Answers to Recent Questions

Alice C. Linsley


Recently, I have received some thoughtful questions from readers and I will attempt to answer them as briefly as possible.

Question: From which son of Noah did the Nilotes come?

Nilotic peoples lived along the length of the Nile Valley long before Noah's time. This is the region of the Earth where some of the oldest human fossils have been found. These humans lived about 1.5 million years ago. Noah lived in the region of Lake Chad about B.C. 2490-2415, when the Sahara experienced a wet period.


Question: Why do you think Genesis is a reliable source of information about ancient civilizations?

This raises a question about what constitutes proper historical and anthropological investigation. Few question the value of referring to the writings of ancient historians such as Philo (25 BC - c. 50 AD), Josephus (37 - c. 100 AD), and Plutarch (46 - c. 119 AD), even though they, like Homer, blend mythical and legendary elements with historical. Secularists tend to regard religious documents as questionable sources of information, but in reality, we don't verify on the basis of history alone. We also consider the evidence of linguistics, anthropology, genetics, archaeology, climate studies and the migrations of human populations. When all the anthropologically significant data converges and aligns with the data of Genesis we have little reason to doubt the book's veracity.

Question: What inspired you to concentrate on Bible anthropology and more specifically on matters concerning the ancestors of Jesus, our Lord?

This question came from my Luo scholar friend, Wandera, with whom I have had some fascinating conversations about the parallels between words in Genesis and the Luo language.

The short answer to Wandera's question is doubt and curiosity.

About 35 years ago I was asked to teach a women's Bible study and the women wanted to study the book of Genesis. Throughout the 15-week study, the women asked excellent questions but I did not find satisfying answers for them in the many commentaries that I had been reading to prepare for the class. When the class was over I experienced a crisis of faith. I began to doubt that the material in Genesis was based on historical and anthropological realities. Perhaps that was why there were so few satisfying answers to the women's questions.

One day, I realized that I could apply my background in kinship analysis to the so-called "genealogies" of Genesis. I started by diagramming the lists of people in Genesis 4 and 5, the lines of Cain and Seth. With the diagram in hand, I began to look for a pattern that might indicate that these people actually lived. 

It took a few years and numerous other diagrams of king lists in Genesis to discover the key features of the Horite marriage and ascendancy pattern. Once the features were identified, I was able to trace the pattern through the Bible to Mary, the mother of our Lord. The pattern is consistent for the families of Abraham, Moses, Samuel, and David, from whom Jesus is descended.

Here is a segment from that first diagram. It shows that the lines of Cain and Seth intermarried (as did the lines of Ham and Shem after them.)

Lamech the Younger (Gen. 5:26), son of Methuselah by his cousin wife Naamah, ascended to the throne of Lamech the Elder (Gen. 4:20-22). He did not belong to his father's house. Methuselah's heir would have been the first born son of his first wife, who was his half-sister.

Once we understand this feature - called "the cousin bride's naming prerogative" - we are able to identify the pattern for the other Horite rulers.  For example, Abraham had two wives. Sarah was his first wife and his half-sister. Keturah was his second wife and a patrilineal cousin. Keturah named her first born son Joktan (Yaqtan) after her father. The firstborn son of the sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father. So Isaac ruled over Abraham's territory. The firstborn son of the cousin/niece wife ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named. So Joktan ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather. The Joktanite clans still reside in Southern Arabia.

Likewise, Moses had two wives. His Kushite wife was his half-sister and Zipporah was his patrilineal cousin. Samuel's father was the priest Elkanah and he also had two wives: Penninah and Hannah.

Kinship analysis is a science. When applied to the Genesis king lists, it reveals an authentic marriage and ascendancy pattern, proving beyond doubt that these people are historical. Is it any wonder that I reject the notion that science and Genesis are at odds?  I apply anthropological science to the text every day and the outcomes lead to further discoveries.

Related reading: Common Questions About Genesis; The Genesis King Lists; Edo, Edom, and Idumea; Kushite Brides; Isaac's Wealth; Abraham's Complaint; Two Named Esau; Questions High Schoolers Ask About Genesis; Speiser and Deuteronomy 21:16

Common Questions About Genesis

Alice C. Linsley

Each week I receive messages asking questions about people and events in Genesis and Exodus. Here are answers to some commonly asked questions.

