The Themes of Genesis 1-3

Alice C. Linsley


There are thousands of narratives concerning the origin of life on Earth and the beginning of human populations. Many of the Old World narratives share a pattern in which the Creator brings to life the founders of a people in a certain location, and establishes terms and conditions with those first parents that will preserve their life and identity. In biblical language this is called a "covenant" and the covenant's terms regulate daily life and shape the people's identity.

Covenant language appears in Genesis 13:14-18. After Abram and Lot separated, the LORD told Abram who had settled in the high country: "Lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants for ever." Indeed, Abraham had many descendants by his 9 sons and unknown number of daughters.

Consider the Gikuyu narrative which emphasizes the Gikuyu sacred land claim:

Now you know that at the beginning of things there was only one man (Gikuyu) and one woman (Mumbi). It was under this Mukuyu that He first put them. And immediately the sun rose and the dark night melted away. The sun shone with a warmth that gave life and activity to all things. The wind and the lightening and thunder stopped. The animals stopped moaning and moved, giving homage to the Creator and to Gikuyu and Mumbi. And the Creator, who is also called Murungu, took Gikuyu and Mumbi from his holy mountain to the country of the ridges near Siriana and there stood them on a big ridge.

Trees and sacred mountains are a common theme in these origin narratives. For the Gikuyu, Mount Kenya is the Kere-Nyaga which means Mountain of Brightness. For the Masai, the sacred mountain is the active volcano Oldoinyo LeNgai in Tanzania. Ngai is the name for the Creator/Maker among the Gikuyu and the Masai. The Gikuyu place their first parents on a ridge north of Muranga, a town south of Nyeri. One can visit the site Mukurwe Wa Nyagathanga and see the Tree of Gathanga.

In ancient Egyptian mythology two sacred mountains flanked the Nile. Bahku was the mountain from which the sun rose on the eastern horizon. The other mountain was Manu on the western horizon. In Abraham's time, Bakhu and Manu were the most frequent expressions for the extreme east and west. The horizons were a deified presence (Aker) between the lion twins (ruti). (The two lions are called ruti/rute/rude in modern Luo, which means twins or things coming in twos.) The Creator is symbolized by the Sun resting at the sacred center. Ra came at high noon like a lover between the breasts of his beloved.

The waters of creation

Water is another common motif. Among the Nilotic Luo Dog Nam refers to the great water or the waters of creation. The Luos consider any large body of water as a place where God is, especially Lake Chad, the Nile, and Lake Victoria.

The victory of Tehut (divine order) over Tehom (watery chaos) originally related to the annual inundation of the Nile. Among the Nilotic peoples, the Nile was where the work of creation began when the Creator caused a mound to emerge from a primal waters. The first life form was a lily, growing on the peak of the emerging dry land called Tatjenen.

The Oromo of the Horn of Africa call the waters of creation Hora Wolabu, a reference to Horus, the "son" of the Creator. The Oromo are the Horomo, people of Horus or Horo. The H is silent and therefore was dropped in English spelling. Horo is said to be the founding father of the Oromo. Horo had two sons. His first born son was named Borana and his younger son was named Barentu. Borana means "those who face east" and Barentu means "those who face west."

The ancestors of the Oromo were cattle-herding Saharo-Nubians. They called the Creator Eebe and he was Waaq, meaning "God of the Heavens." The universe was held in balance by the love of a bull for a cow. The balance was maintained in the cradle of the bull's horns, and the bull stared forever at the cow tied to a pole in front of him. When the cow turned her eyes away from the bull, a physical shift resulted that caused natural disasters.

According to the Oromo, Waaq separated the impregnated body of water into two parts: the water above called Bishaan Gubbaathe and the water below called Bishaan Goodaa.

In the beginning, God...

While Genesis 1 exhibits some Babylonian influence, there is an older African layer. This should be evident in the fact that the phrase "In the beginning was God" is not found in the Babylonian creation texts. However, it is common in African origin narratives.

"In the beginning there was only darkness, water, and the great god Bumba." (Bantu/Central Africa)

"There was no sunlight... the whole land was in darkness." (Gikuyu/Kenya)

"In the beginning there was only the swirling watery chaos." (Egyptian)

"At the beginning of things, when there was nothing, neither man, nor animals, nor plants, nor heaven, nor earth, nothing, nothing, God was and He was called Nzame. (Fan/Congo)

Consider also this song of the BaMbuti Pygmies:

In the beginning was God

Today is God,

Tomorrow will be God.

Who can make an image of God?

He has no body.

He is as a word which comes out from your mouth,

That word! It is no more,

It is past and still it lives!

So is God.

The Akan of Ghana tell this story:

In the beginning the heavens were closer to the earth. First man and first woman had to be careful while cultivating and grinding grain so that their hoes and pestles would not strike God, who lived in the sky. Death had not yet entered the world and God provided enough for them. But first woman became greedy and tried to pound more grain than she was allotted. To do this, she had to use a longer pestle. When she raised it up, it hit the sky and God became angry and retreated far into the heavens. Since then there has been disease and death and it is not easy to reach God.

In South African narratives, the point where heaven touches the earth is called bugimamusi, the place where the women can lean their pestles against the vault of heaven. In Genesis 1 we read that God separated the waters above from the waters below.

In the ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, the "Lord of All" declares, "I will sail aright in my barque; I am the Lord of the waters, crossing heaven." (Spell 1,130)

According to the early Nilotic Hebrew, the first act of the Creator at the beginning was šw (Shu), meaning light. This light was associated with the High God's son Y-shu (Yeshua), as proclaimed in John's Prologue.

The divine Word (Logos) has power

Another common theme is the power of the divine word to generate life. The Luo have a saying: Wach en gi teko which means "a word has power."

The Bambara bards of Uganda recite this praise of the power of the divine Word:

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

God created the heavens and the earth

Another theme is expressed in the merism "the heavens and the earth..." In the Bible and in African theology, the heavens and the earth are a binary set that refers to the whole creation. They are created entities that owe their existence directly to the Creator.

"I cast a spell with my own heart to lay a foundation in Maat. I made everything . I was alone. I had not yet breathed the divine one Shu, and I had not yet spit up the divine one Tefnut. I worked alone." (Ancient Egyptian)

Maat includes equilibrium and harmony between constituent parts, the cycle of the seasons, celestial and planetary movements, honesty in social and business interactions and justice.

Compare this theology to the Babylonian "Epic of Creation" in which Marduk is created to defend the divine ones from attack by the sea goddess Tiamat. Marduk offers to save them on the condition that he be appointed their permanent ruler. The gods agree to Marduk's terms. Marduk kills Tiamat and from her corpse, which he cuts into two parts, he fashions the earth and the skies.

Among the Nilotic Luo, Jachwech piny gi polo means the "Creator of earth and heaven."


Forming Man from the substance of Earth

In Genesis 2:7 we read that God created the first man from the dust of the Earth. This is another common theme found in African origin narratives.

According to the Shilluk of Sudan Juok/Jwok, the High God, made white people out of white sand and the Shilluk of out black dirt. When the Creator came to Egypt, he made the people there out of the Nile mud which is rich in red silt. That is why the Egyptians have a red-brown skin tone.

