The Priesthood is About the Blood

Alice C. Linsley

Speaking from the perspective of Biblical Anthropology, the priesthood of the Church stands in continuity with the Hebrew priesthood that was known to Abraham and his ancestors. The priest's office is unique, very ancient, and stands as an ensign of the hope for immortality.

Melchizedek attended to Abraham's spiritual needs after the battle of the kings (Genesis 14). It appears that he performed a cleansing ritual to diminish Abraham's blood guilt. After that, there was a communion of bread and wine.

The priesthood has always been about the Blood. Priests sacrificed animals because blood is the sign of the Covenant. Jesus exhorts His own to drink His blood in the Sacrament. The priest stands at altar as a divinely appointed agent of that Blood. Life is in the Blood!

Redemption and eternal life require that we have that Blood as our "covering" just as the skins of rams dyed red formed the covering over the Tent of Meeting (Exodus 26:14).

The Hebrew priests kept sheep and cattle to offer as sacrifices. These were often kept in a stone sheep cote (naveh) that had a beehive shape. The sheep cotes were sacred places. With the exception of red heifers, rarely were the females sacrificed. The sacrifice of the red heifer was to be a perpetual sacrifice for Israel (Numbers 19:9). It was for cleansing. 

The earliest ritual burials suggest a priestly office associated with blood. The burial of nobles in red ochre (a blood symbol) was the custom among Abraham's R1b people for at least 40,000 years. It expressed the hope of life after death through the blood.

In the ancient world the community was represented by its chief or ruler. Hope of life after death was pinned on the ruler. If the ruler rose from the grave he would lead his people to immortality. This royal procession language is found more than once in the Bible. Psalm 68:18 says: “When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men.” (Also Ephesians 4:8; Colossians 2:15) Messiah Jesus leads the royal procession to the Father from Calvary's bloody hill.

Paul writes that we who are baptized into Christ "have been brought near in the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13). We enter with boldness into the Most Holy Place "by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is His body..." (Hebrews 10:19, 20)

In this we follow Jesus, our great High Priest, who "did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood..." (Hebrews 9:12)

"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." (Ephesians 1:7-10)

This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it is to be signified by every priest of the Church whether at the altar or in the confessional.

Related reading: The Priesthood in Anthropological Perspective; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection; Sheol and the Second Death; Blood and Binary Distinctions; Why Women Were Never Priests

Sun Symbolism and Blood Guilt

Over the past 2 years I have had several fascinating conversations with Mr. Jose C. Bulang of Bohol (Philippines). Mr. Bulang is a faithful reader of JUST GENESIS and has found some of the research helpful in his pursuit of information about his family's origins. The emphasis of his ancestors on adherence to One True God suggests Muslim merchants or traders - the Gur or Gurjars. In Akkadian gurguri means metalworkers or copper smiths. In Somali Oromo gurguru means to sell (gurgurtaa = sale, gurguraa = seller). In Somali "gur" refers to collecting something and gurgure means one who collects and keeps collecting. The Gurgure clan of the Somali Dir refers to traders who collect wares and resale them.

Mr. Bulang has proved to be a valuable source of information for me also. One account of his father's wisdom has been recorded here (how pythons were used in navigation).

What follows is a portion of a recent correspondence with Mr. Bulang.


Jose Bulang: When my father was alive, he died in 1993, he would always talked about symbolism, symbolism of thing called pair (or is it like to your binary) like the sun and the moon, the day and the night, the man and the woman, and according to him the most important is the hole and that something that is to be place in the hole that made a coupling. And that the most important symbol is zero for everything will get back into it, as zero is the symbol of supreme intelligence. I do not know how you think of it.

Alice Linsley: The binary feature of reality is the beginning of wisdom. I believe that your father was a very wise man. I wonder did he think of the zero as a sun symbol?

Jose Bulang: Yes, my father use to tell me that O is the symbol of sun, according to him the Alpha and the Omega, to the sun we come so to it we go. He also told me that the earth is a big hole that the sun breath unto it and there comes life. I remember he illustrated to me having his two palms together in a molding fashion and breathing an air on it, and he said that what he breath is like the energy from the sun and it gives life and it is what is said in the Bible "God made image of him from the dust and breath a spirit unto it and it become man."

