Blame Eve for the Heat

Alice C. Linsley

Recently, Ralph, a member of the international Facebook forum The Bible and Anthropology asked this question: "Who's sin caused the Fall, Eve's or Adam's?" Here are the responses:

Del - Adam's, I should think; as covenant head, he would have been fit to intercede sacerdotally for Eve had he himself not participated in the sin. 

Alice - That is a good response to Ralph's question and accurate if we accept the biblical assertion that Adam is the first named ruler-priest of the ruler-priest lineages that descend to the Messiah, Jesus. The genealogical lists in Matthew and Luke are intended to show that connection. Also that point is made in Paul's parallelism of Adam and Jesus. "For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." The priestly office is clearly identified with men.

Kristine - In Romans, Paul refers to “one man” (who sinned) like 13 times but never to one woman, even though she ate first.

Alice - St. Cyril of Alexandria teaches that humanity became “diseased… through the sin of one," and if we attend to the Genesis text closely, that is the sin of Eve, the crown of creation (think pyramid), whose action of submitting to the will of a creature who slithers along the ground (bottom of pyramid) inverted the hierarchical order in creation, so that all of the creation is subjected to decay. Therefore, as by that first woman and first man death entered, so by the New Eve (the Theotokos) and the New Adam (Jesus Messiah), death is overcome. "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the tombs bestowing life!"

The Eastern Church never speaks of sin being passed from Adam and Eve to their descendants. Instead, each person bears the guilt and shame of his or her own sin. What then is the inheritance of humanity from Adam and Eve if it is not guilt? It is a condition or a disease that results in death, which St. Paul also points to in I Corinthians 15:21 where he parallels Adam and Christ. "For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive."

Del - I think the difference between the East and the West in this case has to do with the East thinking the Western theologians are using the word "guilt" in penal/juridical sense. While, in fairness, some theologians certainly *do* use the term in that way, that doesn't seem to be the traditional doctrine, which uses the term "debitum" as shorthand for the disorder a man experiences who lacks the justice that comes along with the grace of divine sonship. Since a person is made for interpersonal communion with other persons (and, preeminently, interpersonal communion with God), if he lacks the grace of divine sonship, he can't fully be himself. He is spiritually disfigured, and this creates a disorder in the union of the soul with the body, which in turn negatively impacts both. We can speak of this in terms of "guilt", because it is something corrected by justice (i.e., by "arightness"). It isn't really the same thing as personal guilt, though, nor do I think the Western fathers or later medievals mean to imply an identity between the two.

Alice - True, Del. Another difference is that the Eastern Fathers were sensitive to archetypes and were great observers of patterns in Scripture. One of those patterns is male-female couplets. Note, for example, that after Eve's sin, the cool encounters with God become hot encounters. Gen 3:8 speaks of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. In Gen. 3:15, God tells the Woman that she will bring forth the Seed that will crush the serpent's head. Note the promise of the Son. The next visitation is to Abraham in heat of the day: "The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day." (Gen. 18:1) Again a son is promised. The male-female couplets in Genesis usually point us to Messianic expectation.

Related reading: St. John Chrysostom on Eve's Sin; Adam Was a Red Man; Binary Sets in the Ancient World; The Sun and the Moon as Male-Female Couplet; Rebecca Ran to Her Mother's House; Binary is a Bad Word These Days

Make ready, O Bethlehem!

Make ready, O Bethlehem; for Eden hath been opened for all. Prepare, O Ephratha; for the Tree of life hath blossomed forth in the cave from the Virgin; for her womb did appear as a spiritual paradise, in which is planted the divine Plant, whereof eating we shall live and not die as Adam. Verily, Christ shall be born, raising the likeness that fell of old.

In the icons above, the Nativity takes place within a mountain cave or a rock shelter. The portrayal of Mary with the infant Christ in a cave is a much beloved icon among Orthodox Christians. People often wonder why the Bible doesn't mention a cave, but rather a cattle stable. The connection has to do with the animal totem associated with the Mother of God. From before the time of Abraham this animal was the long horn cow.

Cattle were first domesticated in the Upper Nile Valley about 15,000 years ago. The term for cow nag (Wolog, Fulani), nagge (Hausa), ning (Angas, Ankwe) and ninge (Susu) corresponds to the Egyptian ng.  Cattle were often sheltered in caves along the Nile Valley. Got Agoro in Kitgum District in Northern Uganda has a cave with a painting of Mother Mary holding Jesus. The Shahara of Oman and the Horite Habiru (Hebrew) of Edom also kept their livestock in caves. Abraham is kin to the Horite rulers of Edom who are listed in Genesis 36.

Hathor, the mother of Horus, called the "son" of the Creator

The image of Hathor holding her infant in a cattle stall is found at Nile shrines and temples. Hathor was usually shown wearing the long horns of the Apis bull with the sun cradled in the horns. This image, represented by the Canaanite Y,  indicates her divine appointment and conception by divine overshadowing. 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)

This is why "Mary was the only one who merited to be called the Mother as Spouse of God", according to St. Augustine of Hippo.

My assertion that the Ra-Horus-Hathor narrative is the Proto-Gospel is based on detailed anthropological investigation. The Christ is not a human invention patterned on the Horus myth. Horus is the pattern by which the Horite Habiru (Hebrew) came to recognize the divine Son who was appointed to rule (Messiah) and who would rise on the third day. Jesus Christ is the only historical figure who fits the pattern. 

Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors venerated cattle and left behind engraving of bulls and calves with the solar disc between their horns. This image was associated with Hathor, the virgin who conceived by the overshadowing of the sun, the emblem of the Creator. Her son was Horus. She was the patroness of Habiru metal workers as has been shown by discoveries at Timnah. A temple dedicated to Hathor was discovered at the southwestern edge of the Timnah metal-working site by Professor Beno Rothenberg of Hebrew University.

In the oldest known Messianic tradition the Son of God is born as a calf to Hathor, and the birth took place in a holding place for cattle. Sometimes that was a cave and other times it was a man-made shelter. Horus was portrayed in images as the golden calf appointed to rule by his father the Creator, whose emblem was the sun. the Horites were devotees of Ra, Horus and Hathor and their beliefs were unique in the archaic world. 

One image of Horus is referenced in Exodus 32 which describes the metal-working priest Aaron as the crafter of this image (above). The image incorporates the sun as a representation of the divine overshadowing or visible anointing of the Calf of God. This is the Old Testament version of what was revealed at Jesus' baptism in the Jordan.

The later Deuteronomist Historian, known for iconoclasm, attempted to paint the Golden (red = burnished) Calf as an idol.

Related reading: The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y; Mother and Son Pierced: A picture of intimacy; The Red Heifer; Why Cows Were Sacred in the Ancient World; Graven Images and Idols; African Religion Predates Hinduism; Seal Connects Hezekiah With Horite Beliefs; Shepherd Priests; Mary, the Mound, and the Bread of Life

The Virgin Birth and the Manger too!

Alice C. Linsley


"Must one believe in the Virgin Birth to be a Christian? This is not a hard question to answer. It is conceivable that someone might come to Christ and trust Christ as Savior without yet learning that the Bible teaches that Jesus was born of a virgin. A new believer is not yet aware of the full structure of Christian truth. The real question is this: Can a Christian, once aware of the Bible’s teaching, reject the Virgin Birth? The answer must be no." -- The Rev Dr. Albert Mohler (From here.)