The Upper Nile soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic cambisols have a strong red brown color. The Biblical writers recognized that the people with red skin were of an ancestral line of extreme antiquity. Some of these people were rulers in Edom and are listed in Genesis 36. Esau the Elder and Esau the Younger were among them. Esau is described as red in Genesis 26.

The Hebrew word for red is edom and it is a cognate to the Hausa word odum, meaning red-brown. Both are related to the word dam, meaning blood, and to the name Adam, the eponymous founder of Abraham's people, some of whom lived in Edom/Idumea, the land of the red people. Adam was formed from the red clay that washed down to the Upper Nile Valley from the Ethiopian highlands.


One Creator (High God) known by many names

Among Abraham's Horite ancestors, the Creator was called Ra and Ani. The name Ra is attached to divinely appointed rulers, as in Rafu in the Abydos King List, and Raphu, the father of Palti (Palti-el). (Saul gave Michal, his princess daughter, to a chief named Palti, likely one of Saul's kinsmen (I Sam. 25:44).

Anu/Anum is the Akkadian word for the High God. Both Ra and Anu were said to have a divine "son" who is called Horus and Enki. En-ki means "Lord of the Earth."

The word "Horite" is derived from the name Horus and takes many forms: Hur, Horo, Horonaim, Horoni, Horowitz, Horim, and Hori. Hori was the son of Lotan son of Seir whose descendants were the "lords of the Horites in the land of Seir" according to Genesis 36:20-29 and 1 Chronicles 1:38-42.  Referring to the Horite Hebrew Patriarchs (the Horim), Paul states in Hebrews 4:2: "For unto us was the Gospel preached, as well as unto them..."

The ancestors of the Somali called the Creator Eebe, and Eebe's divine messenger was Huur, another name for Horo or Horus. In Luo, Horu' mo (horumo/orumo) means perfected, realized, finished, or completed.

A Luo reference to God is Nya-sa-ye, which is similar to I am Who I am. The Acholi Luos call the Creator Lacwec, and the Luo Luos call the Creator Jachwech.  Jachwech is a cognate of Yahweh.

The oldest references to Yahweh outside the Bible are found on two hieroglyphic references dating to the New Kingdom period and refer to “the land of the Shasu of YHWH.” These are found on inscriptions from the Nubian temples of Soleb and Amara West. The Shasu are definitively connected to the Horites of Seir of Edom. A monument of Ramesses II claims that he “has plundered the Shasu-land, captured the mountain of Seir” in Edom. A 19th Dynasty letter mentions “the Shasu-tribes of Edom” and Ramesses III declares that he has “destroyed the Seirites among the tribes of the Shasu.”

According to the Shilluk the Creator Juok brought forth his only begotten son, Kola, by the Sacred White Cow. Kola was the father of Ukwa who had two wives. One of Ukwa's son's was Nyakang who became the first ruler of the people. The name Ukwa is related to the Igbo word Chukwa, meaning the Great Spirit.

Related reading: Chaos Subdued; Adam Was a Red Man; Is Genesis Really about Human Origins?; Rightly Reading Genesis 1-3; Boats and Cows of the Proto-Saharans; Genesis in Anthropological Perspective; Common Questions About Genesis; Trees in Genesis; The Nilotic Context of Genesis 1:1-2; The High God Among Some Nilotes


Thanks to native Hausa, Luo, and Oromo speakers for helping with this project, especially John Oguto, Solomon Demissie, Wandera Salmon Owino, and the late Dr. Catherine Acholonu.

Psalm 104:8 and Flood Geology

William Henry Green

⁶Thou didst cover [the earth] with the deep as with a garment;

The waters were standing above the mountains.

⁷At Thy rebuke they fled;

At the sound of Thy thunder they hurried away.

⁸The mountains rose; the valleys sank down

To the place which Thou didst establish for them.

⁹Thou didst set a boundary that they may not pass over;

That they may not return to cover the earth.

            Psalm 104:6-9 NASB¹

Evangelicals owe young earth creationists a debt of gratitude for their principled stand on the authority and primacy of Scripture. In that spirit, this paper is intended as a constructively critical exploration of the biblical foundations for a central concept in modern creationist theory.




Psalm 104: A Creationist Proof Text

Ever since the publication in 1961 of The Genesis Flood by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, Psalm 104:8 has been an important creationist proof text. The Psalm in which the passage occurs was traditionally regarded as a creation hymn, with vv. 6-9 understood as a poetic retelling of day three of the Genesis creation week, but this reading is contested by creationists who view it as an important text relating to Noah’s flood. This interpretation reflects the fact that creationists are forced to confront a pair of difficult questions: since there is not nearly enough water on the planet to cover “all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens” (Genesis 7:19) where did it come from and, more importantly, where did it go after the flood ended?[2] Whitcomb and Morris noticed half a century ago that Psalm 104 seems to provide at least a partial answer:

Very likely, in order to accommodate the great mass of waters and permit the land to appear again, great tectonic movements and isostatic adjustments would have to take place, forming the deep ocean basins and troughs and elevating the continents. This seems to be specifically implied in the poetic reflection of the Deluge in Psalm 104:5-9.[3]

Whitcomb and Morris theorized that the pre-flood earth was relatively flat (thus requiring less water to cover the whole planet), and that the waters were pushed off the continents when the mountains and other land masses were thrust up to their present heights at the end of the flood. Their exegesis of Psalm 104, the only passage in the Bible that seems to reflect these events, met an obvious need in creationist apologetics, and as a consequence similar arguments have been made repeatedly across the last 50 years.[4] The importance for modern creationism of this tectonic or geophysics-centered model of earth history cannot be over stressed.


Creationist Approaches to Psalm 104

Creationist interactions with Psalm 104 tend to fall into two broad categories. In the first place, critics often point out that since Psalm 104 refers in a remarkably untroubled way to animal death (v. 29) and predation (v. 21), then however distasteful such things may be they are not evil and may have existed before the sin of Adam.[5] Creationists respond by saying that Psalm 104 is not a creation account per se, but an inspired reflection on the created world as it existed in the psalmist’s own day, long after the Fall. After all, the passage also talks about ships (v. 26) and sinners (v. 35), and neither of these things existed at the time of creation.[6]

Secondly, creationists argue that a significant portion of Psalm 104 (verses 6-9) does not refer to creation at all, but to Noah’s flood. The clincher, in their minds, is the statement in v. 9 that “Thou didst set a boundary that they may not pass over, that they may not return to cover the earth.”

Contrary to what many old-earth proponents believe, Psalm 104:6-9 clearly refer to Noah’s Flood, not to the third day of Creation Week. This is seen in the allusion in v. 9 to the rainbow promise in Genesis 9:11….God made no such promise at the end of Day 3 of Creation Week. If he had made such a promise in Genesis 1, the global Flood of Noah’s day would have been a breaking of His promise.[7]

Read it all here.


Note: Founded in 1970 by Henry Morris, The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) promotes young-earth creationism.

