Priests and Solar Symbols Among the R1b Peoples

 

Dispersion of the R1b populations.

Dr. Alice C. Linsley


The monk priest Augustine was tasked by Pope Gregory 1 to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons. He arrived in England in 596 A.D. with 40 monks. Augustine was the official representative of Rome and was based in Canterbury.

However, the priesthood among the natives of Britain has a deeper history. According to Gildas's De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae there were Christians living in Britain in 46 A.D. That is 550 years before Augustine’s arrival. The presence of Christians in Roman Britain predates the episcopacy of Evodius of Antioch (53–69 A.D.) and the episcopacy of Linus of Rome (64-79 A.D.).

This is Gildas’ poetic description of Jesus Christ: Meanwhile, to the island stiff with frost and cold, and in a far distant corner of the earth, remote from the visible sun, He, the true sun, even Christ, first yields His rays, I mean His precepts. He spread, not only from the temporal firmament, but from the highest arc of heaven beyond all times, his bright gleam to the whole world in the latest days, as we know, of Tiberius Caesar. At that time the religion of Christ was propagated without any hindrance, because the emperor, contrary to the will of the senate, threatened with death informers against the soldiers of that same religion.

Note that Tiberius Caesar ruled from 14 A.D. until his death in 37 A.D. This suggests that there were followers of Jesus in Britain at least 20 years earlier than the 46 A.D. date given by Gildas.

The Anglican priest, Louis R. Tarsitano, a Church historian, expressed the truth when he wrote: “... it is a simple error of fact to claim that the Anglican Church ‘began’ in the Reformation, or even with the late 6th century mission of St. Augustine to evangelize the newly arrived Anglo-Saxon pagans. The bishops of a five-centuries-old Christian Church met Augustine on the beach. (Of Forms and the Anglican Way)

There is no documentation tracing an orderly succession of consecrations in the Church before the early Second Century. The Vatican acknowledges this fact. The 1973 International Theological Commission on Catholic Teaching on Apostolic Succession states: “The absence of documents makes it difficult to say precisely how these transitions came about. By the end of the first century the situation was that the apostles or their closest helpers or eventually their successors directed the local colleges of episkopoi and presbyteroi. By the beginning of the second century the figure of a single bishop who is the head of the communities appears very clearly in the letters of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, who further claims that this institution is established "unto the ends of the earth".

When the best Church scholars fail to find evidence for something, it is probable that the evidence does not exist. Perhaps it is time to look at this from a different perspective.

Last week we explored the evidence of priestly ordinations for the Anglo-Celtic church in southern Britain during the time of Jesus. A key figure was Joseph Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, who had authority to ordain priests. Luke 23 states that Joseph Arimathea did not consent to the crucifixion of Jesus and that he was living in expectation of the Kingdom of God. If Joseph performed ordinations he would have done so according to the Sanhedrin’s rules. It seems that this resolves the problem of discontinuity which we do not find in the Scriptures, or in the immutable way that God works.


The Sanhedrin Ordination Rules

The Sanhedrin required three ruler-priests to give consent to ordination, but only one was required to be physically present for the laying on of hands. The other two could give consent in writing. In the Anglican tradition, "three to give consent" is the canonical requirement for the consecration of a new bishop. The Apostolic Canons of the Eastern Orthodox require the same for the consecration of a bishop.

At least three named Sanhedrin members were followers of Jesus: Joseph Arimathea, Nicodemus, and James the Just. The friendship between Joseph and Nicodemus is made explicit in John 19:38-42. It states that Joseph of Arimathea claimed Jesus' body after the crucifixion and Nicodemus provided a very substantial mixture of myrrh and aloes. Together, the two men wrapped Jesus' body in strips of linen with the mixture provided by Nicodemus.

As followers of Jesus Christ, Joseph and Nicodemus sought to spread the faith and would have been instrumental in perpetuating the priesthood as they understood it. Joseph probably ordained men of the Faith while he was in Cornwall. This constitutes organic continuity between the priests of the Old Covenant and the priests of the New Covenant.

Members of the Sanhedrin served under the presidency of the high priest much as priests today serve under the presidency of their bishop. The high priest bore the title nasi (ruler, king, prince) and retained this title even after the presidency was transferred to other hands. Likewise, in Anglican orders a bishop remains a bishop even after he has stepped down from serving in that office.

