An Anthropologist Looks at Genesis 4

 

Artist's depiction of the Tabernacle at Nekhen c. 3000 B.C.

Dr. Alice C. Linsley


In Genesis chapter 4 we read about the first persons whose historicity can be verified through scientific methods. Analysis of the intermarriage of the ruler-priests listed in Genesis 4 (Cain’s line) and Genesis 5 (Seth’s line) reveals an authentic pattern of royal endogamy beginning well before Egypt emerged as a political entity.

The lists in Genesis chapters 4 and 5 are typical of royal lists from the ancient world such as the Sumerian King Lists, the Turin Royal Canon, the Abydos King List, and the Saqqara King list. The lists attribute absurdly long reigns and lifespans to the rulers. There is no single pattern for the numbers assigned. Some theorize that the years are calculated according to the 11-year solar cycle. Others recognize that the 365 years assigned to Enoch, the son of Jared/Yered (Gen. 5:23), are a reference to the solar year.

In his book Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-Lists (2019) Gary Greenberg argues that the birth and death dates found in Genesis 5 represent a disguised but accurate chronology of Egypt's dynastic history. However, Cain and Seth lived before the emergence of Egypt as a political entity (c.3150 B.C.).

The numbers assigned to the ruler-priests of Genesis 5 vary depending on the Bible translation. In the Masoretic texts the number seven has pride of place and presents a pattern associated with Cain and his descendants. In Genesis 4:24, Lamech the Elder says, “If Cain is avenged sevenfold (7), truly Lamech seventy-seven fold (77).” In Genesis 5:31, Lamech the Younger, the first-born son of Methuselah and Naamah, is said to have lived seven hundred and seventy-seven years (777).

Naamah was Methuselah’s cousin bride, and she supplies a clue to understanding the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the early Hebrew rulers. This diagram shows the pattern. The names on the left side are found in Genesis 4 (Cain’s line) and the names on the right are found in Genesis 5 (Seth’s line). These royal lines intermarried.

 

 Circles represent females.

Genesis 4:25 clarifies the relationship between Seth and Cain. They were brothers and their descendants intermarried. Their daughters married their patrilineal cousins and named their first-born sons after their fathers (the cousin bride’s naming prerogative). The practice of patrilineal cousin marriage is attested in Numbers 36:11 where we are told that Zelophehad’s daughters—Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milkah, and Noah—married their patrilineal cousins.

Cain’s un-named daughter married her cousin Enosh/Enos and named their first-born son Kenan/Kain after her father. Irad’s un-named daughter married her cousin Mahalalel and named their first-born son Jared/Yered/Irad after her father. Lamech’s daughter Naamah married her cousin Methuselah and named their first-born son Lamech after her father. This is an authentic kinship pattern which reveals endogamy among the royal houses of Cain and Seth. It also proves their historicity.



Regional rulers, clan chiefs, ruler-priests, and high kings of the Nile Valley

Analysis of the kinship pattern of Genesis 4 and 5 sheds light on the historical persons listed in Genesis 10, 11, 25 and 36. All are early Hebrew rulers, priests, and clan chiefs. Some took the Horus name as Horus was the patron and protector of rulers. Abraham’s brother is an example. His name is Na Hor, a variant of Ni Hor, a name found among the early rulers of the Nile. Na Hor was also the name of Abraham’s paternal grandfather (Gen. 11:24-25). Na’Hor and Ni’Hor mean “of Horus” or “of the Most-High One”. Ni Hor is believed to have reigned between 3200-3175 B.C. The name appears in Branislav Andelkovic’s 1995 list of predynastic rulers.

Andelkovic placed the early rulers of the Nile Valley in the following sequence: two unidentified rulers, Pe Hor, Scorpion I, Double Falcon, Ni Hor, Hat Hor, Iry Hor, Horus Ka, Hor Crocodile, Hor Scorpion II, and Hor Narmer. Note the Horus names. These appear to be Horite ruler-priests of the period closer to the time of Cain (5000-4500 B.C.).

