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)

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.

Keeping an Open Mind About the Origins of the Universe

Sheila Liaugminas

Can science prove or disprove the existence of God? Has the origin of creation without a creator come to be settled by science? Are these questions knowable, even by the brightest minds in the world? Yes, sort of, is the basic answer…

Except for the question of ‘settled science’, because it’s not settled and if anything, keeps advancing toward an undeniable conclusion that a creator was behind creation.

So says, more or less, Fr. Robert Spitzer, Jesuit philosopher, educator, author and executive producer of Cosmic Origins, a fascinating new film that explores modern scientific theories about how the universe came to be. Spitzer was my guest on radio Friday for a compelling hour.

He said the eight scientists featured in the film based their dialogue around the fundamental question ‘What is the evidence for God from physics?’ The answer is plenty, so much in fact, that “today there’s more evidence than you can possible imagine,” he stated. Then he added “Stephen Hawking kind of left them all out.”

He said scientific atheism is not scientific at all. And agnosticism can come from honest naturalism, and kind of stay there. “They won’t move to a supernatural explanation unless they’ve exhaused every other natural explanation,” he explained, and of course they’ll never be able to do that.

But a most interesting thing happened at Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday party last January as assembled guests celebrated and conversed. Spitzer pointed to Lisa Grossman’s article in New Scientist to elaborate, but you need a subscription for more than the preview. Here's more:

You could call them the worst birthday presents ever. At themeeting of minds convened last week to honour Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday- loftily titled “State of the Universe” – two bold proposals posed serious threats to our existing understanding of the cosmos.

One shows that a problematic object called a naked singularity is a lot more likely to exist than previously assumed (see "Naked black-hole hearts live in the fifth dimension"). The other suggests thatthe universe is not eternal, resurrecting the thorny question of how to kick-start the cosmos without thehand of a supernatural creator.

While many of us may be OK with the idea of the big bang simply starting everything, physicists,including Hawking, tend to shy away from cosmic genesis. “A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God,” Hawking told the meeting, at the University of Cambridge, in a pre-recorded speech.

For a while it looked like it might be possible to dodge this problem, by relying on models such as aneternally inflating or cyclic universe, both of which seemed to continue infinitely in the past as well asthe future. Perhaps surprisingly, these were also both compatible with the big bang, the idea that theuniverse most likely burst forth from an extremely dense, hot state about 13.7 billion years ago.

However, as cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston explained last week, that hope has been gradually fading and may now be dead. He showed that all these theories still demand a beginning.

A call came in from a listener in the Batavia, Illinois community near Fermilab, who asked for good resources so he could better understand the topic and engage the debate with local scientists hard-set in their elimination of God from the creation and evolution equation.

Grossman’s article was the first resource Spitzer pointed to. I’m happy to direct folks to his book as well, New Proofs for the Existence of God, in which he presents peer-review physics studies, “string theory, quantum cosmology, mathematical thoughts on infinity” and more, in an easily digestible collection of evidence. Spitzer, founder and president of the Magis Institute, also highly recommends Stephen Barr’s Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, reviewed here in First Things.

Barr begins his book by pointing out that the methods and discoveries of modern physics can and must be separated from the philosophical doctrine of materialism, which so often serves as a dogmatic and, as Barr goes on to show with great power and effectiveness, unsubstantiated faith among physicists.

Seems to me that’s a very important note, “unsubstantiated faith among physicists” who willfully hold to their beliefs in spite of growing evidence that counters or at least questions them.

According to Barr, it was never obvious that physics implied or presupposed a materialistic view of the universe, but the existence of such a connection has been rendered downright implausible by a series of developments in twentieth-century physics. In a series of lucid chapters, Barr addresses the question of whether the universe had a beginning, looks at the issue of whether the universe exhibits any evidence of design or purpose, and examines what contemporary physics (and mathematics) has to say about the nature of human beings—specifically on the question of whether our behavior is determined by physical laws and whether we have an immaterial nature. At each point, Barr shows that “recent discoveries have begun to confound the materialist’s expectations and confirm those of the believer in God.”

Alas, it will continue. But with a fascinating compilation of new data all the time adding to the pool of scientific evidence. Last week the headlines touted the discovery of the ‘God particle,’ which Spitzer explained has nothing to do with God but everything to do with marketing. The New York Times explains more here.

Cool stuff, but the coolest of all is the fullest possible exploration of available evidence in the world at the moment. When you’re open to that, you’re open toeverything, God and all.

