The Virgin Mary's Ancestry

Alice C. Linsley

Mary, the most honored woman of the Bible and in the Church, is called "Theotokos" because she brought forth Jesus, who is Christ our God. He is the promised Son of God, the long-awaited Messiah. His mission, as God in the flesh, was and is to save sinners, to make void the curse of death, to destroy the powers of darkness, to make dead men live, and to restore Paradise.

Through Mary the promise of Genesis 3:15 is fulfilled. The Seed of the Woman crushed the serpent's head and death has been overcome. The ancient expectation of a divine royal son who would overcome death is found only among the Horite Hebrew priests, the Virgin Mary's ancestors. Nekhen on the Nile is the oldest known Horite Hebrew (Habiru) temple (3800 BC). Here we find the clue as to the beginnings of Messianic expectation.

Such religious expectation would have been preserved through the generations by priests and prophets. In the Genesis story of the Woman and the Serpent we have a type of the Theotokos through whom Eve's disobedience is reversed. Satan is defeated by the Woman’s Seed (Gen. 3:15). Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God, conceived by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, as the Angel Gabriel declared (Luke 1).

The expectation of Messiah was preserved through a priestly lineage that was carefully guarded and preserved through generations within the priestly lines. Priests married the daughters of priest (endogamy). This is evident in the analysis of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of Abraham’s ancestors, a pattern that continued to the time of Jesus.

The endogamous practice is alluded to in Mishna Taanith: “Four-score pair of brethren-priests took to wife fourscore pair of sister-priestesses in Gophne, all in one night.” It is alluded to also in Matthew's Gospel where Jesus' brothers and sisters are mentioned.

"Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?"

These brothers are also His cousins (Jerome) since the biblical Hebrew practiced clan endogamy. The Jews who doubted Jesus' identity as the Messiah recognized that Joseph and Mary had common ruler-priest ancestors.

The terms "cousin" and "brother" are sometimes interchangeable because of the marriage and kinship pattern of the Hebrew ruler-priests who practiced clan endogamy. In Hebrews, Lot is called the "brother" (adelphos) of Abraham, but in fact Lot was Abraham's nephew, the son of Abraham's brother Haran who died in Ur.

The Hebrew priests took great care in the selection of wives since the offspring would trace their blood lines through their mothers. This kinship pattern enables us to understand the relationship of Mary and Joseph, both of priestly lines. Mary's father was a priest, as was the father of Mary's mother. Joseph was her patrilineal cousin. Some of their ancestors are listed in Nehemiah.

In Nehemiah 7:39-42 the priests that returned from exile are named. "The sons of Jedaiah of the house of Jeshua, the sons of Immer, the sons of Pashhur, and the sons of Harim."

Nehemiah 10 names the priests who signed a document: "Nehemiah the governor the son of Hacaliah, Zedekiah, Seriaiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashhur, Amariah, Malchijah, Hattush, Shebaniah, Malluch, Harim, Meremoth, Obadiah, Daniel, Ginnethon, Baruch, Meshullam, Abijah, Mijamin, Maaziah, Bilgai, Shemaiah."

These names are associated mainly with the southern kingdoms of Judah and Edom. Harim is a Horus name. The name indicated the high rank of his priestly clan, which was said to have 320 adult males (Neh. 7:35). The root of the word is HRM which is also the root of "Horim." Jews call their ancestors the "Horim." 

Hattush is a Hittite name. The Hittites of Hebron (Kiriath-Arba) were kinsmen of Abraham (Gen. 23:5, 6). 

Malchijah is a variant of Melchi or Melki. This name appears twice in the ruler-priest ancestry of Mary (Luke 3:23–31). 

Abijah is the priest line of Zachariah who married Elizabeth (Luke 1). Abijah was the eighth priestly division. 

Obadiah is a royal name. It is related to Obodas, the first ruler of Petra in Edom. According to the Talmud, the prophet Obadiah was from Edom.

Mary’s Lineage

Mary’s parents were Joachim and Anne. Joachim was a shepherd-priest and his wife Anne was a daughter of a priest. Hippolytus of Thebes records that Mary’s mother was one of three daughters of a priest named Matthan (Matthias), probably of Bethlehem of Galilee. The eldest sister, Mary, was the mother of Salome; the second sister, Sobe, married a Levite and was mother of Elizabeth; the third sister was Anne, Mary’s mother. Mary’s cousin Elizabeth was the mother of John the Baptist. Elizabeth and Mary were cousins, and both daughters of priestly houses.