Manetho was a priest in the temple at Heliopolis (biblical On) in the third century B.C. He had access to original sources such as temple archives of rulers and high priests. Manetho divided the history of the Nilotic rulers into the thirty dynasties that are used today. However, he organized his dynasties through the capitals from which the kings ruled. He did not consider the earlier organization of riverine twin cities such as Nekhen and Nekheb, each with its ruler and high priest on opposites sides of the Nile. The tomb of Horemkhawef in Nekhen and the tomb of Sobeknakht in Nekheb were painted by the same artist. Hormose, the chief priest of Nekhen, requested material goods from the temple at Nekheb for use at the temple at Nekhen. Twin cities pose a difficulty for those who want simple linear chronologies such as that attempted by Manetho. Manetho appears to have no information about the Nilotic and Proto-Saharan rulers between 4500 and 3800 B.C. when Cain would have lived.

Some of the early Nilotic settlements and cemeteries include Abydos, Badari, Nekhen, Naqada, Mahasma, Taramsa, and Thinis. Abydos, Nekhen, Naqada, and Thinis are located on the western side of the Nile. Badari, Taramsa, and Mahasma are located on the eastern side of the Nile. Archaeologists discovered a ritual burial of a child at Mahasma Hill that dates to the Middle Paleolithic (c.55,000 years ago). The grave was discovered in 1994 near the site of the temple of Hathor at Dendera. Later graves in the Mahasma cemetery date from the predynastic period to the brick-lined tombs of the early First Dynasty.

The Middle Neolithic world that Cain would have known included settlements along the Nile where residents fished, hunted waterfowl, and cultivated millet and vines. Sealed jars of wine were found in royal tombs at Abydos. Wine making equipment was found in the tomb of Scorpion I (c. 3150 B.C.).

After leaving his home, Cain established a settlement and named it after his proper heir Enoch (Gen. 4:17). It was typical of royal sons to settle a distance away from each other. This is evident in the case of Peleg and his brother Joktan (Gen. 10:25). Apparently, Eber divided his territory (eretz) between these two sons.

Since his brother Seth/Seti is associated with the Nile Valley, and the brothers settled a distance from one another, it is likely that Cain’s settlement was closer to the land of Canaan. That is where we find his descendants the Kenites (Gen. 15:18–21; Ex. 3:1; Num. 24:20; Judg. 1:16; Judg. 4:11). Apparently, this is what is meant by “east of Eden” (Gen. 4:15).

Moses married Zipporah, the daughter of the Kenite ruler-priest Jethro. She was his cousin bride. When Saul came to attack the city of Amalek, he warned the Kenites, “Since you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt, go and move away from the Amalekites. Otherwise, I will sweep you away with them.” So, the Kenites moved away from the outskirts of the city of Amalek. (1 Sam. 15:5-6)


Cain as Ruler

As noted in Genesis 4:1, when Eve gave birth to Cain she declared “kaniti” (qanyty/qanitti). This relates to the Akkadian itti, as in itti šarrim, which means "with/of the king." In his Anchor Bible commentary on Genesis, E.A. Speiser notes “Akkadian personal names often employ the corresponding element itti, e.g., Itti-Bel-balatu “With Bel there is life.” (Speiser, p. 30) The Abydos and Turin king lists include a ruler named Iti, which means “the Sovereign.”

As the first-born son of the historical Adam, Cain would have the rights of primogeniture over his brothers Abel and Seth. Though the rabbinic tradition casts him as evil (Jude 1:11; 1 John 3:12; Heb. 11:4), God shows him mercy when he pleads for his life (Gen. 4:10-15). His action draws the same punishment as that of his father Adam. Both were “under a curse and driven from the ground” and both would find that the land would no longer yield its crops for them. In fact, the time in which Adam and Cain lived (5000-4500 B.C.) marked a return of desert conditions throughout the Sahara and coincides with the movement of people from central Africa to the Nile Valley.


Related reading: The Shrine City of Nekhen; The Cousin Bride's Naming Prerogative; Cain as Ruler; Horite Mounds; Twin Cities of the Ancient World; An Anthropologists Looks at Genesis 1; An Anthropologist Looks at Genesis 2; An Anthropologist Looks at Genesis 3; An Anthropologist Looks at Genesis 5

Image of God Means Imaging God

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." (Genesis 1:26)

What follows is the abstract for IMAGING GOD: A theological Answer to the Anthropological Question? by Alistair McFadyen (University of Leeds). The full text may be read here.