I agree with Dr. Mohler, and I would go farther to say that all the details of the Nativity account are to be believed.  The Mother of God was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, her virginity was preserved, she gave birth in a manger, and the witnesses to the Incarnation were Bethlehem shepherds and Jewish Wise Men living in the East.
 
These are the exact details concerning the expectation of the Seed of the Woman (Gen. 3:15) that were anticipated by Abraham's Horite people and echoed in the Psalms, in Isaiah and in Micah. 
 
Ancient rulers attempted to claim that they were the King of Kings by fabricating stories of their birth that corresponded to these details. Kushite and Egyptian rulers did not name their biological fathers in their king lists. The Pharaoh was called "son of Re" and Egyptian texts never mention an earthly father. Kingship was a manifestation of the solar deity's overshadowing of noble women. Sargon the Great (2300 B.C.) proclaimed that he didn't know his father because his mother was overshadowed by the sun (the emblem of the Creator) while in the palace temple. Here is a fragment of Sargon's legend from Akkad:

Sargon, the mighty king, king of Akkadê am I,

My mother was lowly; my father I did not know;
The brother of my father dwelt in the mountain.
My city is Azu-piranu, which is situated on the bank of the Purattu [Euphrates],
My lowly mother conceived me, in secret she brought me forth.
(From here.)

Sargon was a Kushite ruler. In the ancient world, the east-facing temples were considered the mansion (hâît) or the house (pirû) of the deity. They were O-piru, meaning “Sun House” or “House of the Sun.” The priests who served at the temples were called Hapiru and they were devotees of Horus.

Sargon I (Nimrod) is said to have been born to a lowly virgin queen who was overshadowed by the High God. He was born in an O-piru. His home city was called Azu-piranu, meaning House of God . Azu was an ancient name for the Creator.  It is Azu in Akkadian, Asa in Chadic, Asha in Kushitic, and Ashai in Hebrew. Nehemiah 11:13 mentions a Jerusalem priest named Am-ashai.
 
In the oldest known Messianic tradition the Son of God is born as a calf to his mother Hathor whose is portrayed as a sacred cow, and the birth took place in a stable with the Babe sleeping in a crib.
 
The shepherd-priest motif first found with Abel continues with Abraham who kept flocks and dug wells to support them. Jethro, the Priest of Midian, also kept flocks and offered sacrifices to God. Jethro was Moses' father-in-law. The shepherd-priest motif continues with David who tended his father's flocks and offered sacrifices that were accepted at the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite. The motif culminates in Joachim, the Virgin Mary's father, also a shepherd-priest. Even those who disclaimed Jesus as Messiah recognised that his mother Mary was the daughter of a ruler priest. 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.

Mary is "Miriam Daughter of Joachim Son of Pntjr (Panther) Priest of Nathan of Bethlehem." From the earliest predynastic times among the Egyptian Horites, ntjr designated the king. The name Panther or p-ntjr meant "God is King."

Here is the celestial archetype whereby Abraham's descendants would recognize the identity of Jesus, the only begotten Son of God who was born of the Virgin Mary.

Re, Hathor and Horus represent the Egyptian Triad in which Horus and his father were said to be “one.” Jesus makes this claim concerning Himself, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). The Creator Re is associated with the temple in Heliopolis (City of the Sun) on the east side of the Delta. Hathor, the virgin mother of Horus, had her principal temples in Dendera and Memphis to the south of Heliopolis and on the west side of the Nile. The principal temples of Horus were further south in Nekhen and Edfu, and on the west side of the Upper Nile.

When Jesus claims to be "one" with his Father it is as a shepherd-priest. He says, "My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me." (John 10:27)

Horite priests kept flocks and sacrificed animals from these flocks. This is why their shrines were located near sources of water.

Bethlehem was an ancient Horite settlement according to 1 Chronicles 4:4.  The shepherds living there were descendants of the Horites who anticipated the coming of the Son of God in the flesh. When they beheld the angels and came in wonder to the manger to behold the Christ child, they must have been in wonder, even as we are, that the ancient prophecy was fulfilled in every detail.

That being the case, Christians embrace the Nativity narrative as a whole. We are not free to pick only details that appeal to us and reject those that may offend us.


 
Related reading:  Genesis and the True Meaning of Christmas; Horite Expectation and the Star of Bethlehem

Swelling of Sun and River Speak of God

Alice C. Linsley


In Genesis 1 the creation begins when God’s speaks order (tehut) into the chaos (tehom) and says, “Let there be light.” This is not the light of the Sun, but the uncreated light of God’s presence which counters the chaotic deep. Psalm 29:10 describes “Yahweh who sat as king upon the flood; He is king forever.”

God spoke, saying "Let there be light," and light flooded the vast darkness. There is a parallel between flooding by light and flooding by water. Both the sun and the river swell and in the ancient Nilotic cosmology both speak of God.

A central experience of Abraham’s Kushite ancestors was the annual flooding of the Nile. As spring rains fell in the Ethiopian headlands the river rose above its banks, flooding the Nile Valley between June and October. The flooding lasted for forty days and turned the valley into shallow lakes and deposited fertile silt which renewed the earth. As the waters receded, only the highest mounds of earth would been seen at first. These mounds seems to swell up from the water. When the waters began to recede, families waited another forty days before returning to their homes. This is the origin of the biblical phrase “forty days and forty nights.” It is distinctly Nilotic (which explains why the number forty doesn't appear in Daniel, a book rich in number symbolism).

The Nile flooding brought disorder and was likened to the primordial waters of tehom, the watery and disordered deep which God put in order by His Word, tehut. The victory of tehut over tehom helps us to understand one of the oldest creation myths in which the ancient Egyptians envisioned the world as a mound emerging from the waters of a universal ocean. Here the first life form was a lily growing on the peak of the primeval mound. The mound itself was named Tatjenen, meaning "the emerging land."

The Kushites carried this notion to Asia where it is found today in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. The emerging mound is called Mount Meru. It emerges from the center of the cosmic ocean, and is encircled by the Sun and the seven visible planets. Mount Meru in Hinduism is a mythological mountain. However, it relates to a real Mount Meru in East Africa known to Abraham’s Kushite ancestors. The names meru, meri (Egyptian) and Mary are cognates. The Virgin Mary, whose womb swelled with the Son of God, is sometimes portrayed in icons as a mountain. The Prophet Daniel saw a mountain, from which a stone was cut by the hand of God (Dan. 2:34, 45).

At the Annunciation, the Angel's greeting to Mary was ave, perhaps related to the Hebrew vav צבה meaning "to swell.” Ave also means bird. In many icons and paintings of the Annunciation a dove appears in the background or hovers over the Virgin. There is a relationship between ave and vav if you consider that the dove eats seeds (never worms) and their stomachs swell as the seed expands. Jesus is called the "Seed" of the Woman in Gen. 3:15. He identified himself as the fulfillment of this first biblical promise in John 12:23: "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  I tell you the truth, unless a kernal of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds."

The grain rising from the earth, the heads of wheat swelling parallel the stone pillars by which the ancients established boundaries and covenants. In the Lower Nile small pyramids were carved from single blocks of stone. These were known as bnbn (benben), from the root, bn, meaning to "swell forth." This relates to the sun's rising or swelling. The Egyptian word for the rising sun is wbn. Tombs of officials from the 4th Dynasty (2613 to 2494 BC) were surmounted by conical mounds or benben. These tombs, along with the east-facing royal tombs at Giza, indicate that the ancient Kushite and Egyptian rulers hoped to rise from death, even as the Sun rises. Doubtless this is what the Prophet alluded to when he wrote, “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise [swell/be magnified] with healing in its wings.” (Mal. 4:2).

