the priesthood “is ranked among heavenly ordinances. And this is only right, for no man, no angel, no archangel, no other created power, but the Paraclete himself ordained this succession...”[3]

If the Apostles are not the source of the Christian priesthood, what is the source? It can only be the eternal Christ, who is the eternal Form/Priest. Through Jesus Christ the eternal truth signified by the Priesthood comes into focus. He alone is Priest, fulfilling atonement through His own shed blood. The Priesthood therefore, is necessarily tied to the Blood of Jesus Christ. Where people deny the saving nature of Jesus' Blood there can be no true Priesthood. Any priest who denies the necessity of repentance and trust in Jesus' Blood as the means of forgiveness, is a false priest.


What can we say about the Priesthood?

The priesthood is one of the oldest religious offices in the world, traced back to at least 4000 B.C. It emerged out of the Proto-Saharan and Nilotic context and extended from the Sudan and ancient Nubia through Arabia to the Indus River Valley. According to the Vedic book, the Matsya, the Kushites (Sa-ka) ruled the ancient world for 7000 years. They spread their binary worldview and their religious practices, such a falcon-shaped fire altars dedicated to Horus. The Vedic Priest Manuals (Brahmanas) [4] speak of how the Brahman offered sacrifice at altars which they constructed according to geometry and at the proper seasons which they determined through astronomy. The Vedas also reveal the danger of a priestly order that becomes too powerful and self-serving, as happened also with the ruler-priests of Jesus’ time (Sanhedrin). When the True Priest appeared among them, they were unable to recognize Him because their understanding of the office of the Priest had become corrupted.

The priest must be understood against the backdrop of Horite perceptions of blood as the substance of life or the ground of Being. The binary aspect of blood is seen in the belief that it can both purify and pollute. The priest was not to come into contact with blood before his time of service in the temple. Contact with blood or a corpse caused him to be ritually impure. At the same time, spiritual contamination was cleansed by the blood of sacrificed lambs. Purity, holiness and blood are closely related concepts among the Afro-Asiatics, as is evident from linguistic study. The Hebrew thr means "to be pure" and corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm toro, meaning "to be clean." They are related to the Ethiopian Amarigna word anatara, which means "pure" and to the Tamil tiru, which means "holy." There is a relationship to the proto-Dravidian tor, meaning "blood." In some Kushitic languages mtoro means rain and toro refers to God. The Egyptian ntr, meaning deity, is related and also refers to deified Horite rulers.

From the dawn of time humans recognized that life is in the blood. They saw offspring born of water and the blood. They knew that the loss of blood could bring death. Killing animals in the hunt also meant life for the community. They sought ways to ensure that their dead entered life beyond the grave, especially their rulers who could intercede for them before the Deity. This is why peoples around the world covered their dead rulers in red ochre dust as early as 80,000 years ago.[5] This red dust is a sign pointing to the Pleromic Blood of Jesus.[6]

God planted eternity in our hearts so we innately know that Christ's Blood is not only redemptive, but also the source of our life. This is what St. Paul calls "the mystery of Christ". As his second missionary journey, Paul preached that, “in Him [Jesus Christ] we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) He also wrote: “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. (Eph. 1:7-10)

These words follow Paul’s explanation of the saving work of Jesus Christ in Ephesians: But now in Christ Jesus, you that used to be so far apart from us have been brought very close, by the blood of Christ. For He is peace between us, and has made the two into one and broken down the barrier which used to keep them apart, actually destroying in His own person the hostility caused by the rules and decrees of the Law. This was to create one single man in Himself out of the two of them and by restoring peace through the Cross, to unite them both in a single body and reconcile them with God. In His own person He killed the hostility... Through Him, both of us have in one Spirit our way to come to the Father. (Eph. 2:13-14)

Second, we know that the priest functions to mitigate blood guilt. Anthropologists have noted that there is considerable anxiety about shed blood among primitive peoples.[7] Among the Afro-Asiatics, the priesthood served to relieve blood guilt and anxiety and to perform rites of purity. The priest addresses impurities by seeking purification through blood sacrifice. He also addresses anxiety about shed blood through blood sacrifice.