From here.

Related reading:  Overview of Theories of Creation; Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin; Is Genesis Really About Origins?; Invalid Science Against Religion Argument; Atheist Students Think Science is on Their Side

The World's Oldest Books

Alice C. Linsley


When considering written communication in antiquity, one must begin with the oldest known written communication. That would be ostrich eggshell fragments dating to 60,000 years ago. These have been hailed as the oldest example of symbolic written communication. The unusually large sample of 270 engraved eggshells were mostly excavated at Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa.

However, if one wishes to consider the world's oldest books, there is now a set of 70 contending for that title.

A group of 70 or so "books", about the side of a credit car, with between five and 15 lead leaves bound by lead rings, were discovered in northern Jordan after a flash flood had exposed two niches inside the cave. One one of the niches was marked with a menorah. A Bedouin found the books.  They are believed to be extremely rare relics of early Christianity.  Below is a photo of a page showing a date nut palm (tamar) which is a "tree of life." (Read more here.)

The other books were found in Egypt.  Here's the report:

It was on January 20, 1988, while excavating a third- century Roman house at Kellis, part of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, that student volunteer Jessica Hallet excitedly called out to her supervisor to come and look at a piece of wood with writing on it. Colin Hope, director of the Centre for Archaeology and Ancient History at Australia’s Monash University, wandered over to delicately brush sand from it. What emerged from that ancient kitchen were two wooden-paged books. One contained three speeches by the Greek orator Isocrates; however, it was the other book, underneath that one, that has garnered more attention.

The three years of the Kellis book were either 361 to 364 or 376 to 379, just before the site was abandoned. Wooden books were popular at the time, though papyrus ones were about to come into common use. A private letter, written in Greek and found in the house next door, contained an order: “Send a well-proportioned and nicely executed 10-page notebook for your brother Ision.” The addressee didn’t have to go far. A room adjacent to where the book was found revealed a bookmaker’s workshop containing acacia-wood mallets, three cut wooden pages, a block marked for cutting and a tool box which allowed Hope to reconstruct the process of making the book.

Hope agrees that calling it “the world’s oldest book” is a matter of definition. “It’s certainly the oldest as we know a book,” he says, “with a front and back cover, a pagination system and individual pages bound at the spine.”

Made from a single block of acacia wood, the book’s eight pages measure 33 by 11 centimeters (13"by 4"). Each page is coated with gum arabic to provide a writing surface. They’re held together by tightly spun linen strings threaded through pairs of holes drilled at the top and bottom. Should the binding ever have broken, re-ordering the pages would have presented no problem: Notches along the spine line up to a perfect V when the pages are in the correct order.

The book is now safely housed in the Kharga Archeological Museum in Egypt’s Kharga Oasis, near Dakhleh, where crops similar to the ones named in it are grown, and similar payments continue to be made.

The second book, dubbed the Kellis Agricultural Account Book, is a revealing record written by the manager of an agricultural estate of all the comings and goings of the business of the estate over three years. Its 1784 entries list payables and receivables, including annual obligations to the landlord, the mistress of the house and the field workers. Income items include crops like wheat, barley, chickens, figs, olive oil, honey and wine. Outgoing payments included “to Syrion, for wage,” “to Father Psennouphis, for wedding gifts,” “transport charge,” and notes indicated how each payment was made, whether in cash or produce or both. It’s an extremely important written record that can be compared to archeological remains found at the site.

From here. Dakhleh is in the desert in the southwestern part of Egypt in what was part of ancient Kush.
 
 
Related reading: The Writing System of Menes; Canaanite Origins of the Alphabet; The Origins of Written Communication; Sacred Writings and the Uniqueness of the Bible; Paleolithic Ostrich Eggshell Communication; The Writing of David's Realm

Canaanite Origins of the Alphabet

To the Asiatics, as they were called, the lush Nile Delta, with its open marshlands rich with fish and fowl, was a veritable Garden of Eden. From earliest times, Canaanites and other Asiatics would come and settle here. Indeed, this is the background of the Biblical story of the famine in Canaan that led to Jacob’s descent into Egypt (Genesis 46:1–7).


By the beginning of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (a few years after 2000 B.C.E.), the pressure of immigrants on the eastern Delta was so strong that the Egyptian authorities built a series of forts at strategic points to “repel the Asiatics,” as the story of Sinuhe tells us.1
 
More than a century later, however, Egyptian policy toward the Asiatics changed. Instead of trying to prevent them from coming in, the Egyptians cultivated close relations with strong Canaanite city-states on the Mediterranean coast and allowed select Asiatic populations to settle in the eastern Delta... [Read it all here.]
 