Answers to High Schoolers' Questions About the Earth

Alice C. Linsley




Part 5:  The Creation of Earth
This continues the series on Answers to High Schooler's Questions About Genesis.


Q:  How old is the Earth?

A:  The earth is about 4.5 billion years old. This is based on radiometric age dating of meteorite material and the earth's oldest rocks, and is consistent with lunar samples. Young-Earth Creationists argue that radiometric dating is not reliable because it contradicts what they believe the Bible says about the age of the Earth.  For the sake of argument, let us consider that radiometric calculations are off by 50%. Were this the case (and it is not), the earth would still be over 2 billion years old.  The oldest human fossils are about 3.6 million years.  Again for the sake of argument, let us consider that the carbon dating of the oldest human fossils is off by 50%.  These humans would still have lived over 1 million years ago

Young-Earth Creationists calculate the Earth's age at 6000 years on the basis of ages assigned to the rulers in the Genesis King Lists.  They assume that Bishop James Ussher's scheme is accurate.  However, Ussher didn't recognize that these lists are not generational, but regnal. The reigns of some kings coincided. For example, Tubal-Cain (Gen. 4) and Methuselah (Gen. 5) ruled at the same time.  Further, these rulers had two wives. The first wife was the bride of the ruler-to-be's youth.  The second wife was a patrilineal cousin and this wedding took place shortly before the heir ascended to the throne. This is why Abraham was anxious for Isaac to marry his cousin bride before he died (Gen. 24).

With two wives, there were two first-born sons.  They ascended to different thrones, but the ruling lines intermarried exclusively. Bishop Ussher didn't take this unique marriage and ascendancy pattern into consideration. He apparently was unaware of its importance.



Q:  How many times has God created Earth?

A:  The creation of the Earth was a singular event according to the Bible. John 1:3 says that everything that was created in the beginning was created from nothing (creatio ex nihilo).  In other words, God did not create from pre-existing elements or from the substance of a previous world.

The idea that God created more than one Earth developed out of Greek Philosophy and can be traced to the thought of Anaximander of Miletus (B.C. 610 – 546). He believed that the universe or “all the heavens and the worlds within them” came from “some boundless nature.” Their existence involved the interaction of the four elements of ancient physics: Earth, Water, Air and Fire.

Anaximander speculated that these elements constantly interact to produce new worlds. This is why some thought this world came about as the result of the explosion of a previously existing world.  He hypothesized that the world originated when a firey ball surrounded Earth like bark on a tree. When the ball broke apart it formed other worlds as hollow concentric circles or spirals, filled with fire.

In his first sermon on creation, Basil the Great argued against Anaximander's view that a world is created by the spiraling motion of the four interactive elements.  He declared, "Do not then imagine, O man! that the visible world is without a beginning; and because the celestial bodies move in a circular course, and it is difficult for our senses to define the point where the circle begins, do not believe that bodies impelled by a circular movement are, from their nature, without a beginning." (The Hexaemeron, Homily I)

This idea of previously existing worlds is not found in the Bible. According to the Bible, God fashioned all the worlds from nothing. Hebrews 11:13 says, "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible."



Q:  What existed before God created everything?

A:  No matter existed. Only the triune God existed: Christ the Logos and the Spirit of God were one with God the Father. The Holy Trinity is evident in Genesis 1 and was manifested to John the Baptist and his disciples when Jesus was baptised in the Jordan River. (See Matthew 3:16,17; Mark 1:9-11)

Genesis 1:2 speaks of a void (bohu in Hebrew).  This may be the work of Hellenistic Jews who translated the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) into Greek. That version of the Old Testament is called the Septuagint and it appears to be influenced by Greek Philosophy which debated the idea of motion, matter and a void. John Sailhamer makes this point in his book Genesis Unbound.  The Greek-speaking Jews who translated the Old Testament were likely drawing on the thought of Democritus (460 – ca. 370 BC), a ancient philosopher who argued that any movement would require a void.  Since God is the Unmoved Mover, there was movement at the beginning and therefore a void.  This argument has been used to suggest that God as Unmoved Mover is illogical since, as Democritus asserted, a void cannot exist.

Obviously there is a conflict between the Greek and the Semitic worldviews. As Genesis reflects a Nilo-Semitic worldview, we must look for another explanation of the word bohu.

Genesis 1 describes when God began the work of creation. It uses the words tohu (formless or confused) and bohu (empty or void). 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 it appears that Genesis 1 refers to matter in a confused or chaotic state before God set things in order.

In Nilotic mythology chaos or disorder preceded creation. The Egyptians believed that chaos (tehom) dwelt south of Yebu (Elephantine Island) as a great river serpent between the Nile's east (bahku) and west (manu) banks. The word bohu appears to be related to the word bahku, the direction from which the Sun rose and filled the valley with light - And God said, "Let there be light and there was light." (Gen. 1:3)




Q:  How did everything just appear when God spoke?

A:  The Word of God generates life. This is what John explains in the Prologue to his Gospel:  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men." John 1:1-4

Basil the Great explains, "It must be well understood that when we speak of the voice, of the word, of the command of God, this divine language does not mean to us a sound which escapes from the organs of speech, a collision of air struck by the tongue; it is a simple sign of the will of God."  (The Hexaemeron, Homily II)



Q:  Could God have created the world through evolution?

A:  Evolution is an explanation for how species emerge, adapt and survive. Darwin's observations about the complexity, diversity, adaptability and survival of species do not address the question of the origin of matter.  His hypothesis that humans and apes had a common ancestor has never been proven. There is no physical evidence that this is true.

Some Christians believe that God created the different species by the processes described in evolutionary theory. Their view is called "Theistic Evolution" and has grown in popularity among Evangelicals. 

Other theories held by Christians include Intelligent Design, the Framework Theory, Progressive Creationism, Age-Day Creationism, Gap Theory Creationism, and Young-Earth Creationism. These are described here.

Genesis tells us that God created in an orderly fashion over a period of time and according to a plan. It is the work of science to discover the order and the work of theologians and Bible scholars to discern the plan. For Abraham's ancestors the order was perceived as fixed, though they recognized flux within the fixed boundaries. Their acute observation of the patterns in nature suggested a divine plan.

If the biblical worldview is true, no discrepancy should exist between genetics and the biblical assertion that the order of creation is fixed with genetic boundaries between "kinds."  Specific fixed boundaries exist within the DNA code. This explains why humans reproduce humans and not some other animal. Further, while the similarity of humans to apes may suggest a common origin, this common ancestor is not known to have existed.  A common ancestor exists in the imaginations of artists who draw images for Biology books.

Evolutionary theory rests on many unconfirmed and often ludicrous assumptions.  For example, some assume that because nurse sharks and camels share an antigen receptor protein they are descended from a common ancestor. However, the DNA sequences that code for the proteins are different between sharks and camels. 




Q:  Why did God take seven days to create?

A:  Actually,the first creation story says that God created in six days and rested on the seventh.

According to Genesis 1, God created in an orderly fashion over a period of time.  Order implies duration of time.  Consider how time passes as you write the letters of the alphabet in order.  Seconds pass as you draw each on the paper.  Time began to pass, like a ticking clock, from the moment that God created matter and space.



Q:  Were the seven days of creation 24-hour days?

A:  Genesis 1 suggests that the seven days are to be taken as 24-hour days.  However, Genesis 2 says that God created everything in a single day.  In both creation stories the Hebrew word for day is yom. This word is used in the Bible to mean a 24-hour day or an unspecified duration of time.



Q:  When Genesis says "hovered over the waters" does that mean that water existed before God formed the earth? Or was this water over an unformed earth?

A:  According to the ancient Nilotic peoples, the world emerged as a dry mound rising up from the primordial ocean. Because the Sun is essential to life on earth, the first rising of Ra (the Creator whose emblem was the Sun) marked the moment of the world's emergence. This is why God's first words in Genesis are "let there be light" and why St. John says that Christ, the Word, was the real light that was coming into the world. (John 1:9)




Q: How could water come up from the ground if it hadn't rained yet?

A:  Genesis 2:4-6 says "On the day that God made earth and heaven there was as yet no wild bush on the earth nor had any wild plant sprung up for Yahweh God had not sent rain on the earth, nor was there any man to till the soil. Instead, water flowed out of the ground and watered the whole surface of the soil."

This picture of the primeval Earth as a watery world is consistent with the cosmology of Abraham's Nilotic ancestors from whom we receive this account. They believed that the dry ground emerged from a universal ocean.  It is also consistent with scientific findings that suggest that 2.5 billion years ago oceans covered most of the planet. Just 2% to 3% of the Earth's surface would have been dry land, compared with 28% today.




Q: Where was the Garden of Eden?

A:  Eden is described as a vast watery region that extended from the Nile to Mesopotamia.  The writer of Genesis 2-3 says that God prepared a garden somewhere in this region and placed the first humans there.  This is also the region where the oldest human fossils have been found. This is the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion and the place of origin of the Genesis rulers and of "him that holds the scepter from the house of Eden" (Amos 1:5).

Genesis 2:10-14 says that Eden was watered by four rivers: the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Pishon and the Gihon. The Tigris and Euphrates are in Mesopotamia and the Pishon and Gihon are in Africa. The Ethiopians identify the Gihon with the Abay River, which encircles the former Kushite kingdom of Gojjam. The Pishon "flows through the whole land of Havilah" (Gen. 2:11). Havilah is a son of Kush (Gen. 10:7) and the "Kushites" lived in the Upper Nile region and the Sudan. Kushite kings also ruled in Egypt.

The description of Eden as a well-watered region is supported by climate and geological studies. These four rivers encompass the heart of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion which was ruled by a network of chief priests. They controlled the major water systems and built shrines along the rivers.



Q: Where do dinosaurs fit in the story of creation?

A:

Dinosaurs are not mentioned in the Genesis creation accounts. These accounts speak of great diversity and an hierarchy within the animal world, but the peoples from whom we receive the creation stories did not have any direct experience of dinosaurs. Likely they had oral traditions about great creatures that once lived on the Earth. They may have associated the avian dinosaur with the serpent-dragon. This dragon was called by the RahuKetu (drawing from the Ancient Egyptian words Ra and Ketu). The avian dinosaurs survived after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Scientists have identified seven major global and local dinosaur subgroups during the latest Cretaceous period. The large herbivores, such as ceratopsids and hadrosauroids, appear to have been in decline for some time before their extinction. Carnivorous dinosaurs, mid-sized herbivores, and some Asian species appear to have fared better. Their populations were thriving and appear to have disappeared rather suddenly.

The reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs is still a mystery.  However, most scientists believe that their extinction was environment and likely triggered by the impact on Earth of a large asteroid or comet.  Evidence for such events have been identified in the Yucatan and in Siberia. An object 10 kilometers across struck Earth off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago.

It is believed that this caused dense clouds of dust that blocked the sun's rays. The darker and colder environment caused many plants to die and these were the food source of the large bulk-feeding herbivores.  According to this theory, once the dust cleared greenhouse gases caused temperatures to skyrocket and the frigid and sweltering climatic extremes caused the extinction of up to 70 percent of all plants and animals living at the time.

Another theory involves global volcanic activity. Massive beds of ancient lava found around the world depict an Earth where volcanic eruptions were commonplace. According to this theory, volcanic activity spewed gas, ash, and dust into the atmosphere, blocking light from the sun. Plant production plummeted, and dinosaurs that were poorly adapted to the harsh conditions perished.



Related reading: YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical; Tehut's Victory Over Tehom; Bishop Ussher Goofed; The Nilotic Substrata of Genesis 1; Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin

The Nilotic Context of Genesis 1:1-2

"Fee al-badi' khalaqa Allahu as-Samaawaat wa al-Ard . . . "

Genesis 1:1 - Arabic Bible

Alice C. Linsley


Genesis 1 should be considered in the context of Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors from whom we received this amazing account. The elements of Genesis 1 align very closely with the creation accounts of peoples who live in the Nile region or who migrated from the Nile. The correlation of theme, language, and device is much closer to the African than to the Babylonian stories. Also the theology expressed is distinctly Nilotic, as will be demonstrated in this parsing of Genesis 1:1-2.

In the beginning God ....
God was at the beginning. The Creator pre-existed eternally and is not constrained by time and space, as are creatures.

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."

Ha-hu is the wind (ruach in Hebrew) that separated the waters above from the waters below and the dry land from the seas.

The phrase "In the beginning God" is common in African creation stories and songs, such as this song of the Mbuti Pygmies:

In the beginning was God

Today is God,

Tomorrow will be God.

Who can make an image of God?

He has no body.

Contrast this to the Babylonian "Epic of Creation" in which Marduk is created to defend the divine ones from attack by the sea goddess Tiamat. Marduk offers to save them on the condition that he be appointed their permanent ruler. The gods agree to Marduk's terms. Marduk kills Tiamat and from her corpse, which he cuts into two parts, he fashions the earth and the skies.

God created the heavens and the earth ...
Both the heavens and the earth are created entities which owe their existence to God, the Creator. No other gods shared in the act of creation.

"I cast a spell with my own heart to lay a foundation in Maat. I made everything . I was alone. I had not yet breathed the divine one Shu, and I had not yet spit up the divine one Tefnut. I worked alone." (Egyptian)

Maat is the principle or platform whereby God orders the universe.  In the Psalms the principle is often called "wisdom" by which God orders all things. The principle of Maat includes equilibrium and harmony between constituent parts, the cycle of the seasons, celestial and planetary movements, honesty in social and business interactions and justice. There appears to be a relationship between Maat and Tehut, just as there is a relationship between the watery chaos and Tehom.

The victory of Tehut (order) over Tehom (watery chaos) relates to the annual inundation of the Nile and helps us to understand the Egyptian concept of creation as a mound emerging from a primal ocean (mer). The first life form was a lily, growing on the peak of the emerging dry land called Tatjenen. This is symbolized by the rising pyramid along the Nile.

The celestial waters were called Nun, a name that appears among the Horite 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 earth was formless (tohu) and void/empty (bohu) ...
The formlessness of the earth could have more than one meaning. It may simply mean that God had not yet created the material world. However, the ancient Nilotic peoples may have been thinking metaphysically, that is to say, that God had not yet created the Forms or archetypes of which created forms are the shadow or reflection. Whatever is meant by formless, there was nothing on earth. This is conveyed in this account:

At the beginning of Things, when there was nothing, neither man, nor animals, nor plants, nor heaven, nor earth, nothing, nothing, God was and He was called Nzame. (Fan / Congo)
Boshongo

Darkness was over the surface of the deep ...

Darkness and chaotic waters are commonly associated with the beginning of creation.  This is expressed in the following African creation stories.

"In the beginning there was only darkness, water, and the great god Bumba." (Bantu / Central Africa)

"There was no sunlight... the whole land was in darkness." (Gikuyu / Kenya)

"In the beginning there was only the swirling watery chaos."  (Egyptian)


The Spirit of God was moving over the waters (mə·ra·ḥe·peṯ, Egyptian origin) ...

The Spirit (ruach) of God moved over the dark waters. The ruach of God is the breath of life. This  concept is found in Genesis 2:7: "the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostril the breath of life and the man became a living being." However, in the Babylonian creation myth Ea makes mankind from the blood of Kingu.

In the image above a dead Egyptian receives the breath of life flowing over a sail. The sail was associated with Ra's solar boat which rises after dying at the end of the day. By the wind/breath/spirit of the Creator, the deceased may enjoy life beyond the grave and avoid the second death. The Egyptians believed in the resurrection of the body and prayed for, offered sacrifice for and prepared the bodies of their dead in this hope. The African bishop Saint Augustine wrote "that the Egyptians alone believe in the resurrection, as they carefully preserved their dead bodies." ("Death, burial, and rebirth in the religions of antiquity," Jon Davies, Routledge, 1999, p. 27)


Related reading:  Adam and Eve: The Blood and the Birther; The Nubian Context of YHWH; Who is Jesus?; Genesis One Sets the Scene; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology; The Themes of Genesis 1-3

Victory of God's Order Over Chaos

Dr. Zahi Hawass with statues, one of which is an image of Horus as a child wearing a sidelock.

Alice C. Linsley


I recently received an email from a Japanese friend in which she details some of the horrors and hardships endured by many Japanese in the aftermath of natural disasters.  She wrote: "In my country, fear of earthquakes always haunts us. We don't know when it gonna hit us and kill us. As a small child, I remember nights I could not sleep because of the fear of death by earthquake. I grew up with fear. However, because I encountered with Christ, I am no longer haunted by fear of death anymore. It is the unchanging truth, but it is quite scary when it happens. I lost words when I saw cars and houses carried away by water and drown in it as weapons to steal so many lives. I thought hell would be a place like this."

Hell is probably very like this, a chaotic state without hope of the victorious order that comes with God's Presence. According to Genesis 1, such chaos was overcome by God's Word in the beginning. The Genesis 1 and 2 accounts speak of water in a chaotic state and water that sustains life.

In the Genesis 1 creation account, the earth was chaotic. Darkness was on "deep" until the Spirit moved over waters (1:1-2).

Similarly, in Genesis 2, we read "In the day when the Lord-God made the earth and the heavens . . ." (2:4) there was nothing on earth (2:5) until a mist or water rose from the ground and watered all the surface of the ground.

In Genesis 1 we have an account similar to the ancient Nilotic belief of Tehom (Hebrew: תְּהוֹם‎), a watery and disordered deep which God put in order by His Word (Egyptian word "hu" or hut). The Tehom is subdued by the divine Tehut.

In the early Nilotic account of creation (before Egypt emerged as a political entity) the creation began when a mound or pillar of dry land emerged from the primordial sea. Here the first life form was seen as a lily, growing on the peak of the mound. The mound was called Tatjenen, meaning "the emerging land".

The victory of Tehut over Tehom relates to the annual inundation of the Nile and helps us to understand the Egyptian concept of creation. As rains fell in the Ethiopian headlands the Nile River rose above its banks, flooding the Nile Valley between June and October. The flooding lasted for 40 days. As the waters receded, only the highest mounds of earth would been seen at first. Even after the waters crested and began to recede, families did not return to their homes for another 40 nights. This is the origin of the biblical phrase "forty days and forty nights", and the context is Nilotic.

One of the oldest creation myths of the ancient Egyptians envisioned the first place in the world as a mound emerging from the waters of a universal ocean. In Hindu and Buddhist mythology the mound that emerged is called Mount Meru. It emerges from the center of the Cosmic Ocean, and the Sun and 7 visible planets circle the mountain. Mount Meru in Hinduism is a mythological mountain. 

The name meru is meri in Egyptian and is related to the ancient Egyptian word for love - mer.  The name Mary or Miriam is related to that same root - MR. The Virgin Mary, whose womb swelled with the Son of God, is portrayed in some icons as the mountain of God. The Prophet Daniel saw a mountain, from which a stone was cut by the hand of God (Dan. 2:34, 45). Doubtless this is what Malachi alluded to when he wrote, “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise [swell/be magnified] with healing in its wings.” 

This conception of Earth emerging from a universal ocean likely originated in the Nile Valley where stone pillars called benben were erected. The term is from the root, bn, meaning to "swell forth". The Egyptian word for the rising sun is wbn, which comes from the same root as benben. The benben were a solar symbol. In his book, Mountains of the Pharaohs, Dr. Zahi Hawass states that the benben was the "solar symbol par excellence, thought to have existed in reality as an object, perhaps a stone with a rounded top..." (p. 34)

Hawass believes that this artifact was kept in the main temple at Heliopolis (biblical On) where the sun was the symbol of the High God Ra. Ra's son was called HR, meaning Most High One. The Greeks called Ra's son Horus. The Horite Hebrew priests who served at the main temple in Heliopolis were devotees of Ra, Horus, and Hathor. Heliopolis is mentioned multiple times in the Old Testament. Isaiah 19:18 says that Heliopolis was one of the five cities in Egypt that swore allegiance to the Lord of Hosts.

Recently discovered tombs of officials from the 4th Dynasty were surmounted by conical mounds that represent the benben. These tombs, along with the royal tombs at Giza, indicate that the ancient rulers hoped to rise from the place of death just as the sun rises daily in the east and sets in the west. The solar arc and the hope of resurrection were linked in ancient Nilotic thought.


Related reading: The Prestige of Biblical On; Early Resurrection Texts; The Nilotic Substrata of Genesis 1; Funerary Rites and the Hope of Resurrection; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection; Solar Symbolism of the Proto-Gospel

N.T. Wright Should Admit His Own Church's Failing

Alice C. Linsley


The 1922 Report of the Commission on Doctrine in the Church of England is full of ambiguity when it comes to the question of Creation. The report states: "There are systems of Catholic Theology and of Protestant Theology. To them we have, of course, owed much. But there is not, and the majority of us do not desire that there should be a system of distinctively Anglican Theology." (p. 25)

No worry there. It seems that one can be Anglican and believe just about anything these days. In the USA some Episcopal clergy have been Muslims and Druids, though these were eventually defrocked.

Then there was the report about Bishop Bruno giving communion to Hindus. Like Episcopal bishop William Swing who promotes syncretism, Bruno wants fellowship with Hindus. He likely never read the Anglican statement that maintains that the Christian doctrine of Creation "is not to be confused with any doctrine which represents finite individuality as illusory or tends to blur moral distinctions... that both finite individuality and moral distinctions are lost in the Absolute."

The British theologian N.T. Wright may be frustrated with the American leadership of the Episcopal Church, (and rightly so), but he ought not to blame Americans for Bible literalism. Wright says that Americans have more difficulty interpreting Genesis than Brits because we tend to bundle Biblical literalism with conservative social values. I fully agree. Fundamentalist approaches are not helpful in forming a right understanding of Scripture and even less helpful as a basis for informed political views. Young Earth Creationism, for example, is neither Biblical nor scientific but it shapes many Americans' views on politics, family, and education.

Wright received a good amount of criticism for his remarks about the Americans and later stated at this blog, "My only real point was that as a Brit who spends a fair amount of time in America I find the American debates — including those reflected in this blog — to work with a completely different set of assumptions to those elsewhere, including Europe. This doesn’t mean Americans are wrong in the way they line things up and the rest of us are right, but it ought to give us all some critical distance on all of our polarizations."

That said, Wright needs to face that his own Church of England has been far from faithful in applying objectivity. Where is critical distance on the question of women priests and bishops?  Or on homosexuality? Or on the Nilotic parallels in Genesis creation stories?

The 1922 Commission on Doctrine certainly did not do the hard work of sorting out the threads of Genesis 1-3, opting instead for the briefest treatment on the question of Creation (not even 2 full pages) and the dismissal of the material with these words:

No objection to a theory of evolution can be drawn from the two Creation narratives in Gen. i and ii., since it is generally agreed among educated Christians that these are mythological in origin, and that their value for us is symbolic rather than historical.

One notes that the Church of England was quite ready, ahead of the facts, to embrace evolution in its earlier stages. We might agree on the facts of mutation and adaptation, but natural selection and survival of the fittest are hardly uniform laws of nature.

Such quick acquiescence to Darwin suggests that the Church of England had not investigated the binary distinctions evident in Genesis, or the question of a fixed order in creation, or the essentialism of the Biblical kinds. The Genesis claim is that genetic boundaries exist by which the kinds are fixed in essence. In genetics, this is called "horotely" and it aligns with the belief of Abraham's Hebrew ancestors that the Seed of the Creator - HR in ancient Egyptian, or Y-Shu - is the fixer of all boundaries. Within the kinds, there may be change in form, but not in essence. This is the view of a good number of great philosophers and should not be dismissed.

According to the early Nilotic Hebrew (4000-2000 BC), the first act of the Creator at the beginning was šw (Shu), meaning light. This is not the light of day. It is the eternal, uncreated light associated with the High God's son Y-shu (Yeshua), as proclaimed in John's Prologue.

There is also the concern that the labels "mythological" and "symbolic" in reference to Genesis 1 and 2 permit the Church of England to sidestep the philosophical and anthropological significance of this material. Not a single C or E scholar has acknowledged the binary reasoning of the biblical Hebrew, a pattern of thinking that underlies the whole of the Bible.

It is time for Christians on both sides of the Atlantic to set aside assumptions and look with greater objectivity at what Genesis tells us about the early Hebrew and their pervasive influence on the ancient world.


Related reading: Philosophers' Corner: Two Types of Binary Reasoning; Theories of Change and Constancy; Anglicanism on the Doctrine of Creation; Why the Name Jesus?; Rightly Reading Genesis 1-3; The United Religions Initiative, A Bridge Back to Gnosticism; Russian Church Seeks End to Darwinian Monopoly in Education; Binary Sets in the Ancient World

The Christ in Nilotic Mythology

Alice C. Linsley


While the creation stories of Genesis are often likened to the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, they have much closer affinity to the creation stories of Africa. This is evident in motif and in theological detail. Since Abraham’s ancestors were Proto-Saharan and Nilotic peoples and Genesis reflects their worldview, we should not be surprised to find the closest parallels to the Genesis stories in this part of Africa. Here are some examples:

Asiatic/Nubian/Babylonian/Egyptian

The Shilluk of southern Sudan call the Creator Jo-Uk. Jo-Uk made white people out of white sand and the Shilluk of out black dirt. When he came to Egypt, he made the people there out of the Nile mud which is why the Egyptians are red-brown. 

Much of the soil of the Nile Valley is red or reddish brown due to the high levels of Chromic Cambisols which produce a strong brown or red color.

Here we find the motif of the Creator making the man from the dirt of the earth. We also have a clue as to the original context of the account of God creating the man (Gen. 2:7). The Hebrew adamah (Adam) means red clay and is related to the Hamitic/Hausa words odum, odu and edo, meaning red or reddish brown. So this story comes from that part of the Nile known as Egypt and probably dates to the time of the Kushite rulers. This is the origin of the associated of Edom with the color red. The Greek name for the Edomites was Idumea, meaning red people.

The Horites of Edom had a reddish skin tone. The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Horus. Horus is the archetype by which Abraham's people would later recognize Jesus as the Son of Ra, the "Seed" of the Woman of Genesis 3:15.

Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors considered Horus the Seed of Ra because Hathor-Meri was said to conceive when she was overshadowed by the Sun. In the oldest known Messianic tradition the Son of God is born as a calf to Hathor-Meri who is portrayed as a sacred cow, and the birth took place in a stable with the Babe sleeping in a crib. By all appearances, Jesus fulfills the Horus myth perfectly.

The sacred cow is an ancient motif among the Proto-Saharans, Nilotes and Kushites. Jo-Uk brought forth his only begotten son, Kola, by the Sacred White Cow. Kola was the father of Uk-wa who had two wives. One of Uk-wa's son's was Nyakang who became the first ruler.
 
Here we find the idea of the Creator having an only begotten son. We also find the practice of the ruler having two wives, as did all the Horite ruler-priests among Abraham's people.

Hathor was later called Isis. She is part of the sacred Triad of the Nilotic peoples: Osirus (Re), Isis (Hathor) and Horus. Osirus and Horus are said to "be one." Hathor and Horus were often portrayed as a cow with her calf. The Hebrews asked Harun (Aaron) to make a golden calf, the symbol of Horus who was called the "son of God."

Abraham’s people were devotees of Horus (Horites/Horim). They were ethnically Kushite and the oldest known center of Horus worship is the ancient city of Nekhen in Sudan (Hierakonpolis) in Sudan. At the Nekhen temple, votive instruments were ten times larger than the mace heads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine. Horite priests placed invocations to Horus at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose. This is the likely origin of the sun blessings in Hinduism (the Agnihotra morning ritual) and in Judaism (the Birka Hachama, or “Sun Blessing” ritual performed every 28 years).

The Kushites and Egyptians observed the death of Horus (Osirus) in a 5-day festival. The first 3 days were marked by solemnity (as Plutarch noted in Isis and Osiris, 69). The last 2 days were a time of feasting and rejoicing. Horus is said to have died on the 17th of Athyr. His death was commemorated by the planting of grain. On the third day, the 19th of Athyr, there was a celebration of Horus’ rising to life. It is no coincidence that Jesus alludes to the ancient Horite myth when describing his passion and resurrection. He is a direct descendant of the Horite ruler-priests lines which exclusively intermarried and he was born in Bethlehem of Judah, in the ruler-priest line of Matthew (Mattai/Mattan). This was the line of Joseph of Hari-mathea, a voting member of the Sanhedrin. He and Nicodemus, another member of the Sanhedrin, buried Jesus’ body.


The Bronze Serpent

Harun was apparently an Afro-Asiatic metal worker.  He also crafted the bronze serpent on Moses' rod. When bitten by vipers in the wilderness the people looked upon the rod with the serpent image and were saved. Jesus compared his crucifixion to Moses raising up the rod with a brass serpent: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:14,15). Why the comparison? Because Moses’ staff was a symbol of Horus, who was called the "son of God."

Biblical anthropologist Susan Burns reports, "Jewelry work requires coils of metal. Coiling makes the metal stronger and easier to work. I have a picture of a bronze coil with a flattened nose resembling a snake from the Neolithic."

The flat part was where the metalworker held the coil while working the metal. Such coiled bronze serpents have been recovered at Neolithic metal working sites in the Arabah. Mining operations were always under auspices of Hat-Hor, the virgin mother of Horus, as at the Timna Valley copper mines near Eilat.


Horite Religion

The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who were called Hapiru in Akkadian and Habiru in the Kushitic languages. The Egyptians called these temple attendants ˁpr.w, the w being the plural suffix. This has been rendered '*wap'er' by the Afro-Asiatic expert Christopher Ehret. The *wap'er had significant political authority alongside the ruler. They presided over the rituals directed toward the High God and acted as intercessors and prophets. The Habiru (Hebrew) were devotees of Horus, whose worship originated in what is today Sudan. At Nekhen in Sudan, Horite priests placed invocations to Horus at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose. The sun was the emblem of the Creator.

The Dravidian east-facing temple was termed O-piru, meaning Sun House or House 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 and watched as it expanded across the horizon. This is the likely origin of the sun blessings in Hinduism (the Agnihotra morning ritual) and in Judaism (the Birka Hacama, or “Sun Blessing” ritual performed every 28 years).

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 Indian archaeologist, B. B. Lal, contends that the Dravidians came from southern Egypt and Sudan (Nubia). Lal writes: "At Timos [Timnah in ] the Indian team dug up several megalithic sites of ancient Nubians which bear an uncanny resemblance to the cemeteries of early Dravidians which are found all over Western India from Kathiawar to Cape Comorin. The intriguing similarity extends from the subterranean structure found near them. Even the earthenware ring-stands used by the Dravidians and Nubians to hold pots were identical."

The Timnah Valley of the southwestern Arabah is rich in copper ore and has been actively mined since the 6th millennium BC. Here Beno Rothenberg excavated a small Horite shrine dedicated to Hat-Hor at the base of Solomon's Pillars. It was built during the reign of Pharaoh Seti I at the end of the 14th century BC. Hat-Hor was the Guardian of Afro-Arabian mines.


The Tree of Life and First Parents

The motifs of the Tree of Life and First Parents are also Nilotic. The Gikuyu of Kenya tell this story from precolonial times:  

There was wind and rain. And there was also thunder and terrible lightening. The earth and the forest around Mount Kerinyaga shook. The animals in the forest whom the Creator had recently put there were afraid. There was no sunlight. This went on for many days so that the whole land was in darkness. Because the animals could not move, they sat and moaned with the wind. The plants and trees remained dumb.
 
It was, our elders tell us, all dead except for the thunder, a violence that seemed to strangle life. It was this dark night whose depth you could not measure, not you nor I can conceive of its solid blackness, which would not let the sun pierce through it.

But in the darkness, at the foot of Mount Kerinyaga, a tree rose. At first it was a small tree and it grew up, finding a way even through the darkness. It wanted to reach the light and the sun. This tree had Life. It went up, sending forth the rich warmth of a blossoming tree - you know, a holy tree in the dark night of thunder and moaning. This was Mukuyu, God's tree.

Now you know that at the beginning of things there was only one man (Gikuyu) and one woman (Mumbi). It was under this Mukuyu that He first put them. And immediately the sun rose and the dark night melted away. The sun shone with a warmth that gave life and activity to all things. The wind and the lightening and thunder stopped. The animals stopped moaning and moved, giving homage to the Creator and to Gikuyu and Mumbi. And the Creator, who is also called Murungu, took Gikuyu and Mumbi from his holy mountain to the country of the ridges near Siriana and there stood them on a big ridge. The He took them to Mukuruwe wa Gathanga about which you have heard so much. But He had shown them all the land - yes, children, God showed Gikuyu and Mumbi all the land and told them: 'This land I hand over to you, O Man and Woman. It is yours to rule and to till in serenity, sacrificing only to me, your God, under my sacred tree.'

Here we find the motifs of primal darkness, a tree of life, first parents, sacred mountains, and sacrifice to the Creator.
 
The Kikuyu place the first parents on a ridge north of Muranga, a town south of Nyeri in Kenya. One can visit the site. A sky-blue gate marks the entrance to Mukurwe Wa Nyagathanga—the Tree of Gathanga. Inside the gate are two mud huts, one for Gikuyu and one for Mumbi. The site looks toward the cloud-shrouded Mount Kirinyaga (Mount Kenya).
 
To the Kikuyu, Mount Kenya was the seat of God, who they called Ngai. Ngai created Gikuyu and told him: “Build your homestead where the fig trees grow."  This is why many believe that the forbidden fruit was not an apple, but a fig.
 
At the foot of Mount Kenya's northeast slope, is the town of Meru, on the Kathita River. This town takes its name from Mount Meru in neighboring Tanzania. Some call Mount Meru "Kinyangiri," which is the equivalent of Kirinyaga, meaning Mount Kenya.
 
Mount Kenya stands at 15,000 feet and is 42 miles west-southwest of Mount Kilimanjaro. It is an extinct volcanic crater and the land at the base is rich volcanic soil. As one ascends the mountain, there are forests with fig and Acacia trees. Mahogany, olive, and date palm trees grow on the drier crater walls. So many species of animals live here that the Kenyan tourist agencies refer to Mount Meru as "Noah’s ark."  Some say that Mount Meru is where Noah's ark landed. This makes sense because the biblical Noah lived in the area of Lake Chad in Bor-No, meaning the "Land of Noah."  No other place on earth claims to be Noah's homeland.


The Meru/Meri/Meni Connection
 
The word "meni" appears in Isaiah 65:11, where it is paralleled with the word gad, meaning good fortune. A connection can be established between the word meni and sacrifice on mountain tops because where the word gad appears there is often a contextual reference to sacrifice on mountains. We recall that Noah offered burnt sacrifice on Ar-Meni after his deliverance (Gen. 8:20). Armenia is an incorrect translation of 'Ar-Meni.