Many of the practices of the ancient Israelites originate in the Nile Valley.  It is not far fetched then to suspect an ancient Nilotic background for the Tetragrammaton: Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh. In Aramaic and Hebrew the hey הא means "behold."  The vav pertains to the tribal ruler and deity. So the meaning is something like “Behold our God. Behold he is magnified.”


Related reading: Etymology of the Vav; Mount Mary and the Origins of Life; Cosmology and Ethics; Tehut's Victory over Tehom

Look Upon Her Whose Heart Was Pierced

Simeon, the priest, said to Jesus' Mother: "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also."  Luke 2:35

O much sorrowing Mother of God, more highly exalted than all other maidens, according to thy purity and the multitude of thy suffering endured by thee on earth: Hearken to our sighs and soften the hearts of evil men, and protect us under the shelter of thy mercy. For we know no other refuge and ardent intercessor apart from thee, but as thou hast great boldness before the One who was born of thee, help and save us by thy prayers, that without offence we may attain the Heavenly Kingdom where, with all the saints, we will sing the thrice-holy hymn to One God Almighty in the Trinity, always now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Ossuary of Miriam, Daughter of Y'shua

2000-year-old ossuary of Miriam, daughter of Y'shua

Researchers from Bar-Ilan and Tel Aviv universities published a study confirming the authenticity of an ancient ossuary that was plundered from a tomb in the Valley of Elah (where David defeated Goliath).

The 2,000-year-old ossuary, a stone chest used for secondary burial of bones, belonged to a daughter of the Caiaphas family of high priests. It is marked with the 6 pointed star associated with the Horite ruling caste, and an Aramaic inscription that says, “Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas, Priests of Ma’aziah from Beth Imri.” The inscription dates to the time of the Second Temple.

The word Imri has scholars scratching their heads. It may be a reference to the present-day village of Beit Ummar in the hill country north of Hebron. As an alternative, the scholars Zissu and Goren suggest that ‘Beth Imri’ might be the name of a priestly family of Immer (Ezra 2:36–37; Neh 7:39–42), whose descendants might have been among the Ma’aziah priestly course.

The high priest Yehosef Bar Caiaphas was involved in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. The historian Josephus informs us that his full name was Yosef bar Qayyafa. In 1990 his limestone ossuary was discovered in Jerusalem in a tomb which was in use during the Second Temple Period. The ossuary was inscribed with the name "Joseph son of Caiaphas," the name given by Flavius Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews 18:63.

 
The ossuary also contained the bones of a male individual in his 60’s. It is highly probable that the bones are those of the same Caiaphas who presided over the trial of Jesus (Matt. 26:57-67). He was appointed High Priest by the Roman prefect of Judaea, Valerius Gratus, in 18 CE and removed from office almost 20 years later. The Caiaphas family was related to the Ma’aziah priests, one of the 24 divisions of priests that maintained the offerings at the Temple in a rotation system. A list of priestly divisions can be found in 1 Chronicles 24:7-18, which is usually dated by scholars to the fifth century B.C.

The priests themselves lived not only in Jerusalem but also in other settlements in the land of Israel. When it was "time for the division to go up [to Jerusalem]" (Mishnah, Ta'anit 4:2), the priests left their homes, went up to Jerusalem for a week, and afterwards returned to their homes in Judea or Galilee.


The name "Miriam"

Miriam was a common name in Jesus' time and before.  The name is Meri in ancient Egyptian, Mania in Siamese, and Mari or Meru in the Nilo-Saharan languages.

The inscription on the ossuary is helpful in determining how the daughters of the ruler-priests were memorialized.  If we apply the same formula to the Virgin Mary, this is what we have:

"Miriam Daughter of Joachim Son of Pntjr (Panther) Priests of Nathan of Beth Lehem"

From the earliest predynastic times, ntjr designated the king among the Kushites. The name Panther or p-ntjr likely meant "God is King."

It is certain that Mary was of the ruler-priest caste 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.

I Chronicles 4:4 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 Hebrew territory. The prophets foretold Bethlehem as the birth place of the Son of God.

Joseph's family lived in Nazareth which was the home of the eighteenth division of priests, that of Happizzez (1 Chronicles 24:15).  The words happi and ntjr originate in the Nile Valley, as do the names of many of the ruler-priests listed in the genealogies in Luke and Matthew. Melchi, a name that appears twice in Mary's ancestry, means "my image" in Amharic.

Ma'aziah is Amaziah who ruled over Judah from 769 to 781 B.C. His mother was Jodah who is listed in Luke 3:27. As a member of this priestly family Caiaphas was probably born in the hills south of Bethlehem. This is not Yosef Bar Caiaphas, the Roman appointed high priest who interrogated Jesus. Miriam's paternal grandfather might have been the brother of Yosef.

Caiaphas is also spelled Ka-yafa.  Ka is the Kushitic word for king and yafa means beautiful.

Imri was the father of Zaccur who helped to rebuild a section of the wall of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 3:2). This priestly branch had been in captivity in Babylon. The Jews returned to Palestine between 338-315 B.C. The location of Beth Imri is not known. Some believe that it may be Beth Ummar located south of Bethlehem.

Y'shua is related to the name Shua. Shua was Judah's mother-in-law.  She is a descendant of the Shua mentioned in 1 Chronicles 7:32, a daughter of Eber.


The Six Prong Rosette/Solar Image

The six prong star is also found on the ossuary of Joseph Caiaphas, the high priest (shown below).

This is sometimes called a rosette, It appears on a tomb at Banais, Israel. Banais is thought to be one of the sources of the Jordan river. There is a large cave and various archaeological sites with pools of water running beneath and large cliffs rising above.

The same symbol appears on the top of the Magdala Stone (shown below) which was found in the western shores of the Sea of Galilee in September 2009.

The 6-prong solar symbol was one of the images found among the Celts of the northern Iberian Peninsula. It is seen here on these 9th century BC artifacts found at the archaic high places.

Related reading: The Nazareth-Egypt Connection; The Peoples of Canaan; The Brentford Shard; Kushite Wives

What's Lost When Women Serve as Priests?

Alice C. Linsley


The short answer: the very integrity of the divine office.

Savvy, a reader of Just Genesis, has asked this question after reading The Origins of the Priesthood: "Are you saying that men carry blood guilt and women do not? So a priest representing Christ has to be male, to atone for this guilt. But, did Jesus not come to save both men and women."

Blood guilt and anxiety is in all people. It was very acutely felt by people in earlier times because they believed in the Creator and knew that the One who gives life is the only One who can take life. Since they associated blood with life, any shed blood was a cause for anxiety and had to be accounted for.

The priest stands at the altar as the icon of the Great High Priest, of which there is really only one: Jesus Christ. All priests are mere reflections of Him. The reflection is marred when priests are not pure. The reflection is corrupted when a woman stands at altar as a priest.

Further, women were never priests because the priest took the life of the animal. The life-taking work of the priest and the life-giving work of women are binary opposites and the life-giving work is superior. This understanding is lost when women serve as priests.