 
For more on this topic, go here.

Are the Igbo Israelites?

Alice C. Linsley

Are the Igbo related to the Israelites? This is the question Salamatou Naino Idi asked and I will do my best to answer her question. Probably there is some connection, but the culture traits and religious practices of the Igbo who claim to be Israelites appear to represent a relatively modern departure from the traditional religious practices of other Igbo clans.

Source: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2010

The Igbo have a West Benue-Congo origin. They are one of many peoples to have roots in the Cross River Region of Nigeria. They relied on the land, made fertile by the waters of the Benue Trough, and they fished.

In this 2010 genetic study, it was found that "When the two Igboland groups were compared to the Cross River region clans a large proportion of pairwise comparisons between the two regions demonstrated significant differences. The Igboland groups, despite being in close proximity to each other, even demonstrated differences between themselves..."

Genetic testing of Igbo friends has presented different results. Some are in L1b and others in L1c. However, all modern humans share the mtDNA Haplogroup L3 ancestry.

The map below shows the dispersion of peoples out of the Upper Nile region. Each of these groups: N, R, M and X share common L3 ancestry. Not shown on this map is the movement west into the well-watered regions of central Africa, near Lake Chad and the Cross River Region of Nigeria.

Related reading: Are the Igbos of Nigeria Jewish?; In Memory of Dr. Catherine Acholonu; Little genetic differentiation as assessed by uniparental markers in the presence of substantial language variation in peoples of the Cross River region of Nigeria

Conversation About Hausa Origins

Conversation with Fula (Puel) on the origin of the Hausa

Main linguistic groups of Nigeria

Alice C. Linsley


I've been having an interesting online conversation with a Nigerian named Digare Ahmed at my Biblical Anthropology group. Ahmed lives in northern Nigeria and is Fula (Peul), not Hausa, but he has raised the question about Hausa origins. I thought it might be helpful to present this in a Question and Answer format for others to read.

Ahmed asked:  "How many languages are said to be Semitic? If the Hausa language is one, then are the Hausa people Semitic?"


A: The Semitic languages are Arabic, Aramaic, Amharic, Hebrew and Hausa.  Hausa is linguistically close to Arabic, which is older than Hebrew. The oldest Arabic documents to date have been found in the region of Dedan in Southern Arabia. They are referred to as "Old Dedanite" texts and the qiblahs in the oldest mosques in Cairo and in Baghdad point to Dedan, about 500 miles north-northwest of Mecca. The Dedanites were Afro-Arabians.

Hausa-speakers are a mixture of peoples, but their language is essentially Kushitic.  Here's why:

Beginning in Nubia about 10,000 years ago, the Kushites spread into the interior of Africa along the Shari and the Benue rivers, establishing kingdoms and chieftains as far at Lagos in Nigeria and into the southern Kordafan. They also went west. The Ashante of Ghana were Kushites. Nte means "people of" and Asha (Asa) is a proper name that refers to the Creator and to the Creator's appointed earthly representative, a deified king. The Ashante are the people of Asha, a Kushite ruler who established a kingdom in West Africa.

The name Asha is a priestly name in the Bible. One of Jesse's grandsons was named Asahel, which means "made by God." The priest Elkanah had a son named Am-asi (I Chron. 2:25, 35) and a Jerusalem priest was named Am-ashai (Neh. 11:13). This suggests that the origins of the priesthood of Israel are to be traced to the older Kushite civilization.

The word Akan is likely related to the biblical figure Kain, who was a Proto-Saharan ruler in the region closer to Lake Chad. His descendants are also called "Kushite" but Kushite is a general term that applies to many peoples of the Nile Valley and the Eastern wet Sahara. He is associated with the beginnings of metal work in Africa.

Kush was the grandson of Noah. The term "Kushite" refers to a vast large area. The various regions of ancient Kush are called by different names, including early Egypt, Eastern Sudan, and Nubia. The Kushite territories were ruled by tribal chiefs and overlords of larger territories. Biblical Kush included Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania. The culture was essentially Nilotic. Some of the ancient Nilotic peoples moved into the Benue Trough. Others moved into Southern Arabia. That is why there is a close linguistic and cultural connection between the Edo of Benin and the Edomites of the Bible.