Herod had removed a High Priest named Matthias. He was the 61st High Priest and a descendant of David. The ancestral family of Jacob ben Mattat, once a favorite of Herod the Great, came to have limited political influence with the House of Zadok, as this lineage of King David’s descendants appears to have been ostracized from Jewish political life.

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.” It is said that she was so despised that some Jews tried to prevent the Apostles from burying her body. A legend tells of how "a certain Hebrew named Jephonias" tried to seize her burial bier and his hands stuck to it until he repented.

Mary is said to have been born in the grotto under the Church of St. Anne which would have been adjacent to the Temple, in an area where the Temple priests lived.

Mary's full name would be "Miriam Daughter of Joachim, Son of Pntjr, Priest of Nathan of Bethlehem." Some editions of the Jerusalem Talmud specifically name Jesus as the son of Pandera/Panther. In this case "son" would mean descendant. From pre-dynastic times among the Nilotic Hebrew, ntjr designated God or the king. The name Pntjr is likely Pa-Netjer, the name of Joachim’s mother. In this case, Joachim's mother must have been of high social status for a matronymic to be employed. A limestone stela (1539-1291 B.C.) bearing the names of Pekhty-nisu and his wife, Pa-netjer, is on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.

The connection between Bethlehem and the Horites is alluded to in I Chronicles 4:4, which lists Hur (Hor) as the "father of Bethlehem." The author of Chronicles knew that Bethlehem was originally a Horite settlement in the heart of Horite territory. The prophets foretold Bethlehem as the birth place of the Son of God.

Before his marriage to Mary, Joseph was either an elderly widower with children of his own or Mary was his second wife. The latter is the more likely since Mary was Joseph's cousin and the second wife was almost always a patrilineal cousin (as was Keturah to Abraham).

Joseph’s father was Heli (also spelled Eli), and he was a priest. Joseph's family lived in Nazareth which was the home of the eighteenth division of priests, that of Happizzez (1 Chron. 24:15). The words happi and ntjr originate in the Nile Valley, as do the names of many of the ruler-priests listed by Luke and Matthew. Melchi, a name that appears twice in Mary's ancestry, means "my image" in Amharic, a language spoken in the Upper Nile.


The New Testament Priest Lists

The expectation of Messiah, preserved through thousands of years by the Horites, focuses on the line of Judah. Matthew 1:1–6 and Luke 3:32–34 are in agreement on that.

Abraham
Isaac
Jacob
Judah
Perez – son of Tamar by Judah
Hezron
Ram (Aram)
Amminadab
Nahshon
Salma (or Salmon), married Rahab
Boaz, married Ruth
Obed
Jesse
David

Luke 3:23–31 continues the list as follows (notice the recurrence of names, marked with an asterisk).

David
Nathan
Mattatha *
Menna
Melea
Eliakim
Jonam
Joseph *
Judah – father of Er                                                          
Simeon
Levi
Matthat *
Jorim
Eliezer
Joshua
Er – descendant of Er
Elmadam
Cosam
Addi
Melki
Neri
Shealtiel
Zerubbabel – who returned to Judah from Babylonian captivity with Mordecai
Rhesa
Joanan
Joda
Josech
Semein
Mattathias *
Maath*
Naggae
Esli
Nahum
Amos
Mattathias *
Joseph *
Jannai
Melchi
Levi
Matthat *
Heli
Joseph *
Jesus

The name Matthan/Mattai and its variants appear six times in Luke’s list. The name derives from the word “gift” and can also refer to the “giving’ of Torah. Mattaniah means “gift of God” and is a name found among priests in I Chronicles.

Note the recurrence of names, suggesting cousin brides who named their first-born sons after their fathers. The name Er appears in the 7th generation from Judah. This suggests that Judah's son Er, who married Tamar, had another wife besides Tamar. This would be consistent the with Horite ruler-priest marriage pattern. This might explain Er's refusal to produce an heir by Tamar for his deceased brother (levirate marriage). Tamar must have been Er’s patrilineal cousin. The firstborn son of the cousin bride could potentially become a very powerful leader in the territory of his maternal grandfather.