Third, we know that no woman served as a priest in any official capacity. Women did not enter the area of the altar where blood was offered in animal sacrifice. We know this because the Afro-Asiatics, from whom we received the priestly office, believed that the blood shed by men and women were never to mix or even be in the same place. Sacred law prohibited the blood shed in killing (male) and the blood shed in giving life (female) to share the same space. This binary worldview supports clear distinction between life and death. The same distinction of life-taking and life-giving is behind the law that forbids boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk (Deut. 14:21).

The innovation of women priests begin in the Episcopal Church USA and has led to the demise of that denomination. Many of the women who were encouraged to become priests were latter inhibited from ministry with TEC's hit list now well beyond 600. Not surprisingly, the Episcopal Church has a seminary president, Katharine Ragsdale, who stated in a sermon that abortion is a blessing:

Let me hear you say it:

Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.
Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.
Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.

When we overthrow the binary distinction between life-giving and life-taking, we are left with darkened minds and barbarity.


The ontological impossibility of women priests

Scripture speaks of numerous women in positions of leadership, but none were priests. Deborah and Huldah were regarded as prophets and their families were in the priestly lines. Daughters of priests, such as Asenath and Zipporah, are remembered as great women as well. However not a single women can be identified as a priest in the Bible or in the history of the Church. It is clear then that women have never been priests and that the nature of the priesthood from the beginning has been such that it pertains only to men.

The biblical worldview is not concerned with subjective opposites such as tall-short, talented-untalented, dark skin-light skin, intelligent-unintelligent, etc. as these are relative and subjective, not absolute and objective. The Bible is concerned about what is ontologically real. It is not a book of superstition or antiquated ideas. It is full of reason and evidence of empirical observation.

The binary distinctions were the basis for law and religious practice in the Afro-Asiatic Dominion. Both law and religion recognized that one of the opposites is always greater in some way. The Sun’s light is greater than moonlight. Males are stronger and larger than females. Heaven is more glorious than earth, and life is superior to death. Only in this last category is the feminine greater than the masculine, because the blood of menstruation and childbirth speaks of life, whereas the blood drawn by men in war, hunting and animal sacrifice speaks of death.

Warriors were responsible for the blood they shed in battle. Hunters were responsible for the blood they shed in the hunt, and priests were responsible for the blood of the animals they sacrificed. Midwives, wives and mothers were responsible for the blood of first intercourse, menstrual blood and blood shed in childbirth. The two bloods were never to mix or even to be present in the same space. Women did not participate in war, the hunt, and in ritual sacrifices. Likewise, men were not present at the circumcision of females or in the “mother’s house” to which women went during menses and to give birth.

Because the Creator wants the distinction between life and death to be clear at all times to all peoples, He established this distinction between the “blood work” of women and men. This distinction between the two bloods is the basis for the priesthood, an office ontologically exclusive to males, since only men in the priestly lines could fill the office. This is a received tradition and a holy ordinance which no synod or jurisdiction has authority to change. The priesthood speaks of ancient holy tradition [8], not a creed, but rather the person of Jesus Christ.

From the Afro-Asiatic perspective, which is the perspective of the Bible, God is male and God is priest. It is clear also that God condescends to grant to the lesser a greater role. So it is that a young maiden, from the least of the tribes of Israel, should become the un-wedded Bride of God and the ever-virgin Mother of Christ our God.

God has not changed the office of the priesthood. It survives in Christian communities that preserve Holy Tradition received concerning the Son of God. When the priesthood is held high and priests live above contamination, the world is drawn to Jesus Christ. This happens because there is only one Priesthood: the Messianic Priesthood. There is only one Priest: Jesus Christ, and there is only one Blood, Christ’s pleromic blood which is the life of the world.