One of the duties of the High Priest was to preside at the coronation of a king. In England this is the duty of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The second in charge of the Sanhedrin was a ruler-priest called ab bet din (father of the court). The ab bet din served as a combination of the roles of the bishop's chaplain and the chancellor of the diocese who serves as the chief legal consultant to the bishop. The polity and ordination procedures of the Anglican Church seem to parallel those of the Sanhedrin.

The number of members of the Sanhedrin was limited to 71. When Sanhedrin members passed away or became unfit for service, new members were ordained in what Jews describe as an "unbroken succession" from Moses to the judges of the Secon Temple Sanhedrin (c. 520 - A.D. 70). After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D. the influence of the Sanhedrin was greatly diminished. Jewish ordination was abolished in 358 A.D., leaving priests of the Church as the single body to proclaim the Messianic faith we call "Christianity". Among them were Jewish priests according to Acts 6:7 which states, “a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith." It is through them that the Church has continuity with the priesthood extending back to the order of Melchizedek.


Requirements for Membership

Membership in the Sanhedrin was restricted to priests from families whose lineages could be traced back to the early Hebrew ruler-priests and specifically to Moses. Before a man could be considered for ordination, his ancestry had to be verified. The genealogies of Genesis, Numbers, Matthew and Luke list ancestors who qualified a man for membership. Jesus is a direct descendant of those early Hebrew ruler-priests.

To be considered for membership in the Sanhedrin, the man had to demonstrate knowledge of the Torah, have an imposing appearance, be of advanced age, a scholar, and be able to speak foreign languages. When testimony was given to the Sanhedrin in a foreign language, at least two members who spoke that language examined the witness. There was also a third member who understood the language. These three members constituted a minor court of three, who then reported the testimony to the entire Sanhedrin.


Solar Symbolism of the R1b Peoples

Among the R1b peoples who inhabit much of Western Europe and the British Isles, there is an ancient tradition involving the sun as the symbol of the High God and his son. Throughout Ireland, Wales, and England early Christians seamlessly merged the solar imagery of the early Hebrew with their daily lives. Anglo-Celtic daily routines emphasize God’s presence in activities such as sowing seed in the fields, harvesting, and baking bread. Examples include Irish soda bread scored with a cross and traditional maslin bread scored to look like a sun.

Maslin bread.

Some maslin loaves are decorated with oak leaves because Jesus was said to have been crucified on an oak tree. Belief in Christ’s third-day resurrection was enacted by the sowing of grain in the fields. In antiquity, this annual ritual was overseen by Hebrew priests who led the people in procession to the fields, much as Anglican priests once officiated at Rogation Day blessing of the fields and sowing ceremonies in May.

A threshing floor with solar imagery.

Threshing floors were built at high windy elevations so the wind could carry away the chaff. Threshing floors were also places of worship because they were symbols of the High God whose emblem was the sun. A ruler named Araunah sold David a threshing floor upon which David constructed an altar.

The hope of resurrection was linked to the rising of the sun. This six-prong solar image has been found of bone boxes (ossuaries) and grave markers.  

The ossuary of Miriam, granddaughter of the High Priest Caiaphas.

The inscription identifies this bone box as that of “Miriam Daughter of Yeshua, Son of Caiaphas, Priests of Ma’aziah from Beth Imri.” 

Another solar image that speaks of the High God is the winged sun.

A winged sun and ankh on the Seal of Hezekiah.

This image is expressed in a wonderful assurance: “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings…” (Malachi 4:2) 

Related reading: Solar Symbolism Among the R1 Peoples; Threshing Floors and Solar Symbols; Threshing Floors in Ancient Israel: Their Ritual and Symbolic Significance, by Jaime L. Waters, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015)

Draper and White Created a False Conflict

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

There is a common notion that religion/faith and science/reason are permanent adversaries. The idea of a constant conflict between them was advanced in the 19th century by John William Draper in his 1874 History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, and by Andrew Dickson White in his 1896 A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.

Both authors presented a simplistic picture of conflict between science and the Church. They were not intellectually honest in their assessment of Christianity, took quotes out of contexts, and ignored key historical facts such as the contributions of Christians in all scientific fields. Draper and White failed to recognize the sophisticated reasoning and scientific contributions of the biblical Hebrew, a ruler-priest caste, that pioneered the sciences as early as 6000 years ago.  

The practical wisdom of the early Hebrew (4200-2000 B.C.) extended to architecture, astronomy, animal husbandry, commerce, geometry, medicine, water management, and navigation. 