The Protoevangelium of James says that Mary’s father had flocks. This is a characteristic of priests in the Bible. They kept cattle, sheep and goats. Moses tended the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. A common image of God in the Old Testament is as the Shepherd (Psalm 80:1) and the priests of Israel are referred to as “shepherds” who have a responsibility to tend the flock of Israel. What could be more natural than for priests to maintain herds of animals for sacrifice? They learned to be good priests by learning the skills of a good shepherd. A good shepherd must:

- watch for those who prey on the sheep

- defend the sheep from attackers

- heal the wounded and sick sheep

- find and save lost or trapped sheep

- call them by name and know their individual quirks

- and earn their trust

This is why Jesus is referred to as Good Shepherd, High Priest and “the Anointed [Messiah] of God”, the term applied to David, a king-shepherd who, according to 2 Samuel 24, offered acceptable burnt sacrifice at the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite.

Through Mary the first Biblical promise was fulfilled (Gen. 3:15). Jesus is the Seed born to the Woman (not Eve, since she isn't named until 5 verses later). The promise was made to Abraham's royal Proto-Saharan ancestors of Eden. They were priests before Levi, related to the priest Melchizedek. In Genesis 36 their descendants are called "Horites" which is Horim/Harim. They expected a woman of their ruler-priests lines to conceive by the "overshadowing" of the Creator whose emblem was the Sun.

Mary is the woman appointed by God to bring forth Jesus, the High Priest, the Good Shepherd, the Messiah, the Eternal King, and the Son of God. When she asked the Angel Gabriel how she would conceive, seeing that she was a virgin, Gabriel explained "You shall be overshadowed..." (Luke 1).

Is it any wonder that the Blessed Virgin Mary is venerated in the Church?


Related reading: Who is Jesus?; The Ark Rested in Bethlehem; Joseph's Relationship to Mary; Mount Mary and the Origins of Life; God's Word Never Fails, The Daughters of Horite Priests; The Significance of Galilee in Matthew's Gospel; Matthew's Testimony Concerning the Empty Tomb; The Pattern of Two Wives; Joseph's Relationship to Mary

The Kenite-Horite Connection

Alice C. Linsley


About one-quarter of Genesis is the story of God’s dealings with Abraham and his ancestors (chapter 1-12). The other chapters deal with Abraham's descendants before the establishment of Israel. Because this is so, we must 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. The expectation was preserved by Abraham's ancestors to whom the promise was first made in Eden, a well-watered region that extended from the Nile to the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.

The bulk of my research focuses on the first quarter of the book, material that is often dismissed as non-historical or simply ignored. However, archaeological, linguistic, genetic, climate and migration studies have begun to present a unified picture of these peoples and their consanguine ties.

Abraham's mother was a daughter of Na' Hor, a Horite name. The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who originated in the Nile region. Exclusive intermarriage (endogamy) is a characteristic of castes. This means that Abraham's mother was Horite. Because ethnicity was traced through the mother, we must conclude that Abraham was Horite. As David is a descendant of Abraham, David also had Horite blood. This explains why all of David's sons are called "priests" in II Samuel.


David's Kenite-Horite Blood

According to the Talmud, David's maternal grandfather was Adael. Adael is the masculine equivalent of the name Adah. Adah was the wife of Lamech the Elder and the mother of Jubal and Jabal (Gen. 4). This is also the name of one of Esau the Elder’s wives. So Adah and Adael is a family name traced back to the lines of Cain and Seth. Both versions of the name are traceable to the Kenites, the descendants of Cain who intermarried with Seth's line. So David had Kenite blood. This means that he is a descendant of Cain/Kain and since the lines of Kain and Seth exclusively intermarried, he was also a descendant of Seth. This explains why David sent the spoils of war to the cities of Judah and to the Kenites (1 Samuel 30:29).

David's ancestry is traced through Tamar, the daughter of a Horite priest. She was probably at her father's shrine when she tricked Judah into impregnating her. When Judah discovered that she was pregnant, he ordered that she be burned to death. This was the Levitical punishment for daughters of priests who committed adultery or harlotry. Chastity was of the first order among the priestly lines, both for males and females. Horite ruler-priests married only the daughters of priests. Some of those priests were metal-working descendants of Kain, called Kenites.

Jethro, Moses' fathers-in-law, may have been a Kenite. He is called the "priest of Midian."  Jethro was not his name but rather his title. He was a Yatir that proclaimed the laws of YHWH as they pertained to the husbandry of sheep and goats. Yatir is from the Hebrew YTR which is the 3-letter root of Jethro. According to Biblical Anthropologist Susan Burns, the Yatir was a priest of nomadic sheep herders. Although not all the priestly clans were metalworkers, all the priestly clans kept herds.