He told me that spirit is energy trapped in a shell called human body from the earth, and earth is mother and sun is the father, earth is negative sun is positive. and when this energy is released the body returned to the dust and the spirit return to the source that is the Sun. But even the earth may come back into the sun, at anytime. My father lost interest in worldly things, he engrossed in prayers but he is not going into the church. Very seldom, when invited to baptisms or burials did he go to church.

Alice: The solar symbolism that your father shared with you is very ancient wisdom. The image of the human body as a shell is especially beautiful to me because I used to collect shells and I still have some that I gathered off the beaches of Luzon.

Jose: One day I ask my father where our eldest ancestor come and who is he, he answered, "I cannot be certain but accordingly our eldest ancestor was named Osman and claimed to have come from the House of Sulaiman. Accordingly, he told our grandfather, "bring your children to the belief and service of one and only God and so the blood of the Bulang will be cleanse of its Curse." This thing my father have told me. And because of this I have made a research which I started at age 40. I am now 57. It bothers me because the Curse in the Bible refers to Cain and his downline.  In history it refers to Alexander the Great, and in history of the family, if my research is right, there were killings between the family members - the reason why we are now in the Philippines.

Alice: The curse is the same for all clans, all families. It is blood guilt that comes from the blood on our hands, and the anxiety that comes from consciousness of our mortality. Some blame the Jews for Jesus' crucifixion because the agitators in the crowd shouted, "His blood be on us and on our children." However, every human in every generation bears guilt for His blood. The paradox is that His blood frees us from the curse, from guilt, and from anxiety.

None is without the curse. It is our existence since death entered the world. All have ancestors who have taken life and spilled blood. Blood is the substance of human life and it has power to speak even from the ground. When Cain killed Abel, Abel's blood cried out to the Creator from the ground. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ covers all blood guilt. Only by the blood of the Pure One can the blood of the impure ones be made right. And when we doubt that the curse has been removed, we need to receive HIM again in the Holy Sacrament of Bread and Wine; doing this with thanksgiving. Our thankful hearts make the heart of God rejoice.

The priesthood emerged as a response to blood guilt and anxiety of blood guilt. It is the oldest known religious office. Remember that the priest Melchizedek came to Abraham after Abraham had been in combat. Melchizedek came to perform the rite of purification to relieve Abraham of his blood guilt and anxiety, and this rite involved bread and wine. It speaks of Jesus Christ. His symbol in the ancient world was the Sun, and the Sun was believed to give life to the Earth. The ancients were very concerned when there was a solar eclipse, but over time they came to understand that life on Earth does not end when the Sun is black (eclipsed). The Eternal One remains even when His glory is veiled.

Related reading: Kushites in Mindanao; From the Nile to the Philippines; Blood and Binary Distinctions; The Sun and Moon in Genesis; A Tent For the Sun; The Solar Imagery of the Proto-Gospel; The Priesthood in Anthropological Perspective

Water and Blood

Alice C. Linsley


According to the oldest written sources water and blood were viewed by the ancients as the primal substances of life. Both substances were related to the sun and had cosmic implications.

Thales of Miletus taught that water was the original substance from which all things took form. He noted that water has many states: liquid, solid, vapor, ice. He reasoned that everything that exists came from water and retains the essence of water.

From reading Sumerian commercial records, the Egyptian Coffin Texts, and the Hebrew Scriptures it is evident that many Afro-Asiatic peoples believed that the earth emerged from a watery chaos. In the Coffin Texts we read, I was the one who began (everything), the dweller in the Primeval Waters. First Hahu emerged from me and then I began to move."

Hahu is the wind that separated the waters above from the waters below and the dry land from the seas. In Akkadian, the wind of God is called Enlil. In Hebrew the wind or breath of God is called Ruach. In Christianity this uncreated force is called the Holy Spirit.