St. Paul expresses it this way: “There is one Body, one Spirit, just as one hope is the goal of your calling by God. There is one Lord, one Faith, one baptism, and one God and father of all, over all, through all and within all.” (Eph. 4:4-5)

As C.S. Lewis has written: “I have every respect for those who wish women to be priestesses. I think they are sincere and pious and sensible people. Indeed, in a way they are too sensible... I am tempted to say that the proposed arrangement would make us much more rational, but not near so much like a Church.” (From Priestesses in the Church?)


Related Reading: The Priesthood is About the Blood;  Female Shamans, Not Women Priests; Rethinking "Biblical Equality"; Women Priests by E.L. Mascall; Women Priests; God as Male Priest; Levi-Strauss and Derrida on Binary Oppositions; The Question of Women Priests Must Be Addressed; Women Priests: History and Theology by Patrick Henry Reardon; Water and Blood; Blood and Binary Distinctions


NOTES

1. To read about the difference between the worldviews of the priest and the shaman, go here.

2. Plato taught that there is but one true Form of all observable entities and this Form exists in eternity (outside of time and space). Species of natural objects observed are reflections of their true Forms. Plato studied for thirteen years at Heliopolis (Biblical On) in Egypt under a Horite priest.

3. St. John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press (1977), p. 70.

4. The Brahamas are Vedic texts that provide instruction for Hindu priests. These texts give detailed instructions about sacrifices offered at altars of fire. They also make it evident that the Priest is a close associate of the King and the King relies heavily upon the Priests’ services. This is evident in the Priest-King relationship that we find n the Old Testament. For more on this, see Bujor Avari’s book India: The Ancient Past, pp. 77-79.

5. Anthropologists have discovered that the wider the dispersion of a culture trait the older the trait.

6. Sophisticated mining operations in the Lebombo Mountains of southern Africa reveal that thousands of workers were extracting red ochre which was ground into powder and used in the burial of nobles in places as distant as Wales, Czechoslovakia and Australia. Anthropologists agree that this red powder symbolized blood and its use in burial represented hope for the renewal of life.

7. This has been discussed in many of the great monographs: Benedict's Patterns of Culture, Lévi-Strauss' The Raw and the Cooked, and Turnbull's The Forest People.

8. For more on Holy Tradition go here and here. Holy Tradition has two categories: kergyma and ecclesiastical order and discipline.  The first is non-negotiable and the second accommodates.  The "priesting" of women touches on the first category. Women bishops would never have become a divisive issue if Anglicans had held to the received tradition.

Ideologies Opposed to Holy Tradition

Alice C. Linsley


C.S. Lewis wrote, "With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us. " (from "Priestesses in the Church?")

C.S. Lewis places the discussion of the distinction between male and female in the context of Holy Tradition, for as he states, "With the Church, we are farther in..." As Christians we are so deep in Holy Tradition that we appear odd and out of touch to the world, but in fact, we alone are in touch with Reality. It is not something we brag about. It is something that God has accomplished in us by Divine Mercy. We have been granted clarity in a world where the God-established distinctions and boundaries are blurred. For Christians, righteous or ethical living means observing and honoring these distinctions and boundaries.

To illustrate the contrast between the world's understanding of ethical living and the Church's understanding, consider popular views on diversity and inclusion. In contemporary America "diversity" means drawing together the factions that I agree with and who I can count on for support. We saw this most recently in President Obama's selection of religious speakers. He chose a progressive Protestant, a gay Episcopal bishop, a left-leaning female ecumenist and a female convert to Wahhabi Islam. These speakers represent the diversity that Obama approves and from which he draws political support. He hopes from this consolidated base to gradually include those segments of society that don't support him: traditional Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, pro-life Protestants, a large number of American Jews, and many conservative Americans who are nervous about overturning the Protection of Marriage Act.