Traditionally the central trope in Christian theological anthropology, ‘the image of God’ tends to function more as a noun than a verb. Whilst that has grounded significant interplay between specific Christian formulations and the concepts of non-theological disciplines and cultural constructs, it facilitates the withdrawal of the image and of theological anthropology more broadly from the context of active relation with God. Rather than a static rendering of the image a more interactionist, dynamic and relational view of ‘imag ing God’ is commended as a key anthropological term. Engaging with Psalm 8 suggests that, biblically, asking the anthropological question (what is humanity?) is tied to the answer to the theological question: who is God? This locates theological anthropology securely within the interactive context of being related to by God and suggests that theological anthropology might be a matter of performance, rather than definition: actively imaging God.

McFadyen's article makes sense of the theological context of this Biblical figure of speech - "the image of God" and he rightly asserts that the theological and the anthropological meanings are inextricably entwined. He uses the term "anthropological" in a theological sense, i.e., as related the biblical view of human nature, and this helps his argument. On the other hand, he fails to explore the trope as an anthropologist would and that weakens his case. 

The weakness comes from failure to see that the structure of Psalm 8:4 is parallel to the structure of Genesis 4-5. Adam and Enoch are paralleled, as are their descendants whose lines intermarried. In this diagram of Cain's line (Genesis 4) and Seth's line (Genesis 5) are shown parallel. They represent two ruling houses that intermarried. Naamah, the daughter of Lamech the Elder, married her patrilineal cousin Methuselah. She named her first-born son Lamech, after her father. This is one of many examples of the cousin bride's naming prerogative found in the Bible.

Analysis of the diagram enables us to see that Enoch and Adam are rulers whose descendants practiced endogamy, that is, their royal lines intermarried. Endogamy is a universal trait of castes. Their descendants represent the oldest known ruler-priest lines, and it is from them that the Son of God came in the person of Jesus Messiah.

On a fundamental level "imaging" God is what the deified ruler is to do. To miss this is to lose sight of the connection between dominion and the divine image. There is a Messianic dimension as the One who has ultimate dominion is the Son of God. Jesus Messiah is the icon of God the Father and this icon is not a static picture, but a living image.

McFadyen writes:

"Because God’s relating – and therefore God – are already oriented towards the human; indeed, oriented and seeking the human in its fullest realization. Psalm 8 has a shorthand code whereby it rolls up the whole history and future directedness of God’s relating in its orientation towards human well-being, flourishing and consummation: God’s mindfulness (v.4). And it is in the context of wondering acknowledgment of the status that affords human beings that it articulates the anthropological question in a specifically and definite theological register."

Adam was made in the image of God and this expresses a God-Man relationship, but beyond that we must consider the claim of Abraham's ancestors that they are the royal descendants of Adam. In other words, they claim a historical link to the divine image through their Horite Hebrew ancestors and this constitutes their work as ruler-priests who are to image God.

Psalm 8:4 is reveals an important theological and anthropological understanding of the God-Man relationship. Adam parallels Enoch/Nok, the father-in-law of Cain and Seth . In this sense, Genesis poses two founding fathers: Adam and Enoch/Nok/Anochie. They are founders of the ruler-priest lines described in the Genesis 4, 5, 11, 25 and 36. These are not genealogies. They are King Lists.

Note that Enoch and Adam are paralleled in Psalm 8:4:

What is man (Enoch/ha-noch) that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man (ben adam) that you care for him?

Psalm 8:4 connects the Adam and Enoch and highlights their historicity and meta-historical significance. The historical ruler Enoch parallels the "son of man", Jesus' favorite description of Himself. There is a sacred mystery here concerning Christ that places Him at the nexus of the meta-historical and the historical. Both Adam and Enoch point to the fully human Son of God, the very "image of God" shown to us perfectly and fully in the person of Jesus Messiah. 