Midian was one of the Abraham's sons by his cousin-wife Keturah. Likely, Aaron was skilled in metal work which explains why the Israelites appealed to him to build the golden calf.

Rahab of Jericho was the wife of Salmon the Horite, the Son of Hur (Hor). Salmon is called the "father of Bethlehem" in 1 Chronicles 2:54. Rahab became the grandmother of Boaz who married Ruth. Salmon (also Salma or Solomon) is a Horite name and is associated with Bethlehem (1 Chronicles 2:51). This connection of the Jews to the ancient Horites is why Jews call their parents horim.

Hiram I of Tyre was kin to David and sent skilled artisans to help David build a palace in Jerusalem, “the city of the Great King” (Matt. 5:35). Hiram is also known as "Huram" and "Horam", which are versions of the names Hur, Hor and Harun (Aaron), as in Jabal Harun, the Mountain of Aaron. According to Midrash, Hur was Moses’ brother-in-law, Miriam’s husband. Hur’s grandson was one of the builders of the Tabernacle. I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hur as the "father of Bethlehem", a settlement in the heartland of Horite territory and the birthplace of King David and his "son" Jesus, the Christ.

The evidence concerning David's ethnicity points to Kenites and Horites who intermarried according to a unique pattern that is like a cultural signature. The pattern involves exclusive intermarriage between priestly lines. Each ruler had 2 wives. One was his half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham) and the other was a cousin or niece (as was Keturah to Abraham). The cousin/niece bride named their firstborn son after her father. So Abraham's firstborn son by Keturah was Joktan, named after Keturah's ruler-priest father. This Joktan the Younger is probably the founder of the Joktanite tribes of Arabia. Going back further, Methuselah's Kenite bride Naamah named their firstborn son Lamech after her father (see diagram below).

Related reading:  Shepherd Priests; The Ethnicity of David and Abraham; Who Were the Horites?; Abraham's Horite Mother; Why Jesus Visited Tyre; Afro-Asiatic Metalworkers

Moses's Wives and Brothers

Analysis of the marriage and ascendancy structure of Moses' family reveals the distinctive pattern of the Horite Hebrew ruler-priest caste.

Moses had two wives. His Kushite wife was his half-sister, as was Sarah to Abraham. The pattern of Moses's family is identical to that of the rulers listed in Genesis 4, 5 and 11 and to that of Abraham's father Terah and Samuel's father Elkanah. One of the sons of Korah the Younger (Ishar's son) was named Elkanah. This is the name of the prophet Samuel's father who also had two wives. Samuel's family was also Horite.

It appears that all of these great men of Genesis and Exodus were Horite Hebrew rulers. Many are designated as divinely appointed by the initial letter Y in their Hebrew names, a solar cradle.

Moses’ father was Amram. He had two wives, following the pattern of his forefathers who were Horite Hebrew priest-scribes. Exodus 6:20 indicates that Jochebed was probably Amram's half-sister, and if so, she was Amram's principal wife. Her name is also spelled Jacquebeth and refers to the African homeland, probably ancient Kush. The Horite Hebrew were originally from the Nile Valley.

Amram's relationship to Jochebed parallels Abraham's relationship to Sarah. Both were first wives, married at a young age. The ruler's second wife was usually a patrilineal cousin or niece. Such was the case with Amram's second wife Ishar and Abraham's second wife, Keturah. This pattern is characteristic of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of Horite ruler-priests.

Ishar is a woman's name, derived from the Hebrew isha, meaning "woman." Women are sometimes listed as "sons" in Genesis and Exodus if the ruling line is traced through them, which is the case with Ishar (Ex 6), and Anah and Oholibamah (Gen. 36). The last two women are Horites of Edom, of the house of "Seir the Horite."

Likewise, Ishar was a descendant of Seir the Horite. She was either Amram's half-sister or his patrilineal cousin (as was Keturah to Abraham). Ishar was the mother of Korah the Younger (Num. 26:59), who she named after her father Korah the Elder. Korah the Younger is the one who opposed Moses' authority.

Exodus 6:17 lists Ishar and Amram in the same generation. These were Kohath's children by two different wives. A characteristic of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the Horite ruler-priests is that they had two wives.