This brings us to a better understanding of the popular notion of inclusion. To be "inclusive" is to at least appear to reach out to people who differ from you. It is driven by a utopian vision of a society in which gender, racial, religious and political distinctions are set aside. It is to insist on egalitarianism. Such a view is contrary to Holy Tradition which makes distinctions and uphold boundaries. Holy Tradition renders egalitarianism meaningless. Why? Because egalitarianism is the world's attempt to create an alternative reality. Let us consider how this is so.

The Gospel according to Luke is indisputably the most egalitarian of the four Gospels. Yet Luke's Gospel makes it clear that the equality and inclusion we yearn for is found only within Holy Tradition. In the parable of the wine and wineskins (unique to Luke) we read "And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, 'The old is better" (Luke 5:36-39). This parable is about Holy Tradition. That becomes evident when we remember that new wine is not stable. Old wine, on the other hand, can go into both new and old wineskins because it is stable. What is new therefore can't be inclusive because it can be received by only the new. On the other hand, what is old is inclusive because it can be received by old and new. In this parable Luke testifies that Holy Tradition is inclusive in nature.

The alternative reality which the world attempts to force even on Christians leads to death and destruction because it is ultimately intolerant. It declares war on the saints who uphold Holy Tradition. This is why it is so important for Christians to understand our Tradition and to stand on the right side of the lines that are drawn.


Ideologies Opposed to Holy Tradition

Christians have difficulty grasping the distinction that Holy Tradition upholds between male and female because we fail to weigh the authority of Tradition against the ideologies that oppose Tradition. These ideologies include Feminism, Empiricism, liberal Protestantism and revisionist liturgies and prayer books.

Feminists attack Tradition on the grounds that it perpetuates oppression and exploitation of women. This is easily demonstrated to be false. The study of history reveals that the plight of women has improved wherever Christianity has become the dominant religion. Christianity’s legal establishment under Emperor Justinian resulted in improved status for women in the Empire. With the implementation of the Justinian Code the following practices quickly disappeared:

· Infanticide
· Polygyny (the practice of maintaining multiple wives)
· Incest
· Cultic prostitution
· The 3-tiered caste system that limited women’s marriage options
· The practice of fathers selling their daughters into slavery.

The Code also made it legal for:

· Slave owners to grant liberty to as many slaves as they wanted.
· Families to retain the estate in cases where the father died intestate.
· Noble women to exercise political power.

Where is the evidence that women have been oppressed under Church rule? Not much of a case can be made based on historical evidence. Christianity has largely improved the conditions of women.

Feminists want to see the demolition of patriarchy worldwide. This demonstrates how out of touch with Reality they are. Patriarchy is the universal order, with soft patriarchies found in many places. After 85 years of ethnographic research, no true matriarchy has been found to exist. A true matriarchy requires the following conditions:

· line of descent must be traced through the mothers
· rights of inheritance must be figured through the mothers
· political power must be vested with ruling females
· females must have the final say in deciding matters for the community

No true matriarchy has ever been identified by cultural anthropologists.

The real reason Feminists oppose Holy Tradition is because the father plays a primary role in establishing and maintaining a chain of believing descendents. Sadly, in the West, fathers have largely relinquished their responsibility to be spiritual heads of their families and to instill Holy Tradition in their children. As my friend, Father Timothy Fountain, explains, “Males are charged with spiritual protection of the people, not because they are superior, but because that is their assigned role.”

Empiricism undermines Holy Tradition by insisting that there is no place in education and in public debate for metaphysics. Many of the famous empiricists of the 20th century were atheists because their alternative reality precluded the possibility of a Creator and rejected metaphysical categories.

Liberal Protestantism is utopian in its outlook, seeking to bring its own version of peace on earth. This too is an alternative reality. It sets itself against the Reality of the Pleromic Blood and the Messianic Priesthood. The liberal Protestant aligns with forces for world unity and regards Holy Tradition as a quaint vestige of the past.

