The Stirring of the Waters

Crossing the Red Sea, a wall painting from the 1640s in Yaroslavl, Russia

Alice C. Linsley

The Bible contains many references to water. It is the primal substance at the beginning of creation (Gen. 1). It is used to cleanse, both ritually and literally. The blind man was told to wash in the pool of Siloam and the lepers were to wash before they showed themselves cleansed to the Temple authorities. The great military leader Naaman,when he sought to be cured of leprosy, was told by Elisha to wash 7 times in the river Jordan (II Kings 5:10). The Egyptians made their escape through water, and through the waters of baptism, we who believe receive spiritual regeneration. The Apostle Paul writes that we who are baptized into Christ "have been brought near in the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13).

The most prestigious shrine cities of the ancient world were on major water systems like the Nile and the Tigris or Euphrates. Joseph married the daughter of the priest of On (Heliopolis), a prestigious shrine city on the Nile. His wife's name was Asenath or Asnat. The name sometimes appears in ancient texts as Mari-Anath. Mari means "mother" and is also the Egyptian word for Mary. Mari-Anath may be the same deified mother as Hathor, the mother of Horus. Her name sometimes appears as Hathor-Mari, and many water shrines were dedicated to her. Women came to the shrines to ask the Creator for children. These were places of healing where people went into the water when it was disturbed supernaturally by the wind (Ruach/Spirit).

Even today holy water is used by the Eastern Orthodox as an agent of grace for healing. The priest at Holy Apostles Orthodox Church (Saddle Brook, New Jersey) blessed the Saddle River in January 2014.The ceremony is called the "blessing of the waters" and it is believed that the baptism of "Christ our God" had the effect of making the water holy, and restores the waters of the earth to their original created purpose as an instrument of life.

Here is a description of the ritual: "The blessing was complete with a procession, singing, and Father Matthew trying not to slip in the mud when he blessed the river. The sun shined through the clouds just as we began the service joining our prayers and even the ducks came over to watch. Some say they saw the water stir when it was blessed." (From here.)


Sacred waters

The idea of sacred pools can be traced back to the priests of the Nile Valley who also served as physicians. The Egyptian physician-priest was called wab sxmt (wab sekhmet). Sekhmet Eanach (3000 B.C.) was a physician-priest who "healed the pharaoh's nostrils." (Eanach is a variant of Enoch.) Imhotep (2600 B.C.) was the High Priest of Heliopolis (On) and his skill as a physician became legendary. The Greeks linked Imhotep to Asklepius.

The Greeks and Romans had a similar belief that rose around the cult of Asklepius. The rod of Asklepius is a snake-entwined staff, like that used by Moses for the healing of the snake-bitten Israelites in the wilderness. Asclepius' rod is a symbol of medicine today.

Elisha sent a messenger to say to Naaman the Syrian, "Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed." (2 Kings 5:10)

Piye of Nubia set out to conquer the Upper Nile in 730 B.C. He and his troops disembarked at Thebes, the capital of Upper Egypt. There Piye instructed his soldiers to purify themselves before combat by bathing in the Nile and sprinkling their bodies with water from the temple at Karnak. (Kar-nak means "place of rituals.")

Jesus told the blind man to wash in the Pool of Siloam. "So the man went and washed, and came home seeing." (John 9:7b)

Church ruins at Bethesda

In first-century Jerusalem the Pool of Bethesda [Bet-Zeta] was regarded as a place of supernatural healing. The pool was a reservoir for rain water in the 8th century BC, when a dam was built across the short Beth Zeta valley. John 5:2-9 tells this story:

Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters; for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?' ‘Sir,' the invalid replied, ‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.' Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.'  At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked."

Versions based on the Vulgate omit verse 4: "for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted." This is because it is regarded as superstition and presumed not to be originally inspired. On the other hand, it is very likely an authentic picture of the beliefs of people living in Jerusalem during the time of the Second Temple.