The celestial waters were called Nun, a name that appears among the Horite Hebrew chiefs in the Hebrew Bible. Joshua bin Nun is an example. Nun is found at the Horite shrine of Heliopolis in Egypt and represents the cosmic waters of the firmament above and firmament below (Gen.1:6). In Heliopolitan cosmology the watery realms were connected by the great pillars of the temple of Heliopolis (Biblical On).

In Genesis the primal chaotic waters are called tehom. Tehom was subdued by tehut which went forth from the mouth of God. The Hebrew phrase "formless and void" (Gen. 1: 2) is tohu wa-bohu and is of Nilotic origin. The word tohu in Isaiah 34:11 means "confused" so Genesis 1 evidently refers to matter in a confused state before God set things in order.

The Egyptians envisioned the first place as a mound emerging from a universal ocean. Here the first life form was a lily growing on the peak of the primeval mound. The mound was called Tatjenen, meaning "the emerging land." Anything that springs forth, mounds, emerges represented life and was termed bnbn (benben), from the root bn, meaning to "swell forth." This conception of land and life emerging from a universal ocean was represented by stone pillars, mounds of earth, and pyramids.

The notion applied to the daily swelling of the sun. The image of the sun swelling forth from the peak of the pyramid or mountain is represented in the sign of tnt (tanit) and in the Agadez crosses made by the Inadan metalworkers of Niger and Sudan. The Egyptian word for the rising sun is wbn, which comes from the same root. The swelling of the sun speaks of God's sovereignty over all the earth. In the Arabic yakburu in reference to the sun means “he is getting big” and with the intensive active prefix: yukabbiru means "he is enlarging." Here we identify the biru in ha-biru which is the word Hebrew. For the ancient Ha-biru, the sun was the emblem of the eternal Creator.

The annual swelling of the Nile brought life-giving minerals to the soil. The Nile waters were essential for life, and provided habitats for fish, hippos, crocodiles and many hundreds of species of birds. Without water and blood life as we know it could not exist.This ancient understanding seems modern since today biologists and medical practitioners take this for granted.

In his The Dynamics of World History (p. 128) Christopher Dawson explains, “The great civilizations of the world do not produce the great religions as a kind of cultural by-product; in a very real sense, the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest.”

Mircea Eliade: “The prototype of all water is the ‘living water’….Living water, the fountains of youth, the Water of Life…are all mythological the same formulae for the same metaphysical and religious reality: life, strength and eternity are contained in water.” (Patterns in Comparative Religion. Sheed and Ward Ltd., London, p. 193.)


Blood as primal substance

In the Babylonian creation myth Ea makes mankind from the blood of Kingu. In Genesis 4:10 we read that the Abel's shed blood has power to cry out to God from the ground. The first human, according to Genesis 3 was formed from the red earth which is the likely etiology of the word Adam, or ha-dam, meaning the blood. The Hebrew word for red/ruddy is edom. The word edom is equivalent to the Hausa odum and to the Hebrew adam, and originally referenced the red clay that washed down to the Upper Nile from the Ethiopian highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic cambisols have a strong red brown color.

Red and black Nubians
Detail from a Champollion drawing

The blood-colored substance that is found naturally around the globe is red ocher or hematite (from the Greek word for blood, haema). When hematite powder is mixed with water is looks like blood.

For 100,000 years red ocher was used in burial as a symbolic blood covering. Proto-Saharan nobles were buried with red ochre at Nekhen on the Nile (3800 BC). P.L. Kirk reports that prehistoric Australian aboriginal burials reveal pink staining of the soil around the skeleton, indicating that red ochre had been sprinkled over the body. The remains of an adult male found at Lake Mungo in southeastern Australia were copiously sprinkled with red ocher.

Red ocher is an ancient and universal symbol of blood. Stan Gooch explains:

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

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

For a different interpretation of blood symbolism read "On Blood and the Impulse to Immortality."

John Greenway tells this story concerning the influence of red ocher among Australian Aborigines today:

"The most terrifying physical inquisitors in aboriginal Australia are the little known Red Ocher Men… It is astonishing how little is known by outsiders of the Red Ocher Men. Many whites who have learned about everything else of aboriginal life have not even heard of them, so well enforced is the omerta among even those of the aborigines who wish the whole organisation ended… The cult is nearly universal in aboriginal Australia… In the deserts the Red Ocher cult moves right across the land in the course of a year, carrying its own ceremonies and myths, touching all tribes in its path, and working as a kind of ecclesiastical circuit court embodying all processes of the religious judiciary.