Jesus is the only way to salvation for both males and females. Jesus' kenotic act was to join himself fully to the human creature, and the human creature - both male and female - is "other" in reference to the Trinity.

In the biblical worldview, the Creator is always number one and the Referent by which all other entities derive meaning. The oldest system of communication probably employed only 1 and 2, allowing for mutual understanding before the development of more complex languages built upon a binary foundation. This would include the Divine and Other, and would apply to fixed observable entities that are binary opposites. This is suggested by comparison of the spelling sign language systems for the deaf used worldwide in which the first and second signs are almost universally the same.

For example, in Japanese signing, two index fingers held up with the palms facing represent two people facing each other.  Slowing bending the fingers toward each other makes the sign of two persons bowing to each other in the typical Japanese greeting. There is a universal logic to the first and second positions in the various sign languages for the deaf.

The universal application of the binary sequence, whether it be letters (A-B) or numbers (1-2), suggests an inherent logic common to all human communications.

The greatest love is shown when A submits to B or when 1 bows to 2. Whether that love is reciprocated matters not. So it is the great love of God that is demonstrated in the incarnation of  Christ our Lord. It goes against every message that the world declares and it goes against the instinct of the individual ego. Our Lord Jesus showed the full extent [eis telos] of his love when He stooped to become human, when He bowed to the creature, when He washed the disciples' feet. There can be no question that His condescension was an expression of divine love for all both males and females.

The Creator condescends to grant to the lesser a greater role. So it is that a young maiden, from the least of the tribes of Israel, should become the unwedded Bride of God and the ever-virgin Mother of Christ.

The biblical revelation of Jesus, whose coming as the Seed of the Woman was promised to Abraham's ancestors (Gen. 3:15), has a definite pattern.  The first to sin or to be lost are the first to recieve the message of redemption. The woman, who with the man was created just beneath the Creator, lowered herself to the status of a creature that goes with its belly on the ground. In doing so, she caused the inversion of the hierarchy of creation. God restores the original hierarchy in the incarnation of His Son by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.  God redeems the whole creation and gives life to the redeemed through the Blood of His Son.



Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest


The the sacramental work of the priest at the altar was instituted by Christ our God and Priest when He broke bread and shared the cup with his disciples before His death and resurrection.  None of the disciples were of the ruler-priests lines, as far as we know from Scripture and Tradition, so none of them would have been qualified to institute the Euchartist.  We call it "the Lord's Supper" because it is exactly that. It must be taken on the grounds and according to the tradition that it respresents, which included the all-male priesthood to which Jesus belonged.

Nazareth was the home of the eighteenth priestly division, ha·pi·TSETS (Happizzez). In 1962 excavators discovered in the ruins of a synagogue at Caesarea a small piece of a list of the twenty-four priestly divisions. This marble fragment is inscribed with the names of where four of the divisions resided, including Nazareth, the residence of Happizzez. Joseph's family lived in Nazareth, the home of the priestly division of Happizzez (1 Chronicles 24:15).

The Virgin Mary's full title would have been "Miriam Daughter of Joachim Son of Pntjr (Panther) Priests of Nathan of Beth Lehem." From the earliest predynastic times, ntjr designated the king among Abraham's Horite people. The name Panther or p-ntjr means "God is King."

It is certain that Mary was of the ruler-priest caste 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.

The words happi and ntjr originate in the Nile Valley, as do the names of many of the ruler-priests listed in the genealogies in Luke and Matthew. Melchi, a name that appears twice in Mary's ancestry, means "my image" in Amharic and refers to the Creator King.

Mary's father was Joachim, a shepherd priest from Bethlehem. I Chronicles 4:4 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.  Children were registered according to the clan of their mothers, just as today Jewish identity is traced through the mother, not the father.

There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah; and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth…. Once when he [Zechariah] was serving before God while his division was on duty... (Lk. 1:5, 8)

Mary and Elizabeth were of the ruler-priests lines, as were their husbands Joseph and Zachariah.  Priests only married the chaste daugthers of priests.  This endogamous practice originated with their Nilotic ancestors who are listed in Genesis 4 and 5.  There are many rabbinic traditions attesting to this practice. For instance, Rabbi Tarfon states that when he was a boy he stood on the steps outside the sanctuary to participate in the priestly benediction with "Shimshon, his mother's brother" (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:11). This indicates that his uncle Shimshon was a priest, and that Tarfon's mother was also of priestly stock.

The historical importance of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, according to the tradition He received from his Horim must not be overlooked or minimized.  The Christian priest stands at altar as the icon of Christ and that image is distorted when the form at the altar is that of a female.


Related reading:  Mary's Priestly Lineage; Gender Reversal and Sacred Mystery; The Importance of Binary Distinctions; Blood and Binary Distinctions; God as Male Priest; C.S. Lewis' Priestesses in the Church?

True Food for the Nativity Fast

The Nativity Fast begins today for the Orthodox.  It is a challenge for me to observe the fasts diligently, not having been raised Orthodox.  I fail in so many ways to practice my faith and I pray that my failings might not cause others to stumble.  If I have offended any of you, dear readers, please forgive me.

Perhaps these words will satisfy our spiritual hunger and strengthen us for the Fast.

Troparion of the Forefeast Tone 4


Make ready, Bethlehem, Eden has been opened to all.
Prepare Ephratha, for the Tree of Life has blossomed in the cave from the Virgin.
Her womb was a spiritual paradise whence came the Divine Plant.
If we eat it we shall live and not die like Adam.
Christ is born to raise up the image that of old had fallen.

 
H/T to Orthocath

Freud and the Virgin Mary

Alice C. Linsley


"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis." --Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, 1927

Sigmund Freud was a complex person who was profoundly interested in religion. He wrote four books in which he presented his ideas on religion: Totem and Taboo (1913), The Future of an Illusion (1927), Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), and Moses and Monotheism (1938).

In Moses and Monotheism, Freud wrote: “Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. [...] If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.”

Essentially, Freud argued that religion gives expression to psychological neuroses, is an attempt to control the Oedipal complex, a means of wish fulfillment, an infantile delusion, and an attempt to control events in one’s life. All these aspects appear to be true of Freud himself. He wrote: "Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will understand why this illness was bound to come upon you and perhaps you will thenceforth avoid falling ill." While Freud doubtless explored his own depths, the great psychoanalyst never underwent formal therapy. 

When it comes to religion, Freud most reveals his inner self not in his books on religion, but in letters to his friend Wilhelm Fliess and in his attempt to psychoanalyze Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings of the Virgin Mary and her mother Anne (Anna). Freud expressed his interest in Leonardo’s passion for pioneering and research in a letter to Wilhelm Fliess in 1898. In the third chapter of Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood Freud lays groundwork for the concept of self-love and narcissistic choice, the very aspect of Freud that emerges when we examine his relationship with the person closest to him, his younger daughter, Anna.

In 1899, Freud wrote to Fliess concerning his daughter saying, "Anna has become downright beautiful through naughtiness... ". He praises Anna as one who didn’t conform to behavioral expectations and social norms, the quality that he praises in Leonardo and hopes to demonstrate in his own work, as revealed in this 1900 letter to Fliess: “I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador--an adventurer….”

Anna was born after Freud wrote Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, what he believed to be “the only beautiful thing” he had ever written. In the book Freud attempts to explain Leonardo da Vinci’s fondness for the subject of the Virgin Mary and her mother, Anne. Leonardo’s Anne never looks older than her daughter. Leonardo immortalizes the mother of the mother of Christ.