Revisionist liturgies and prayer books have tossed out much of Holy Tradition in their attempts to introduce egalitarianism to the Church. This is evident in the post-Vatican II liturgical 'reforms', especially in bringing the altar away from the East wall and having the priest celebrate facing the people. Here the reformers failed to uphold the binary distinctions inherent in Holy Tradition.

The priest stands facing East. The people are at his back, to the West. This is a critical and ancient aspect of Holy Tradition. Among Abraham's people the Sun was the emblem of the Creator. The Creator ruled the heavens, making a daily visitation of His realm from East to West (phenomenologically speaking). In so doing, the Creator cast His glory over His lower holdings on Earth. Out of deference to the Creator, Afro-Asiatic chiefs established their territories by positioning their 2 wives in separate households on a North-South axis (except Lamech the Elder, who set himself up as equal to God).

Holy Tradition teaches us that the priest stands at the sacred center between the rising of our God at His visitation and the passing of His glory over the people. All of this was tossed out in the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms.

Ignorance of the origins of the Priesthood has contributed greatly to the gradual undermining of this sacred institution. Protestants don't get it because they do not hold to a sacramental view of the Lord's Supper. Many Anglicans don't get it as is evidenced by their willingness to put women in the order of Priests. Roman Catholics, despite the in-roads of modernism, have preserved the distinction of a male priesthood in keeping with Holy Tradition. The Eastern Orthodox churches have preserved the Tradition very well, but at least one American seminary now entertains the possibility of women priests.

Primitive societies are much better at recognizing and upholding binary distinctions than moderns. They made distinctions between East and West, between Male and Female and between blood shed in birthing and blood shed in killing. The two bloods represent the binary opposites of life and death. The blood shed in war, hunting and animal sacrifice fell to warriors, hunters and priests. The blood shed in childbirth fell to wives and midwives. The two bloods were never to mix. That’s why women didn’t participate in war, hunting and ritual sacrifices. That’s why men were not permitted in the birthing hut.

Among tribal peoples, brotherhood pacts are formed by the intentional mixing of bloods, uniting two men, but binary distinctions such as male and female, or human and God are still maintained as part of sacred tradition.

This anxiety about the shedding of blood is universal and very old. The priesthood probably came into existence from the first day that blood was shed and humanity sought relief of blood anxiety. As a point of fact, the first blood, according to the Bible, was shed in giving birth. The second shedding of blood was when God make skin clothes for Adam and Eve. The third shedding of blood was when Cain killed Abel. We note that between the two bloods (birthing and fratricide) God sacrifices an animal to provide for the needs of humanity. God is the first Priest.

Today when the Orthodox priest proclaims “Christ is in our midst” and the congregation responds “And ever shall be” we are reminded that Christ gives us His Body and Blood. Though we speak of the Eucharist as a “bloodless Feast” (against the Roman doctrine of Transubstantiation) we do not in these words deny the reality of Christ’s Blood. That is why a priest standing at the altar must immediately leave the sanctuary if he should cut himself and bleed. Here is yet another distinction between bloods: the Pleromic Blood of Christ and the mortal blood of man. Mortal blood must give way to the Pleromic Blood. St. Paul cautions the churches not to dishonor the Pleromic Blood. It must be received only by those who discern Christ’s Body.

Discerning binary distinctions is essential to understanding Holy Tradition. Upholding the distinctions is essential to preserving Holy Tradition. Every ideology that opposes Tradition blurs the distinctions between Male and Female and God and Humanity.

END

To read the first and second essays in this series go here and here.

C.S. Lewis on Women Priests

Priestesses in the Church?