Further, the supernatural stirring of sacred waters is a very ancient belief. In Genesis 1 the Spirit hovers over the waters. The image is that of a great bird. The flapping of the bird's wings caused ripples on the surface of the water.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

The Polish anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski, discovered a similar belief among the women of the Trobriand Islands in the South Pacific who believed that conception occurred by entering the sacred lagoon when the waters were stirred. 

Related reading: Water and Blood; The Blessing of Waters; Genesis in Anthropological Perspective; Between Heaven and Earth: Birds in Ancient Egypt

Merlin Stone's book is rubbish

Alice C. Linsley


Recently a friend emailed me to say that she just bought a book at the Goodwill for $1.00 because it had a provocative title. She wanted to know if I had read When God Was a Woman. The original title, which appeared on the earlier UK publication, was The Paradise Papers: The Suppression of Women's Rites. The author, Merlin Stone (1931-2011), was an American sculptor who taught art history.

I read the book when I was in seminary. It was circulating among the women who were preparing for ordination and I am certain it influenced some of the less discerning. Then I had doubts about the book's value. Today I would say Stone's book is rubbish.

There is neither historical nor anthropological support for her thesis that the Hebrews suppressed goddess worship. She tries to prove that the Canaanites had a matriarchial and matrilineal structure. She is wrong on both counts. In the ancient world only Kushite queens exercised political power (matriarchy), and it was the Nilo-Saharan Horites who traced some lines through mothers (matrilineal). The Horites are hardly distinguishable in history from the Hebrews or Ha-biru.

It is this kind of shallow research and neo-pagan feminism that leads to bad things in the Church, like women priests. A lesbian Episcopal priest once argued with me on the question of women priests. Here is how she argued: God called Esther and Ruth and Judith to leadership in community. They weren't ordained because of ancient, cultural misogyny. 

This "priestess" asserts that the Episcopal Church was guided by the Holy Spirit in unilaterally deciding to ordain women to the priesthood. If this is true, why attempt to establish precedent by listing women in the Bible, none of whom were priests. Not a single female can be found in the Bible or in the history of the Church who was a priest, despite desperate theories about "Junia" and "Presbytera."

Goddesses in the ancient world

Goddesses existed in ancient cultures as representations of aspects of nature: skies (Nut), seas, wind, fire, water, etc, or as representatives of the Feminine Principle which is complementary to the Masculine Principle, but never portrayed as superior. The goddesses to which Stone refers are late comers compared to Hathor-Meri, the most important female venerated in the ancient world.

Hathor-Meri, the mother of Horus, was said to conceive by the overshadowing of the sun, the emblem of the Creator. She is the archetype of the Blessed Virgin Mary whose people were Horites. Christ fulfills the Horus myth and the Horite expectation of the Seed of Ra born of their ruler-priest lines. Mary is the virgin daughter of the ruler-priest Joachim. Mary is a variant of the ancient Egyptian name Meri.

In conceiving the Seed of God, Hathor-Meri became the tabernacle of the Deity or sh ntjr, meaning God's tent. A biblical female who stands as a sign of the blessed Theotokos is Oholibamah. Her name means most high tent and she is a Horite bride of Esau the Younger.

Mary's full name was "Miriam Daughter of Joachim Son of Pntjr Priests of Nathan of Beth Lehem." From the earliest predynastic times among the Egyptian Horites, ntjr designated the king. The name Panther or p-ntjr meant "God is King." It is certain that Mary was of the ruler-priest class because even those who hated her admit this. Sanhedrin 106a says: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.”

The Horites are the most ancient caste of temple and shrine attendants known to have existed. Their religious practices were evident as early as 3600 BC at Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) in Sudan. Votive offerings at the temple of Horus were up to ten times larger than the normal mace heads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine.

Remember what the angel Gabriel said to Mary? "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. Therefore that holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." (Luke 1:35, cf. Gen. 3:15)

Related reading: C.S. Lewis, Priestesses in the Church?; Why Women Were Never Priests; The Biblical Worldview is Binary; The Canaan Abraham Knew; Who Were the Horites?; God as Male Priest; The Destruction of Hazor: Another theory; Women Priests (Part1)