 
According to Numbers 26, Korah's claim to be the ruler-priest was supported by the Hanochites (descendants of Ha'nock, the first born son of Jacob's firstborn son Reuben). As the first born son of the cousin/niece bride Korah was to rule the territory of his maternal grandfather.

Korah's descendants are praised in 1 Chronicles 26. Here the Chronicler classifies them with the gatekeepers of Obed-Edom. Obed was the name of David's grandfather and Edom is the traditional homeland of the Horites. Petra, the capital of Edom, reflects Horite architecture.

The Pattern of Two Wives

Following the custom of his Hebrew forefathers, Moses had two wives. The first wife would have been a half-sister, the wife of Moses' youth. It is likely that he married her while in Egypt. She is said to be Kushite (Numbers 12) and for some reason Moses' siblings didn't approve of the marriage, although the marriage was probably arranged by Amram. 

Zipporah, Moses' cousin bride, is mentioned in Exodus 2:15-16 and in Exodus 18:1-6. Moses met her while she at a well where she was drawing water for her father’s flocks. Priests were also shepherds who maintained shrines near wells, springs or other bodies of water. Zipporah was the daughter of "the priest of Midian". In other words, her father was a descendant of Abraham by Keturah who bore him a son named Midian.

Moses’ Kushite wife is not named, but she was likely a woman of high rank and his half-sister. Moses's first wife would have been a half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham), if Moses married according to the pattern of his Hebrew ruler-priest ancestors. HIs second wife would have been a patrilineal cousin (as was Keturah to Abraham). Moses likely had children in Egypt by his first wife before he fled to Jethro in Midian and married Zipporah.

The criticism of Moses' marriage to the first wife is related in this passage: “When they were in Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married: “He married a Kushite woman!” They said, “Has the Lord God spoken only through Moses? Has God not spoken through us as well?” (Numbers 11:35-12:2)

We don’t know why Aaron and Miriam criticized Moses for marrying the Kushite woman, but it is was not racially motivated since all these people were descendants of Noah by Kush (Ham's son) and Aram (Shem's son) since the two lines intermarried. Likely, Moses’ siblings were angry that he asserted authority over Aaron, his older brother, by marrying Korah's sister and then marrying a Midiante wife. His marriage to Korah's sister strengthened the alliance with the Kushites and his marriage to Zipporah strengthened the alliance to the Midianites. This led to the formation of a powerful alliance of peoples related by blood and marriage and strengthened Moses' position as ruler.

In order for Moses to rule, he had to have two wives. This pattern of rulers having two wives is first found in Genesis 4 which mentions Lamech and his two wives. It continues through the generations with Nahor, Terah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and as we have seen with Moses. [3] This also explains Abraham's urgency to fetch a cousin wife for Isaac so that Isaac could rule after Abraham's death. This suggests that we should look in the biblical text for clues as to who Isaac's first wife would have been. We know that she would have been a half-sister, since Rebecca was the cousin bride. Likely, Isaac's first wife was a daughter of Yishbak, another son of Abraham by Keturah.

Here we find the 3-son pattern with Yishmael, Yishbak and Yitzak.  It is like other 3-son tribal units that we have seen: Uz, Buz and Huz; Og, Magog and Gog. The pattern corresponds to the 3-son Kushite rulers Sheba-qo, Shebit-qo and Ta-Har-qo. Here we find the Meroitic honorary suffix qo. The first two names are linguistically equivalent to the biblical name Sheba, an ancestor of Abraham and his cousin-wife Keturah. Ta-Har-qo is a Horus name.


The Youngest Son Rules

Isaac was the younger of the 3 first-born sons and he was chosen to rule over Abraham's territory after Abraham's death. The theme of the youngest son as ruler runs throughout the Bible. However, he never rules without objection from his siblings who express jealousy such as Miriam and Aaron. Cain’s jealousy of his younger brother overturns his natural affection to the point that he commits fratercide. Likewise, the jealousy of Joseph’s older brothers overturned their affection and they sold him into slavery. Neither was David, the youngest of the 12 sons of Jesse, treated well by his brothers. They left him to tend the flock while they returned home to feast with the Prophet Samuel. We have an allusion to this in the opening of the Song of Songs, which says that beloved’s skin is as dark "as the tents of Kedar" because he was made to work in the sun by his older brothers.