The Psalmist parallels two deified rulers: Adam and Enoch. He regards both as "fathers" of the Hebrew people whose roots are in Eden. Perhaps this is why Jesus' ruler-priest identity was recognized in Tyre in Mark’s Gospel, not on a mountain, as in Matthew's account of the Transfiguration. For Mark, the Messiah’s appearing means the beginning of the restoration of Paradise. Mark likely had in mind this passage from Ezekiel 28: 

"Son of Man, raise a lament over the king of Tyre and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and flawless beauty. You were in Eden, in the Garden of God; every precious stone was your adornment... and gold beautifully wrought for you, mined for you, prepared the day you were created."

Likewise Amos 1:5 speaks of “him who holds the scepter from the house of Eden."

Genesis connects "image of God" with dominion over all the earth. Consider this from Genesis 1:26:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

In the beginning, Adam did not have to work for his dominion. God bestowed to him a territory to rule over. The suggestion that Man is to enjoy status as a deified or righteous ruler who "images" the Ruler of the universe is quite evident. This is a bestowed ontology.

The Fall did not remove the image and likeness of God, nor did it remove the responsibility to "image" God. Adam's descendants spread abroad and they ruled over territories from Africa to India and beyond. As they dispersed, they took their expectation that a Son who would be born of their ruler-priest lines. He is called the "Seed" of God in Genesis 3:15. Of this Seed, Paul writes in Galatians 3:

"Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He saith not, and to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy Seed, which is Christ… And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise."

Jesus referred to Himself as the promised "Seed" when He foretold his death in Jerusalem. He told his disciples "Unless a seed fall into the ground and die, it cannot give life." (John 12:24)

The phrase "image and likeness" suggests a royal seal which holds the image or likeness of the king. There is a sense of divine appointment. Adam, Enoch, Cain, Seth and all appointed rulers after him are to "image" on earth the righteous rule of God. Yet all failed, save Jesus Christ beneath whose feet God will subject all things. 

McFayden writes, "Engaging with Psalm 8 suggests that, biblically, asking the anthropological question (what is humanity?) is tied to the answer to the theological question: who is God?

Psalm 8:4 does indeed speak of who God is. However, it does so using parallelism of historical persons and it places the Son of God as the culminating figure of the biblical narrative and the Messianic Faith.

 Related reading: The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Cain as Ruler; Enoch: Angelic Being or Deified Ruler?; Horite Hebrew Deified Sons; The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ: The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative; Adam Was a Red Man; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection

The Virgin Mary's Ancestry

Alice C. Linsley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mary’s Lineage

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

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

It is certain that Mary was of the ruler-priest class because even those who hated her admit this. Sanhedrin 106a says: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.” It is said that she was so despised that some Jews tried to prevent the Apostles from burying her body. A legend tells of how "a certain Hebrew named Jephonias" tried to seize her burial bier and his hands stuck to it until he repented.

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

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

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

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

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


The New Testament Priest Lists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- watch for those who prey on the sheep

- defend the sheep from attackers

- heal the wounded and sick sheep

- find and save lost or trapped sheep

- call them by name and know their individual quirks

- and earn their trust

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

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

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

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


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

Luther Was Wrong About the Priesthood

Alice C. Linsley

I question Martin Luther's interpretation of 1 Peter 2:29 whereby he generalized a historical reality of a Hebrew priest caste to all Christians. His "priesthood of the believer" helped him to undermine the authority of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, but it obfuscated the identity of the Hebrew ruler-priest caste from whom the Church receives the Messianic Faith.

It is likely that 1 Peter was addressed to Hebrews in the Diaspora. The Hebrew were indeed a "nation of priests" or a priestly caste. Being a Christian means being grafted into the Faith of Abraham the Hebrew (according to Paul), but it does not make each of us a priest. That comes with Apostolic ordination, a sacrament of the Church.

The Church exists where the priesthood exists. The marks of the Church are apostolic preaching, right doctrine, and the sacramental agency of the priest. Speaking from the perspective of Biblical Anthropology, the priesthood of the Church stands in continuity with the Hebrew priesthood that was known to Abraham and his ancestors. The priest's office is unique, very ancient, and stands as an ensign of the hope for immortality. The priesthood is about the blood. Life is in the blood!