Is it possible that Freud identified with Anne, seeing her as the figure behind the singular event of the Incarnation? This certainly fits Freud’s understanding of religion as wish fulfillment. The “conquistador” wished to become immortal through Ana’s continuation of his work. In this sense, St. Anne becomes the progenitor of Freud as deity and Anna, Freud's daughter plays the Virgin Mary to Freud's Anne.

It appears that Freud’s analysis of Leonardo’s fondness for Mary and Anne speaks more of Freud’s relationship with his daughter who he named for the grandmother of God. At a 1990 conference in Toronto, Patrick Mahoney spoke of Freud’s four-year “treatment” of Anna as a hedge against mortality. Anna Freud entered the profession her father pioneered, never marrying. She remained devoted to her father, caring for him as he suffered and eventually died from cancer of the jaw. She became the Virgin Mary to Freud’s Anne, remaining a strict-constructionist of her father’s theories throughout her lifetime. While she certainly didn’t conform to the norms of young women of her day, Anna was known to have lived a chaste life according to Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, who wrote Anna Freud: A Biography (Yale University Press, 2008). Ann’s offering to the world was not of flesh and blood, but of paper and ink.

Was Freud an agnostic Jew who believed in the Virgin May? This is likely, and further evidence of the complexity of Freud’s personality.  He appears to have accepted at least on the level of myth the idea of Mary as the Bearer of God. Perhaps this Christian view of Mary became embedded through his early exposure to the veneration of the Virgin by the Catholic population of Freiburg, his hometown. Exploration of Freud’s obsession with Anne and the Virgin Mary suggests that he put more stock in the Christian view of Mary than in the Talmudic view which circulated through the synagogues of Europe. Sanhedrin 106a says Jesus' mother was a whore: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.”  I wonder what Freud would uncover through psychoanalysis of the rabbi who first wrote that?

Related reading: The Virgin Mary's Ancestry; Joseph's Relationship to Mary; Was the Virgin Mary a Dedicated Royal Woman?

The Blessed Woman of Genesis 3:15

Alice C. Linsley


"for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
(Luke 1:48)



Mary is without doubt the most honored woman in the Church as the mother of Christ our God and the very model of obedient love.  She is the Mother of the Church and where the Church is, she is venerated.

Through her God has fulfilled the first promise of Scripture: Genesis 3:15, the Edenic Promise. She is the culmination of the expectation that led the ruler-priest lines to intermarry exclusively so that the Promised Son would be born of their blood lines.  Analysis of the kinship pattern of Abraham's people reveals a unique pattern of intermarriage between patrilineal cousins of priestly lines. It is possible to trace these lines because the cousin brides named their first-born sons after their fathers. The genealogies of Genesis trace only male rulers. The naming of the first-born son after the cousin bride's father was a way to trace royal lineage on the mother's side.

Keep in mind that kinship patterns are highly resistant to change. The unique kinship pattern of ruler-priests survived Egyptian captivity and deportation to Babylon.  It continued afterwards as we see in the case of the priest Elkaniah with his two wives (1 Samuel 1:2). It continued to the time of Jesus and then stopped because the pattern had fulfilled its purpose once Messiah was born.

Mary and Joseph were cousins and both of priestly lines. These lines had been intermarrying from before Abraham's time and continued to intermarry until to the birth of Jesus Christ. Joseph's family lived in Nazareth which was the home of the eighteenth division of priests, that of Happizzez (1 Chronicles 24:15).
Abraham's people traced bloodline through the mother but social status and occupation was inherited through the father. So Joseph was a carpenter like his father and Jesus was a carpenter like Joseph. Likewise, St. Paul was a tent maker like his father.

Jesus was the Son of God, born to "the Woman" according to the ancient expectation (Gen. 3:15). Mary was the proper bride for Joseph since she was of a priestly line. He too was of a priestly line descending from Judah and Ram, David's ancestors. Joseph of Nazareth married the daughter of a priest. In doing so he simply adhered to the custom of his ancestors. Joseph married the daughter of a priest in Egypt and Moses married the daughter of a priest in Midian.  All of these priests are related, though they lived in different places at different times.

The marriage of Joseph and Mary was the pinnacle of biblical history in that the Promised Son was born into their union, but not by their union.  From God, the Son received his divine rights (being one with the Father), from Blessed Mary He received His flesh, and from Blessed Joseph He received his social position as a carpenter in Nazareth.

According to Holy Tradition, Mary’s parents were Joachim and Anne. Joachim was a priest and his wife Anne was probably a daughter of a priest. The Protoevangelium of James says that Mary’s father had flocks, which does not preclude him from being a priest. Many priests of the Bible had flocks. 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 of Israel (Ps 80:1) and the priests of Israel are referred to as “shepherds.”

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. It is certain that Mary was of the ruler-priest class because even those who hated her admit this. Sanhedrin 106a says Jesus' mother was a whore: “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. One of the Jews seized the coffin. A rabbi approached her burial procession and attempted to overturn her casket.

In the Talmud, ignominious names are given by the rabbis to Mary and be Son.  Mary is called "Charia" which means dung or excrement. In Hebrew her name is Miriam. Jesus is called "Jeschu" which means May his name and memory be blotted out. His Hebrew name in Jeschua (Yeshua) which means Salvation. That Mary was hated as much as her Son tells us that she was a force to be reckoned with, a person of great influence.  She was abused in her repose as was her Son in his passion and God has granted her an exalted place among the saints.

May God have mercy upon those who hate and abuse Jesus the Christ and his most blessed, most pure, and most honorable Mother.


Related reading: Marrying that Christ Mat be Born; Mary's Ruler-Priest Lineage

The Bible as the Woman's Story

Alice C. Linsley


In many ways, the Bible is The Woman's Story. Reading some commentaries one gets the impression that the Bible is about men and the experiences of men. Exposition of the biblical text on the basis of the male experience alone does not render a full picture of God’s work in the world. The masculine perspective may be the louder voice heard in the narrative, but there is also a softer voice speaking under the dominant voice.

The relationship of the male and female is much like the conscious and subconscious. During the waking hours the conscious is dominant and during the sleeping hours the subconscious rules the mind. The individual is the sum (and more) of the conscious and subconscious.

Likewise, to understand the Bible, we must pay equal attention to the quiet voice of female experience and the dominant voice of male experience. This enables us to keep focus on God made flesh through the Virgin Mary. He is the fulfillment of the ancient expectation of the Righteous Ruler, the Son of God, who overcomes death and leads his people to immortality. She is the one to whom God made the first Messianic promise that her Seed would crush the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15). This is the over-arching hope of the biblical writers.

John 3:16 states that belief in the Son of God is necessary for salvation.  There is the Martha's testimony "I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” (John 11:27) There is also the Woman's urging of the servants at the wedding in Cana: "Do whatever he tells you." (John 2:5)

When we listen to the quieter voice we hear proclamation that the promise made to “the Woman’ in Eden has been fulfilled (Gen. 3:15). Behold a virgin conceived and brought forth the Seed who crushes the serpent's head and restores paradise. Jesus claimed to be the fulfillment of this promise. He explained to his disciples that he was going to Jerusalem to die: unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it cannot give life to the world. (John 12).

