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

"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

A Theological and Scientific Conversation about Humans

A reader has asked: "What about the idea that the evolution of the human physical body from other primates is a possibility, as long as the soul is believed to have been directly created by God?"

Response from a Roman Catholic friend:

That is not an historic Christian view. St. Paul and Thomas Aquinas make it clear that the human is not human without the body.

Aquinas believed that the soul is the form of the body, as Aristotle said, and gives it life and energy. But against Neo-Platonism, he taught that the soul and body are inextricably linked and that the soul this declared dogma by the ecumenical Council of Vienne in 1312, which the Catholic Church consider binding. So the question arises: how can the Catholic Church teach that the soul is created immediately (i.e., without secondary efficient causes) by God at the moment of conception? That teaching of the Church is reaffirmed at CCC §366.

Both body and soul are essential to the individual human's being. God creates the soul ex nihilo, and the parents generate from gametes the body that the soul informs and vivifies, thus enjoying the privilege of co-creating with God.

Well, there is no reason to suppose that the two teachings are mutually inconsistent. By generating the body of their child, and thus acting as efficient causes of their child, parents only produce the material cause, not the formal cause, of the entire person who is their child. The soul does not come into being without the body and the body does not come into being without the soul. Yet the body is that of a human person, from the moment of conception, only in virtue of God's infusing it with a spiritual soul.

The soul need not, therefore, be itself produced by the parents in order to be the form of the body. And so the dogma that the soul is the form of the body offers no support for traducianism, which some but not all Church Fathers held. Aquinas even argued: The process of spiritual generation is impossible; since the soul is immaterial and indivisible, no spiritual germ can be detached from the parental soul (cf. St. Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles II, 86; Summa Theologiae I:90:2, I:98:2, etc.).

Response from JandyonGenesis:  Archaic humans were fully human. The essence of the human is Trinitarian: body, mind and soul (anima). There is no substantial evidence that archaic humans lacked this essence. In fact, to argue such is to assert that such creatures are not human.

We must begin by identifying the 4 keys ideas of evolution and examining the evidence for each:

1. mutation
2. adaptation
3. natural selection
4. common ancestry or common descent

Touching on the first point there is no doubt that mutation is a reality. Living organisms under go mutation both gradually over long periods of time and sometimes rather quickly. However, there appears to be a boundary to mutations in a given class of organisms. This is referred to as horotely, a Greek word that is a reference to horos - limit or boundary, and to the word horizon. The term is likely related to Horus, the "son" of the Creator who was said to be the fixer of boundaries.

Adaptation is also a reality. God created organisms with the ability to adapt to their changing environments. It appears that organisms gradually "accumulate" certain physiological, behavioral, and structural traits that aid their ability to survive and reproduce under existing environmental conditions. Those that are unable to adapt become extinct.

Natural selection takes place.  The theory of evolution by natural selection does not attempt to explain how life first began or why living things are on Earth. Rather, the theory of natural selection explains the observable processes that change the physical characteristics of living things through time. That said, we are still speaking of the theoretical rather than a law of nature, since some poorly adapted organisms nevertheless thrive in their environments. If we are honest, we must admit that there are factors in survival that we do not understand, and which may pertain to supernatural oversight, something beyond the realm of science.

Common ancestry or common descent of all living organisms is a hypothesis proposed by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species.  He believed that it is likely that all currently living organisms on Earth share a common genetic heritage with each being the descendant from a single original species. He wrote, "There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one."

The common descent hypothesis is suggested by developments in the Cambrian explosion and later, but anthropologically speaking, there is no physical evidence to permit us to state as fact that humans and apes have a common ancestor. Molecular genetics has not proven this, but it has provided a model for how this might be so. We must accept that common ancestry is quite contrary to what Genesis asserts about humans as a special creation. As Christians who take Scripture as a first/primary authority, we cannot gloss over this or assume that this view represents ignorance on the part of the ancient Biblical writers.

The Rising Star Expedition in Southern Africa has retrieved and cataloged over 1000 hominid fossils, and large numbers of fossils remain at the underground site to be retrieved in future expeditions. The findings of this expedition are forcing paleontologists to rethink the evolutionary model. First, these archaic humans practiced ritual burial. Second, these fossil remains reveal a wide range of physical features. The features that have been identified are found in modern humans. One feature that has been shown in various images is of a skull with a protruding chin (projecting jaw). This same feature is found in R1b lineages from Africa to Serbia to Ireland, and most commonly among the metal working castes (who intermarried) and who dispersed widely in service of ancient rulers.