Christianity is a received tradition. It didn't begin with Jesus and the Apostles, as if they founded a new religion. This view suggests discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments. Christianity represents continuation with, indeed, the fulfillment of the faith of Abraham and his Hebrew people, all of whom were in the priest caste, though not all served as sacrificing priests. For example, Horite women did not serve as priests, neither did all Horite men. The offering of blood sacrifice was reserved for the spiritual head of the clan. He was to be a righteous ruler like Job and Abraham.

The priesthood can be traced to before the time of Abraham. The Christian Faith emerges from the faith of Abraham's Horite people, a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Horus. The Greek word for priest which appears in the New Testament is ἱερεύς (hiereus). It is derived from the ancient Egyptian word Horus and related to the word hierogylph, meaning priestly writing.

Horus was the pattern by which the early Jewish Christians recognized Jesus to be Messiah. Jesus' birthplace was Bethlehem, an ancient Horite settlement (I Chronicles 4:4). Herod's wise men knew Bethlehem was the place Messiah was expected to be born. The whole of Israel's Messianic expectation was rooted in the tradition they received from their early Hebrew ancestors (4200-2000 BC). Even today Jews refer to their forefathers as Horim, another word derived from Horus. (For other words derived from Horus and the early Hebrew worldview, see this.)

Hiereus is used in the New Testament as the equivalent of the Hebrew/Arabic kohen, having to do with the Horite priests who were related by blood and marriage. Horite priests married the daughters of Horite priests. Jesus is the direct descendant of the early Hebrew ruler-priest lines through Mary, the daughter of a shepherd priest Joachin.

The earliest Christians had "kohens" (kohanim) among them in the persons of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, that is, Yosef of the Ar clan of Matthew. He was a Horite priest of the line of Matthew. They recognized the spiritual authority of such men. Neither of these were the High Priest, however. The whole sacrificial system was about atonement for sin, and that was the special work of the High Priest only. He was the mediator between God and the people. The early Christians recognized Jesus Christ as their High Priest, that is, the only mediator between God and the community of the redeemed.

Christian priests stand in the tradition of the ancient priesthood, but are not a caste, and the sacrifice they offer is not a bloody one, as least not in the sense of crucifying Christ over and over. In catholic tradition, priests are the Church's Apostles and are said to stand in "apostolic succession". The charisms of the priest are received at the laying on of hands by bishops who are the spiritual heirs of the Apostles commissioned by Jesus Christ.

The priesthood originates in Christ and is fulfilled in Christ. Without Christ our Great High Priest there would be no priesthood. The priesthood is not a human invention. The priesthood is a divinely established ordinance. Every true priest reflects the purity, sobriety, humility and compassion of Jesus Christ.

God's self-revelation to the world is perfected in Jesus Christ. Ultimate authority is attached to our Great High Priest who has gone into the Most Holy Place through the veil of His own flesh. The author of Hebrews speaks of the old sacrificial system as a prefiguring of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Jesus is not so much the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrificial system as He is the reason for the system and for the priesthood. Every priest is ontologically like the one True Priest, Jesus Christ. If he is not like Him in purity, grace, humility and sobriety, he is not an "in-Christ" priest. He is an impostor, a phony.

St. John Chrysostom wrote that the priesthood "is ranked among heavenly ordinances. And this is only right, for no man, no angel, no archangel, no other created power, but the Paraclete himself ordained this succession..." (On the Priesthood, 1977, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, p. 70). A "heavenly ordinance" is eternal in essence and cannot be changed by man.


The "priesthood of all believers"

There are serious historical and exegetical problems with using I Peter to support the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, as Luther did. Luther went too far in his attempt to undermine the authority of Rome. I'm not sure he even believed this, since he insisted that confession be made to a priest.

Possibly this epistle of Peter was written to Bible-believing Karaite Jews who were shunned by the orthodox Jewish leadership. The Jerusalem leadership persecuted the disciples and the Karaites who did not accept oral Torah. Oral Torah refers to rabbinic expositions of the Hebrew Scriptures, many of which seek to divert the plain meaning of Messianic passages that clearly are fulfilled in Jesus Messiah.