Abraham’s ancestors expected the Seed to be born of their priestly bloodlines, which is why the Horite Hebrew ruler-priests practiced endogamy within and between their clans, that is, they intermarried exclusively. This also explains their strict moral code. Many of the rulers attempted to live into the expectation of the Righteous Ruler. Some went so far as to claim that their mothers miraculously conceived while in the temple. One of these was Sargon whose title means King of Kings or Most High King.

The female experience as it is presented in the Bible is not well represented. The commentaries written by women tend to be feminist critiques of the patriarchal world in which the women lived. Feminists largely portray the women of the Bible as victims of systematic oppression when, in fact, few are victims and few are oppressed. Many women of the Bible are shown to exercise considerable influence, some for good and some for bad. Most of the women named in the Old Testament are the wives, daughters and daughters-in-law of rulers and priests. This means that they were upper class and rather protected, though not often pampered. The women of the Bible were prophets, judges, witches, queens, wise women, harlots, merchants, seamstresses, and servants of the Most High God. Their stories round out our understanding of the Bible and of the received tradition concerning the Son of God that comes to us from Eden, born of the "Woman" Mary, the daughter of the shepherd priest Joachim. [1]

To understand the received tradition concerning the Son of God we must pay attention to the women in the Bible because among Abraham’s people, as with Jews today, bloodline was traced through the mothers. We see how this is true when we trace Jesus’ ancestry through key women. Consider this telescopic line of descent from A to K. Telescopic means that not all the generations of mothers are listed. If we begin with B – Cain’s wife – we have a depth of 10 mothers, which is the usual number in telescopic lines of descent.[2]

A. The “Woman” of Eden (Gen. 3:15) is not Eve since Eve is not named until verse 20. This woman is the mother of the Son of God. She conceived, according to Horite expectation, by divine overshadowing.

B. The wives of Cain (Gen. 4) and Seth (Gen. 5), daughters of Enoch/Anak. The lines of Cain and Seth intermarried.

C. Naamah, cousin wife of Methuselah (Gen. 4 and 5)and the mother of Lamech the Younger, who she named after her father, Lamech the Elder.

D. Wives of Shem and Ham. We know little about these women. They may have been sisters. The lines of Shem and Ham intermarried, so Abraham is a descendant of both men.

E. Mother of Abraham (Horite wife of Terah)

F. Sarah, Abraham’s half-sister, daughter of Terah. (Terah/Tera means priest.)

G. Rebekah, daughter of a priest

H. Leah, wife of Jacob

I. Tamar, daughter of a priest (She is cast as more righteous than Judah because she made sure the levirate law was fulfilled. The Deuteronomist defines righteousness as the fulfillment of the Law. Faith does not enter into the definition, so justification by faith is not expressed by the Deuteronomist Historian.)

J. Rahab of Jericho, wife of Salmon the Horite (She is cast as a "whore" by the Deuteronomist's shouting voice.)

K. Ruth, descendant of Terah by Lot (Lot is cast as a drunken incestuous father by the Deuteronomist Historian who wanted the Jews to think of the Moabites as their enemies, rather than their kinsmen.)


Explanation

A. The “Woman” of Gen. 3:15 is recognized by the Church Fathers as the Theotokos, or God-Bearer. She is at the beginning of the Messiah’s line as prophesy and she is at the end of Messiah’s line as his virgin mother. She is foreseen in the same way that Levi is said to have existed in the “loins” of Abraham. Hebrews 7:9-10 explains: “And, so to speak, through Abraham even Levi, who received tithes, paid tithes, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.” Levi, yet unborn is said to have paid the tithe while still in the loins of his "father" Abraham when Abraham paid the tithe to the priest Melchizedek (Gen. 14:20).

B. Cain and his brother Seth married sisters, the daughters of the African chief Nok. We must trace Jesus' ancestry through Cain's descendant Naamah who married Methuselah and was the grandmother of Noah.

C. Naamah is the daughter of Lamech the Elder and the mother of Lamech the Younger. She was Methusaleh’s cousin bride.

D. Shem’s wife is not named. She was likely his half-sister. Shem and Ham’s lines intermarried according to the pattern of the ruler-priests. So Jesus is descended from both Shem and Ham.

E. Abraham’s mother is not named in the Bible, but according to tradition she was the daughter of a priest associated with the Egyptian shrine of Karnak (Karnevo in the Babylonian Talmud). This shrine was dedicated to Horus, called the “son of God”. The genealogical information indicates that her father was Na’Hor. She named her first-born son Na'Hor, according to the cousin bride's naming prerogative.

F. Sarah and Abraham had the same father, Terah, but different mothers. As a ruler-priest, Terah had two wives. One was a half-sister and the other was a patrilineal cousin.

G. Rebekah was Isaac’s cousin wife. His half-sister wife was the daughter of Abraham by Keturah who dwelt in Beersheba. This explains why Eliezar brought Rebekah to marry Isaac in Beersheba, and not to Hebron.

H. Leah is the mother of Judah. The Son of God would come from Judah by Tamar.

I. Tamar, the Righteous, tricked Judah into impregnating her. When Judah discovered that Tamar was pregnant, he ordered that she be stoned to death. This was the sentence for daughters of priests who committed adultery or harlotry.

J. Rahab was visited by Hebrew spies. She helped them to escape and as a reward her family was spared when the Hebrews attacked Jericho. The sign of her protection was a scarlet cord hanging from her window, a symbol of the Blood of Lamb. This is like the blood on the doorposts in Goshen, and Rahab’s story is a second Passover, a narrative that stresses the heroine. The Exodus story lifts up the hero Moses. Rahab married Salmon, 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).

K. Ruth is the celebrated great grandmother of King David. With Ruth the bloodlines descending from Terah converge. Ruth is the celebrated great grandmother of King David.


NOTES

1. Genesis 2:10-14 says that Eden was watered by four rivers: the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Pishon and the Gihon. Two are in Mesopotamia and two are in Africa. This is the heart of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. This is the place of origin of the ruler-priests and of "him that holds the scepter from the house of Eden" (Amos 1:5). So Eden is not a mythical garden, but a vast well-watered region and the point of origin of Abraham’s ancestors.

The description of Eden as a well-watered region is supported by climate and geological studies. Around 12,000 years ago the Nile river system filled with waters from the Angolan Highlands. Geological uplift tilted the region to create Lake Victoria and direct its excess flow north into the White Nile which provides most of the Nile's water during the dry season. Essentially the entire Albertine Rift was a vast flood plain extending 3,700 miles from Syria to central Mozambique.

The Ethiopians identify the Gihon with the Abay River, which encircles the former African kingdom of Gojjam (where Ge'ez was spoken, the language of the Ethiopian Orthodox church). The Pishon "flows through the whole land of Havilah" (Gen. 2:11). Havilah is a son of Kush (Gen. 10:7) and the "Kushites" lived in the upper Nile region and the Sudan. Kushite kings also ruled in Egypt. These four rivers encompass the heart of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion which was ruled by a network of ruler-priests. They controlled the major water systems and built shrines along the rivers. The Kushite expansion out of the Nile Valley continued into the Indus Valley, Bactria, and southern China where they are called the Kushan.

2. One theory holds that the genealogical segments were in groups of 10 because to facilitate the memory of the tribal story teller. While this is certainly possible, it seems more likely that 10 represents the beginning of a new cycle, since the counting system of Abraham’s people used 9 as the base. This would mean that Ruth, descendant of Terah, begins the new cycle and this cycle traces the Son of God through David. This is significant since David’s city was Bethlehem and the “father of Bethlehem” was a Horite chief. I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hur (Hor) as the "father of Bethlehem". The author of I Chronicles knew that Bethlehem was originally a Horite settlement, less than 10 miles from Mt. Hor.

Related reading:  The Daughters of Priests; Mother and Son Pierced: An image of intimacy; The Virgin Mary's Horite Ancestry; The Question of Patriarchy; The Paradox of Feminism; Rethinking "Biblical Equality"

God as Male Priest

"In his actions in and toward the world of his creation, the one God and Father reveals himself primarily and essentially in a 'masculine' way."-- Fr. Thomas Hopko (Women and the Priesthood, p 240)


Alice. C. Linsley

Among Abraham's ancestors the sun was venerated as the emblem of the Creator. It was believed to inseminate the earth and bring forth life. This is a distinctly masculine image for God and key to understand the origins of Messianic expectation among the Nilo-Saharans.

Their worldview was based on universally observed binary distinctions such as male-female, the east-west solar journey, dark-light, life-death, and on human experiences on a fundamental level of existence. The binary sets are observed by all people in all places on earth. The biblical worldview is not concerned with subjective distinctions such as tall-short, talented-untalented, dark skin-light skin, intelligent-unintelligent, etc. as these are not absolute and objective. The Bible is concerned about what is real ontologically.

The ancient Afro-Asiatics honored many realities, but one of the most significant is the male-female distinction. They associated maleness with the Sun and femaleness with the Moon. This association extended to semen and milk. The Sun inseminates the earth with its light and warmth and the Moon, which influences tides and body fluids, stimulates female reproduction and lactation. The ancients observed a relationship between the lunar cycle and the periodicity of the menstrual cycle. In France, menstruation is called le moment de la lune.

The binary distinctions were the basis for law and religious practice in the Afro-Asiatic Dominion. Both law and religion recognized that one of the opposites is always greater in some way. The Sun’s light is greater than moonlight. Males are stronger and larger than females. Heaven is more glorious than earth, and life is superior to death. Only in this last category is the feminine greater than the masculine, because the blood of menstruation and childbirth speaks of life, whereas the blood drawn by men in war, hunting and animal sacrifice speaks of death.

Because the Creator wants the distinction between life and death to be clear at all times to all peoples, He established this distinction between the “blood work” of women and men. This distinction between the two bloods is the basis for the priesthood, an office ontologically exclusive to males, since only men in the priestly lines could fill the office.

Warriors were responsible for the blood they shed in battle. Hunters were responsible for the blood they shed in the hunt, and priests were responsible for the blood of the animals they sacrificed. Midwives, wives and mothers were responsible for the blood of first intercourse, menstrual blood and blood shed in childbirth. The two bloods were never to mix or even to be present in the same space. Women didn’t participate in war, the hunt, and in ritual sacrifices. Likewise, men were not present at the circumcision of females or in the “mother’s house” to which women went during menses and to give birth.

It is also significant that among tribal peoples, brotherhood pacts are formed by the intentional mixing of bloods between two men, but never between male and female. The binary distinctions of male and female were maintained as part of the sacred tradition.


Female Blood Work

As a point of fact, the first reference to the shedding of blood in the Bible is not Cain’s murder of Abel. The first reference is to the blood of “the Woman” who would give birth to the One who would crush the head of the cosmic serpent and restore Paradise. This is significant because it places life-giving blood before killing. In other words, the blood work of women is posed as both prior to and equal to the blood work of priests.

In the Bible, the first blood work of women is not the birth of Cain, but the birth of Messiah promised to “the woman” in Eden in Genesis 3:15. This woman is not Eve, since Eve is not named by Adam until verse 20. The first blood work of Scripture is Christological, as indeed is the blood work of priests.


Male Blood Work

God sacrifices an animal to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:21). In the Biblical chronology this places God as priest between the birthing blood of the Woman (Gen. 3:15) and Cain's murder of his brother (Gen. 4:8). God is at the sacred center between life and death. There God sacrifices what is His for humanity. In this sense, God is the first priest and that first animal that covers nakedness is a symbol of the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world.

From the Afro-Asiatic perspective, which is the perspective of the Bible, God is male and God is priest.  It is clear also that God condescends to grant to the lesser a greater role. So it is that a young maiden from the ruler-priest lines should become the un-wedded Bride of God and the ever-virgin Mother of Christ our God.


Related reading:  The Importance of Binary Distinctions; The Binary World and Kenosis; Blood and Binary Distinctions; The Priesthood as Heavenly Ordinance; Ideologies Opposed to Holy Tradition; Why God is Father and Not Mother by Mark Brumley; Why I am Not a Protestant

Avoiding Heresy and Syncretism

Alice C. Linsley


Many heresies spring from failure to apply basic critical thinking skills. Such is the case with the Episcopal Church's sexual ethics, with most feminist biblical interpretation, and with gender-neutral Bibles. These represent erroneous and non-biblical anthropology in that they fail to preserve, and even obfuscate, the celestial pattern that is universally observed in the order of creation and which presented throughout the Bible.

The Bible has a binary framework. The binary feature is evident in the binary sets: sun-moon; male-female; heaven-earth, east-west, and life-death.This worldview emerges out of the acute observations of Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors. The binary distinctions are observed universally in nature and experienced on the most fundamental level of existence. The biblical worldview is not concerned with relative or subjective opposites such as tall-short, talented-untalented, dark skin-light skin, intelligent-unintelligent, etc., but rather speaks about what is real ontologically. There is no fantasy world where women serve as priests. The notion of women priests is antithetical to the Biblical worldview.

The Horite ruler-priests honored many realities, and were careful not to violate the boundaries they perceived to have been established by Horus, the Seed of God. The ancient priests saw boundaries in earth's geometry. From the tops of high mountains they noted the curvature of the Earth at dawn and dust. They "oriented" themselves by facing east as the Sun rose. Ancient towers and temples reflected the sacred geometry and cosmology of their builders. The differing geometric shapes of the temples of the Horite Sabians (Afro-Arabian Dedanites) associated the hexagon with Saturn, the triangle with Jupiter, the rectangle with Mars, the square with the Sun, the octagon with the Moon, and a triangle within a quadrangle with Venus

Abraham's Nilotic ancestors conceived of the cosmos as God's sacred pyramid or temple. As the Sun rose, God entered the temple from the east. As the Sun set, God left the temple toward the west. Rulers were buried in pyramids with the hope that they would rise with the Sun and lead their people in procession to immortality. St. Paul refers to this belief when he writes about how Christ rose from the grave, leading captives in his train. (Ephesians 4:7-9)

This is the symbolism of the sand scarab, which comes out of the sand when the Sun rises and returns to the sand as night approaches. The sand scarab represents the Sun's journey and life after death (repose). The female sand beetle lays her eggs in the sand and when the eggs hatch, she is no longer, because she gives her body to be eaten by her newborn young (cf. Jesus' words, "This is my Body given for you...").

For Abraham's Horite ancestors, the Sun and the scarab spoke to them of their deity, HR (Horus in Greek). He was regarded with his father Ra as the marker of boundaries. Horos (oros in Greek) refers to the boundaries of an area, or a landmark, or a term. From horoscome the English words hour, horizon and horoscope. The association of Horus with the horizon is seen in the word Har-ma-khet, meaning Horus of the Horizon. Today the word horoscope connotes astrology, but the word original meant "observer of the hours", from hora (time or hour) and skopos (observer or watcher).

In the time of Abraham's ancestors, the priests of Horus (called "Horites") were dedicated to observation of the planets and constellations. They observed that the planets and the constellations have an orderly clock-like movement. They conceived of this order as fixed and established by the generative force which makes existence possible (logos, nous, ruach, etc.) The Horite priests were the earliest known astronomers and it is likely that horo is a reference to their celestial archetypes surrounding Horus, the son of Ra, born to Hathor-Meri. Hathor-Meri's animal totem was a cow. She is shown at the Dendura Temple holding her newborn son in a manger or stable.

The Horites were devotees of HR (Hor, Hur, Har or Horus) whose mother Hathor-Meri conceived miraculously by the overshadowing of the Sun (the Creator's emblem). Horus is the archetype by which Abraham's descendants would recognize Jesus as the promised Seed of the Woman (Gen. 3:15). His authentication was His rising from the dead on the third day, in accordance with Horite expectation. In a 5 day ceremony, the Nilotic peoples fasted as a sign of grief for the death of Horus at the hand of his brother. On the third day the priests led processions to the fields where grain was sowed as a sign of Horus' rising to life. Jesus described his death as a seed of grain falling into he ground and dying (John 12:20-26). St. Augustine noted that the Egyptians took great care in the burial of their dead and never practiced cremation, as in the religions that seek to escape physical existence. Abraham's ancestors believed in the resurrection of the body and awaited a deified king who would rise from the grave and deliver his people from death.

Horus marked the boundaries and established the "kind" (essences). He guarded the four directional points and controlled the water and the wind. The Harmattan trade wind that blows from the northeast and east across the Sahara was named for Horus. The word is comprised of the biradicals HR for Horus and MT meaning order. The Nilotic peoples were probably the first to invent the sail because the prevailing wind blows south while the Nile (Hapi) flows north. Horus was invoked to send favorable wind. The four winds sometimes appeared as birds at the four quarters of the heavens announcing the accession of Horus' deified ruler on earth. On the walls of Amenemhat's burial chamber at Hawara Horus is depicted at the cardinal points and associated with the resurrection of the ruler. The four forms of Horus top the canopic jars holding the ruler's organs.

The male-female distinction

One of the most important binary distinctions upheld by Abraham's people is the male-female distinction. They associated maleness with the Sun and femaleness with the Moon. This association extended to semen and milk. The Sun inseminates the earth with its light and warmth and the Moon, which influences tides and body fluids, stimulates female reproduction and lactation. The ancients observed a relationship between the lunar cycle and the periodicity of the menstrual cycle. In France, menstruation is called le moment de la lune.

The binary distinctions were the basis for law and religious practice in the Afro-Asiatic Dominion. Both law and religion recognized that one of the opposites is always greater in some way. The Sun’s light is greater than moonlight. Males are stronger and larger than females. Heaven is more glorious than earth, and life is superior to death. Only in this last category is the feminine greater than the masculine, because the blood of menstruation and childbirth speaks of life, whereas the blood drawn by men in war, hunting and animal sacrifice speaks of death.

Because the Creator wants the distinction between life and death to be clear at all times to all peoples, He established this distinction between the “blood work” of women and men. This distinction between the two bloods is important for understanding the origins of the Christian priesthood, an office ontologically exclusive to males, since only men were priests.

There is no ontological difference between male and female. Both are human and both are fully in the image of God. Both crown the Creation, being created on the 6th day. Yet it is obvious that men and women are different. The Bible understands the difference as supplementarity. To understand the biblical worldview we must grasp its binary feature and the concept of supplementarity. These must be held together to avoid heresy and understand what the Bible teaches us about the created order and about the Creator.

In a sense, the woman is the gemstone of the crown of creation. This explains the gravity of Eve's sin. She who was created as the crown of the creation, the peak of the pyramid, inverted the order of creation when she submitted herself to the will of a creature who slithers along the earth. That is Eve's sin. Yet the Creator redeems the situation through The Woman (Gen. 3:15) from whom Christ became flesh by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. If we say that the woman is of a substance different from the man, we fall into heresy, because that would mean that the substance of Christ is different from the substance of men.

The Faith we've received from the Afro-Asiatics through Abraham recognizes a distinction and supplementarity between male and female when it comes to the order of creation. The man was made first, then the woman. The headship of males was expressed in the blood work of hunting, war, execution of lawbreakers, and in animal sacrifice by the ruler-priest. Anglicans who ordain women as priests, but not as bishops, on the "principle of headship" are missing the point! The pattern is about the blood work. The priest takes the life of the animal in sacrifice to make atonement for sin.

The blood work of women is distinct and speaks of life. Women sacrifice blood in first marital intercourse. They bleed in their monthly cycle and in childbirth. The blood shed of women is distinct yet supplementary to the blood shed by men in hunting, war and animal sacrifice.

The prohibition against mixing types, be they fibers, seeds or blood, is like the prohibition against confusing the holy with the unholy, or blurring the distinction between life and death, such as happens when a baby goat is boiled in its mother's milk (forbidden 3 places in Scripture). That is why each seed is to go to its own kind. As plants are born from the earth, so the seeds of plants return to the earth. As the man is born from the woman, so the seed/semen of man is to return to woman. The spilling of seed called 'onanism' is regarded as an unrighteous deed, a violation of the order of creation. So obviously is homosex.

Bloods were never permitted to mix or even to be present in the same space. And of course, this is what Orthodox and Catholic Christians say about the Eucharist, where Christ's Blood alone is to be present. That is why, according to ancient instruction in the Priests' Manuals, the priest must immediately leave the Holy Place should he in inadvertently cut himself and bleed. This is why women never can be priests and why they are "churched" after childbirth, following the ancient custom.

God's ordering of creation is for the benefit of those who would know God's Nature (as St. Paul tells us in Romans). As male and female alike are in God's Image, and God is not divided, neither can we divide in substance the male and the female. In marriage the two are able to become one because they are of the same "kind" and supplementary. Supplementary means that one cannot be perceived to exist without the other. This is a picture of the Godhead - for the Father and the Son (Logos) can't be perceived to exist one from the other. To say that the Word became flesh is to say that the Son of God became human in order to redeem and restore believing humanity to our original state. We fall into heresy when we leave out the part about the "Son" of God. The language of Father and Son is not coincidental to what God is revealing to us. The Father delivers the Kingdom to the Son. The Father presents the Church as a pure and radiant Bride to the Son.

The supplementarity of opposites is evident only when their distinctions are maintained. Satan directs a good deal of effort to blurring distinctions by encouraging androgenous dress, homosex, the ordination of women to the priesthood, and by fanning the flames of feminist rhetoric. However, if we attend to the binary distinctions of the created order which God declared "good" and we affirm their supplementarity, we are less likely to stray from path of life, which is not a path so much as it is the person of Jesus Christ.


Related reading: The Binary Aspect of the Biblical Worldview; Genesis on Homosex: Beyond Sodom; The Importance of Binary Distinctions; God as Male Priest; Mary and the Origins of Life; Ideologies Opposed to Holy Tradition; The Biblical Meaning of Eve; Impressions of the New American Anglicanism