The function of the court is to punish law-breakers — not so much the perpetrators of everyday misdemeanours like spear fights and wife-beating, but those felons who blaspheme the laws incorporated in the myths. If, for example, the young man on trial in Meekatharra had really shown the tjurunga [the law sticks] to women, his only chance to escape the Red Ocher Men would have been to flee from his tribal jurisdiction and live in a city or large well-policed town among other fugitives from their honour and their heritage."

The Red Ocher men are responsible for blood sacrifice to re-establish community/communion. They conduct ceremonies and rituals according to their sacred laws and offer prayers to resolve blood guilt and anxiety. Among primitive peoples blood guilt and anxiety arise from the shedding of blood through killing, hunting, menstruation, and the birth process.

Anthropologists have noted anxiety about blood among every primitive society studied. A principle of anthropology that applies here is: The wider the distribution of a trait, the older it is. Since the use of red ocher as a symbol of blood is virtually universal, we may conclude that it is very old and that the earliest populations regarded blood as a primal substance akin to water.

The offices of the priest and the shaman serve to mitigate against blood anxiety and guilt. These are the oldest known religious offices. Though they represent different worldviews, they serve similar roles in their communities, and for both blood and water are the most fundamental substances of life.


Water and blood speak of Christ

On the cross Christ's side was pierced and out flowed water and blood. These came forth like blooms from the cross as Aaron's rod bloomed, foretelling Jesus the true High Priest in whom there is life.

"Truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him." (John 6:53-56)

Christ's encounter with Photini at Jacob's well speaks of Him as the Living Water given to his bride, the Church.

The blood and water from Jesus' side represent the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Eucharist. John Chrysostom wrote, "As God then took a rib from Adam’s side to fashion a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from his side to fashion the Church." (The Catecheses, Cat. 3, 13-19; SC 50, 174-177) This view of the sacraments in their proper order is reflected in Church writings that reverse the order of John 19:31-36. Instead of keeping the Biblical order, this order appeared in Church literature: ‘from His side came water and blood.”

Yet St. Paul gives the blood first place, suggesting that the material world exists by virtue of Christ's blood which is real even before His incarnation. 

Before his incarnation He was eternal God and He continues to be eternal God in His resurrection body. His blood is given for the life of the world... does this have layers of meaning? Most certainly we are faced with a sacred mystery. The mystery is lightly touched upon in the Creed: "Through Him all things were made." Christ was with the Father before the foundation of the world. "He was in the beginning with God." (1 John, verse 2)

Paul grounds what could become gnostic speculation to the historic event of the Cross by frequently speaking of the blood of Christ. The event is a moment in time, but the benefits of His blood are cosmic and timeless.

Paul writes that those who are baptized into Christ "have been brought near in the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13). We may enter with boldness into the Most Holy Place "by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is His body..." (Heb. 10:19, 20) In this we follow Christ, our great High Priest, who "did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood..." (Heb. 9:12)

"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)

The gathering into one is termed "pleroma" in Greek and for St. Paul, the blood of Christ is pleromic. There is a significant difference between the Gnostic application of “pleroma” and Paul’s application. For the Gnostics, the pleroma was vague and undifferentiated, but for Paul the pleroma is the manifestation of the benefits of the “blood of Jesus.” Jesus Christ is the “pleroma” (fullness) of all things in heaven and on earth, both invisible and visible. The Gnostics used “pleroma” to describe the metaphysical unity of all things, but Paul uses the term to speak about how the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ in bodily form (Col. 2:9). Paul never allows the churches to wander from the blood of Jesus. 

The pleromic blood can be traced through the Scriptures as the scarlet cord that ties all things together. To express this in the simplest terms, all things are gathered in Jesus Christ in whom dwells the fullness of God. By His blood we are made clean and by faith in His blood we receive eternal life.

