"Binary" is a Bad Word These Days

Alice C. Linsley

Recently, I read about a catchy slogan that has gained popularity among left-leaning segments of American society. The slogan is “No borders, no bosses, no binaries." This was one of the slogans used to advertise the 2019 Socialism Conference.

Clearly, a world without borders, bosses, and binaries would be the realm of chaos. This is what the Bible warns against. Proverbs 22: 28 says, "Don't move a boundary marker set up by your ancestors." Native American wisdom speaks of the Creator assigning lands to the various peoples. Leftists are quick to point out the tragic treatment of Native American populations by Europeans, yet they would rob them of the lands that they rightfully control through their tribal councils. Removing borders and boundaries does not make people free.

The slogan drives at a new world order where the existing authorities are replaced by ideologues, and as history has shown, ideologues hold their principles above human lives. Far more people were murdered in the Twentieth Century by socialists than by the Nazis. In Russia alone, the number killed under Stalin's regime is incalculable, easily as many as twenty million.

The slogan expresses lawlessness or anarchy in order to achieve a new order. Socialists are willing to sacrifice lives, property, and social stability to achieve a pipe dream. Chaos only brings chaos. The spiral is not upwards toward a better social order. It is always downwards toward more chaos until a leader emerges who will strong arm the people into submission. That leader comes to power through bloody struggle, not through an orderly process of elections. In Marxian thought this is a positive development and one which is necessarily repeated over and over. We have only to look at the final decades of ancient Rome to imagine the horrid life this cycle produces for the average citizen.

Socialism operates on the level of theory and Utopian idealism. It is not rooted in empirical observations. It is made of dreams, ambitions, and non-reality. In stark contrast is the biblical worldview with its emphasis on the Law.

In the Bible the Law hinges on the empirical observation of binary sets and distinctions which are recognized in patterns in nature. The distinctions present certain hierarchies. For example, in the binary set male-female, males are recognized as being larger and stronger than females. Homosex was forbidden because it defies the male-female binary order in creation. The defiance has no limits. It gives way to theories of a gender continuum and gender transitions.

In the binary set Sun-Moon, the sun is recognized as the greater light (Genesis 1). The light of the Moon is refulgent. The Moon reflects the glory of the Sun. Another hierarchy. 

Another binary distinction is between humans and plants. Onanism was forbidden because the seed that should fall to the earth is the seed of plants, which spring forth from the earth. The seed of man should fall on his own type (the womb), from which man comes forth. 

There is a binary distinction between humans and non-human animals. Bestiality was forbidden as it blurs the distinction between humans and animals. Likewise, the distinction between life and death was not to be blurred by boiling the baby goat in its mother's milk (forbidden three places: Ex. 23:19; Ex. 34:26, Deut. 14:21). The baby's life is to be nurtured by the mother's milk.

The binary worldview of the Bible makes it clear that God's order in creation has both hierarchies and boundaries. Both have been rejected throughout history by people who defy the divinely established order. Homosex is merely one of numerous transgressions of boundaries. Transgression of boundaries provides a sense of freedom from restrictions. However, it can also cause disorientation.

The wisdom of the Law becomes clearer to us when we understand the binary logic upon which it rests. This wisdom has a basis in empirical observation and reality. It points us to a realm of peace under a Good God. Some seek to replace it with a lesser wisdom and a god of their own invention.

Related reading: The Binary Worldview of the Bible; Blood and Binary Distinctions; The Sun and Moon as a Binary Set; Public Debate and Search Engine Politics; Trapped in a Web of Punditry

The Binary Worldview of the Bible

Alice C. Linsley

A much overlooked feature of the biblical worldview is its binary logic. Some refer to this as the Semitic block logic. This thinking is comfortable with paradox, and approaches truth as concrete and tangible. This logic moves beyond "either-or" to "both-and" while maintaining distinctions between the entities of the binary set. 

The binary set of Male-Female provides an example. The entities of this set are by nature quite different and yet closely related. They define humanity, not as either-or, but as both-and. From their union comes more or their kind, both male and female children.

The binary distinctions established by God at the beginning testify to the highest authority. Only the Supreme Being could call forth matter from nothing, separate light from darkness, quell the chaotic waters, and separate the dry land and the sea. From what was once a cosmic ocean there emerged dry land, called the "pillars" of God, suggesting extrusive volcanism.  The sequence of logic moves toward the Creator's act of separating or creating distinctions. The earth is established on pillars and the emerging peaks are the Creator's pillars. Samuel 2:8 states that these "pillars of the earth" belong to God. (Also see Psalm 75:2,3; and Job 9:6.)

There is the distinction of earth and heaven, yet this binary set points to something beyond itself.

The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens. By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew. (Proverbs 3:19, 20)

Another example is the distinction between the firmament above and the firmament below. The firmament above and the firmament below are distinct, yet naturally related. These are posed as God's creation and God dwells on high, beyond the realm of humans, until the coming of the Incarnate Word, Jesus Messiah. Jesus is unique. He is the unique God-Man who bridges the gap by His one-time offering of Himself, and by His mighty resurrection.

In terms of organic life there are distinctions between plants and animals, and between plants and humans, and between animals and humans. The separateness of these is so obvious that we hardly stop to consider it. Long before Aristotle, people observed that certain things belong together; that objects in nature can be classified into groups, and there are hierarchies. Horses eat grass. Grass does not eat horses. There is a fixed order that testifies to the divine Hand in creation.

Binary sets are concrete: Creator-creature, life-death, male-female, night-day, sea-land, heaven-earth, east-west, etc. In the Hebrew way of thinking these attest to fixed patterns in Nature and stand as a witness to the Creator's existence, divine nature, and eternal power. The Apostle Paul speaks of this in Romans 1:19, 20:

For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.

Unlike dualism, where the entities are equal, one entity in the binary set is superior in some visible way to the other. The male human is larger and stronger than the female. Genesis 1:6 speaks of the Sun as the greater light that rules the day. In the ancient world objects commonly were perceived as reflecting male or female attributes and often this was implied by the size. This is evident in some languages today. For example, the Spanish word for ship is el barco (masculine), but the Spanish word for boat is la barca (feminine). The larger in size is assigned masculine gender. A pond is el charco (masculine), but a puddle is la charca (feminine).

In the biblical view, the Sun and the Moon are not equals (dualism) because the Sun is the "greater light" and the Moon reflects the greater light (refulgence). This is the main distinction between the binary logic of the Bible and the dualism of Asian religions that developed in the Axial Age.

In Genesis the Sun - Shemesh - is masculine, as in Genesis 19:23. In the Sumerian language, the word for the Sun was Utu, and he is called a “son” of Nanna and Ningal. In the Akkadian, the Creator is sometimes called Aplu, a compound word that speaks of God as father (ap/appa/abba) with the masculine affix lu. 

Among Abraham’s Nilotic ancestors, the Creator was called Ra, and described as the "father" of Horus. (The Ancient Egyptian word for father is re.) "God Father and God Son" is an emphatically masculine designation. It is apparent in Psalm 19:4-6:

…the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber; It rejoices as a strong man to run his course. Its rising is from one end of the heavens, And its circuit to the other end of them; And there is nothing hidden from its heat.