Zipporah and the Flint Knife

There is a strange story about Zipporah circumcising Moses’ son using a flint knife. As far as we know women didn’t circumcise males. This would have been a violation of the gender role distinctions practiced among Abraham's people. Women circumcised females and men circumcised males. This has led some to wonder if perhaps Moses was uncircumcised and Zipporah circumcised him in an urgent situation, but the Egyptians practiced male circumcision and Moses would not have been permitted to appear before Pharaoh had he been uncircumcised.[4]  Besides, the text specifically says that Zipporah circumcised her son.

“On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the LORD met him and tried to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin, and touched Moses' feet with it, and said, “Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” So he let him alone. It was then she said, “A bridegroom of blood by circumcision.” (Exodus 4:24-26)

Here we see Zipporah acting as a priest in applying the blood of the son to save her (uncircumcised = ritually impure) husband. This is the only written record of a woman involved with male circumcision and Zipporah clearly was not happy to be put in that situation. In her cultural context performing an act reserved for men would have diminished her femininity. She sacrificed an aspect of her womanhood in performing this act to save her husband.


Related reading: Were the Shasu Related to Moses?; The Nubian Context of YHWH; The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ; The Ethnicity of Abraham and David; The Genesis Record of Horite Rule; Who Were the Horites?; Lamech Segment Analysis; Abraham's Nephews and Nieces; The Eyes of Horus Speak of Jesus; Abraham and Job: Horite Rulers; God's African Ancestors; Moses and Abraham: Different Origins of Israel?


NOTES

1. The name “Korah” means shaved head. This was the custom for priests in Egypt preparing for their terms of service in the temples. See Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2007, p.37.

2. Many of the rulers in Genesis and Exodus met their wives at wells. That is because they married the daughters of priests who tended shrines where there were either natural springs or wells.

3. All of these royal priests married two wives and maintained them in separate households on a north-south axis. These settlements marked the north and southern boundaries of the ruler’s territory along the water system he controlled. The pattern of ruler-priests having 2 wives continues throughout the Bible. Elkanah is a later example, with his two wives Hannah and Penninah.

4. Circumcision was a sign of purity among the Egyptians and none who were uncircumcised were permitted to appear before Pharaoh. Circumcision applied to females also. Read about Pharaonic circumcision here.

Shepherd Priests

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

The ruler-priests among Abraham's people had two wives who lived in separate settlements with separate flocks. Together these constituted the extent of the ruler's kingdom. There were practical reasons for this practice. In the event of attack, the ruler's line was more likely to survive if divided into two camps. This very fear of being "cut off from the earth" motivated Jacob to divide his household into two groups when returning to Canaan (Gen. 32).

Horus, who was called "son" of the Creator, was believed to be the uniter of two lands (the Upper and Lower Nile). In ancient Egyptian he is called HR, meaning Most High One. One of his titles was Har-pa-Neb-Taui, which means "Horus of the Two Lands." He was regarded as the patron of kings and the Great Shepherd.

The early Hebrew were shepherd priests. The signs of their authority were the shepherd's crook and the flail or the staff (matteh) and the rod (shebet).  Many of these rulers bore a Horus name because they believed that their king was divinely appointed to enforce divine law as an earthly representative of Horus. Great care was taken in the preparation of the dead king's body in hope that he might be the righteous ruler who would overcome death and lead his people to immortality.

The rulers of Egypt kept flocks and acknowledged that Jacob's people were especially skilled shepherds. This is why Pharaoh asked Joseph to put the best shepherd of Jacob's clan in charge of the royal flocks (Gen. 47:6). Moses' father married according to the pattern of the early Hebrew ruler-priests. He too was a shepherd priest. One of Amram's daughters grew up around her father's water shrine and she married a Hur, a Horite Hebrew ruler. Hur is a Horus name.

The shepherd-priests kept sheep to offer in sacrifice and they often sacrificed at the sheep cotes which were sacred places in the ancient world. The shepherds slept at the sheep cotes, guarding the doors with their rods to protect the flock from predators. This is the background to Jesus' statements about being the door in John 10:9-15:

Jesus said, "I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me-- even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep."

Sheep were also sacrificed at threshing floors. David, the shepherd who tended his father's flocks, offered sacrifices at the threshing floor of the Jebusite Araunah. Threshing floors were also regarded as sacred spaces in the ancient world.