C.S. Lewis


'I should like Balls infinitely better', said Caroline Bingley, 'if they were carried on in a different manner... It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing made the order of the day.' 'Much more rational, I dare say,' replied her brother, 'but it would not be near so much like a Ball.' We are told that the lady was silenced: yet it could be maintained that Jane Austin has not allowed Bingley to put forward the full strength of his position. He ought to have replied with a distinguo. In one sense conversation is more rational for conversation may exercise the reason alone, dancing does not. But there is nothing irrational in exercising other powers than our reason. On certain occasions and for certain purposes the real irrationality is with those who will not do so. The man who would try to break a horse or write a poem or beget a child by pure syllogizing would be an irrational man; though at the same time syllogizing is in itself a more rational activity than the activities demanded by these achievements. It is rational not to reason, or not to limit oneself to reason, in the wrong place; and the more rational a man is the better he knows this.

These remarks are not intended as a contribution to the criticism of Pride and Prejudice. They came into my head when I heard that the Church of England was being advised to declare women capable of Priests' Orders. I am, indeed, informed that such a proposal is very unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities. To take such a revolutionary step at the present moment, to cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the divisions between ourselves and other Churches by establishing an order of priestesses in our midst, would be an almost wanton degree of imprudence. And the Church of England herself would be torn in shreds by the operation. My concern with the proposal is of a more theoretical kind. The question involves something even deeper than a revolution in order.

I have every respect for those who wish women to be priestesses. I think they are sincere and pious and sensible people. Indeed, in a way they are too sensible. That is where my dissent from them resembles Bingley's dissent from his sister. I am tempted to say that the proposed arrangement would make us much more rational 'but not near so much like a Church'.

For at first sight all the rationality (in Caroline Bingley's sense) is on the side of the innovators. We are short of priests. We have discovered in one profession after another that women can do very well all sorts of things which were once supposed to be in the power of men alone. No one among those who dislike the proposal is maintaining that women are less capable than men of piety, zeal, learning and whatever else seems necessary for the pastoral office. What, then, except prejudice begotten by tradition, forbids us to draw on the huge reserves which could pour into the priesthood if women were here, as in so many other professions, put on the same footing as men? And against this flood of common sense, the opposers (many of them women) can produce at first nothing but an inarticulate distaste, a sense of discomfort which they themselves find it hard to analyse.

That this reaction does not spring from any contempt for women is, I think, plain from history. The Middle Ages carried their reverence for one Woman to the point at which the charge could be plausibly made that the Blessed Virgin became in their eyes almost 'a fourth Person of the Trinity.' But never, so far as I know, in all those ages was anything remotely resembling a sacerdotal office attributed to her. All salvation depends on the decision which she made in the words Ecce ancilla [Behold the handmaid of the Lord]; she is united in nine months' inconceivable intimacy with the eternal Word; she stands at the foot of the cross. But she is absent both from the Last Supper and from the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost. Such is the record of Scripture. Nor can you daff it aside by saying that local and temporary conditions condemned women to silence and private life. There were female preachers. One man had four daughters who all 'prophesied', i.e. preached. There were prophetesses even in the Old Testament times. Prophetesses, not priestesses.

At this point the common sensible reformer is apt to ask why, if women can preach, they cannot do all the rest of a priest's work. This question deepens the discomfort of my side. We begin to feel that what really divides us from our opponents is a difference between the meaning which they and we give to the word 'priest'. The more we speak (and truly speak) about the competence of women in administration, their tact and sympathy as advisers, their national talent for 'visiting', the more we feel that the central thing is being forgotten. To us a priest is primarily a representative, a double representative, who represents us to God and God to us. Our very eyes teach us this in church. Sometimes the priest turns his back on us and faces the East - he speaks to God for us: sometimes he faces us and speaks to us for God. We have no objection to a woman doing the first: the whole difficulty is the second. But why? Why should a woman not in this sense represent God? Certainly not because she is necessarily, or even probably, less holy or less charitable or stupider than a man. In that sense she may be as 'God-like' as a man; and a given woman much more so than a given man. The sense in which she cannot represent God will perhaps be plainer if we look at the thing the other way round.

Suppose the reformer stops saying that a good woman may be like God and begins saying that God is like a good woman. Suppose he says that we might just as well pray to 'Our Mother which art in heaven' as to 'Our Father'. Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. All this, as it seems to me, in involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does.

Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion. Goddesses have, of course, been worshipped: many religions have priestesses. But they are religions quite different in character from Christianity. Common sense, disregarding the discomfort, or even the horror, which the idea of turning all our theological language into the feminine gender arouses in most Christians, will ask 'Why not? Since God is in fact not a biological being and has no sex, what can it matter whether we say He or She, Father or Mother, Son or Daughter?'

But Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument not in favour of Christian priestesses but against Christianity. It is also surely based on a shallow view of imagery. Without drawing upon religion, we know from our poetical experience that image and apprehension cleave closer together than common sense is here prepared to admit; that a child who has been taught to pray to a Mother in Heaven would have a religious life radically different from that of a Christian child. And as image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.

The innovators are really implying that sex is something superficial, irrelevant to the spiritual life. To say that men and women are equally eligible for a certain profession is to say that for the purposes of that profession their sex is irrelevant. We are, within that context, treating both as neuters. As the State grows more like a hive or an ant-hill it needs an increasing number of workers who can be treated as neuters. This may be inevitable for our secular life. But in our Christian life we must return to reality. There we are not homogeneous units, but different and complimentary organs of a mystical body. Lady Nunburnholme has claimed that the equality of men and women is a Christian principle. I do not remember the text in scripture nor the Fathers, nor Hooker, nor the Prayer Book which asserts it; but that is not here my point. The point is that unless 'equal' means 'interchangeable', equality makes nothing of the priesthood for women. And the kind of equality which implies that the equals are interchangeable (like counters or identical machines) is, among humans, a legal fiction. It may be a useful legal fiction. But in church we turn our back on fictions. One of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize to us the hidden things of God. One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of the union between Christ and the Church. We have no authority to take the living and sensitive figures which God painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures.

This is what common sense will call 'mystical'. Exactly. The Church claims to be the bearer of a revelation. If that claim is false then we want not to make priestesses but to abolish priests. If it is true, then we should expect to find in the Church an element which unbelievers will call irrational and which believers will call supra-natural. There ought to be something in it opaque to our reason though not contrary to it - as the facts of sex and sense on the natural level are opaque. And that is the real issue. The Church of England can remain a church only if she retains this opaque element. If we abandon that, if we retain only what can be justified by standards of prudence and convenience at the bar of enlightened common sense, then we exchange revelation for the old wraith Natural Religion.

It is painful, being a man, to have to assert the privilege, or the burden, which Christianity lays upon my own sex. I am crushingly aware how inadequate most of us are, in our actual and historical individualities, to fill the place prepared for us. But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer. Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally, and till the Parousia) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him. We men may often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine. It is no cure to call in those who are not masculine at all. A given man may make a very bad husband; you cannot mend matters by trying to reverse roles. He may make a bad male partner in a dance. The cure for that is that men should more diligently attend dancing classes; not that the ballroom should henceforth ignore distinctions of sex and treat all dancers as neuter. That would, of course be eminently sensible, civilized, and enlightened, but, once more, 'not near so much like a Ball'.

And this parallel between the Church and the ball is not so fanciful as some would think. The Church ought to be more like a Ball than it is like a factory or a political party. Or, to speak more strictly, they are at the circumference and the Church at the Centre and the Ball comes in between. The factory and the political party are artificial creations - 'a breath can make them as a breath has made'. In them we are not dealing with human beings in their concrete entirety - only with 'hands' or voters. I am not of course using 'artificial' in any derogatory sense. Such artifices are necessary: but because they are artifices we are free to shuffle, scrap and experiment as we please. But the Ball exists to stylize something which is natural and which concerns human beings in their entirety - namely courtship. We cannot shuffle or tamper so much. With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us.

END


Related reading: Women Priests and the Anglican Church of North America; Why Women Were Never Priests; God as Male Priest; Blood and Binary Distinctions; More Thoughts on the Priesthood; What's Lost When Women Serve as Priests?