The Sun was the emblem of the Creator among the biblical Hebrew, and the Sun was regarded as masculine in essence. In Genesis, the sun and moon are a binary set, but the Sun is the greater light that rules the day. The greater light speaks of God, the light that the wise pursue.

In review, consider the concrete language employed in this discussion: water, land, pillars, sun, moon, man, woman, father and son. The concrete language of the Bible reflects the concrete thinking of the ancient Semitic world. God's creation reveals complex binary sets and hierarchies that introduce new things. That Word spoken at the beginning hangs still in the air and continues to generate and sustain life. 

The Structuralist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss observed the binary logic of primitive tribes in South America. The Deconstructionist (Anti-Structuralist) philosopher Jacques Derrida could not escape the binary reality either. Levi-Strauss based his conclusion on empirical observation of humans; Derrida on analysis of human language.

I am of the opinion that all complexity emerges from the binary order in creation. I am able to use my computer to write this blog post because of the foundational operation of binary language. This seems true in assessment of the Cambrian Explosion which appears to be been triggered by the emergence of binary symmetrical features.

Related reading: Greek Linear Logic vs. Hebrew Block Logic;  Ethics and Binary Oppositions; Binary Sets in the Ancient World; Binary Distinctions and Kenosis; Blood and Binary Distinctions; Levi-Strauss and Derrida on Binary Oppositions; Circumcision and Binary Distinctions; The Sun and Moon as a Binary Set; Sun and Moon and Gender

The Murky Waters of Insanity

"Anthropology is the enemy of reductionism, be it naturalistic explanations of human skin color variation, the ascertainment of human presence via exclusive archaeological arguments or the belief that linguistic classifications are only skin deep."-- German Dziebel

Alice C. Linsley

Biblical Anthropology has helped me to detect the deficiencies and falsehoods of Feminism, Process Theology, and religious reductionism, for as anthropologist German Dziebel has said, "Anthropology is the enemy of reductionism."

Reductionism take various forms, but all attribute religious beliefs to non-religious causes. Some view faith as a by-product of human evolution. In this view, religion enhances survivability for members of a group and so is reinforced by natural selection. Others reduce the religious impulse to susperstition, as a way to explain the inexplicable. When it comes to morality, some reductionists view divine law as merely Man's attempt to determine conceptions of right and wrong.

There is also the psychological view that religion is a way to cope with our anxieties. This view has some basis in Scripture because all the evidence suggests that the priesthood emerged among Abraham's ancestors out of a need to address blood guilt. The primitive principle is one we recognize as animal sacrifice; blood for blood, and the sacred law that already existed among Abraham's ancestors, pertained in large part to blood; for life is in the blood. In the Biblical worldview, blood both pollutes and makes clean. Ancient law codes, such as the Law of Tehut, which existed long before the code of Hammurabi, addressed transgressions of boundaries between God and Man, and between the individual and his neighbor, and between the individual and his community.

One of the errors of reductionism is that it blurs the distinction between God and Man. The creation is not perfect and changes. God is perfect and immutable. There is a boundary between God and Man that no mortal can deny. God alone knows all things. The lie posed to Eve was that eating the forbidden fruit would make her like God, knowing good from evil. This blurring of the distinctions between God and Man, between life and death, between good and evil, between male and female, and between black and white is pure hubris and plays out to its logical end in the recent stories of two deluded individuals: Bruce Jenner and Rachel Dolezal.

Sadly, many have rejected the Biblical worldview in favor of pseudo-psychological explanations. People can be whatever they want to be. There is no fixed reality of male-female. Instead, there is a gender continuum which requires the State (as here) to recognize bisexual, transgender, unspecified, indeteriminate, and gender diverse, etc. There no longer being a fixed reality, our grip on permanent virtue is lost and we slip beneath the murky waters of insanity.

I am reminded of something G.K. Chesterton wrote in The Ball and the Cross:

Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. ...The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of a permanent virtue.

Related reading: Ethics and Binary Distinctions; Understanding Binary Distinctions; Levi-Strauss and Derrida on Binary Distinctions; Blood and Binary Distinctions; G.K. Chesterton on Drawing the Line

Binary Sets and Gender Distinctions

Alice C. Linsley

The ancient biblical writers saw a binary pattern in the order of creation. Binary refers to perceived sets of opposites like dark-light; male-female; Creator-creature; life-death, etc. Not everything that we regard as opposites represents a binary set in the Biblical sense, however. Tall-short; hot-cold are relative to the person judging. At 5 feet 5 inches, I would be considered short by a Watusi warrior, but a Pygmy would consider me to be tall.

The difference between the binary view and dualism is significant. In dualism the entities in the set are regarded as equal. Think of the philosophy of Yin-Yang. However, the biblical writers understood that one entity in the fixed binary set is superior in some way to the other. Males are larger and stronger than females. The Sun is greater than the moon. In Genesis we read that God created two great lights in the heavens: the greater (Sun) to rule the day and the lesser (moon) to rule the night. The superiority of the male and the Sun are not value judgments. These represent empirical observation of a universal pattern. The binary worldview is found throughout the Bible and is especially evident in Genesis. Sometimes the binary distinction is rather subtle and easy to miss. Consider, for example, the binary set of hot and cool encounters with God. Abraham was visited “in the heat of the day” by God in three Persons (Gen. 18:1). The binary opposite is “in the cool of the day”, the time of God’s visitation to Adam and Eve in Paradise (Gen. 3:8). We have encounters with God described as hot and cool. We must always pay attention to such distinctions. In the first God has come to punish Sodom and Gomorrah, and in the second God has come to enjoy fellowship with the Man and the Woman.

Men and women are ontologically equal in that they are both created in the image and likeness of the Creator. Nevertheless, it is universally observed that males are larger and stronger than females and that they naturally perform quite different tasks. The male-female binary set was employed by Paul in his exploration of the nature of the relationship between Christ and his Church. It is like the relationship of the sun and moon. In the ancient world the sun represented the masculine principle and the moon the feminine principle. These gender assignments are evident, for example, in Spanish - el sol and la luna, and in other languages that share a common proto-Afro-Asiatic system of roots. When Genesis 1 describes the sun as the greater light this pertains not only to its size, the strength of its light and the intensity of its heat. The reality is that it is the source of all light and warm. The moon merely reflects the light of the sun (refulgence). This is another way to describe the relationship between Christ and his Church. Paul says that he is exploring a mystery. Christ is the great light and source of life. His people reflect His light and life. Heaven is greater than earth. God is greater than humans. Were it not so, God could not stoop to save us. In emptying Himself (kenosis) Jesus Christ shows Himself to be the greater and the only one able too save. Without the binary view the Gospel would be meaningless. Christ's kenotic act would be senseless.

The study of philosophy tells us that the binary feature of reality allows for greater complexity. The human anatomy, for example, has a bilateral feature which allows for greater range of motion. The human brain has a binary feature - two chambers - which allows for greater complexity of thought. Binary language is the basis of the enormous complexity that has become possible with computers. Binary points us to a greater mystery. It seems to be God's way of inviting us to come closer and discover!