My concern is that we not allow labels to skew our interpretation of the data. When we look at the labels attached to various remains we find see that these are not very helpful. Neanderthals were fully human. The features associated with them have been found very widely, well beyond the Neander Valley of Germany.

A. Afarensis also had human dentition which is quite easily distinguished from that of apes. In humans, the back teeth are larger than the front teeth (not so with apes), and the canines are not pointed. Humans also lack the characteristic diastema or tooth gap found in apes.

Mary Leakey’s 1979 discoveries in Tanzania added to the evidence that humans walked the earth about over 3 million years ago. At Laetoli, about 25 miles south of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Leakey discovered footprints of a man, woman and child created about 3.6 million years ago and preserved under falling ash from the nearby Sadiman volcano. The raised arch and rounded heel of the footprints showed that whoever left these footprints walked as humans today. Unfortunately, Donald C. Johanson had already announced to the world that the finds were apes, though Mary Leakey would have classified her Laetoli finds as Homo/human. She expressed her regret that “the Laetoli fellow is now doomed to be called Australopithecus afarensis.”

Johanson and Mary Leakey were scheduled to speak at a Nobel Symposium in Sweden in May 1978. The conference honored Mary Leakey, who received a medal from the King of Sweden for her scientific investigations. Mary Leakey received the Golden Linnaean Medal, but also was very embarrassed when Johanson announced the new name - Australopithecus afarensis - for his Afar Triangle finds and included Mary Leakey's 4 million year old Laetoli specimen (jaw bone LH4) from Tanzania as an exhibit. Johanson, who was scheduled to speak before Mary Leakey, scooped Mary's speech. She was angry that Johanson had named her discoveries, using a designation that was totally at odds with what she believed to be the evidence. Johanson's name stuck though today, based on more recent discoveries, he doubts the accuracy of the ape designation.

Based on years of teaching students, I have found that labels such as Neanderthal and Australopithecus tend to cause confusion. Among these groups the range of physical traits is the same as the range of traits found in modern human populations. So much so, that it is more helpful and more accurate to speak simply of archaic humans and modern humans. This is one reason I believe that the earliest humans appeared on Earth about 4 million years ago, and although they show archaic anatomical features, they were created fully human with the potential to develop (evolve) into modern humans.

Cranial capacity is not an indication of complexity of thought. The bicameral brain and the binary feature in the order of creation are what trigger complexity of thought and innovation. This binary pattern in the order of creation and among living organisms is found in Genesis, but has been largely overlooked by Bible commentators.

Related reading:  Fully Human From the Beginning; Binary Feature Triggered Greater Diversity;  Questioning the Common Ancestry Hypothesis

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

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

The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ

Recommended before reading this: The Horite High Places, The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative; Hebrew Priests in Judah, Aram, Edom, and Moab; Horite Mounds; The Substance of Abraham's Faith


Alice C. Linsley

After 35 years of “anthropological sleuthing of pre-Abrahamic origins” I have come to conclusions which are not well understood and rightly questioned. Readers should pursue the truth of this research because it will strengthen you spiritually and intellectually, and equip you for the work of Christian apologetics and evangelism.

The concern most often expressed has to do with Abraham’s Horite Hebrew caste and the Horite antecedents of Messianic expectation and Christianity. In a recent online conversation with a Messianic Jew I was asked:

Alice:

Why are you so persuaded by the theory that a priest class of devotees to Horus are the predecessors of Israel’s religion? You do know this belief of yours about history is not shared by many other people and has nothing to do with Judaism or Christianity, right? You seem like a great thinker and an articulate person.

My response was:

Horus (HR), was called “son of God,” but HR was actually a title or address. HR in ancient Egyptian means "Most High One." Abraham's Horite Hebrew ruler-priest caste believed in God Father and God Son. In a priestly prayers on behalf of the king in the Pyramid Texts (2000 BC), we find this: "Horus is a soul and he recognizes his Father in you..." (Utterance 423)

Horus was born of a royal woman who was overshadowed by the sun, the Creator’s emblem. Her totem was a cow and images of her show her wearing the solar crown with the bull's horns.

Since the king lists of Genesis reveal a Horite marriage and ascendancy pattern, it is logical to assume that the Horite belief is the origin of Messianic expectation. In other words, Christianity emerges in an organic way from the faith of Abraham and his Horite ruler-priest caste. In this sense, it is a received tradition of very great antiquity, not a copy-cat religion as many agnostics and atheists claim.