Was Abraham the first Jew?
No. Abraham was not a Jew and he did not speak Hebrew. Even rabbis admit that this is part of the Jewish narrative which is more myth than fact. Dr. Shaye Cohen (Harvard) explained how this is so in a 2008 NOVA interview:

The biblical narrative gets going with Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. Abraham in turn Isaac, in turn Jacob, in turn Joseph and the twelve tribes, this brings us directly to the people of Israel and the covenant at Sinai. So Abraham is thought of as the first Jew, the archetype. Historically speaking, of course, this doesn't make much sense. It's hard to talk about Jews living around the year 1800 B.C.E. or anytime near that. We don't have any of the institutions, beliefs, social structures in place that will later characterize Jews and Jewishness. So in a mythic kind of way we can say that Abraham recognizes God and that Abraham launches the process—biological and social and cultural—that will culminate in the people of Israel, who in turn will become Jews and the purveyors of Judaism. But to call Abraham Jewish simplifies things very dramatically.

The haplogroup of Abraham and his ancestors

This is a case where over-simplification approaches obfuscation.

Abraham was a Horite ruler in Edom. Were we able to test his DNA we would find that he is in haplogroup R1 (Y-DNA) which has a wide range of physical features. The dispersion of the R1b group is shown on the map (right). Note the bright red around Lake Chad, Noah's homeland, and the Upper Nile Valley. The R1b is also prevalent in the British Isles where Kushan peoples settled and where Horite mining experts took up residence.

The Genesis narrative suggests that Abraham had a distinctive red skin tone that is associated with other famous Edomites, like Esau. The Edomites may have been kin to the red Nubians. The Shasu of Nubia also lived in Edom.

Detail from drawing by Ippolito Rosellini (1828)
Nubian captives

What nationality was Abraham?
At the time that Abraham lived there were no nations in the modern sense. There were peoples, clans, and castes. Ethnic identities aligned with the territorial chief.

Abraham's ethnicity was Kushite and his father was a ruler-priest descendant of Nimrod, a son of Kush. Nimrod was a sent-away son who became a mighty ruler in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. This is why we first meet Abraham in Ur, though his ancestors were cattle-herding Nilo-Saharans.

Abraham was another sent-away son whose territory extended on a north-south axis between his two wives Sarah and Keturah. Sarah resided in Hebron and Keturah lived in Beersheba. Abraham also dug wells in Gerar to the west and had a treaty with the ruler of that region. Likely he also had water rights at Engedi to the east. This means that Abraham's territory was entirely in the region know as ancient Edom. The Greeks called this region Idumea, meaning "land of red people."

Edom is named in the Bible as one of the ancient seats of wisdom. The wisdom of the Horites extended to medicine, astronomy, writing, commerce, navigation, natural sciences, and architecture. The 400-acre Edomite complex at Petra reflects Horite beliefs. This was the home of the red Nabateans. Naba or Nabu was the guardian of scribes and prophets. The cult of Nabu was introduced into Mesopotamia and Babylon by the Kushites. Kushite kings sometimes bore the name Nabu, as with Nabu-shum-libur, an early Kushite king in Babylon and Nabu-aplu-iddina. This is the origin of the Hebrew word nabi, meaning prophet.


What language did Abraham speak?
Abraham and his advisers would have communicated using the languages of the peoples with whom they had contact. This included Egyptians, Nubians, Arameans, and peoples of Arabia. During Abraham's time many different alphabets and scripts were used.

The Egyptian hieroglyphs were priestly writings, and the symbolism of each glyph or pictograph pertains to the ancient Egyptian cosmology which changed over time. The oldest of these will be found in the Upper Nile and at the oldest Horite shrine in Nekhen. To understand the Sumerian pictographs we have to look at the earlier roots common to both the Nilotic and Sumerian peoples. Here we will find some very ancient lexemes: V, T, X and the solar symbols O and Y. Many of these appear in the old Dedanite scripts and in the Oasis North Arabian alphabets like Thamudic, Dumaitic, and Taymanitic. The urheimat of the Canaanite Y is the Nilo-Saharan cattle herding and boating populations. They are among Abraham's ancestors, and Messianic expectation appears to have originated among them.

Orly Goldwasser, professor of Egyptology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argues that the first alphabet, from which all other alphabets developed, was invented by Canaanite miners in the turquoise mines of Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai peninsula. The pictorial hieroglyphs of the Nile Valley served as the inspiration for this alphabet.

Other ancient writing forms used by merchants for keeping accounts are found along ancient trade routes; the spice routes, the silk routes, the King's Highway from Egypt through Palestine, the ancient tin route from Spain to Ireland, etc. These involve fewer pictographs and more hatch marks that suggest counting or record keeping. Ogham bears resemblance to these earlier commercial scripts. Some of the elements of the commercial scripts are found in Hebrew and in Ainu, scripts that are clearly related (see image at right).

A comparison of the Ainu (Kata) and Hebrew scripts reveals a connection that is explained by the fact that the earliest scripts were those used by priests in the service of rulers in many regions, and these priest-scribes kept royal accounts. These ancient rulers are the "mighty men of old" mentioned in Genesis. Among them were the "red" rulers associated with Abraham and the Edomites.


Was Noah's flood worldwide?
No. It was an extensive regional flood during the African Humid Period. At one time major water systems connected the Nile and central Africa. The highest concentration of R1b in Africa is in the Lake Chad region, Noah's homeland.

Noah lived approximately 2490-2415 BC. This is the period of the Old Kingdom, a time of great cultural and technological achievement in Egypt. This places Noah and his sons in relatively recent history. They ruled over territories during the time of the 7th, 8th and 9th Dynasties in Egypt.

Humans were dispersed globally by 20,000 years ago and during Noah's time these populations were not destroyed. Consider the following population estimates by urban center between 2500 and 2200 BC:

• Memphis, Egypt - 32,000 inhabitants
• Lagash, Iraq - 60,000 inhabitants
• Mohenjo-daro, Pakistan - 40,000 inhabitants
• Mari, Syria -50,000 inhabitants
• Baodun settlements covering an area of about 373 miles show no evidence of destruction by flooding though all six Baodun settlements straddled the Min River in central Sichuan province. The Min is a tributary of the upper Yangtze River.

There is no evidence that any of these peoples were wiped out by a catastrophic global flood and that the earth was repopulated by Noah's descendants. However, there is evidence of a Kushite expansion out of Africa.


Were Adam and Eve real?
In Genesis Adam and Eve are meta-historical figures who represent the first parents of the ruler-priest lines from which Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus came. Adam was probably a red man. Later Biblical writers treat them as the first created humans. Were this the case, Adam and Eve would have lived about 4 million years ago.

It is doubtful that Adam and Eve lived 4 million years ago. That is not how they are presented in Genesis, although they are interpreted as the first of the human race in other places in the Bible. The Biblical writers recognized that the people among them with a red skin tone were of an extremely ancient ancestral line. These were the "mighty men of old." Some were rulers in Edom. These are listed in Genesis 36. Esau the Elder and Esau the Younger were among them. Esau is specifically described as being red in Genesis 26. David is related to the Horite rulers of Edom and he is described in the Bible as red/ruddy. Samuel, the son of a Horite priest from Ramah, anointed him ruler.


How many wives did Moses have?
As with all Horite rulers, Moses had two wives. His first wife was Kushite and a half-sister. She and Moses had the same father, but different mothers. His second wife was the daughter of a ruler-priest of Midian. Her name was Zipporah and she was Moses's patrilineal cousin.

Moses was a descendant of Seir the Horite (Gen. 36). As can be seen in the diagram above, Moses's father also had two wives. His first wife was his half-sister Jochebed and his second wife was his patrineal cousin Ishar. Ishar was the mother of Moses's half-brother Korah the Younger. She named her first born son after her father, according to the cousin bride's naming prerogative. Korah opposed Moses in the wilderness. "Korah" relates to the practice of shaving the head and body in preparation for the priest's term of service in the temple. (Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2007, p.37)


Related reading: What Color Was Abraham?; Noah's Flood: Where and When?; Moses's Wives and Brothers; Red and Black Smiths; Sent-Away Sons; When is the Evidence Sufficient?; How the Deuteronomist Changes the Genesis Narrative; Solving the Ainu Mystery; Were the Shasu Related to Moses?; Two Named Esau; Questions High Schoolers Ask About Genesis; Answers to More Questions

Christ Across the Pages of the Bible

Alice C. Linsley

Genesis tends to be read either literally, as a scientific text, or as myth with little relevance for modern people. Both approaches lead to misunderstanding because they fail to note the patterns that are expressed throughout the book. These patterns speak of the mystery of divine love and the intervention of the Creator in human history. They also speak of the earliest Messianic expectation.

The patterns are discerned when we look deeply into the text with minds and hearts open to the leading of God's Spirit. We note that the pattern of the Kushite kings speaks about the Kingdom of God. Their sent-away sons delivered kingdoms to their fathers, and this was a driving factor in the scientifically verified Kushite expansion out of Africa. It is important in understanding the divine Son, Jesus Christ. He who lived immortally in communion with the Father set aside His power and right (kenosis) and became mortal that He might redeem a people and establish an eternal kingdom.

We see the pattern in the cosmology of Abraham's Horite people. God brings light into the world daily with the rising of the sun in the east. This is the pattern whereby we understand the "Seed" of Genesis 3:15 as the lamb who matures to full strength, as a ram caught in the thicket, as the perfect and ultimate holocaust.

I've noticed that more readers of Just Genesis are picking up on this approach which helps us to see Christ across all the pages of the Bible. Ramona Gordy recently commented on this post. She wrote:

I believe that Adam and Eve were at once "real" people, and their lives were set for a pattern of a people, past, present and future. The pattern of a people who chose to obey God and all that entails. They are also set forth as a sign and a beginning of the blood line of the Savior.

I am fascinated by your research on the customs of the Horite's. Adam lived to be at least 900 years old and had many children. No record of how old Eve lived, do you suppose that Adam had other wives, in that Horite type of tradition?

Here is my response:

Ramona,

Pattern is so important in proper understanding of the Genesis material. Adam and Eve are the pattern for every man and woman. We, like they, are made in the "image and likeness" of our Creator. In that respect, humans are unique among all the creatures.

They are also the First Parents of the line of Jesus Christ and we trace that line by paying attention to the marriage pattern of the kings listed in Gen. 4, 5, 10, 1, 25 and 36. Analysis of their marriage and ascendancy pattern reveals an authentic lineage of royal priests who served kingdom builders across the ancient world. The pattern remains unchanged from Cain in Genesis 4 to the lists of Hebrew ruler--priests listed in Matthew and Luke, the ancestry of Jesus. It is the Horite Hebrew pattern of Abraham's ancestors, Joktan the Elder, Seir the Horite (Gen. 36) Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, Moses, and Samuel.
I believe that the years attributed to the pre-flood rulers come from a later period and reflect a Kabalistic interest in the hidden meanings of numbers. It is interesting that Noah's father, Lamech the Younger, is assigned 777 years in the Masoretic text and Noah is called "righteous" among those living on Earth.

It would be speculating beyond the biblical evidence to say that Adam had two wives, but there is a Talmudic tradition that suggests he did. The first wife was called Lilith and she was evil. However, like the Talmud, the myth of Lilith is also much later than the Genesis king lists, and the context is Babylonian, not Nilo-Saharan.


Related reading:  Jesus: From Lamb to Ram; The Myth of Lilith; The Genesis King Lists; Afro-Arabian Number Symbolism; Jacob's Ninth Son; Moses' Wives and Brothers; Joseph and Mary's Relationship; Mary's Ruler-Priestly Lineage

Answers to More Questions

Alice C. Linsley


I receive many questions about Genesis. Here are some commonly asked questions that are easy to answer.


Who lived first Moses or Abraham?
Abraham lived before Moses. Here is an approximate chronology:

B.C. 2112-2037 - Nahor the Elder

B.C. 2091-2016 - Terah

B.C. 2039-1964 - Abraham

These three patriarchs correspond to the Egyptian 11th Dynasty between 2160-2000 B.C. 

B.C. 1987-1912 - Yaqtan or Joktan (Abraham's firstborn son by Keturah)

Joktan, Jacob, Esau, and Joseph correspond to the 12th Dynasty between 2000-1788 B.C.

Amram, Aaron, Korah, and Moses correspond to the 13th Dynasty between 1802-1649 B.C.

How many wives did Moses have?
Moses had two wives, as was the custom of Horite rulers. Moses' family was in the Horite caste. He was a descendant of Seir the Horite who is named in Genesis 36 (See diagram). The Horites originated in ancient Kush so Moses' marriage to a Kushite woman was consistent with the endogamous marriage pattern of the Horite rulers. Oholibamah was a high ranking Horite princess and an archetype of the Virgin Mary.

What was the birth order for Abraham and his siblings?
Abraham had two older brothers: Nahor and Haran. Haran died in Ur and Nahor inherited the territory of their father Terah. Haran was Abraham's half-brother. They had the same father, but different mothers.



Who was Abraham's first born son?
Abraham had nine sons. The firstborn was probably Yaqtan (Joktan) who was born to Abraham's cousin wife, Keturah. Joktan the Younger would rule in the territory of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named. The Joktanite Tribes inhabit southern Arabia and Yemen.



Was Ishmael supposed to be Abraham's heir?
No. The proper heir according to the Horite marriage and ascendancy pattern was the first born son of the half-sister wife. In Abraham's case, that would be Isaac. Sarah was Abraham's half-sister (Gen. 20:2). They had the same father, but different mothers.



Related reading: Answers to Your Questions; Commonly Asked Questions About Genesis; Extraordinary Questions; Answers to Students' Questions About the Flood; Questions Students Ask About Genesis