Here are two binary sets that pertain specifically to male-female distinctions: Deborah sitting under her tamar tree. A tamar is a date nut palm and was associated with the female principle. (Many Old Testament women were named Tamar.) The prophet or "moreh" consulted by Abraham sat under an oak. This tree was associated with the male principle.

There are two "passovers" in the Old Testament. The passover associated with Moses involving the lamb's blood streaked on the lintel and door posts. Because of this blood, death passed over these houses. Likewise the scarlet cord hanging from the window of Rahab's house preserved all those within when death came to Jericho. It is interesting that the blood and blood symbol in these two stories: the horizontal streak on the lintel, and the vertical red cord form a cross. The two narratives point us to Christ whose blood brings deliverance.

Trees and Crosses at the Sacred Center

We have a cross also when we consider the location of the two trees. Judges 4:4-6 says that the Palm of Deborah, was between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim (a north-south axis). Genesis 12 that tells us that the Oak of the Moreh was between Bethel and Ai (an east-west axis). The intersection of east-west and north-south provides another image of the cross. The two narratives must be taken together to gain this picture. 

The point of intersection of the north-south axis and the east-west axis was regarded as the sacred center. In the ancient world, sacred centers were often marked by trees. Genesis 2:9 says that the Tree of Life was in the sacred center of the garden. The Church fathers understood this to be an allusion to the cross upon which Christ died to give life to the world. The cross is called a “tree” in Scripture. Deuteronomy 21:22-13 is an example: “If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and you hang him on a tree, you must not leave the body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is a curse of God. You must not defile the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.”

So Jesus, the Son of God, became a curse for us. He died, was buried on that same day, and rose again on the third day, proving that He is the Righteous Ruler long expected of His faithful Horim (Horite ancestors).

Related reading: The Story of Ontology; Binary Distinctions of the Horites; Blood and Binary Distinctions; The Importance of Binary Distinctions; Rethinking "Biblical Equality"; Levi-Strauss and Jacques Derrida on Binary Oppositions; Trees in Genesis; The Bible as Woman's Story

Rethinking Gender Equality

Alice C. Linsley

The egalitarian doctrine held by feminists has made significant inroads in the churches. In this view women and men are equal in function, opportunity, and potential. On this basis women are ordained priests in some Anglican jurisdictions and even elevated to bishop. The gender distinctions observed in the order of creation and recognized in the canonical texts are overthrown.

It does not matter that not a single priest named in the Scriptures was a woman. Apparently, even Evangelicals who claim to uphold the authority of Scripture have fallen into the egalitarian heresy. The Evangelical complementarians accept the ordination of women to the priesthood, but illogically reject having female bishops since this contradicts their headship principle. It would serve them well to consider the difference between their complementarianism and the binary reasoning of the Bible.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and that is certainly the case with these pictures that serve as additional clues as to the error of the complementarian and egalitarian doctrines.

Writing about "Priestesses in the Church" C. S. Lewis describes such an innovation as a "wanton degree of imprudence." Imprudence was personified in the person of Ann Holmes Redding who served on Sundays as an Episcopal priest at St. Clement's of Rome Episcopal Church in Seattle while also dedicating her life to the study of the Quran with a Muslim group.

Some advocates of women in the priesthood have completely lost their grip on common sense. Susannah Cornwall argues that women can be priests because Jesus was a woman! This is her way of confronting "discrimination against women" which she believes "is based on the tradition of Jesus having chosen only male apostles." Of course, this is not the rationale for the all-male priesthood as it is revealed in the Bible, nor is this view supported historically, theologically, or anthropologically.

None of the apostles were priests. The three priests who were followers of Jesus were James the Just, Nicodemus, and Joseph of Hari-Mathea who was called "bouleutēs" which means honorable counselor. All were men and all were of the Horite ruler-priest lines. The Christian priesthood emerged from the pattern of the Horite priests. In their worldview male and female were not regarded as equals. This was based on their observation of patterns in nature. It is clear that males are stronger and larger than females. They are the best equipped to protect, fight wars, hunt, and sacrifice large, powerful animals. This is the nature of the blood work of males. It mainly concerns taking life so that, through the shedding of blood, life can be sustained.

Females, on the other hand, are created to perform a different kind of blood work: one that concerns giving life. Their work involves the shedding of blood in first intercourse, in their monthly cycle, and in childbearing. In the binary reasoning of the Bible the blood work of males and females speaks of the distinction between life and death.

The male principle involves insemination, protection of the weaker, expansion and uprightness. It is symbolized in the ancient world by meteorites and iron seeds covering the surface of the earth, by the Sun's rays shining down, the lengthening of shadows, and the strength of mountains and pillars. The female principle involves receptivity, birthing, nurturing, fluidity and softness.

In the ancient world of Jesus' Hebrew ancestors, bloods were never mixed or even present in the same space. Men were not permitted in the birthing hut. Women were not permitted where animals were sacrificed. When blood was shed there were priestly rituals for the purification of blood and relief of blood anxiety. Melchizedek performed this for Abraham (Gen. 14). He came to Abraham after a great battle in which Abraham incurred blood guilt. The ritual involved bread and wine. In Church tradition women waited 40 days to return to church, following the ancient custom of purification after shedding blood. The practice is still observed in the Eastern churches.

The biblical view of gender distinctions reflects how the ancients understood what is universally observed, but contemporary dualistic and egalitarian views distort that reality. The distinction between the male principle and the female principle has become blurred so that none consider it odd that women serve in combat or as priests. Mothers kill their babies. Fathers abandon their children and abuse their wives. Men have sex with men. God is cast as goddess, and the fact that Jesus was born a man, the Son of God, is dismissed. All of this begs the question: Who are these women serving? It is not the God who has revealed Himself in Scripture and in the Word made flesh.

Before the ordination of women priests, Anglican orders were more highly regarded by the hierarchs of both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. This innovation devalued Anglican orders in the view of those churches and continues to be an obstacle to wholeness within catholic Christendom. The innovation reveals confusion about the nature of the priesthood and infidelity to the received tradition which was embraced by the early priests of the Church. The ordination of women as priests is an accommodation to a culture that does not understand blood covenants or the distinction between the blood work of males and females.

When Anglicans contemplate reception of Christ's body and blood in the Eucharist, it is appropriate to see before them a masculine form. Likewise, in contemplation of the Annunciation and Incarnation we would properly have before us an image/icon of Mary, not a masculine form. To place a female form at the altar unravels the fabric of the Messianic tradition. It tells this story: The ewe who gives birth, and nurtures with her milk, is sacrificed, offering herself for the life of the world. It simply does not work! The ewe is a timid creature who stays with her young and seeks protection from the ram when threatened. She embodies feminine virtues and her self-sacrifice is at odds with the order of creation. From the Biblical perspective, a woman at the altar is equivalent to the boiling of a baby goat in its mother's milk, something repeatedly forbidden, because this practice blurs the distinction between life and death.

Here is the message delivered when the female stands at altar: The one who saves is the daughter of God. The divine council agrees to take the life of one who is divinely designed to give life. We no longer have the Gospel. We have a pagan tragedy!

Ignatius of Antioch adjures, "Be diligent, therefore, to use one eucharist, for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup, for union with his blood; one altar, even as there is one bishop, together with the presbytery and the deacons who are my fellow-servants, to the end that whatever ye do, ye may do it according unto God. (Philadelphians 4.1).