The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who served at the ancient temples and water shrines. They can be traced back to the cattle-herding Proto-Saharans whose oldest known shrine (about 4000 BC) was Nekhen on the Nile. When they were not serving at the temples and shrines, they worked as metalworkers, tanners, scribes, stone masons, carpenters, shepherds, and warriors.

Another Horite shrine was Heliopolis. The Harris papyrus speaks of 'apiru of Re at Heliopolis, the shrine of the Sun. Joseph married into this royal priest line when he married Asenath, the daughter of the priest of On. On is Heliopolis. The terms 'Apiru and Habiru are derived from the ancient Akkadian word for priest, Abru.

The Horite Hebrew priests of Heliopolis were known for their meticulous devotion to the Creator and his son, and for their sobriety and purity of life. 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 Horites believed that heavenly recognition of a people depended on the righteousness of their ruler-priest.

The Horites did not worship the Sun. They regarded the Sun as the emblem, boat, or chariot of the Creator. The six spoke wheel of God's solar chariot, called "merkaba" is found on the ossuary boxes of such prominent Jews as the High Priest Caiaphas and his granddaughter Miriam.

Ossuary of Miriam, daughter of the priest Yeshua, granddaughter of the Caiaphas

Solar imagery for the Lord is common in both Horite and Biblical texts. Horus is described as “The Good God, Golden [Horus], Shining in the chariot, like the rising of the sun; great in strength, strong in might…” (Tablet of Victory of Amenhotep III, J.H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Two, p. 854). Psalm 92:2 describes the Lord as “a sun and a shield.”

The mother of Horus was called Hathor. She is shown at the Dendura Temple holding her newborn son in a manger or stable. The stable was constructed by the Horite priest Har-si-Atef. Atef was the crown worn by deified rulers. The Arabic word atef or atif means “kind.” The ruler who wore the atef crown was to embody kindness and he was to unite the peoples, as Horus was credited with united the Upper and Lower Nile populations. The rulers of the two regions wore different crown, but Horus wore both, which is why he was called "Horus of the Two Crowns."[2]

In his infancy Horus was depicted as either a calf or a lamb and in his maturity as a bull or a ram.[3] Horus is the only mythological figure in ancient Egypt who was understood to be a man and only as a man does he wear the two crowns.

Hathor was the patroness of Horite metal-workers, such as Aaron. Mining operations were under the auspices of Hathor, as at the Timna Valley copper mines near Eilat. At an ancient city in southern Iraq there is a place called Bad-tibira, which means "Wall of the Copper Worker." This ancient site appears among antediluvian cities in the Sumerian King List. Its Akkadian name was Dûr-gurgurri, meaning "Fortress of the Horite traders."

Hathor's solar headdress represents the belief that she conceived by the overshadowing of the sun. Deified rulers were said to be born by such a miraculous means. Sargon claims this for himself. His claim to divinity was disproved when he died and did not rise from the grave.[4]

Hathor (cow totem) and Horus (falcon totem) flank the ruler, Ra's representative on Earth.

Horite belief in a deified son who would embody kindness and unite the peoples found fulfillment in Jesus Christ, a descendant of the Horite ruler-priests, the divine son of the Virgin Mary, daughter of the shepherd-priest Joachim of the line of Nathan. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham’s Horite ancestors in Eden (Gen. 3:15). This is why Frank Moore Cross cannot avoid the conclusion that the God of Israel is the God of the Horites.

The Horite ruler-priests were regarded as deified “sons” of God. They are often called “gods” (elohiym) as in Exodus 22:28: “Thou shalt not revile the gods (elohiym), nor curse the ruler of thy people.” They served in the temple on a rotating schedule and purified themselves before the time of service. It is from the Horite priesthood that the priesthood of Israel developed. Moses’ brothers Korah and Aaron were Horite priests before the nation of Israel existed. This is confirmed by the distinctive Horite marriage and ascendancy pattern of Moses’ father.

The Horite Hebrew worshiped the supreme Creator when other peoples were worshiping lesser deities. They anticipated the coming of the Seed of God (Gen. 3:15) and believed that He would be born of their royal-priest bloodlines. That is why the lines of priests intermarried exclusively and why unchaste daughters of priests were burned alive (Lev. 21:9). Sexual impurity was not tolerated.