Joachim, the Virgin Mary's father, was a shepherd-priest. Even those who rejected Jesus as Messiah recognized that Mary was the daughter of a ruler-priest. In the Talmud we read: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.” (Sanhedrin 106a)

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, speaks of having other sheep in another fold (John 10:16). The two folds are often cast as dispensations: one consisting of those who lived in expectation of the Son of God (Abraham's people) and the other being the witnesses of His resurrection (the Church). Together these comprise the Kingdom of God.

Jesus, born in Bethlehem of David, comes from a long line of shepherd-priests. Mary’s father Joachim was a priest, and the Protoevangelium of James says that he kept flocks. The priests of old maintained shrines at water systems or wells where they watered their flocks. Moses tended the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. It was at Jethro's well that Moses first met his future wife, Zipporah. Abraham's servant found Rebecca at a well and Jacob first encountered Rachel at a well. Jesus encounters the first convert, a Samaritan woman known as Photini, at Jacob's well.

The association of sheep with the Son of God is found throughout the Bible and takes the Horite shepherd-priests as its pattern. In Scripture, God is depicted as the Shepherd of Israel (ex: Psalm 80:1) and the priests of Israel are commanded to be good shepherds of the flock.

The ruler-priests among Abraham's ancestors were shepherds. The signs of their authority have been found in pre-dynastic wall paintings at Hierakonpolis, the site of the oldest known Horite religious practices (4200 B.C.). Priests placed invocations to Horus at the summit as the first rays of the sun came over the eastern horizon. Of particular interest is the tomb painting of two men who carry crooked staffs with objects that look like flails, suggesting that they might have been ruler-priests. Their bodies are painted with red ochre, an almost universal practice among holy men before the Axial Age.

It was to the shepherds of Bethlehem, a Horite Hebrew settlement (I Chronicles 4:4; 1 Chronicles 2:54), that God sent the first message of the fulfillment of the promise made to their ancestors in Eden (Gen. 3:15). In God's economy, which always gets the order of things right, the descendants of the people who first tasted paradise are the first to hear the news of deliverance and restoration.


Related reading: The Hebrew Were a Caste; Sheep Cotes as Sacred Spaces; Ancient Moral Codes; Jesus: From Lamb to Ram; Threshing Floors and Solar Symbols; The Two Brides of Christ; The Pattern of Two Wives; Horite and Sethite Mounds

The Eyes of Horus Speak of Jesus

Ron, a regular reader of Just Genesis has made an important and well-informed observation which I would like to explore further. He wrote in a comment here:

[My] theory…. depends entirely on whether or not gold and silver are, in Egyptian mythology (or, more generally, in the Afroasiatic worldview) associated with the sun and the moon. I don't know if they are.

But if they are, then perhaps the two metals in the Zech. 6:11 crown symbolize the eyes of Horus.

Or perhaps they symbolize sun worship at the western end of the Afroasiatic dominion and moon worship at the eastern end, mentioned in one of your earlier posts ("Was Abraham a Pagan?"), which may suggest rule over the whole Afroasiatic dominion, from east to west. At that time, wouldn't that be the entire known world?

We begin by addressing Ron’s last observation about the western and eastern extensions of the vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion. Ron recognizes that there are 2 creations stories and 2 flood stories and that they come from different areas of the Dominion, yet they share a common worldview. On the western end, the Sun was regarded as superior to the Moon and the emblem of the Creator.  On the eastern end, devotion to the Mood-god Sin was so great that the Moon was regarded as the Sun's equal.  The western Afro-Asiatics would have viewed this as heretical (pagan) because it moved the more ancient binary worldview, in which one of the opposites is always greater in some way, to a dualistic worldview in which the opposites are equal in every way. 

In the story of Jesus’ birth we find another expression of the western and eastern expectations of God's work. The announcement came to the shepherds from an angelic host at night. The heavens lit up with their glory as they proclaimed that a Son was born in the city of David. To the Magi, who were eastern Afro-Asiatics, the announcement came by the conjunction of the king planet Jupiter with the king star Regelus, in the constellation of Leo. Why God would communicate with the western and eastern Afro-Asiatics differently? Why not send angels to both groups. Wouldn’t that have worked as well?

God honors both traditions in choosing to proclaim the birth of His Son within the contexts of the two groups. The shepherds would have known about the promise of the coming Son because all the old Horite priests were also shepherds. The Magi knew to read the heavens because they were the descendents of those rulers from Judah who expected the Son’s coming to be attended by evidence in the heavens. This knowledge came to them from their Horite priest ancestors.  In both cases, events in the heavens communicate with those who are paying attention.  In ancient times, the people who payed attention to events in the heavens were priests.