Related reading: What May Christians Safely Disbelieve?; Why Women Were Never Priests; The Paradox of Feminism; The Question of Patriarchy; Blood and Gender Distinctions;  Levi-Strauss and Jacques Derrida on Binary Distinctions; God as Male Priest; The Bible as Woman's Story

Blood and Gender Distinctions

Alice C. Linsley

Today when and if we speak about blood, our conversations are so sanitized that we have trouble understanding how ancient populations understood blood has having power and presence. Today to speak of blood guilt and blood coverage for protection is to turn heads and raise eyebrows.

To understand the biblical view of blood and gender distinctions we must recognize that the priesthood is first found among one group: the early Hebrew, a ruler-priest caste (4200-2000 BC). The social structure of the Hebrew is not patriarchal. I have written about that in my book The First Lords of the Earth: An Anthropological Study. 

The Hebrew social structure does not have the 6 features required to be classified as patriarchal. For example, in the Hebrew system of cognatic descent, Hebrew mothers were acknowledged as ancestors. Hebrew women exercised considerable influence within their social circles, and they owned property and could inherit property. Solomon bowed before Bathsheba, the queen mother, and had her sit on a throne at his right side (1 Kg. 2:19). Hebrew women served as clan chiefs, prophets, and judges. Some temple-dedicated Hebrew women had vital ministries to women who came to the temples for ritual cleansing and healing.

The typical Feminist narrative runs: "Israel was a patriarchal society. Legal codes conceive of men as the sole legal actors. Women are regarded as men's possessions on a par with oxen, asses, and slaves. Women are sexually abused and valued mainly for the reproduction of offspring. Even the sign of the covenant is an expression is male circumcision."

Legal codes provided for women, especially widows. Women were able to inherit property and temple women were independently wealthy. Circumcision was a custom among priests and women were not priests.

A proper understanding of the priesthood clarifies why women were never priests. The blood work of women pertains to childbirth, the giving of life. Hebrew women spilled blood in the birthing of their children, and this blood was regarded as having power and presence. Men were not permitted in the birthing chambers. Likewise, Hebrew women were not permitted in the place of animal sacrifice. None ever served as priests, though they were the wives and daughters of Hebrew ruler-priests.

Not a single woman is described as a priest in the Bible because that would have been unthinkable to the Hebrew. The idea of women sacrificing animals in the sacred space reserved for men would have been regarded as an affront to the Creator. He created women to bring forth life, not to take it.

The distinction between the blood work of females and the blood work of males ultimately is about the distinction between life and death. This is why the Hebrew were commanded never to boil a baby goat it its mother’s milk. The mother's milk speaks of life. Killing the new life in the substance of life blurs the distinction between life and death.

Ignoring the origins of the priesthood weakens the traditionalist defense of the male priesthood. Traditionalists tend to go back only to the first and second centuries of Christianity, overlooking thousands of years of salvation history and significant anthropological and archaeological information.

Anthropological studies have shown that the origins of the priesthood predate Abraham by at least 2200 years. The oldest known order of priests to worship one supreme Creator were the Horite priests of Nekhen along the Nile (3600 B.C.). The ruler-priest Melchizedek was not the first of his kind. Hebrew priests were a caste, and as such practiced endogamy, that is, they married only within their priestly lines. Archaeological discoveries reveal that there was an order of priests dedicated to the Creator and his Son (HR) as early as 3200 B.C. The Horite Hebrew ancestors of Abraham were devotees of HR (Horus in Greek). That is why even today Jews refer to their ancestors as the "Horim".

The Hebrew ruler-priests held a binary worldview (versus a dualistic worldview). They were great observers of the patterns in nature and noted certain fixed binary sets: male-female, day-night and east-west. These priests kept records of celestial events and natural phenomena because they believed that God has made his divine nature and eternal power known in the order of creation (Romans 1:20). When we ignore or confuse such binary distinctions we have a distorted view of the fullness of Christ.

The Hebrew priests regarded blood as the substance of life. This why the first man is called Adam in the Bible. Adam is a reference to blood. Ha-dam means "the Blood" and specified human beings among archaic peoples. Leviticus 17:11: “The life is in the Blood.”

There is an etymological connection between the words Adam, Edom and the Hausa word Odum. These words pertain to red, the color of blood. Edom was the home of an especially prestigious line of ruler-priests. Some were identified as having a red skin tone. These Horite Hebrew rulers are listed in Genesis 36. Jesus is a descendant of these Hebrew rulers.

Blood is the complex and somewhat mysterious transport system that allows communication and coordination between different parts of the human body. It nourishes organs and muscles. Without it, life as we know it could not exist. It is natural to associate blood with the beginning of life and the renewal of life. For Saint Paul the blood of Jesus speaks of the fullness of life in God. The blood of sacrificed animals prefigured the blood of Jesus but could never serve as a substitute. In Chapter 156 from the Book of the Dead, the blood of the divine one provides protection.

The Blood of Christ 

For St. Paul, the benefits of the “blood of Jesus” are manifested as the pleroma, or the fullness of all things in heaven and on earth, both invisible and visible. Jesus' blood has universal power and presence. The Gnostics used the term to describe the metaphysical unity of all things. Paul uses the term to speak about how all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ in bodily form (Col. 2:9).

Paul refers to the blood of Jesus no less than twelve times in his writings. Because God makes peace with us through the blood of the cross, he urges “Take every care to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together” (Eph. 4:3).

This idea that men and women have distinct blood work is a foreign concept to moderns. Today women fight in combat, hunt and abort their unborn. However, in the ancient world men and women had distinct roles when it came to blood work. These roles were not to be confused. Nor was it proper for the blood shed by males and females to be present in the same place. That is why women were not permitted at the altar of blood sacrifice and men were not permitted inside birthing chambers.

Abraham's Hebrew people made a distinction also between the blood work of men in killing and the blood work of women in birthing. The two bloods represent the binary set of life and death. The blood shed in war, hunting and animal sacrifice fell to warriors, hunters and priests. The blood shed in first intercourse, the monthly cycle and in childbirth fell to wives and midwives. The two bloods were never to mix or even to be present in the same space. Women did not participate in war, the hunt, and in ritual sacrifices, and they were isolated during menses.

Historically, in the Church women and their newborn infants were received with great solemnity and joy. This "churching" was the Church’s way to recognize the woman and welcome the child. This was a positive statement about the blood work of childbearing. The practice was observed in the Church for centuries but disappeared in most Western churched as feminists railed against it. Today, instead of welcoming the newborn and affirming the labor of the mother, we find clergy celebrating abortion. In a speech delivered at the Episcopal Church Seminary in Massachusetts, the Dean, Katharine Ragsdale, led her audience in this chant:

“Let me hear you say it:

Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.
Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.
Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.”

The innovation of women priests has caused great confusion and division in the Church. This has spread throughout the whole Anglican Communion. This innovation is contrary to the received tradition whereby the blood work of women and the blood work of men is distinct and never confused (an anthropological observation). A female standing as a priest at the altar is as confusing as a male intending to represent the Virgin Mary.

Regardless of how one views the priest at altar - in persona christi, in persona ecclesiae, an icon of Christ, the divinely appointed mediator in the pattern of the Mediator, etc., this is not a matter of secondary importance. No synod or jurisdiction has authority to change the received tradition concerning Jesus Christ and his blood shed for the salvation of the world.

C.S. Lewis is correct that when it comes to the Church's received tradition, "We cannot shuffle or tamper so much. With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us." (From Priestesses in the Church?)

Related reading: Water and Blood; Why Women Were Never Priests; God as Male Priest; The Origin of Animal Sacrifice; Are Feminists Correct About the Church?; Males as Spiritual Leaders: Two Patterns; Philosophers' Corner: On Blood and the Impulse to Immortality; BIBLICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: The Hebrew were a Caste; Adam Was a Red Man

Today's Savage Mind

Alice C. Linsley

The Human Mind and Patterns

Proverbs 25:2 says, "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter."

Plato would have approved. His philosopher-king was such a seeker. However, not all seekers of concealed things have royal blood. Seekers are found in every culture, ethnic group and social class, and they have this in common: they are great observers of patterns and seek to understand their meaning.

Jacques Derrida and Lévi-Strauss explored the "underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity." They were interested in the ways that meanings are derived from binary oppositions, their relationships and the transitions from one to the other. For example, in every society and religious group what is edible varies, but all recognize the binary opposites of raw and cooked, wet or dry, or natural and manipulated, or fresh and rotten, and Kosher or non-Kosher. The pattern is consistent and yet it is difficult to define the exact point at which wet become dry, or what is a natural object or substance becomes a product of human handling.

Derrida, a North African, Arabic-speaking Jew, essentially reintroduced an ancient epistemological approach. He identified the complexity of binary oppositions which characterize ancient worldviews.

The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss believed that the primitive mind and the modern mind have the same structures or patterns. He came to this through observations of primitive peoples of the Amazon and elsewhere and his presented his findings in Tristes Tropiques (1955) and Le cru et le cuit (1964). He showed that qualities experienced as raw or cooked, and other sensible binary sets, point to a network of abstract relations which form a coherent system. These books made Lévi-Strauss the central figure in the structuralist school.

As Lévi-Strauss once said, structuralism is “the search for unsuspected harmonies” across cultures. Working among Amerindians from the 1930s onward, Lévi-Strauss found those harmonies to be evident in mythology. In this understanding Lévi-Strauss and Derrida were on the same page. In their investigations they found that myths, in Lévi-Strauss's words, “provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction.”

Structuralist theory considers how opposites generate meaning not only by what each entity represents but also through the relationship of the binary opposites. Man and woman each represent a unique idea, but the relationship of the two presents additional layers of meaning. In the Bible male and female represent a merism, that is, the binary set points beyond itself to the whole of humanity. In his Logical Investigations, Husserl set forth the theory of wholes and their parts. Today the formal theory is known as “mereology.”

Mereological thinking involves exploration of sets and their relationship. For example, when we speak of a couple, we are speaking of two people and their relationship. In the case of the sacrament of marriage we are speaking of at least 6 aspects: the man and the woman; their relationship, the relationship of each individual to their Maker, and the covenant relation made before God and witnesses.

When we speak of night and day, we are speaking of two experiences with a range of in-between experiences that we call “dawn” and “dust”. The binary set also expresses the whole range of experience. The expression “night and day” represents a 24-hour cycle. To say “they searched high and low” is to mean that they searched everywhere. 

Merisms are common in Biblical poetry. In Genesis 1:1 we read that God created "the heavens and the earth." The merism means that God created the whole universe. In Psalm 139, the psalmist declares that God knows "my sitting down and my rising up”. This is to say that God knows all the psalmist's actions. The phrase “good and evil” – as in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - is merism whereby a pair of opposites refers to all that can be known. Eve is tempted to eat of this tree so that she might become like God, knowing all things.

Levi-Strauss argued that binary distinctions generate a hierarchy of meanings and are central to cultural narratives. He was influenced by Husserl's phenomenology. On the surface the binary oppositions seem straightforward. However, Derrida's investigations reveal complexities and nuances in deconstruction of texts, ideas, myths and human customs. In the case of binary oppositions, each component of the binary set means something, and the relationship of the oppositions means something, and the hierarchy exhibited by the set means something. On deeper examination, we find complexity and nuance in the sensible pattern.

Binary sets require that we make distinctions between entities, consider the relationship of dominance and subservience, and explore reversals. In so doing, unfamiliar or hidden meanings emerge. This is what Derrida recognized in his playful and profound exploration of texts and myths. 

Derrida ascribes to objects a less substantial existence than the shadow they cast, or their trace. He explores the metaphysical aspect behind the physical. He moves behind Aristotle to Plato, and behind Plato to the ancient Nilotic mysteries which informed Plato. Derrida's reversals are a strategic intervention to free Western Philosophy from the constraints of empiricism, materialism and linear logic. His method involves neutralizing the shouting voice in order to hear resonances of underlying sounds.

As Derrida suggested: "Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed immediately to neutralization: it must, by means of a double gesture, a double science, a double writing, practice an overturning of the classical opposition, and a general displacement of the system. It is on that condition alone that deconstruction will provide the means of intervening in the field of oppositions it criticizes" (Metaphysics).

This reversal of the subordinated term of an opposition is no small aspect of deconstruction's strategy. Derrida's argument is that in examining a binary opposition and reversals, deconstruction brings to light traces of meaning that cannot be said to be present, but which must have metaphysical existence. This is not a new idea or even a new approach to meaning. It is consistent with the binary thought and observations of the Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors from whom we receive the binary narratives in Genesis.

Pattern and Method

All of this is to say that binary oppositions are both pattern and method. In the field of Physics Einstein and Bohr represent the tug-o-war between determinism and non-determinism. Einstein preferred the determinism of classical physics over the complementarity and the uncertainty principle of Bohr and Heisenberg. Yet none of them could deny that all properties and actions in the physical world are to some degree non-deterministic. None can deny that every snowflake is unique. Yet every snowflake has a perfect pattern. 

Niels Bohr was right that light behaves like both waves and particles. This led him to conclude that entities could be analysed as having several contradictory or mutually exclusive properties, such as a wave or a stream of particles, depending on the experimental framework. In other words, no entity is only one thing.

In Philosophy we find Essentialists and Non-Essentialists, and Determinists and Non-Determinists. It is never wise to be dogmatic about either position because neither can function without the other. The opposites must be held together if we are to discover anything about the more difficult questions, such as "At what point does the entity cross from this to that?" This question weighs on Darwinians who are faced with identifying the crossover points from single cell to complex organism to primate to human. Despite the bluster of popular figures like Richard Dawkins, they have not been able to accomplish this. Could this be because no entity exists that does not conform to some pattern?

The Human Mind and Craftsmanship

In "The Savage Mind” (1962), Lévi-Strauss proposes a distinction between conception, design and manufacture. The craftsman works with his hands to create something that does not exist in nature using natural materials such as flint, copper, ivory or wood in different ways. Early man had to experiment, and in this sense, he was the father of all inventors and scientists. Yet Lévi-Strauss saw a difference. The savage mind is more spontaneous, and more open to divine inspiration. The scientist is methodical and, for the most part, unconcerned with the divine.

The great monuments of the ancient world - pyramids, astronomically aligned obelisks, wind towers, etc - served both practical and spiritual needs. Computers and satellites serve a practical need, but not a spiritual need. Science presents us with secular expressions of reality. The theory of natural selection would have us believe that the human mind has advanced beyond the savage mind, and yet our perceptions of pattern in nature are the same. That is assuming we are paying attention to patterns. 

One need only ask the average American high school student a few questions about the natural world and it becomes evident that they are not paying attention to patterns. Their minds are less informed about patterns in nature than the minds of the Amerindians studied by Lévi-Strauss. I recently asked 78 9, 10 and 11 grade students in a highly regarded private school these questions:

What does it mean when we speak of the moon waxing and waning?

Why is the calendar divided into 12 monthly cycles?

Why is the week divided into 7 daily cycles?

How long does it take (approximately) for the earth to complete on full rotation?

Not a single student was able to give me an explanation about the lunar and solar cycles, the 7 celestial bodies after which the ancients named the days of the week or sidereal astronomy. Yet in Abraham's time, such matters were discussed and considered important enough that the ancient Horites kept records over thousands of years. Being thus ignorant of basic patterns in nature, would it not be more appropriate to call us "savages"? 

In our day, the greater question concerns the human heart or the human spirit. If Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Derrida are correct, the experience of binary sets is universal. That being so, firsthand experience of the binary oppositions should inform us as to the true nature of reality. But here technology intrudes. Though computers represent binary language, most students have no conception of this. They use computers for entertainment and social networking. Their world has become virtual, not real. In their world the patterns are distorted. Man and woman is meaningless in their androgynous world. Homosex is a sexual preference like chocolate or strawberry ice cream. The very binary distinctions that enable us to dig deep into the meaning of things are blurred beyond recognition or entirely lost. The result is not only a loss of knowledge, but also a loss of empirical method.

Related: Why Logic Should Be Taught in Schools; Ancient Seats of Wisdom; Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; A Pragmatic Approach to Knowledge; Theories of Change and Constancy; Seven Planets/Stars and Seven Bowls; Binary Distinctions and Kenosis

Genesis on Homosex: Beyond Sodom

"Given the traditional Orthodox understanding of the Old and New Testament scriptures as expressed in the Church's liturgical worship, sacramental rites, canonical regulations and lives and teachings of the saints, it is clear that the Orthodox Church identifies solidly with those Christians, homosexual and heterosexual, who consider homosexual orientation as a disorder and disease, and who therefore consider homosexual actions as sinful and destructive." -- Fr. Thomas Hopko


Alice C. Linsley

In the contemporary dispute over homosexuality the Bible plays a less significant role than in the past because it is viewed as a book of miracles and supernatural revelation, having nothing to do with science and the modern understanding of sexuality. This is not based on an objective assessment of what the Bible says about homosexuality. It is rooted in the Enlightenment rejection of the Bible, and especially in David Hume's dismissal of miracles. Hume argued that unless universals in religion could be ascertained, no religious truth claims can reasonably be verified. Since Hume's time, anthropologists have identified several significant universals in religion, notably burial in red ochre, serpent veneration, and water shrines.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) also contributed to a dismissal of the Hebrew Scriptures as "a collection of mere statutory laws upon which was established a political organization." In his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone Kant argued for a "pure moral religion" based on duty as "the euthanasia of Judaism." He maintained that Judaism was later "interfused, by reason of moral doctrines gradually made public within it, with a religious faith - for this otherwise ignorant people had been able to receive much foreign (Greek) wisdom." Kant's distortion of the facts is evident in the influence of ancient Egypt on Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plato.

Although Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was an oddity in his time, he perpetuated the Enlightenment disdain for the Hebrew Scriptures. He incorrectly portrayed the Hebrew Bible as derivative of what he regarded as the more ancient Vedas. His notion was repeated by Friedrich Maximilian Müeller (1823-1900) who wrote, "In the Rig-Veda we shall have before us more real antiquity than in all the inscriptions of Egypt or Ninevah....the Veda is the oldest book in existence...."

Today it is recognized that the oldest layer of the Vedas reflects the Horite religion which took root in Southern India's Harappa culture. Har-appa is a Dravidian word that means "Horus is Father". The words Kusha, Rama, Hari and the description of Krishna (Christ) as the "Ancient Man" are all found in earlier Hebrew and Aramaic texts. 

Schopenhauer also said, "Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun 3,000 years: just because a jealous god had said, 'Thou shalt make no graven image.'"

Again Schopenhauer was mistaken. It was the Roman emperor Augustus who desecrated the most revered of all the ancient sacred places. In 14 BC, he had the sacred pillars of Heliopolis (Biblical On) removed to Alexandria to grace the grounds of the Caesareum.

It is also evident that polytheistic Hinduism has contributed its share of religious violence and persecutions.

These writers dismissed the Hebrew Scriptures as irrational superstition and their assessment, though false, has been accepted uncritically by many today. Even to refer to the Bible in reference to homosexuality is to risk attack from gay activists. Some claim such references as "hate speech" and thereby effectively block a way of inquiry that has proven to be empirically valid (See Biblical Anthropology). It is no surprise that the Bible does not factor significantly in the contemporary debate over homosexuality.


Beyond Sodom and Gomorrah

When the Bible is referenced in conversation about homosexuality, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is usually cited. Some argue that the destruction of the cities was an act of divine punishment on those who practiced homosex. Others argue that the sin of Sodom was not homosex, but a lack of hospitality. Both sides miss the point. These Canaanite cities represent a religion quite foreign to that of Abraham's Horite people and it is Abraham's people who tell the story.

Their repudiation of homosex proceeds logically from their doctrine of creation. God created humanity in two sexes that the human race might be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. All non-procreative acts are viewed as immoral in this context. This includes onanism, homosex and refusal to fulfill the levirate marriage law (Deut. 25:5-10). Such acts frustrate God's purpose and go against the divine order in creation.

The levir's duty was to produce an heir for his deceased brother by his brother's widow. This practice insured that none of the priestly divisions would cease to exist. This was important to God's purpose since Jesus would be born of these priestly lines. The Virgin Mary's father was a priest who married a daughter of a priest, following the Horite marriage and ascendancy pattern.

The spilling of semen (onanism) is still regarded as an unrighteous deed among Afro-Arabians and most tribal peoples. The seed that should fall to the earth is the seed of plants, which spring forth from the earth. The seed of man should fall on his own type (the womb), from which man comes forth. This is the ancient wisdom which observed patterns in nature.

From the earliest days, Christians have upheld the Biblical teaching on non-procreative acts. Clement of Alexandria wrote, “Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted” (The Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2 A.D. 191).

The Pew Research Center's 2007 Global Attitudes Survey found that "people in Africa and the Middle East strongly object to societal acceptance of homosexuality." It should not come as a surprise that societies that value the traditions of their ancestors resist acceptance of homosexuality while societies influenced by the Enlightenment, i.e., Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, accept and even advocate for gay rights.

Blue shades represent areas where homosex is most accepted. There are groups within the blue areas which do not accept homosex. The Micmac (Ainu) of northeast Canada and the Aborigines of Australia are examples.

The Horites and sexual purity

The moral law which is associated with Moses developed out of an early moral law associated with Menes who united the peoples of the Nile. Menes is shown as the first in the procession of ancient lawgivers in the South Wall Frieze of the United States Supreme Court. His was called the Law of Tehut. Menes (c. 3200 BC) and the kings after him bore Horus names. They were Horite ruler-priests whose wisdom and skill was still remembered in the times of the Egyptian historian Manetho (3rd century BC) and the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC).

The most ancient moral codes have many features in common. They appeal to the authority of the deity who was recognized by the ruler and they view the ruler as the deity's earthly representative. Another common feature is concern for purity among the priestly caste as they were regarded as the mediators between the deity and the ruler and his people. Often the rulers themselves were priests, but when it came to ritual purity, especially to cleanse from blood guilt, ruler-priests turned to other priests for purification of absolution rituals.

Ancient moral codes have a religious quality because religion and government were never separate in the ancient world. Among ancient peoples religious laws governed every aspect of the community’s life. Taboo is an aspect of ancient law that regularizes a community’s recognition of boundaries and supernatural power. In ancient Egypt none were permitted to touch the ruler except his queen who was usually his half-sister or his cousin. Among the ancient Polynesians, the high chief’s “mana” was such that people even avoided having his shadow fall on them. Taboo extended to objects, persons, words, and even numbers. Those who broke a taboo were punished or shamed by community.

An example of a taboo among the ancient Israelites was boiling a kid in its mother’s milk (Exodus 23:19; 34:26; Deuteronomy. 14:21). This was taboo because it blurred the boundary between life-giving and life-taking. This same boundary applied to blood. The blood shed in hunting, war and animal sacrifice could not be confused with or even physically near the blood shed by women in their monthly cycle or in birthing. The two bloods represent the binary oppositions of life-taking and life-giving. To blur the distinction between them was a serious matter as this boundary was established by the Creator.


Moses and the Horites

Moses was a Horite and the Mosaic law reflects the Horite caste's emphasis on ritual purity. The Horites (Ha-biru/O-piru) were expected to keep themselves from all impurity as the taint of impurity would render their work as intercessors and mediators ineffective. The Horites served as river shrine and temple attendants. They interceded for others and offered sacrifice. Both Abraham and righteous Job offered sacrifices and interceded for others.

There is a linguistic connection between Hr and TR. The Horite priest shaved his body before his term of service. The shaved priest was called Korah. Kor/Korah and Tor/Torah are both related to blood sacrifice and the Horite concept of purity. The Hebrew root thr = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm toro = clean, and to the Tamil tiru = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian tor = blood. The Horite priest was to be purified before entering the temple. The purification ritual involved shaving their heads and bodies. Moses had two brothers who were priests: Aaron (Harun) and Korah.

Horite priests were known for their purity and devotion to the High God whose emblem was the Sun. Plutarch wrote that the “priests of the Sun at Heliopolis never carry wine into their temples, for they regard it as indecent for those who are devoted to the service of any god to indulge in the drinking of wine whilst they are under the immediate inspection of their Lord and King. The priests of the other deities are not so scrupulous in this respect, for they use it, though sparingly.”

The oldest tomb associated with the Horite priestly caste was found in Egypt. The tomb belongs to a priest named Rudj-Ka (or Rwd-Ka) and is dated to the 5th Dynasty - between 2465 and 2323 BC. The 4400-year-old tomb is located south of the cemetery of the pyramid builders at Giza. This corresponds to the time of Noah's son Ham (2438-2363) and Noah's grandson Kush (2417-2342). For other correlations between Genesis and history see A Scientific Timeline of Genesis.

The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah comes from the Horite priests who condemned Canaanite practices such as homosex and onanism. These same practices were condemned by the Biblical prophets who were their descendants.

The Horite priests were a high ranked caste in ancient Egypt. Among the ancient Egyptians homosex was regarded as shameful. To be anally penetrated was looked upon as humiliating, and the only archaeological evidence of homosex in ancient Egypt is a painting on the interior wall of a remote cave.

The Book of the Dead, from approx. 1650-1550 BC, tells of how the one who wishes to enter the afterlife must confess before Ra/Horus and the 42 deified rulers (Horim or Houris) that "I have committed no acts of impurity nor have I had sexual intercourse with a man." [The Book of the Dead, chapter 125, by Richard Hooker.

There is textual evidence that homosexual rape was practiced in the ancient Near East against defeated warriors. This supports the view that homosex was regarded as a humiliating act. St Paul states that homosex is "contrary to nature" (Rom 1:26), that is, it violates the binary order of creation whereby God makes known His eternal power and divine nature (Rom 1:20).


An argument from silence?

A fallacy circulating these days is that no Near Eastern texts have been found that condemn homosexuality. This again points to the Enlightenment rejection of the Hebrew Scriptures which are themselves representative of Near Eastern and Afro-Arabian texts and which clearly are not silent on homosex. Both homosex and onanism bring death to their practitioners and the death is not from natural causes, but ascribed to God as an act of punishment (Gen. 19; Gen. 38:7-10).

Further, the Assyrians prohibited homosex during the time of Tukulti-apil-Eser, also known as Pileser I (1115–1077 B.C). However this prohibition and the prescribed punishment of castration can be traced back to the 15th century B.C. The Hebrew (Ha-biru/O-piru) punishment for homosex was far more severe. Leviticus 20:13 states, "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

From the Old Babylonian period this image (left) was found depicting homosex in what appears to be a tavern or a place of orgy. The passive partner is seen drinking from a fountain. (Ch. Ziegler, ADFU 6 (1962), plate 10, Fig. 168 and p. 55. Whether the passive partners were castrated males is uncertain. In the 2nd century A.D. the Roman satirist Apuleius refers to Ishtar's castrated devotees as galli. In the 4th century A.D. Eusebius mentions effeminate priests attached to the moon goddess in Harran. They were said to perform homosex on Mount Lebanon.

Ruler and white bride
represent sun and moon

Worship of the moon god was criticized by the Biblical prophets. For the Horites, who were famous sky watchers, the eclipse of the moon was less significant than the eclipse of the sun because in their binary worldview the sun was regarded as superior to the moon. For this reason, it was shameful to worship the moon.

This was not an arbitrary preference, but a description of reality since the sun gives light whereas the moon merely reflects the sun's light. The sun's superiority is expressed in Genesis 1:16: "God made the two great lights: the greater to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night."
 
The sun and the moon were gendered in Horite thinking, but the two were not seen as equals. As with all the binary sets found in the Bible, one entity in the set is regarded as superior to the other. This distinguishes the Biblical worldview from the dualism of the East. The sun was associated with the masculine because solar rays inseminate the earth over which the sun has dominion. The moon was associated with the feminine because it is the sun's counterpart, reflects the sun's light, and because it influences the woman's monthly cycle. This is why the male rulers of ancient Egypt appeared with darkened skin from sun exposure while their queens appeared with whitened skin, symbolic of the moon.

Apart from the adoption of the 12 month lunar cycle, the Horites recognized the moon as the binary opposite of the sun, and regarded worship of the lesser entity as idolatry. This is why worship of a moon-goddess finds no resonance in the Hebrew Bible.

Even were it true that no ancient Near Eastern texts condemn homosex, the argument from silence is not conclusive. We might as well note that no ancient Near Eastern or Afro-Arabian texts pose homosex as good.


Related reading: Plato's Debt to Ancient Egypt; Ancient Moral Codes; Is Opposition to Homosexual Activity "Irrational"? by Thomas Storck; Binary Distinctions and Kenosis; Levi-Strauss and Derrida on Binary Distinctions; Ritual Sex and Ancient Egyptian Priests; Abraham and Job: Horite Rulers; Alice C. Linsley's Research on Genesis; Genesis and African Bishops

Lévi-Strauss and Derrida on Binary Oppositions

Alice C. Linsley


There is no doubt that Proto-Saharan and Nilotic peoples as early as 3,800 B.C. thought of the observable world in terms of binary sets such as male-female, night-day, heaven above-earth below, dry-wet, raw-cooked, and life-death. This characterized the worldview of Abraham's Horite Hebrew ancestors and is an important feature to recognize when studying the biblical texts.

The directional axes of east-west and north-south comprised fundamental binary sets for Abraham's people and underpin their cosmology, worship, and burial practices. It appears that Horite Hebrew rulers were buried with their heads to the north and their faces to the east. The rising of the sun, the emblem of God Father (Ra or Ani) and God Son (Horus or Enki), spoke to them of the hope of bodily resurrection. They anticipated a Righteous Ruler who would overcome death and lead his people to immortality.

The Horite Hebrew venerated the sun and aligned their monuments to the solar arc. The overshadowing of the sun signified divine appointment of rulers. Ascent to the mountain top (the spatial sacred center) at high noon marked the sacred temporal center, and the place and time of theophanies.

Likewise the sacred pillars in the Horite Hebrew temples and elevated shrines (called bnbn in Ancient Egyptian) connected heaven and earth.

The biblical worldview observes binary sets or binary oppositions which distinguishes this worldview from dualism. In a binary set, one of the entities is recognized as being superior in some way to its opposite. The entities are not equal opposites as in dualism. The sun and moon are posed as a binary set, and we note that the sun is the greater light (Gen.1:16).


An ancient way of thinking

The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss observed binary thinking among pre-literate Amazon tribes in the 20th century. In his book, Le cru et le cuit, Strauss explores cultural perceptions of natural/raw-prepared/cooked, and other binary oppositions/sets within primitive cultures.

Lévi-Strauss dedicated himself to searching for the "underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity." On the basis of his anthropological findings he argued that the primitive mind has the same structures or patterns as the civilized mind. These observations culminated in his famous book Tristes Tropiques, which positioned him as the central figure in the structuralist school.

Lévi-Strauss was interested in how meaning is related to and derived from observation of binary oppositions/sets. His structuralist theory considers how meaning relies not only on a single entity in the binary set, but also on the relationship of the entities and the beyond thing to which the relationship points. So "man" and "woman" each represent a unique idea, but the relationship of the two presents additional layers of meaning. Levi-Strauss argued that binary distinctions generate a hierarchy of meanings and are central to cultural narratives.

On the surface binary logic seems straightforward. However, the work of Jacques Derrida reveals great complexities in deconstruction of texts, ideas, myths and human customs. In the case of binary oppositions, each entity of the binary set means something, and the relationship of the oppositions means something, and the hierarchy exhibited by the set means something, and then there is still a beyond Presence, a constancy beyond human grasp.

Binary sets require that we make distinctions between entities, consider the relationship of dominance and subservience, and explore reversals.  In so doing, deeper and/or unfamiliar meanings emerge. This is what Derrida recognized in his playful and profound exploration of texts and myths.

Derrida ascribes to objects a less substantial existence than the shadow they cast, or their trace. He explores the metaphysical aspect behind the physical. He moves behind Aristotle to Plato, and behind Plato to the ancient Nilotic mysteries which informed Plato. Derrida's reversals are a strategic intervention to free Western Philosophy from the constraints of empiricism, materialism and linear logic. His method involves neutralizing the shouting voice in order to hear resonances of underlying sounds.

As Derrida suggested: "Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed immediately to neutralization: it must, by means of a double gesture, a double science, a double writing, practice an overturning of the classical opposition, and a general displacement of the system. It is on that condition alone that deconstruction will provide the means of intervening in the field of oppositions it criticizes" (Metaphysics).

This reversal of the subordinated term of an opposition is no small aspect of deconstruction's strategy. Derrida's argument is that in examining a binary opposition and reversals, deconstruction brings to light traces of meaning that cannot be said to be present, but which must have metaphysical existence. This is not a new idea or even a new approach to meaning. It is consistent with the binary thought and observations of the Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors from whom we receive the binary narratives in Genesis.

After deconstruction, Jacques Derrida concluded that there is a center and that something is there. He spoke of this something as "presence." He claimed that throughout the history of Philosophy this metaphysical presence is called by different names, “God” being one of them. This is uncomfortable for materialists. They find the metaphysical baffling. If there is a "presence" at the metaphysical center, it must surely be of ultimate authority (Romans 13:1). It is natural that many should feel existential angst about this possibility.

Derrida was a North African Arabic-speaking Jew. In a sense,  his contribution to Western Philosophy has been to re-introduce the Afro-Arabian interpretive approach to meaning. In this, he unintentionally renders a great service to Bible scholars. In Romans 1:20, Paul asserts that God's invisible qualities, namely His divine nature and eternal power, are evident in the fixed binary order of creation.  Here the Apostle is drawing on the received tradition of his Horim.

In the Horite Hebrew view, the world does not change. Flux occurs within boundaries, but the order of creation is fixed. Lévi-Strauss and other structuralists agree that all humans observe certain patterns in the ordering of their societies and these patterns are informed by objective observation of the fixed order in creation. This flies in the face of the gay activists' claim, expressed by Gene Robinson at Emory University, "You can’t take a 20th century word, stick it back into an ancient text, and expect it to mean something entirely unknown to the authors of the text. These verses are quoted as if our world has never changed."

Gay advocates refuse to recognize that the biblical consideration of homosex is not restricted to a few verses in Genesis and Romans. It is a fundamental aspect of the binary framework of the entire Bible.

As a Biblical anthropologist, I seek to understand the cultural context of the Bible, especially at the oldest, pre-Abrahamic foundations. Biblical Anthropology concerns itself with antecedents. The oldest layers of the biblical material reveal a binary and hierarchically structured worldview relative to gender, blood, circumcision, cosmology and priesthood. This is not a popular idea in these egalitarian times, but it is important that we understand the biblical worldview to discern falsehood from truth. A blow to the binary distinctions strikes the very heart of Christianity, for without this understanding, the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ is meaningless. Were all equal, there would be none greater than ourselves who could stoop to save us.


Related reading:  Something Older; Genesis and Jacques Derrida; Ontology and the Philosophical Project; Binary Sets in the Ancient World;  Blood and Binary Distinctions; Binary Opposition and Narrative; Binary Distinctions and Kenosis; Gender Reversal and Sacred Mystery; Reality is Cross Shaped; Sweeping Away Gender and the Binary Distinctions; Full documentary "Claude Lévi-Strauss in His Own Worlds" (2008)