Astronomy

The ancients were motivated to understand celestial patterns because they believed that the order in creation was fixed by the Creator, and they were concerned about trespassing boundaries or violating the order in creation.

The Nilotic Hebrew priests were among the earliest observers to record celestial movements and astronomical events. By 4245 B.C. the priests of the Upper Nile had established a calendar based on the appearance of the star Sirius, known to the ancient Egyptians as the Sothic cycle, a span of 1,461 sidereal years (365.25 x 4) in which the heliacal rising once again “syncs up” with the solar calendar. In 3000 B.C. the heliacal rising of Sirius and the flooding of the Nile occurred around June 25th, near the summer solstice. This also marked the Egyptian New Year. The Sothic cycle from one average first sighting of Sirius to another is 365.25 days, and only 9 minutes and 8 seconds short of a sidereal year.

The Nilotic priests had been tracking the movement of Sirius and connecting it to seasonal changes and agriculture for thousands of years. The priest Manetho reported in his history (241 B.C.) that Nilotic Africans had been “stargazing” as early as 40,000 years ago. Plato claimed that the Africans had been tracking the heavens for 10,000 years. Plato defined the "perfect year" as the return of the celestial bodies (planets) and the diurnal rotation of the fixed stars to their original positions.

The ancient Nilotic astronomers observed that 36 groups of stars (small constellations) rise in a consecutive order on the eastern horizon every 24 hours. Each decan rises for 10 days. This gave them the formula of 36 X 10 = 360 days, with the calendar broken into 12 months of 30 days each.

Medicine

The earliest medical texts are found among the ancient Nilotes. These include the Ebers Papyrus, the Hearst Medical Papyrus, and the Edwin Smith papyrus, the world's oldest known surgical document (c. 1600 BC). These texts, most of them based on older texts, are comparatively free of the magician’s approach to treating illness. Priests were the first to practice medicine at "Houses of Life" or the temples along the Nile.

Only members of the elite strata of society learned and practiced medicine. One of the earliest known medical practitioners was Eanach (Enoch). He served the Pharaoh as his priest-physician, a wab sxmt (wab sekhmet). Eanach lived around 3000 B.C. and is said to have "healed the pharaoh's nostrils." Likely, this means that he performed a healing ritual that involved placing the cross-like Ankh against the Pharaoh's nose and offering prayers for his healing.

The wab sekhmet appears to be a distinct role from the non-priest healer called a wabau. It may be that the wabau was a shaman. The priest and the shaman represent different approaches to healing. The priest is forbidden to consult spirits in a drug-induced state. The shaman believes that disease and illness happens when the spirits have been offended, causing disharmony. Shamans typically enter a trance state to discover the cause of the disease and attempt to learn how to appease the spirits.

It is also possible that the wabau was a priest of lesser rank who served the common people, rather than the nobility. More research is required to gain a better understanding of the different types of healers, but it is evident that the early Nilotic physicians specialized in one part of the body: head, stomach, heart, etc. This was reported by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus who wrote, "The study of medicine with them was divided between specialists; each physician attending to one kind of illness only. Every place possessed several doctors; some for diseases of the eyes, others for the head, or the teeth, or the stomach, or for internal diseases." (Diodorus Siculus, i. 91)

The Mesopotamian physicians learned their skills from the priest caste that moved into the Tigris-Euphrates from ancient Kush (Gen. 10). The Akkadian word for a physician priest is azu. Sargon was born in Azu-pir-Anu, a house of divine healing/temple of Anu, the High God. The physician priest sat beside the sick person. This suggests that the Akkadian word wasabu is related to the Egyptian word wabau, a healer-priest.

Animal Husbandry

15,000 years ago, cattle were domesticated in what is today Kenya. The common term for cattle or cow in the many African languages is nag (Wolog, Fulani), nagge (Hausa), ning (Angas, Ankwe) and ninge (Susu). This corresponds to the Egyptian word ng (nag).

Red and black Nubian cattle herders

Cattle bones were found in elite graves at Hierakonpolis (Nekhen), the oldest known site of Hebrew worship (4000 B.C.). Cow skulls were used to mark the pan graves of the people buried in the Green Sahara. The oldest evidence of domestication of wild pigs is found at Nekhen, Maadi, Abydos, and Armant, near graves belonging to the poorer classes, indicating that the diet of the lower classes included pork. Cows were also transported on boats constructed of bundles of reeds.