Linguistic and archaeological evidence supports the biblical picture of Abraham's ancestors coming from the Upper Nile region that was part of Kush and spreading their culture and religious beliefs by the great water systems across what I've termed the ancient "Afro-Asiatic Domnion." During this period the Sahara was a much wetter region. Genesis tells us that Abraham was a descendant of Kush and of the great Kushite kingdom-builder, Nimrod.

Hausa’s close relationship to Arabic is due to the common roots that the Kushite languages share with old Arabic. Before Judaism became a distinct world religion, these Afro-Asiatic peoples shared a common worldview and religious practices which the Bible calls Kushite.  The Kushite civilization spread from the Nile Valley into southern Africa and into West Africa.

Kushite religion was characterized by the following features:

1. A deity associated with the number 3, a triune God. The number 3 is repeatedly found in connection to the most astonishing acts of God. Jonah was 3 days in the belly of the whale. Moses was hidden for 3 months (Ex. 2:2). Job's 3 friends struggled with the mystery of why the righteous suffer. Moses asked permission to go 3 days journey into the wilderness to worship. Abraham traveled 3 days to a mountain only God could reveal and upon which God provided His own sacrifice. The Covenant God made with Abraham involved cutting up 3 animals that were 3 years old. God in 3 Persons visited Abraham (Gen. 18). The 3 measures of flour made into cakes for those Visitors. The 3 gifts offered them: curds, milk and a calf. Abraham prayed 3 times for the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. Joseph had a dream of a vine with 3 branches (Gen 40:10-12). Saul was told "you will come as far as the oak of Tabor, and 3 men going up to God at Bethel will meet you, one carrying 3 young goats, another carrying 3 loaves of bread..." (I Sam.10:3) The “Son of Man” appeared with 3 men in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3). Jesus rose on the third day, “according to the Scriptures.” The Afro-Asiatic Canaanites had a name for the 3 God: "Baal Shalisha".

2. Veneration of the Sun as the Deity's emblem/chariot (against Babylonian worship of the Moon which merely reflects light). Abraham’s father, Terah, was criticized for being an idol worshiper because he left the land of this fathers (Canaan) and compromised with the religion of the land to which he moved (Ur and Haran, both known for the worship of the moon god Sin).

3. A fixed binary order in creation which speaks of God's nature, and helps seekers of God to know how they should order their lives. As the Sun was regarded as the emblem of the Creator, people faced the rising Sun to pray. This is what it means to be rightly “oriented.” Male-female, heaven-earth, night-day, dry land-seas, east-west, north-south, left-right, raw-cooked, hot-cold, life-death, good-evil, God-man: these distinctions order our world and our thinking. They prevent us from becoming lost, confused or disoriented. It is necessary to pay attention to these binary distinctions to understand holy Tradition. For example, Abraham was visited “in the heat of the day” by God in 3 Persons (Gen. 18:1). Compare this to the binary opposite of “in the cool of the day”, the time of God’s visitation to Adam and Eve in Paradise (Gen. 3:8). Why are the two accounts posed as hot and cool encounters with God? Because in the first God has come to punish the cities, and in the second God has come to enjoy being with the Man and the Woman He made in His image.

4. At least among the Horites of the Nile there was an expectation of Messiah/Anointed One, who like David (only greater), would be "Son of God". Muslims believe this is the Prophet Mohammed. Christians believe this is Jesus, Son of the Virgin Mary. Jews are still waiting for the Messiah’s appearing.

5. A hereditary office of priest and the intermarrying of priestly lines. I’m interested in your suggestion that Hausa might be hawassa, which might be derived from the Egyptian word for priest - harwa. This would fit the general picture of the Hausa’s origins being to the east of Nigeria, possibly in ancient Nubia (Sudan) which in the time of the black Pharaohs controlled Egypt.  the word sarki which is translate emir in Hausa has an earlier meaning or ruler-priest. The priests of the ancient Afro-Asiatic dominion were called sarki and they spread all the way to Nepal and Cambodia.

6. Animal sacrifice at altars, many of which were associated with Horus, called “son of God.” This is why many of the oldest altars were shaped like falcons, the totem of the followers of Horus who are called Horites. Moses and his family were Horites.

7. Similar number symbolism, the number 7 having special significance, especially as related to the first-born son’s marriage and his reception of a kingdom.

8. Prophets and a tradition whereby true and false prophets were discerned. I recently read an article on prophets in ancient Nubia/Meroe which indicated that this phenomenon is very old.