Related reading: Why Women Were Never Priests; Mining Blood; Blood and Binary Distinctions; Theories of Primal Substance

Resurrection as Mirrored Reality

Alice C. Linsley

The Ancient Egyptians considered the blessed dead “the living ones.”[1]  In pre-dynastic times and in the earliest dynasties the people were believed to follow their deified ruler from this world to the next. Their immortality depended on that of their ruler. This is why the ruler was to be righteous and undefiled by contact with blood or corpses. This world and the rulers of this world were viewed as mirror reflections of the eternal word, or what Plato would call the Forms.  In fact, Plato likely borrowed this concept from the ancient Egyptians.

In this view, the material world mirrors the eternal world into which the ruler leads his people in procession.  The body of the dead ruler was carried in procession to the tomb, his retinue following behind.  The procession to the tomb was the earthly journey that would be continued beyond the grave at the deified ruler's resurrection. This stands behind Paul’s description of Jesus Christ leading captives from the grave to the throne of heaven.

This is why it says: "When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men." Ephesians 4:8

When you ascended on high, you led captives in your train; you received gifts from men, even from the rebellious--that you, O LORD God, might dwell there. Psalm 68:18


This conception relates to the Egyptian belief in Duat, the death and rebirth associated with the underworld and the heavens.  Each day, Ra journeyed in his solar boat above the earth toward the west, and at night he passed under the earth to be reborn at dawn.

In Early Dynastic burials, mirrors were placed in the hands or by the feet of the deceased. Most were placed near the face, head or shoulders. Mirrors were painted on the walls of burial chambers or on coffins.  Many appear with a red dot, a sun symbol associated with Re or Osiris. The rulers of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death. When Osiris rose from the dead they would, in union with him inherit eternal life and in that life intercede for their people. Beginning around 1550 BC, the idea arose that less noble persons would also inherit eternal life if they were properly initiated. [2] This pertained to those with substantial resources, and the practice was encouraged by the priests who encouraged sacrifices in order to line their pockets.

Handle image of Bes the Dwarf

In Egyptian poetry there are frequent references to mirrors, and iron mirrors were called "kharsini" (Arabic), a reference to the Khar or Horite ruler-priests who fashioned such artefacts. A mirror constructed of a highly polished selenite flake set in a wooden frame dates to the Badarian era (c. 4400 to 4000 BC). It is from the same period as the Badarian ritual flint knives used by Horite rulers for circumcision.

A popular mirror form was the ‘divine standard’ design accompanied by Horus falcons.  The round disk represented the Sun, the emblem of Horus' father.  This design, with single or double Horus-falcons, was used throughout the Pharaonic era and resembles the Ankh, the Ashanti and Akan fertility doll, and the Agadez cross, all symbols of life. 

Egyptian mirrors consisted of three main parts: the mirror disk with an integral tang, formed from copper, bronze alloys or silver; the umbel formed from wood, ivory, bone, horn or metal, and the handle, usually made of the same material as the umbel. Three parts are typical of images of the sacred triads of ancient Egyptian theology.

One triad is the divine family Osiris, Hathor and Horus. The umbel was sometimes crafted into a stylized head of Hathor, the virgin queen and mother of Horus. She is depicted in Egyptian iconography as a cow who gives birth in a manger.

The Akan of Ghana were originally a Nilotic people and greatly influenced by ancient Egyptian/Kushite ideas.  The structure of a fertility doll is like the Egyptian mirrors and also resembles the Ankh. It has a huge round head and narrow body, and it is shaped like a cross. The lower section is like the hieroglyphic sign for stability known as the Djed. 

The Djed is Osiris' backbone and the Djed Pillar (shown left) is the oldest known symbol of the Resurrected God. Djed amulets were thought to bring regeneration.

Another sacred triad is represented by the Agadez cross, comprised of the Sun over the mountain peak. The diamond shapes to the left and right represent the east-west movement of the Sun and the diamond at the bottom represents Duat. The mountain peak is reversed at the bottom of the cross and points to the underworld as a mirror reflection of the peak that points to the Sun and the heavens above. This symbolism is pre-Christian and pertains to ancient Egyptian/Kushite cosmology.