Boats and cows of the ancient Proto-Saharans.

Related reading: Physician Priests of Antiquity; STEM Education: Medical Care in the Ancient World; Seats of Wisdom; Philosophers' Corner: Ancient Wisdom, Science and Technology; Why Nekhen is Anthropologically Significant

From the Historical Eve to the Virgin Mary

 

My second book, The First Ladies of the Earth, is available on Amazon. The book presents neglected aspects of the cultural milieus of the women of the Bible, including the Women of Noah's Household and evidence that Tamar was Judah's wife. These were women of high status, with ministries to women, entrepreneurial successes, and balance of authority between them and their Hebrew husbands.

The astonishing contributions and enduring influence of the Hebrew wives and daughters come alive for the reader of this sequel to The First Lords of the Earth: An Anthropological Study.


“Alice's analysis of the kinship pattern of the biblical Hebrew opened my eyes to understand not just Genesis and not just the Pentateuch, but the whole diacronic layers in all of the Old Testament." - Shalom Rutgaizer, Israeli archaeologist and Old Testament scholar

"In terms of tertiary studies, I learned Old Testament from 'extreme liberals' as well as 'moderate conservatives.' Then for years I felt satisfied that, although by no means a specialist, I had worked out a sensible approach to the Old Testament that was authentically Christian while avoiding the pitfalls of fundamentalism, Marcionism and liberalism . . . especially with regard to the Book of Genesis.

That was until I found Alice Linsley's work. Her biblical, historical, theological, cultural, anthropological and archaeological research takes the reader into fascinating areas which really make sense and have caused me to change quite a number of my previously held views!" - David Chislett SSC, former Anglican Bishop of the Traditional Anglican Church

Related reading: BIBLICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: Reading the Bible in a Different Way; Binary Reasoning and Gender Balance; Orthodoxy Requires Binary Reasoning

Binary Reasoning and Gender Balance

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

The binary sets that informed the reasoning of the early Hebrew are natural and universally observed. They display a hierarchical relationship between the entities of the set. Males are larger and stronger than females. The sun is the greater light, the moon the lesser, yet both sun and moon rule their domains (Gen. 1:16). The Hebrew observation of binary sets as having both balance and hierarchy is reflected in their social structure. The social structure of the biblical Hebrew was neither matriarchal nor patriarchal. It was characterized by a male-female balance of authority and separate domains.

The binary sets of the Bible are not arbitrary. They are based on empirical observation of the order in creation. Not every set of opposites is a binary set in the biblical sense. The opposites “tall and short” do not constitute a binary set because those are contextually dependent. Were I to stand beside a Watusi warrior I would appear short. However, were I to stand beside a Pygmy, I would appear tall. The entities of a true binary set are not contextually dependent. They do not derive meaning from human experience other than their observation as natural sets: male-female, sun-moon, light-dark, and life-death.

The opposites hot-cold are not a binary set because those are subjective. What might feel cold to one person may not feel cold to another.

The Hebrew way of reasoning should be distinguished from dualistic reasoning which divides reality into two irreconcilable halves. The Egyptologist Frédéric Servajean notes that unlike dualism, Egyptian duality is integrative and dynamic. Servajean's article "Duality" in the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (2008) examines how ancient Egyptian reasoning involved natural pairs of opposites. He defines duality as a dynamic coexistence of two elements that balance and define each other such as light and dark and order and chaos. Servajean believes that this was the conceptual framework by which the Egyptians made sense of the cosmos. However, he does not investigate the influence of the Hebrew ruler-priests whose perceptions of the order of Creation were informed by empirical observations. When the Hebrew ruler-priests studied the order of creation they observed that one of the entities in the natural pair (binary set) is greater than its partner.

My Journey to Greater Understanding

I studied for a Master of Divinity at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Mount Airy, Pennsylvania. That degree was awarded in 1988. Many years after that I was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters for my work on gender, specifically about the question of the ordination of women to the priesthood.

My doubts about women’s ordination launched me into a twenty-year study of that dangerous innovation. I drew on my background in anthropology, philosophy, and linguistics. I noted that no women served as priests among the biblical Hebrew. Likewise, men did not serve as midwives. This suggested that men and women have distinct types of blood work: the priests in the place of blood sacrifice where women were forbidden to enter, and the woman in the birthing chamber where men were forbidden to enter. Two types of blood work in two distinct places and the two were always maintained apart. I pondered that a great deal.

Among the biblical Hebrew who delivered to us the authoritative moral law, male and female are distinct physiologically, anatomically, emotionally, and in the roles they were created to perform. This seems obvious even to those who minimize the distinction between males and females. Some realities cannot be denied.

When Riley Gaines asked the University of Pittsburgh professor Gabby Yearwood if an archaeologist can differentiate between two sets of 100-year bones as male and female, Professor Yearwood answered “no” to which the audience of students laughed. Yearwood responded, "I'm not sure why I'm being laughed at! I'm the expert... I have a Ph.D.!" The students recognize that someone can get a Ph.D. in anthropology and still be ignorant of basic facts about humans. Forensic medicine has been identifying the sex of human remains since the 16th century, and today we have the advantage of genetic testing as well.

Pondering the two distinct types of blood work took me deeper into consideration of the binary reasoning of the biblical Hebrew. That reasoning is based on empirical observation of the hierarchies in the order of creation. These hierarchies are expressed in a small number of binary sets: Creator-creature, life-death, heaven-earth, male-female, and sun-moon. The Apostle Paul uses binary reasoning in 1 Corinthians 15 when he contrasts the Creator and the creature, the sun and the moon, and the perishable and the imperishable. 

The Church receives the reasoning of the biblical Hebrew through the Apostles. That Tradition builds a protective hedge around what the Creator has established as good. Life is greater than death. Thus, the Hebrew were never to boil a baby goat in its mother's milk (forbidden three places in Scripture). This action blurs the distinction between life and death because the mother’s milk is to sustain the life of the offspring. This prohibition represents the typical rabbinic “hedge” around the Torah.

There is a binary distinction between humans and non-human animals. Bestiality is forbidden because it blurs the distinction between humans and animals.

Homosex is forbidden because it blurs the distinction between male and female, a binary set established by God in the beginning and by which humanity is to survive extinction. Homosex, transvestism, and bestiality represent denial of divine authority. The Triune God has a purpose for each person. Rebellion against His purpose brings gradual loss of the divine image. Therefore, those who oppose His authority are to be pitied and humble intercession offered for them.

The spilling of human semen (onanism) was regarded as an unrighteous act because this violates the divinely established order in creation. The seed that should fall to the earth is the seed of the plants with roots in the earth. The seed of man should fall on his own type (the womb), from which man comes forth. In 191 A.D., Clement of Alexandria wrote, “Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted.” (The Instruction of Children)

The prohibition against onanism reflects the ancient wisdom that was informed by observation of patterns in nature. It is based on reality, not imagined entities or moral relativism. Dr. David C. Innes of King’s College in New York City, wrote, “Living in reality also means living in principled awareness of who is in charge of all things and thus living in recognition of what is true.”

The hedge extended even to the sowing of seed and to textiles. The Hebrew were not to sow two types of seed in the same field or weave cloth using two different types of fiber.

Such prohibitions sound strange to people today. They are seen as baseless religious restrictions. Some reject binary reasoning entirely though it is the logical outcome of empirical observations of the order of creation. 

Though the world casts Bible believers as naive or stupid, binary reasoning is the basis for great complexity of thought. Consider the complexity of Artificial Intelligence and advanced computation. Both are driven by binary code. Consider also how the diversity of organisms in the Cambrian Explosion is characterized by the emergence of binary and symmetrical features. In the Precambrian organisms we find neither bilateral symmetry nor any bivalves. The greater diversity and complexity of organisms coincided with the appearance of binary features in the fossil record.

Related reading: Orthodoxy Requires Binary Reasoning; STEM Education: Theories About the Cambrian Explosion; Philosophers' Corner: Two Types of Binary Reasoning; A Christian Anthropologist Considers Gender in the Bible; Male and Female are Primary in Hebrew Scriptures; Territorial Ambitions of the Early Hebrew

The Land of Kain and His Descendants

 

Photo credit: Anni Vahlqvist

"And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the Land of Nod, on the east of Eden" (Gen. 4:16, KJV).

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

The Hebrew phrase "east of Eden" is quimat-Eden and appears to be a Nilotic reference to a fertile plain with bulrushes. The Ancient Egyptian word for bulrushes is qma. Perhaps the biblical writer has Mesopotamia in mind. The term Eden derives from the Akkadian term edinu, which refers to a fertile plain and describes the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. If Cain went to reside east of Mesopotamia, he would have been in Pakistan.

Identifying where Kain went is difficult because Eden extended from the Upper Nile Valley to the great rivers of Mesopotamia. The Bible describes Eden as a vast well-watered territory that extended from the sources of the Nile in Uganda and Ethiopia to the Tigris and Euphrates. In Genesis 2, one of the rivers on the southern border of Eden is called the Gihon (meaning "gushing"). The Ethiopians identify the Gihon with the Abay River. The Pishon is also associated with the Nile Valley because it "skirts the whole land of Havilah" (Gen. 2:11). Havilah is the name of one of Kush's sons (Gen. 10:7) and the Kushites lived in the Nile Valley. 

Evidence of the cousin bride's naming prerogative. 

Kain's unnamed daughter married her cousin Enosh 

and named their firstborn son Kenan after her father Kain.

It seems likely that Cain's journey eastward took him out of Africa into Canaan, the land named after him. There he married and built a city which he named after his son, Enoch. Enoch is a royal title.

Canaan is where we find some of Cain's descendants, the Kenites (Gen. 15:18–21; Ex. 3:1; Num. 24:20; Jg. 1:16; Jg. 4:11). The word "Kenite" and the name Kain are related to the land of Canaan, which is כנען, pronounced kena'an. The Kenites were descendants of Tubal Cain who is identified as an early blacksmith in Genesis 4. The Kenite smiths often camped outside of cities where they did their metal work. When Saul came to attack Amalek’s city, he warned the Kenites to move away, saying, “Go, depart, get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them: for ye shewed kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt. So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.” (1 Sam. 15:5-6)

The 5100-year fortified Canaanite town of Kinna-ret (Gennesaret) is mentioned by ancient Ugarit scribes and appears to refer to the Kinna people who were called kinah-hu in the Nuzi tablets. This is another explanation for the origin of the word "Canaanite". However, kinah-hu may be related to the names Kain and Kenan. The clans of the early Hebrew brothers Cain and Seth intermarried (caste endogamy). Women descendants of Cain married male descendants of Seth. Genesis 5 lists Kenan as Kain's grandson by his un-named daughter. This is an example of the cousin bride's naming prerogative, a distinctive feature of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the early Hebrew. The name Kenan is a variant of Kain and Ghayin. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (2007) believes that ghayin lies behind the word kinah-hu. In the Canaano-Akkadian, "hu" is a pronominal suffix.

Related reading: Abraham Settled in the Land of Cain; Eden Was a Well-Watered Region

Identifying Strands of the Genesis Narratives

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Genesis is a complex and layered text. Shalom Ratgeizer, an Israeli Bible scholar, notes, “The texts were written by different authors in different times and places in and outside Eretz Israel and were meant for different audiences. The literary styles, languages, and theological ideas are different and at times contradict each other.”

The older material in Genesis pertains to the earliest biblical populations and to the antecedents of the Messianic Faith among Abraham's Hebrew ancestors. Over these older layers are glosses and anachronisms that reflect at least two later sources: the Deuteronomist Historian, and the later hands of Jewish writers. The Deuteronomist writes from the context of the Neo-Babylonian Period, c.700-300 BC, about 1500 years after the time of Abraham. The Jewish insertions reflect even later periods. They date from around 400 B.C. to 200 A.D. The different sources are detected by the contextual incongruities and unraveling the interwoven elements is necessary if we hope to understand the Book of Genesis.

Understanding also requires attention to the anthropologically significant data that highlight contextual incongruities. Consider a Native American chief with a fleet of birch wood canoes controlling trade between villages on the Mississippi in 1720. Fast forward a mere 200 years to 1920 when a river magnate controls commerce on the same river with his fleet of riveted steel ships. Same river, very different cultural contexts.

The cultural contexts of the biblical persons in Genesis 4-12 were as distantly in the past for First Century Jews as they are to most readers today. Adam and Eve lived around 5000-4800 B.C. in a vast well-watered region called Eden. Nimrod, one of their descendants, left Kush (East Africa) and became a city builder in Southern Mesopotamia around 3500 B.C. (Gen. 10). Abraham the Hebrew was one of his descendants.

Abraham's territory extended between Hebron and Beersheba. He also had control of the wells that he dug in Gerar around 2000 B.C. To understand biblical history, we must grapple with the shifts in temporal, spatial, and cultural contexts, and the best disciplines to apply in this effort are cultural anthropology, archaeology, DNA studies, and linguistics.

Critical reading can prevent imposing a presumed or denominational interpretation on the text. The richness of the Genesis narratives is found by tracing the layers and listening for the subordinated voices. Often those are the voices of women.

Discerning the Antecedents

Biblical anthropology asks about antecedents. It explores what comes before what is described in the text. What events preceded the events recounted? It seeks to understand the cultural context of the earliest persons named in Genesis: Adam, Eve, Cain and Seth, etc. It is concerned with ancestors and received traditions. From what earlier context did certain practices develop? What traces of ancient memory can be uncovered?

The biblical text always speaks of something older, some prior action that solicits a response from later generations. The later generations are enjoined to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There is a thick cultural web surrounding the God of the early biblical Hebrew.

That context is not apparent to the casual reader because it is hidden behind layers of Jewish midrash, denominational interpretations, theological typologies and mythological motifs. The motifs of the tree of life and the serpent are found in many of the world's religions. They are clues as to the lush riverine contexts of the early Hebrew who believed that a woman of their ruler-priest caste would bring forth the Son/Seed of God who would crush the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15). God’s adversary bruises the foot of the Woman’s Son, but the Son crushes his head. That expectation was expressed around 4000 years ago and recorded in Utterance 388 of The Ancient Pyramid Texts: "Horus has shattered (crushed) the mouth of the serpent with the sole of his foot".

Similar references are found in the later Vedic texts. "The Ancient Man danced on the serpent, who still spewed poison from his eyes and hissed loudly in his anger, and he trampled down with his feet whatever head the serpent raised, subduing him calmly as if he were being worshipped with flowers. Kaliya, his umbrella of hoods shattered by the gay dance of death, his limbs broken, vomiting blood copiously from his mouths, remembered the Guru of all who move and are still, the Ancient Man, Narayana, and he surrendered to him in his heart." (Srimad Bhagavatam 10:6, from Andrew Wilson, Ed. World Scriptures, p. 449.) The early Hebrew were a priest caste that believed in God Father and God Son. The Son of God was called HR which means Most High One in ancient Egyptian. The Greeks referred to HR as Horus. In Ancient Egyptian Re means "father."

In the Ancient Pyramid Texts, a priest prays for the King, saying, "Horus is a soul and he recognizes his Father in you..." (Utterance 423)

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Horus is called the "advocate of his Father" (cf. 1 John 2:1), and all the gods are said to be "in the train of Horus." Here we find the language of a royal procession such as this: "When He ascended on high, He led captives in his train, and gave gifts to men.” (Eph. 4:8).

Biblical anthropology insists that the texts be read objectively and with an eye to extracting data that helps us to understand the earlier contexts. The mythological Adam and Eve are posed as the first parents (apical ancestors). This is consistent with many African origin stories. Among the Gikuyu, the first man and women were called Gikuyu and Mumbi. However, these are not the first humans on earth, but the founders of the Gikuyu people. Likewise, Adam and Eve are the founders of the clans that come to be identified as Horite and Sethite Hebrew. These were Abraham's ancestors.

Abraham is the father of many peoples, an icon of faith, and a "sent away son" to whom God delivered a territory in ancient Edom. The sending away of non-ascendant sons is a feature of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the biblical Hebrew. That feature drove the Hebrew dispersion out of Africa and the spread of the primitive Messianic Faith that came to be known as "Christianity".

Related reading: The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Three Portraits of Adam; The Hebrew were a Caste; Horite and Sethite Mounds; What Abraham Discovered on Mt. Moriah; The Hebrew Selection of Marriage Partners

Was Tamar Judah's Wife?

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Tamar is usually presented as a Canaanite woman with no Hebrew ancestry. This is clearly not the case because the Hebrew took only Hebrew marriage partners (caste endogamy). It is more likely that Tamar was a daughter of a Hebrew priest who maintained a water shrine along the road between Adullam and Timnah and that she was a shrine-dedicated virgin before her marriage. She was qedeshah, that is a holy woman. Judah’s friend Hirah went to find Tamar, asking for the qedeshah (Gen. 38:21).

Concerning such women, Bible scholar Edward Lipinski noted, “Contrary to the claims of some 20th-century scholarship, the Hebrew Bible never refers directly to cult prostitutes. Many modern Bible translations are simply misleading in this respect. Much of the confusion results from a misunderstanding of a few Biblical texts that mention qedeshot, the plural of qedeshah, which is related to qodesh, “holy place.”

In his “Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew” Hayim Tawil notes that qedeshah or kedeshah is derived from the root K-D-Sh which can mean “separation” or “elevation” of a holy woman. It can refer to a woman dedicated to the service of a temple or a water shrine.

If we remove the narrative about Judah’s sons Er and Onan we are left with a coherent picture of Judah as a Hebrew clan chief with two wives. One wife was the daughter of a Hebrew man named Shua and the other, mentioned in rabbinic writings, was either the daughter of Asuel (or Bat-Asuel) or, if one credits the Book of Jubilees (34:20), a woman named Aliyah. High-ranking Hebrew chiefs typically had two wives living in separate settlements.

It is strange that the Bible provides so little information about someone as prominent as Judah. Afterall, the words Jew and Judea are derived from his name. Judah was a Hebrew chief who, by the time of the events described in Genesis 38, would have been an older man with two wives. Tamar was probably one of them. The detail about God killing Judah’s sons seems to come from the Deuteronomistic Historian, a source from about 1000 years after the time of Judah and Tamar. The narrative reflects the legal and theological frameworks of the Deuteronomistic history, the taboo of onanism, and the practice of levirate marriage as codified in Deuteronomy 25:5–10. The theology of the Deuteronomist entails a God who directly punishes and sometimes ends the lives of those who violate the Law.

When we extract this source from the picture Judah emerges as the father of three living sons: Shelah, Perez, and Zerah by two different wives. These Hebrew sons form a typical three-clan confederation. It was common for the descendants of two of the sons of a confederation to intermarry. The intermarriage between the descendants of Zerah and Perez explains why they are linked in the Book of Ruth and counted among the ancestors of King David and Jesus.

Typically, the Bible traces descent from two half-brothers and their wives. Consider these sibling sets in which a common father is acknowledged, but there are at least two different mothers.

Jubal, Jabal, Tubal-Cain – Lamech’s sons by two wives (Gen. 4).

Ham, Shem, Japheth – Noah’s sons by different women.

Nahor, Abraham, Haran – Terah’s sons by two wives.

Isaac, Joktan, Ishmael - Abraham’s sons by two wives and a concubine.

Moses, Aaron, Korah – Amram’s sons by two wives.

Numbers 26:20 explicitly identifies the three-clan confederation of Judah. “The descendants of Judah by their clans were: through Shelah, the Shelanite clan; through Perez, the Perezite clan; through Zerah, the Zerahite clan.”

Typically, only two of the three sons of a Hebrew confederation are ascendant, meaning that their roles as firstborn sons are prescribed. The firstborn of the first wife is his father’s heir and when the father dies, he rules over the father’s territory. The firstborn of the second wife serves the household of his maternal grandfather or becomes an official in that territory. The third is a son of a concubine and he is sent away with sufficient resources to become established in an area away from the two other sons. This custom drove the dispersion of the early Hebrew into far reaches on the ancient world.

Evidence that Judah married Tamar

Around the time that Joseph was serving his uncle Potiphar in Egypt, Judah left Hebron and went to Timnah for a sheep shearing with his Hebrew kinsmen Hirah of Abdullum. On the way, Judah stopped at Enaim where he married Tamar. The priest overseer of the Enaim water shrine was Tamar’s father.

Enaim means “Two Wells” and it was common for marriages to be formalized at such places. Abraham married Keturah who lived at the Well of Sheba (Beersheba). Moses married Zipporah who he met at the well of her father Jethro. Caesarius Archbishop of Arles explained that Isaac, Jacob, and Moses are types of Jesus Christ, "for this reason they found their wives at wells, because Christ was to find His church at the waters of baptism."

Note that when Judah arrived with a gift for his bride, she was veiled. This was a common practice. In Genesis 24:65 we read that Rebekah covered her face with a veil when she learned that the man walking toward them in the field was her future husband, Isaac.

Note also that Judah gave Tamar a kid from his flock and promised her a goat. This sounds very much like a bride price.

Related reading: The Hebrew were a Caste; The Hebrew Selection of Marriage Partners; Hebrew Rulers with Two Wives; Keturah was Abraham's Second Wife; Cousin Brides Among the Hebrew; The Hebrew Hierarchy of Sons; Fertility and Water Shrines