Messianic passages of the Bible have parallels in ancient Horite texts. Consider how Horus, the archetype of Christ, describes himself in the Coffin texts (passage 148):

“I am Horus, the great Falcon upon the ramparts of the house of him of the hidden name. My flight has reached the horizon. I have passed by the gods of Nut. I have gone further than the gods of old. Even the most ancient bird could not equal my very first flight. I have removed my place beyond the powers of Set, the foe of my father Osiris. No other god could do what I have done. I have brought the ways of eternity to the twilight of the morning. I am unique in my flight. My wrath will be turned against the enemy of my father Osiris and I will put him beneath my feet in my name of ‘Red Cloak’.” (Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt by R.T. Rundle Clark, p. 216)

Note the similarity to Psalm 110:1, a messianic reference: The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”

Today there is adequate information available to gain a clearer picture of the pre-Abrahamic origins of the Messianic faith. It is not sufficient in this age of empiricism and skepticism to say that the Biblical record is true. People want to see that it is verified by the evidence in the sciences. That is why my research is valuable.

Part 1: The Question of Joseph’s Father

Matthew traces Joseph's ancestry through King Solomon and lists Joseph's father as Jacob, while Luke gives a line through Nathan and says Joseph is the son of Heli. Jacob and Heli are the same person. Heli was an honorific title that meant God, helper or strength. It is Nilotic in origin. The Egyptian cry to the Creator whose emblem was the Sun began “Helie!” Here we see the polysemic quality of the ancient Afro-Asiatic biradicals.[5] HL has multiple yet related meanings.

Heli is equivalent to Eli and appears to indicate the chief priest as personification of God. This precedes the establishment of Israel’s monarchy. This was a common notion among Abraham’s Horite people. The ruler was expected to become a deified son. Eli was the chief priest at Shiloh. He acted as a seer in foretelling Hannah’s miraculous conception of Samuel (I Sam. 1:9-18).

Heli and Eli are derived from El and Al in the North and Southern Arabian dialects, and related to Eloi in Aramaic, ‘Alahy in Syriac and Ηλει in Greek. The transliteration of Heli Heli (my God, my God) in Matthew 27:46 as Eloi, Eloi follows the Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

The priestly line of Joseph is evident in both Matthew and Luke. Consider this list in Matthew: Zadok, Eleazar, Matthan, Yaqob, all names associated with the priesthood of Israel. The priest Zadok (Tzadok צדוק, meaning "Righteous") was descended from Eleazar, one of the sons of Aaron (Harun). Zadok was the first chief priest to serve in Solomon’s temple. David addressed him as ha-Kohen ha-ro'eh attah, meaning "You are the seer-priest" in II Sam. 15:27. The sons of Zadok are praised by the prophet Ezekiel as staunch defenders of the true faith. Ezekiel was himself a Horite, the son of Buz (Buzi in Akkadian).[6] Ezekiel 42:13 and 43:19 suggests that the priestly descendants of Zadok would serve in the future Third Temple, which Ezekiel envisions along the lines of an ancient Horite archetype.

The antiquity of the priestly ancestry of the Virgin Mary’s husband is evident in these names, Melchi, Levi, Matthat, and Heli. Melchi-Tzadok (Melchizedek) is the first named ruler-priest of Yerusalem in the Bible (Gen. 14:17-20). His name means “Righteous King.” Levi was a son of Jacob. His descendants, the Levites, served in the temple. As was characteristic of the Horites, they were dispersed among the peoples.[7] Matthat and Heli are Nilotic names pertaining to the Horite ruler-priest caste. The royal hat is found in the names of Egyptian rulers such as Amen-em-hat, Hat-shep-sut, Merytre-Hat-shep-sut and in the name of one of Isreal’s great rulers, Yeho-shep-hat/Jehoshephat (Matt. 1:8). One of Yehoshephat’s sons was Shep-hat/Shephatiah (II Chron. 21:2).

Part 2: The Question of Divergent Spellings

There was no J in Biblical Hebrew. The J only appears in English and German translations of the Bible after the 16th century. That being the case, Jacob was Yaqob; Joseph was Yosef; Judah was Yahuda, and Jorim was Yorim or Horim.

Different versions of the Bible have different spellings for the same person. There are many examples, including Asa/Asaph; Hophni/Ophni and Phinehas/ Phinees. The spellings Mattatha, Matthat and Mattathias are the same name, though they do not refer to the same person in Luke’s genealogy. This name appears 4 places in Luke’s list and elsewhere in the Bible as Mattai, Mattan and Matthew.