Silver Agadez cross

The Sun as the symbol of the Creator speaks of death and resurrection.  It also speaks of the immutable nature of God and the certainty of His promise to those who put their faith in the Son of God. Christ is spoken of as the "Sun of rightouesness" who rises with healing in His wings. This may refer to Horus as a falcon flying over the Sun, as he is depicted in many ancient Egyptian/Kushite icons. 

"And what is the exceeding greatness of His power towards us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His right hand in heavenly places, Far above all principality, power, and might, and dominion, and every name which is named, not only in this age, but also that which is to come." (Ephesians 1:19 – 21)

1.      Conceptions of God In Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many", Erik Hornung (translated by John Baines), p. 233, Cornell University Press, 1996, ISBN 10-8014-8384-0

2.      “Man, Myth and Magic", Osiris, vol. 5, p. 2087-2088, S.G.F. Brandon, BPC Publishing, 1971.



Related reading: Why Does genesis Speak of Gods?; Blood and Crosses

Jesus' Blood Cleanses

Evil is like a blood stain. 

"Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" (Macbeth quote, from Act V, Scene I)

If only it were that easy to rid ourselves of our bloody deeds; our gossip, our manipulation of others, our selfishness, and lack of love.

Our evil deeds cannot be justified by speech. Their stench cannot be perfumed by sweet words. They are covered only by the purifying Blood of God's appointed Lamb. The Blood of Jesus washes our stains and gives us life.

St. Maximus of Turin writes:

The divine Scripture always cries out and speaks; hence God also says to Cain, ‘The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me.’ Blood, to be sure, has no voice, but innocent blood that has been spilled is said to cry out not by words but by its very existence. [It makes] demands of the Lord not with eloquent discourse but with anger over the crime committed. It does not accuse the wrongdoer with words so much as bind him by the accusation of his own conscience. The evil deed may seem to be excused when it is explained away with words. But it cannot be excused if it is made present to the conscience. For in silence and without contradiction the wrongdoer’s conscience always convicts and judges him. (Sermons 88.1, from Andrew Louth, ed., with Marco Conti, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament I, Genesis 1-11, Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2001 p. 107.)

May God have mercy upon us through the blood of His eternal Son.


Related reading:  Jesus' Messianic Priesthood; Jesus' Blood is Restorative; The Scarlet Cord Woven Through the Bible; Jesus Christ in Genesis

What's Lost When Women Serve as Priests?

Alice C. Linsley


The short answer: the very integrity of the divine office.

Savvy, a reader of Just Genesis, has asked this question after reading The Origins of the Priesthood: "Are you saying that men carry blood guilt and women do not? So a priest representing Christ has to be male, to atone for this guilt. But, did Jesus not come to save both men and women."

Blood guilt and anxiety is in all people. It was very acutely felt by people in earlier times because they believed in the Creator and knew that the One who gives life is the only One who can take life. Since they associated blood with life, any shed blood was a cause for anxiety and had to be accounted for.

The priest stands at the altar as the icon of the Great High Priest, of which there is really only one: Jesus Christ. All priests are mere reflections of Him. The reflection is marred when priests are not pure. The reflection is corrupted when a woman stands at altar as a priest.

Further, women were never priests because the priest took the life of the animal. The life-taking work of the priest and the life-giving work of women are binary opposites and the life-giving work is superior. This understanding is lost when women serve as priests.

Jesus is the only way to salvation for both males and females. Jesus' kenotic act was to join himself fully to the human creature, and the human creature - both male and female - is "other" in reference to the Trinity.

In the biblical worldview, the Creator is always number one and the Referent by which all other entities derive meaning. The oldest system of communication probably employed only 1 and 2, allowing for mutual understanding before the development of more complex languages built upon a binary foundation. This would include the Divine and Other, and would apply to fixed observable entities that are binary opposites. This is suggested by comparison of the spelling sign language systems for the deaf used worldwide in which the first and second signs are almost universally the same.

For example, in Japanese signing, two index fingers held up with the palms facing represent two people facing each other.  Slowing bending the fingers toward each other makes the sign of two persons bowing to each other in the typical Japanese greeting. There is a universal logic to the first and second positions in the various sign languages for the deaf.