Psalm 19:1 says that the "heavens declare the glory of God." The greatest celestial witness is one which God set to go off in the heavens like an alarm clock on December 24 A.D. 3. That's when Jupiter completed a triple coronation of and aligned with Regelus in the constellation of Leo to produce the brightest heavenly light ever seen. The ancients who expected the Son of God to be born recognized the sign and followed the Bethlehem Star to the Son of God. This event is confirmed by sophisticated astronomical software. (For more on this, go to http://www.bethlehemstar.com/)

Ron asks about the metals silver and gold in Zechariah’s crown. The metals are silver and gold. It is certainly possible that these represent the eyes of Horus, who was called "Horus of the Two Eyes". However, Horus is often portrayed as blind in one eye. That eye was damaged while Horus engaged in mortal combat with this brother Set. The other eye is often shown as red, as in the image of Hathor crowned with the red eye of Horus, a solar image.



In ancient Egyptian symbolism, the right eye is the Eye of Ra, and symbolizes the sun. The left is the Eye of Thoth, and symbolizes the moon. Together they are the Two Eyes of Horus, but one is weaker than the other. This is consistent with the binary worldview of Abraham's Kushite ancestors. If the metals represent the eyes of Horus, the silver would have been the symbol of the Moon and the gold the symbol of the Sun.  Now the question remains, which would have been the red eye?  To answer that, we should consider Hathor, an image of divine judgment, which is what the red eye appears to symbolize.  In Egyptian mythology, Apopis was a water serpent and a symbol of chaos (te'hom). He is slain by Hathor, Ra's cat. This makes sense when we consider that the Sun and Moon appear red when the atmosphere is least pure, that is to say, when the "waters above" are made chaotic. This too would have been observed by the ancient Afro-Asiatic priests.

This takes us back to the story of Jesus' birth. The shepherds would have known the story of the angels coming to Abraham and their announcement of the birth of a son.  The angelic beings appeared in the "heat of the day". This contrasts with God's visitation in the garden in "the cool of the day", in which He intended to commune with the Man and the Woman.  The latter visit was a hot encounter with God because the angels were on their way to Sodom, a city that stood under divine judgment.  The chiastic structure of the Sodom narrative places the destruction of Sodom between the promise of a son for Abraham and the birth of two sons to Lot.  The element of the promised Son's birth can be found even in the story of Sodom's destruction.

Wells and Brides

Alice C. Linsley


"Therefore blessed Jacob, as you have heard, went into Mesopotamia to take a wife. When he had come to a certain well, he saw Rachel coming with her father's sheep - after he recognized her as his cousin, he kissed her as soon as the flock was supplied with water. If you notice carefully, brothers, you can recognize that it was not without reason that the holy patriarchs found their wives at wells or fountains. If this had happened only once, someone might say it was accidental and not for some definite reason. Blessed Rebekah who was to be united to blessed Isaac was found at the well; Rachel whom blessed Jacob was to marry was recognized at the well; Zipporah who was joined to Moses was found at the well." - Caesarius of Arles (Sermon 88:1)

To this list, we must add Keturah who resided at the Well of Sheba where Abraham went to take her as his second wife. And there is the Samaritan Woman at the well to whom Jesus spoke. Her name, according to Tradition, is Photini and she symbolizes the Church, the "Bride of Christ."

In addition to the pattern of meeting brides at wells, we recognize that Rebekah and Zipporah were drawing water for their father's sheep. This is highly suggestive, since Zipporah was the daughter of the "Priest of Midian", Jethro. Mary's father was Joachim and tradition tells us that he was both a priest and a shepherd. Was Rebekah the daughter of a priest? Very likely.

Rebekah's father was Bethuel, which means "House of God" and probably refers to a shrine. Bethuel was a son of Nahor and Milka, a "brother" of the tribal unit designated by Huz, Uz, Buz, and a nephew of Abraham (Genesis 22:20-22).

The well also represents refreshment, neutral ground for strangers to meet, and a place of ritual cleansing. Caesarius of Arles explains that since Isaac, Jacob and Moses are all 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."

The ancient shrines were built at wells, rivers, oases and springs which sustained the flocks of the priests who tended those shrines. It was here that Horite ruler-priests often met their future wives.

Related reading:  Water and Blood; A Woman at a Well; Shepherd Priests