Ahmed asked: Where did the Hausa come from?

A: This is an excellent question. I believe the oral tradition of the Hausa is reliable in the fine details. According to Hausa oral tradition, Bayajida (or Bayajidda) is the founder of the seven Hausa city states. He is said to have come to Bor’No (Land of Noah) from the east. He was a stranger to the area because his name is "Ba ya ji da", which means "he who didn't understand the language before, he was a stranger here." He likely came to Nigeria from Arabia. The name resembles the Arabic name 'Ub ay diyya.  Al-'Ubaydiyya (Arabic: العبيدية‎) was an Arab village before it was depopulated on March 3, 1948. It was located in Galilee about 6 miles south of Tiberias, close to the Jordan River. The Canaanites referred to al-'Ubaydiyya as Bayt Shamash which means "House of God." Shamash was another name for the Creator Re, whose emblem was the Sun. He was worshiped by different names across the vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion.
In Bor’nu, Bayajida married the daughter of a local chief, but later fled after having a dispute with the ruler. This fits the biblical person of Cain (Kano) who married a daughter of the chief Nok. He is said to have fled after killing his brother.

The Hausa claim that their founder, Bayajida, came from the east in an effort to escape his father. It is possible that his father was a ruler in Egypt or ancient Nubia. The story goes on to say that Bayajida eventually came to Gaya where he employed blacksmiths to fashion a knife for him. This fits the picture as the region of Gaya, Nok and Kano is famous for blacksmiths, such as the Inadan. Gaya is said to be the origin of a man named Kano who first settled in the present Kano State in search of ironstone.

With his knife Bayajida proceeded to Daura where he delivered the people from oppression by a powerful serpent who guarded their well and prevented them from getting water six days out of the week. The serpent could not keep them from taking water on the holy day. In appreciation, the queen of Daura married Bayajida and she gave birth to seven sons. Each became a ruler and ruled the seven city states that make up Hausaland.

A problem arises when we attempt to put dates to these events. The Hausa states are recognized as entities only as early as 500 A.D., and they did not control the region until 1200 A.D. Their history is tied to Islam and the Fulani who wrested power from them in the early 1800s through a series of holy wars. It appears that the original Hausa story has taken on layers of interpretation since the influx of different peoples to the area.

Nevertheless, there are striking parallels between Bayajida’s story and the stories of Abraham’s ancestors who lived in west central Africa. For example, Bayajidda, the son of a ruler, met his wife at a sacred well where he delivered her people from a great serpent. Most of the heroes of Genesis met their wives at sacred wells or springs. Abraham married Keturah at the Well of Sheba (Beersheva). Issac (Yitzak) found a wife at a well in Aram. Moses encountered his wife at a well sacred to the Midianites and won her had after he delivered the women and flocks from Egyptian raiders.

Bayajida was associated with metal workers, as was Cain. The metalworkers of the ancient Kushite civilization were also rulers which is what the word Cain means. (The Eastern Afro-Asiatic equivalent is Khan, meaning king or ruler.) The Kushite maintained two wives in separate households.  This is still done today among the metalworkers of the region.  The metal working chiefs of the Inadan who live in the Air Desert surrounding Agadez, maintain two wives in separate households on a north-south axis (National Geographic, Aug. 1979, p. 389). This is the pattern of the Horite ruler-priests of Abraham's people. They also had two wives in separate households on a north-south axis, and they were metal workers.

Aaron (Exodus 32) made a statute of a golden calf, the symbol of the young Horus who was regarded as the "son" of the Creator. Horus' anthropomorphic form is either as a adult male or more usually as a boy wearing the sidelock typical of royal Egyptian youth. Horus as a boy is often shown on cippi dominating crocodiles and serpents. Consider this in light of the Woman, the Child, and the Dragon in Revelation 12. Consider also the red cow of Numbers 19 that stands as a perpetual symbol of Israel's need for cleansing. The cow is sacrificed and burned outside the camp and the ashes used for "water of lustration." (Numbers 19:9)

The root of Bayajidda's name is BJA, the ancient Egyptian word for meteroric iron. Bja refers to iron beads from heaven. The Beja of Sudan, Egypt and the Horn of Africa are metalworkers. The Beja's metalworking kin in Niger and northern Nigeria are the Inadan. Bja corresponds to the Sanskrit word bija, meaning semen or seed. Meteoritic iron was used in the fabrication of iron beads in Nubia about 6000 years ago. These beads may have been perceived as seeds from heaven which brought divine power to the wearer. Meteoritic iron was used in the fabrication of crooks and flails, the symbols of the Egyptian and Kushite pharaohs. These symbols were believed to give the ruler powers from heaven.