The universal application of the binary sequence, whether it be letters (A-B) or numbers (1-2), suggests an inherent logic common to all human communications.

The greatest love is shown when A submits to B or when 1 bows to 2. Whether that love is reciprocated matters not. So it is the great love of God that is demonstrated in the incarnation of  Christ our Lord. It goes against every message that the world declares and it goes against the instinct of the individual ego. Our Lord Jesus showed the full extent [eis telos] of his love when He stooped to become human, when He bowed to the creature, when He washed the disciples' feet. There can be no question that His condescension was an expression of divine love for all both males and females.

The Creator 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 unwedded Bride of God and the ever-virgin Mother of Christ.

The biblical revelation of Jesus, whose coming as the Seed of the Woman was promised to Abraham's ancestors (Gen. 3:15), has a definite pattern.  The first to sin or to be lost are the first to recieve the message of redemption. The woman, who with the man was created just beneath the Creator, lowered herself to the status of a creature that goes with its belly on the ground. In doing so, she caused the inversion of the hierarchy of creation. God restores the original hierarchy in the incarnation of His Son by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.  God redeems the whole creation and gives life to the redeemed through the Blood of His Son.



Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest


The the sacramental work of the priest at the altar was instituted by Christ our God and Priest when He broke bread and shared the cup with his disciples before His death and resurrection.  None of the disciples were of the ruler-priests lines, as far as we know from Scripture and Tradition, so none of them would have been qualified to institute the Euchartist.  We call it "the Lord's Supper" because it is exactly that. It must be taken on the grounds and according to the tradition that it respresents, which included the all-male priesthood to which Jesus belonged.

Nazareth was the home of the eighteenth priestly division, ha·pi·TSETS (Happizzez). In 1962 excavators discovered in the ruins of a synagogue at Caesarea a small piece of a list of the twenty-four priestly divisions. This marble fragment is inscribed with the names of where four of the divisions resided, including Nazareth, the residence of Happizzez. Joseph's family lived in Nazareth, the home of the priestly division of Happizzez (1 Chronicles 24:15).

The Virgin Mary's full title would have been "Miriam Daughter of Joachim Son of Pntjr (Panther) Priests of Nathan of Beth Lehem." From the earliest predynastic times, ntjr designated the king among Abraham's Horite people. The name Panther or p-ntjr means "God is King."

It is certain that Mary was of the ruler-priest caste because even those who hated her admit this. Sanhedrin 106a says: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.” It is said that she was so despised that some Jews tried to prevent the Apostles from burying her body.

The words happi and ntjr originate in the Nile Valley, as do the names of many of the ruler-priests listed in the genealogies in Luke and Matthew. Melchi, a name that appears twice in Mary's ancestry, means "my image" in Amharic and refers to the Creator King.

Mary's father was Joachim, a shepherd priest from Bethlehem. I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hur (Hor) as the "father of Bethlehem." The author of Chronicles knew that Bethlehem was originally a Horite settlement in the heart of Horite territory. The prophets foretold Bethlehem as the birth place of the Son of God.  Children were registered according to the clan of their mothers, just as today Jewish identity is traced through the mother, not the father.

There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah; and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth…. Once when he [Zechariah] was serving before God while his division was on duty... (Lk. 1:5, 8)

Mary and Elizabeth were of the ruler-priests lines, as were their husbands Joseph and Zachariah.  Priests only married the chaste daugthers of priests.  This endogamous practice originated with their Nilotic ancestors who are listed in Genesis 4 and 5.  There are many rabbinic traditions attesting to this practice. For instance, Rabbi Tarfon states that when he was a boy he stood on the steps outside the sanctuary to participate in the priestly benediction with "Shimshon, his mother's brother" (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:11). This indicates that his uncle Shimshon was a priest, and that Tarfon's mother was also of priestly stock.

The historical importance of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, according to the tradition He received from his Horim must not be overlooked or minimized.  The Christian priest stands at altar as the icon of Christ and that image is distorted when the form at the altar is that of a female.