Another variant of the name is Hara-mathea. In the Masoretic Text the name of Samuel's city is hara-matatyim zophim.[8] Samuel’s father Elkanah was a Horite priest of the line of Matthew/Matthat. Hara-matatyim is the priestly line of Joseph of Arimathea, the maternal grandfather of Mary’s husband Joseph the Younger. He was the member of the Sanhedrin who requested the Lord's body in order to bury Him. Consider the following diagram.

Part 3: The Question of Different Genealogical Lists

Luke’s list is longer than Matthew’s because it reflects the cousin bride’s naming prerogative, which suggest that Luke received this information from Mary, Joseph’s cousin bride. The cousin bride named her firstborn son after her father. This is evident in Luke’s list in the repetition of the names Matthew, Joseph and Melchi. The repetition of names in lists of rulers indicates that the cousin bride named her firstborn son after her father. The pattern is first found in Genesis 4 and 5. Consider the following diagram.

In Luke’s list, there are forty-two names after David and in Matthew's genealogy there are only twenty-seven names after David. Luke places Joseph and his brothers Judah, Simeon and Levi in sequence, creating 4 generations.  However, Joseph, Judah, Simeon and Levi represent one generation. It is immediately after this insertion of Jacob’s four sons that Luke’s list becomes very interesting, as demonstrated in the following chart.

Matthew’s List                                                 Luke’s List

Jehoshep-hat (Matt. 1:8)                                   Matta-hat (Luke 3:29)

Joram (Yoram)                                                 Jorim (Yorim/Horim)

Uzziah                                                              Eleazar

Jotham                                                             Yeshua/Jesus

Ahaz                                                                Er

Hezekiah                                                          Elmadam

Manasseh                                                         Cosam

Amon[9]                                                           Addi

Josiah                                                              Melchi

Jechoniah                                                         Neri

Shealtiel                                                           Shealtiel

Zerubbabel                                                       Zerubbabel

Abiud                                                               Rhesa

Eliakim                                                             Joanan

Azor                                                                 Joda

Zadok                                                              Josech

Achim                                                              Semein

Eliud                                                                 Mattahias

Eleazar                                                             Joseph

Matthan                                                            Jannai

Jacob (Heli)                                                      Melchi

Joseph, husband of Mary                                   Levi

                                                                        Matta-hat

                                                                        Heli (Jacob)

                                                                        Joseph, husband of Mary

Conclusion

It is evident that Joseph and Mary were patrilineal cousins, that is, they had common male ancestors. This is true of all the Horite Hebrew lines presented in the Bible. The lines of Cain and Seth intermarried (as per diagram above).  The lines of Ham and Shem intermarried. The lines of Abraham and Nahor intermarried. This was the custom of the Horites (Horim) and the lists in Matthew and Luke indicate that the practice continued to the time of Jesus.

Though it appears that Luke inserts names for his own editorial purposes, we can assume that the families of Joseph and Mary understood how these records were organized. They understood the marriage and ascendancy pattern of their Horim.

The Horite marriage and ascendancy pattern remained unchanged from the Neolithic period of Genesis 4 and 5 to the time of Joseph and Mary. The pattern can be traced through various parts of the Bible, and it is an impossibility that this pattern could have been written into the text at a late date. The various books that convey information about the Horite marriage and ascendancy structure were scribed by different writers over more than 1000 years.

Using kinship analysis, a tool of cultural anthropology, I have demonstrated the veracity of the Christian claim that Jesus is the long anticipated Son of God and the fulfillment of the first Biblical oracle concerning a Horite Hebrew virgin who would bring forth the Seed (Gen. 3:15). Jesus claimed to be that Seed when he told His disciples that He was going to Jerusalem to die. He explained his death using the analogy of a seed. "Timeless truth I speak to you: Unless a grain of wheat falls and dies in the ground, it remains alone, but if it dies, it yields much fruit.” (John 12:24, translation from the Aramaic)

The Virgin Birth is as central to our Messianic faith as Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. The Gospel is of one piece and cannot be torn apart. I agree with Dr. Albert Mohler who wrote, "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." (From here.)

Christianity is a Tradition of very great antiquity, received from Abraham's Horite ancestors and passed by them as they lived in expectation of the coming of the Seed who would crush the serpent's head, free Adam from the curse of death, and restore Paradise. He is the true divine Son to whom the eternal kingdom will be delivered. For God's promise in Psalm 110 is sure: The Lord says to my Lord: "Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet."

Likewise, Psalm 2 declares: I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, "Thou art My Son, today I have begotten Thee. Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Thine inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Thy possession."

NOTES

1. In the Song of Songs the ruler's sister bride is described as having been "made white" like the moon (6:10) while her beloved has skin as dark "as the tents of Kedar" because, as with David, he was made to work in the sun by his older brothers. Kedar was a son of Ishmael by his Egyptian wife (Gen. 25:13). The tents were woven of the hair of desert black goats of North Sinai and Egypt.

2. In Zachariah 6, the priest Joshua/Yeshua/Jesus is crowned with a double crown. "Take the silver and gold, and make crowns, and set it upon the head of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest..." Zechariah 6:11

3. Horus was called the Lamb in his weaker (kenotic) existence and he was called the Ram in his glorified strength. Both are associated with the death and resurrection symbolism of the vernal equinox. This sheds light on the story of Abraham's offering of his son. As they ascended Mount Moriah, Isaac asked Abraham "where is the lamb" for the sacrifice. Abraham replied that God would provide the lamb, but God didn't provide a lamb, but rather a ram.

4. The Dravidian east-facing temple was termed O-piru, meaning “Sun House” or “House of the Sun.” Those who served in the Sun tempels were called Ha-piru or Habiru (Hebru?). Sargon I is said to have been the son of a 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 in Akkadian, Asa in Chadic, Asha in Kushitic, Ashai in Hebrew; a Jerusalem priest was named Am-ashai in Neh. 11:13). The Dravidian shrine cities in southern Pakistan are referred to as the "Har-appa" civilization. Har refers to Horus and "appa" is the Dravidian word meaning father. The origin of Dravidian religion was apparently Egypt and ancient Kush from which the Horites came.” Har-appa might refer to Horus as father, just as today a Jew might refer to his father as horeh.

5. A polyseme is a word or phrase with multiple related meanings. The Afro-Asiatic languages have this characteristic, as do Dravidian and Hindi. For example, the phrase a-laya-vijña-na is the seed of the receptacle-world, or literally, the receptacle of the seed. There is a relation to the word va-gina. In Vedic tradition, karmic seeds laid down in one A-laya-vijña-na produce karmic fruition. Prajña means "wisdom of the great house." The title Pharaoh comes from pr-aa which means "great house.” Likewise the biradical TR in the various cognate languages can mean blood, purity, rain, holy and God. The Hebrew root thr = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm toro = clean, to the Amarigna (Ethiopia) anatara = pure, and to the Tamil tiru = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian tor = blood. In some Kushitic languages mtoro means rain and toro refers to God. Here we find a relationship to the Ancient Egyptian ntr = deity. The Virgin Mary was "Miriam Daughter of Joachim Son of Pntjr (Panther) Priests of Nathan of Beth Lehem." From the earliest pre-dynastic times among the Horites, ntjr designated the king. The name Panther or p-ntjr meant "God is King."

6. Buz, Huz and Uz formed a three clan Horite confederation. Uz was the name of Job’s homeland. Uz was associated with the Dedanite traders of Arabia and the Horites in the hill country of Edom/Seir. Job also was a Horite, as were Abraham, Moses and Samuel.

7. The word Horite takes many forms: Khar, Gur, Hur, Horonaim, Horoni, Horowitz, Horim, and Hori. Hori was the son of Lotan son of Seir whose descendants were the "lords of the Horites in the land of Seir" (Gen. 36:20-29 and 1 Chronicles 1:38-42). Lot, Lotan, and Nim-Lot are Egyptian titles. Nimlot C was the High Priest of Amun at Thebes during the latter part of the reign of his father Osorkon II. Horite does not refer to the ethnicity of the people, but to their caste. The ancient world had a caste structure. This explains why Horites are found among many peoples across the Afro-Asiatic Dominion. For more information see the related readings below.

8. See The Anchor Bible Commentary on I Samuel by P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., p. 51

9. Amen/Amon is a name for God that originated in the Upper Nile. Amen-hotep means "the Peace of Amen." 

Related reading: Who Were the Horites?; Etymology of the Word "Horite"; The Sun and Moon in Genesis; Jesus: From Lamb to Ram; Mary's Ruler-Priest Lineage; Samuel's Horite Family