That the earlier layer of the Hausa origins account is very old is attested by the role which water plays in the story. In the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion shrines were built along rivers and at wells and springs from west central Africa to the Indus River Valley. Serpents inhabited these places and were both venerated and feared. In Sanskrit serpent is naaga, in Hebrew it is nahash, and in Hausa the serpent is naja.

Such shrines exist today in Africa and Asia. It is not uncommon for the serpent to speak through a woman who goes into a trace. This is regarded as prophecy. The late Igbo scholar Dr. Catherine Acholonu believed that the Christ is the Great Serpent. The serpent is a neutral image in Scripture: sometimes it is feared and reviled, and at other times it is a symbol of divine deliverance and healing.

Moses crafted a bronze serpent in the wilderness and those who looked upon it were saved.  “And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues, they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly they will recover; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (Injil, Mark 16:17-18) 

Christians believe that Jesus is the fulfillment of the first promise in the Bible, Genesis 3:15. This is called the "Edenic Promise" because it was made to Abraham's Kushite ancestors in Eden.  Here God declared that "the Woman" (not Eve since she is not named until verse 20) would bring for "the Seed" who would crush the serpent's head and restore paradise.

I hope that this will stimulate further discussion of the fascinating topic of Hausa origins.

Best wishes to you Digare Ahmed!


Related reading:  Archaeology and the Afro-Arabian Context of Genesis; Conversation about Igbo Origins; African Naming Practices; An African Reflects on Biblical Names; Who Were the Kushites?; Who Were the Horites?

DNA Confirms Mixed Ancestry of Jews

Alice C. Linsley

Reformed Judaism Magazine has an article about the mixed ethnic and racial identity of Abraham's people. Here is the part that caught my attention:

Based on the anthropological and genetic record, we’ve been able to ascertain that the core Israelite population was not a single homogenous population, as the Bible says, but really an amalgam of local populations—Canaanites, Semites, and others—who merged in one form or another over many centuries and achieved a kind of tribal unity by about 1000 B.C.E., during the time of King Solomon. DNA then begins to come into play again after the development of a worldwide Jewish diaspora, which began in the aftermath of the Assyrian invasion of the Northern Kingdom in the 8th century B.C.E. and again after the destruction of the First (586 B.C.E.) and Second (70 C.E.) Temples in Jerusalem. For example, DNA research now confirms that groups in China and India are likely descendants of Israelites from the First Temple period.

The Bible reveals that the Jews are a not pure race. That is something that the Jewish leaders hoped to accomplish after the return from Babylon, but Jewish racial purity is largely a myth, except for the priestly lines which intermarried exclusively. Those are the lines listed in the genealogies of Genesis 4-12.  The priestly lines do not show a mixed DNA.

Priests married only the daughters of other priests and the priestly lines were patrilineal kin. The priesthood was already well established before Aaron. Moses' father was the eighth generation ruler-priest of the House of Seir, the Horite. Joseph married the chaste daughter of the priest of Heliopolis. Abraham’s mother is not named in the Bible, but according to tradition she was the daughter of a priest associated with the shrine of Karnach on the Nile. Her father is called "Karnevo" in the Babylonian Talmud.  The Karnach temple was dedicated to Horus who was called the “son of God”. The Horites were a caste of priests who were devotees of Horus.

Genesis 10 reveals that Abraham was a descendent of Kush, so we know that the Genesis material has a Nilotic cultural context.

This same article in Reform Judaism Magazine goes on to says: "DNA research of male and female lineages has shown, for example, that certain tribes in Africa and India have Jewish roots."  The Sudra who settled in southern India were from Sudan. They are the ones who build the Harrapa civilization and spread their Nilotic worldview across the anceint Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

They migrated out of East Africa, as did the great kingdom builder Nimrod, one of Abraham's ancestors. These Kushite rulers are responsible for the spread of a common worldview and common religious practices from Bor-No (Land of Noah) near Lake Chad to India.


Related reading:  Jewish Myth of Racial Purity; Challenge to Shaye Cohen's Portrayal of Abraham; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology; Who Were the Kushites?; The Migration of Abraham's Ancestors; Who Were the Horites?