Related reading:  Mary's Priestly Lineage; Gender Reversal and Sacred Mystery; The Importance of Binary Distinctions; Blood and Binary Distinctions; God as Male Priest; C.S. Lewis' Priestesses in the Church?

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.

Blood and Binary Distinctions

Alice C. Linsley


The Afro-Asiatic worldview of the Nilotic, Arabian and Mesopotamian peoples, as it is presented in Genesis, is framed by the binary distinctions or supplementary sets. These are universally observed in Nature and experienced on a most fundamental level of existence. These distinctions are evident in daily life, as in the observation that the Sun appears to rise in the East and to set in the West. They are observed in the distinction between male-female, hot-cold, night-day, and between Heaven-Earth. In fact, the ancient Afro-Asiatics associated maleness or the masculine principle with the Sun and femaleness or the feminine principle with the Moon.

This intuitive association extends to semen and milk. The Sun inseminates the Earth and the Moon stimulates female reproduction and lactation. Because the moon affects water, tides, and body fluids in a repeating cycle there is a natural association of the Moon with the periodicity of the menstrual cycle. Many ancient peoples associated pregnancy with the moon and in France menstruation is called “le moment de la lune”.

Primitive societies are much better at recognizing and respecting binary distinctions than moderns. They were more attuned to the patterns observed in nature and aligned their thinking with those patterns. Blood was a matter of anxiety for ancient Man. This is evident in the mythological material that comes to us from the ancient Afro-Arabians and Afro-Asiatics.  For example, the Hebrew words adam and adom relate to red clay from which the first man is said to have been made.  These words are related to the Hamitic/Hausa word odum, meaning red-brown, like to clay along the Nile when the rains wash red silt down from the Ethiopian highlands. This is the region of the world where Abraham's Kushite ancestors lived and the story of the creation of Adam comes to us from the Nilotic peoples.

These peoples made a distinction also between the blood work of men in killing and the blood work of women in birthing. 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 first intercourse, the monthly cycle and in childbirth fell to wives and midwives. The two bloods were never to mix or even to be present in the same space. Women didn’t participate in war, the hunt, and in ritual sacrifices, and they were isolated during menses. Likewise, men were not present at the circumcision of females or in the birthing hut.

The mixing of life-giving substances with the blood shed in killing was absolutely forbidden among the Afro-Asiatics. This is why the Israelites were commanded never to boil a young goat it its mother’s milk. It also places into context the Judeo-Christian teaching against abortion, which mixes birth blood with killing blood, thus perverting the binary distinction between male and female to a point of desecration.

It is also significant that among tribal peoples, brotherhood pacts are formed by the intentional mixing of bloods between two men, but never between male and female. The binary distinctions of male and female are maintained as part of the sacred tradition.

Early man had an intuitive anxiety about blood. We see this in the belief that the blood of Abel cries to God from the ground (Gen. 4:10). Anxiety about the shedding of blood is universal and very old. The Priesthood, verifiably one of the oldest known religious institutions, likely came into existence the first day that blood was shed and the individual and the community sought relief of blood anxiety and guilt.

As a point of fact, the first blood shed in the Bible was not the blood shed by Cain when he killed his brother Abel. It was not the blood shed by God in taking the rib from Adam. It was the blood shed by the woman when she gave birth. This is significant because it places life-giving blood ahead of the blood shed in killing. The birth blood to which I refer here is not the birth of Cain, but the birth of Messiah promised to the woman immediately after the Fall. This is the first blood of Scripture, though not explicitly stated, and this Blood is always prevenient.

The second shedding of blood was when God made clothes of animal skins for Adam and Eve. Here we see the first sacrifice of animals for the benefit of humans. This places God at the center between the life-giving (promised) blood and the blood shed in Cain's killing of his brother.

The third shedding of blood was when Cain killed Abel. We note that between the two bloods (birthing and murder) God sacrifices an animal to provide for the needs of humanity. In this sense, God is the first Priest and that first animal is a symbol of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world.


Related reading:  Binary Distinctions of the Horites; God as Male Priest; Why Women Were Never Priests; Circumcision and Binary Distinctions; The Importance of Binary Distinctions; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology