Is it Possible to Speak of the Proto-Gospel?

Dr. Alice C. Linsley


Just Genesis presents an "anthropological sleuthing of pre-Abrahamic origins." I have identified the marriage and ascendency pattern of Abraham's Hebrew caste and have demonstrated that this pattern drove the early Hebrew into distant lands where they established territories as early as 4000 BC. The dispersal of the early Hebrew kingdom builders was driven by the practice of sending away sons.

The early Hebrew believed in God Father and God Son and anticipated the incarnation of the Son by divine overshadowing of a virgin of their ruler-priest caste (Luke 1). This expectation is expressed in the first Messianic promise of Scripture - Genesis 3:15 - given to Abraham's ancestors. Some of those ancestors are named in the King Lists of Genesis 4, 5, 10 and 11.

I want to thank the faithful readers of Just Genesis. You have been an excellent sounding board as I have pursued the research on Abraham and the Horim/Horite Hebrew ancestors. I appreciate that you recognize the unique nature of this blog. Just Genesis is unique in these aspects:

• takes an anthropological approach to the study of Genesis
• acknowledges the great age of the earth and of human existence
• rejects aspects of Darwinian theory that lack material evidence
• asserts that Genesis interprets itself on questions of origins
• shows that the first verifiably historical persons in Genesis are kings listed in Genesis 4 and 5
• examines the material in its original cultural context, that of ancient Nilotic peoples
• argues that Genesis isn't about human origins as much as it is about the origin of Messianic expectation among Abraham's ancestors

All the articles at Just Genesis are listed by topic alphabetically in the INDEX. Articles on Biblical Anthropology can be found at my other blog by that name.

About one-quarter of Genesis is the story of God’s dealings with Abraham and his ancestors (chapters 1-12). The other chapters deal with Abraham's descendants before the establishment of Israel. Because this is so, we recognize that the promise concerning the coming of the Seed of God by the Woman (Gen. 3:15) does not originate with the Jews. It is much older. We may speak of it as the "Proto-Gospel" because the Horite and Sethite Hebrew believed that the Son of God would be miraculously conceived, and that in his repose he would proclaim glad tidings to those in Hades. A Horite Hebrew song found at the royal complex at Ugarit speaks of Horus (HR) who descends to the place of the dead "to announce good tidings." 

The Seed of God was expected to crush the serpent's head. This early Hebrew expectation was expressed in the Pyramid Texts, dating to 2400 BC. "Horus has shattered (tbb, crushed) the mouth of the serpent with the sole of his foot (tbw)" (Utterance 388).

They believed that the Son of God would rise on the third day. A reference to the third day resurrection is found in the Pyramid Texts: "Oh Horus, this hour of the morning, of this third day is come, when thou surely passeth on to heaven, together with the stars, the imperishable stars." (Utterance 667) Jesus' third-day resurrection fulfilled that Horite Hebrew expectation in every detail.

The Messianic reference in Psalm 110:1 - The Lord says to my Lord: "Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet." - is expressed 1000 years earlier in the Coffin Texts (Passage 148). "I am Horus, the great Falcon upon the ramparts of the house of him of the hidden name. My flight has reached the horizon. I have passed by the gods of Nut. I have gone further than the gods of old. Even the most ancient bird could not equal my very first flight. I have removed my place beyond the powers of Set, the foe of my father Osiris. No other god could do what I have done. I have brought the ways of eternity to the twilight of the morning. I am unique in my flight. My wrath will be turned against the enemy of my father Osiris and I will put him beneath my feet in my name of 'Red Cloak'." (Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt by R.T. Rundle Clark, p. 216)

Jesus subdues the Father's enemies so that God's children might live and prosper. This is expressed in Psalm 2:12: "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him."

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Horus is called the "advocate of his father" (cf. 1 John 2:1).

The expectation of the coming of the Son of God was preserved by Abraham's ancestors to whom the promise was first made in Eden, a well-watered region that extended from the sources of the Nile to the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.

The oldest known site of Horite Hebrew worship is at Nekhen on the Nile. The Hebrew ruler-priests served at many of the ancient Sun Cities. They gave the world the earliest known resurrection texts.

Waiting for the Eternal King 

The Genesis King Lists help us to understand the Bible's purpose and what we might call the "proto-Gospel" or the pattern upon which the prophets reflected and whereby Jesus Messiah would be identified as the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15. 

From beginning to end, the Bible is about the royal ancestry of Jesus Christ. It is possible to trace His ancestry because of the cousin bride's naming prerogative, whereby the cousin bride named her first-born son after her father. This is why there are two named Enoch, two named Lamech, two named Nahor, two named Esau, etc. Lamech the Elder (Gen. 4) bragged to his two wives, and his daughter Naamah gave birth to Lamech the Younger (Gen. 5). Naamah named her first-born son after her father. This is one of many examples in the Old Testament of the cousin bride's naming prerogative.

The cousin-bride's naming prerogative is found from Genesis 4 to Numbers and beyond, so it is not coincidental. Rather it is a feature of the unique marriage pattern of the early Hebrew. Many scholars (Noth, Albright, Speiser, etc.) concluded that Genesis 4 and Genesis 5 represent different oral or textual traditions of the same ruling line. This is NOT what the Bible claims, however, and I take the Bible's claims very seriously. Genesis claims that the rulers listed in Genesis 4 are the descendants of Cain and those listed in Genesis 5 are the descendants of Seth. The correspondence of names (Enoch/Enosh, Kain/Kenan, Irad/Jared, Lamech/Lamech, etc.) between the two lists has to do with the cousin-bride's naming prerogative, something that I discovered about 20 years ago using kinship analysis, a tool of anthropology. 

The kinship pattern of these early Hebrew rulers reflects characteristics typical of ancient castes. One of those characteristics is caste endogamy. The high-ranking rulers practiced bride exchange to strengthen the caste bonds.

All of the men listed in Genesis chapters 4 and 5 are rulers with two wives. One wife was a half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham) and the other was either a patrilineal niece or a cousin (as was Keturah to Abraham). The cousin bride named her first-born son after her father because this son would serve as a high official in the territory of his maternal grandfather. Lamech's daughter, Naamah, married her patrilineal cousin, Methuselah, and named their first-born son Lamech. This son of Methuselah would serve in Lamech the Elder's territory as he belonged to the household of Lamech. 

Jesus Messiah is a direct descendant of the early Hebrew ruler-priests. As they regarded the Sun as the symbol of the Creator, divine appointment was expressed by overshadowing. Hathor, the mother of Horus, is consistently shown in ancient iconography as divinely overshadowed. The Greek word Horus is derived from the ancient Egyptian HR, meaning Most High One.

When the Virgin Mary asked how she was to become the mother of the Messiah, the angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God." (Luke 1:35)

Related reading: Hebrew Rulers with Two Wives; The Marriage and Ascendancy Pattern of Abraham's People; The Story Behind Osirus; The Substance of Abraham's Faith; The Hebrew Were a Caste