Angkor Wat in Cambodia is a symbolic representation of Mount Meru in Buddhist and Hindu myths. This was originally a Horite shrine as evidenced from a stone relief which shows Horus as a falcon flying above the sun on Re' solar boat.

Horus at top right flying as a falcon above the sun.

Angkor Wat faces west toward the Nile. Angkor Wat and the Egyptian royal tombs correspond in form to the number 72. The number 72 represents represents the numerical sequence linked to the earth’s axial precession, which causes the apparent alteration in the position of the constellations one degree every 72 years. It has been noted also that Angkor Wat is located 72 degrees of longitude east of the Pyramids of Giza. The name Angkor correlates with the ancient Egyptian Anhk-Hor, meaning "May Horus Live." This was originally a Horite shrine, evidence that the Horite ruler-priests are responsible for the diffusion of Horite religious beliefs and practices across the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

Meru is Meri in Egyptian and Mary in English. In Cambodia, Meri is Meni, with the n taking the place of the r, as often happens in the Southeastern Asian languages. There Mary is called "Mania." The association of Mary with a sacred mountain is very old. The Virgin Mary, whose womb swelled with the Son of God, is often portrayed in Christian iconography as the sacred mountain.

The Prophet Daniel saw a mountain, from which a stone was cut by the hand of God (Dan. 2:34, 45). This is the stone which the builders rejected and which has become a stumbling block, even Jesus Christ, the Son of God.


Related reading:  The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ; Petra Reflects Horite Beliefs; Horite Expectation and the Star of Bethlehem; What Color was Abraham?; The Genesis Creation Stories; The Afro-Asiatic Metalworkers;  Mount Mary and the Origins of Life; Genesis: Is It Really About Human Origins?

Genesis 1 Sets the Scene

Genesis looks at what the culture around it believes about the nature of the material world, and disagrees with it profoundly. -- Jane Williams


Genesis 1 and 2 must be among the most hotly debated texts in the Bible. But our obsession with whether and how they can be reconciled with scientific descriptions of the beginning of the universe is distorting our understanding of where these "creation narratives" fit into the wider concerns of the Book of Genesis. In its printed form, Genesis has 50 chapters, only one and a bit of which directly concern the origins of the universe. They are there to set the scene for what follows.

Genesis is, from beginning to end, a theological book. It opens with God, "the beginning", and everything that follows is based on this assumption of the relationship between God and the world. So when we get on to the main action of Genesis, with God's conversations with Abraham and his descendents, we know that what is happening is not just of local significance. The God who calls Abraham is the one we have just seen, making the world, so we know that Abraham's story is one about the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Read it all here.

This is an interesting article, though it contains nothing controversial or new.  Williams asserts that Genesis presents a view of the material world unlike the cultures around it. The first question one might ask is "Cultures around whom?" It is meaningless to speak of cultures around a text.  It would be more meaningful to ask "What culture produced this text?"

The second question to ask is this: "If the Genesis creation stories are akin to the Gilgamesh Epic, then in what way do they represent a worldview different from the culture that produced the Gilgamesh Epic?"

In fact, the Genesis creation stories have much closer affinity to the creation stories of the part of Africa from which Abraham's ancestors came. This is evident in motif and in theological detail. We might more accurately speak of these as Afro-Arabian narratives since Abraham's ancestors were Nilotic and spread across the Arabian Peninsula. This is why the Genesis creation stories have close affinity to the creation stories of the Nilotic peoples.


Related reading:  The Genesis Creation Stories; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology; Afro-Arabian Number Symbolism

Q and A on Creation versus Evolution

Alice C. Linsley

I was recently reading what Religious Tolerance.org has published on the debate between creationists and evolutionists. I was struck by how the site raises significant questions but fails to answer them. So I have constructed a Q and A using material from that page to present answers that might clarify the issues.


RT: Will the battle between evolution and creationism be settled in the foreseeable future?

Not likely. The battle ground is the book of Genesis and the conflict has to do with warring interpretations of that book. The general populace must be better acquainted with what Genesis actually says before there can be a resolution of this falsely framed conflict. A proper understanding of Genesis can resolve the creation versus evolution debate, but the media and the schools are not going to make the effort to learn what Genesis tells us and to transmit that information to the public. Journalists love debate (even ones based on false premises) and the schools, both public and religious, have too much invested in their systems of interpretation to set them aside in favor of the truth.



RT: There seems to be a trend among some Christian schools and colleges to abandon creationism in favor of theistic evolution -- the concept that God used evolution of the species over billions of years to create the species that we see today. What do you think of this trend?

It is not helpful. Genesis asserts that the order of creation is fixed and unchanging. This assertion must be understood before it can be either accepted or rejected. By fixed order the Bible means that God has established the order of creation with flexible but fixed boundaries. This means that there is change within species but not evolution from one species to a totally different species. This is why humans produce only humans and if there is something wrong with the genetic code, the fetus usually aborts. Likewise, plants produce plants, animals produce animals and bacteria, while it can mutate, is still bacteria.

Examples cited of evolution from one species to another are not backed up with physical evidence. For example, the public school biology books assume that humans evolved from lower primates and show this in drawings beginning with a hairy, stooped-shouldered and long-armed creature whose form over a series of drawings becomes more like modern humans. These drawings have no basis in physical evidence however. They are a theoretical model. In fact, the oldest human fossils show every evidence of being fully human. There is a range of physical structure among these remains, just as there is a range of physical appearance among humans today. In other words, after 85 years of frantic searching for the “missing link” none has ever been found. Nor will such a specimen be found if Genesis is correct in the assertion that God’s order of creation has fixed boundaries.



RT: Does acceptance of theistic or naturalistic evolution require people to interpret Genesis symbolically or to reclassify the creation stories as myths?

No. Analysis of the Genesis material makes it clear that the author understood the difference between historical and mythological. This is evident in analysis of the kinship pattern of Genesis 4 and 5 which shows intermarriage between the descendents of Cain and his brother Seth. Both men were rulers and they married the daughters of an African ruler named Enoch (Nok). So the author knew that Cain and Seth pertain to history while the Adam and Eve story pertains to mythology. Even in the story of the Fall there is evidence of an historical event which must have taken place in southern Africa before 70,000 years ago.



RT: The creation stories are closely tied to the fall of man. If Genesis were interpreted as symbolic or myth, wouldn’t the entire role of Jesus have to be reinterpreted? Without original sin, there is no obvious need for a savior.

The idea that something is wrong with this world is universal and hardly based on acceptance of the Genesis account of the Fall. In Hinduism, the fallen world is to be escaped. In Buddhism, the suffering of this world is to be overcome. The Jews, who have suffered throughout history, don’t need to be told that this is a fallen world or that evil exists. Each religion offers a different hope for salvation or escape from this world, but the oldest offer is traceable back to the oldest religious beliefs which apparently involved close communion between the Creator and His creatures and a promise of restoration of that communion through the royal Son who would be born from the priestly lines going back to Eden where the promise was made and has been remembered all these millennia.

Related reading:  Getting the Facts on Human Origins