Many Karaites became Christians; what we might call "Messianic" Jews. The Old Testament references for I Peter 2:9 are Isaiah 43:20,21 which is about doing a new thing... making a new way for God's chosen ones. Also Isaiah 28:16 which refers to the orthodox Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, telling them that God is laying a new foundation. Are we to generalize the historical reality of a sacrificing priest caste to all Christians on the basis of this one passage? I think it is a mistake, as do other scholars who see this epistle as addressing the parting of ways between two groups of Jews: those who placed Talmud above Torah, and those who saw Torah as their sole authority.

The "priesthood of all believers" is a phrase that alludes to Jews living outside of Palestine. They were Jews whose families had been living in Southern Europe for many generations. Their ancestors had dispersed widely before Abraham. 

In I Peter 2 we read, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a priestly kingdom." Since the Hebrew practiced endogamy, it is a genetic fact that they were a nation of priests. Here Peter is speaking of an historic reality that should not be generalized to believers who are not descendants of the Hebrew. Peter is speaking to people of the priestly clans whose ancestors lived long before Judaism.

Since Abraham's people practiced exclusive intermarriage (endogamy) between the priestly clans, it is possible to speak of the Hebrew as a "nation of priests" or a people belonging to the priestly caste that originated in Eden. It was to the Edenic forefathers of the Horite Hebrew that the promise was made that a woman of their ruler-priest lines would bring for the the Seed of God who would crush the serpent's head and restore Paradise (Gen. 3:15). Jesus claimed to be this Seed when He spoke of his death being like a seed that falls into the ground a dies in order to bring life (John 12:24).

This is an historical and anthropological discovery that Martin Luther did not recognize when he railed against the Roman priesthood and all that he considered idolatrous. Let us check the facts.

In 1520 Luther wrote a treatise To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation in which he proposed this innovation: that all baptized Christians are priests. He wrote:

That the pope or bishop anoints, makes tonsures, ordains, consecrates, or dresses differently from the laity, may make a hypocrite or an idolatrous oil-painted icon, but it in no way makes a Christian or spiritual human being. In fact, we are all consecrated priests through Baptism, as St. Peter in 1 Peter 2[:9] says, "You are a royal priesthood and a priestly kingdom," and Revelation [5:10], "Through your blood you have made us into priests and kings."

Luther further developed this idea in his treatise On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), in which he wrote:

How then if they are forced to admit that we are all equally priests, as many of us as are baptized, and by this way we truly are; while to them is committed only the Ministry (ministerium Predigtamt) and consented to by us (nostro consensu)? If they recognize this they would know that they have no right to exercise power over us (ius imperii, in what has not been committed to them) except insofar as we may have granted it to them, for thus it says in 1 Peter 2, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a priestly kingdom." In this way we are all priests, as many of us as are Christians. There are indeed priests whom we call ministers. They are chosen from among us, and who do everything in our name. That is a priesthood which is nothing else than the Ministry. Thus 1 Corinthians 4:1: "No one should regard us as anything else than ministers of Christ and dispensers of the mysteries of God."

The historical background is important. The Diet of the Holy Roman Empire met at Worms in 1521. Martin Luther appeared there before examiners to respond to charges of heresy. Pope Leo X condemned 41 of Luther's propositions and when Luther refused to recant, he was excommunicated in January 1521. Luther had anticipated this possibility and sought to redefine the priesthood on the basis of baptism, rather than priestly succession. He was determined to cast doubt on the authority of the Roman Church, even if that meant redefining the priesthood by latching onto 1 Peter 2:9. However, Peter's letter is directed to believing Hebrew people living in the Diaspora. They are a "nation of priests" who ancestors were the Hebrew ruler-priests. 1 Peter 1:1 and 2:12 make it evident that Peter is writing to Jews, not Gentiles.

It is ironic that Luther, who insisted that Church doctrine must be accountable to the teachings of Scripture alone (sola scriptura), should resort to wrongly handling Scripture to justify and encourage the Lutheran movement.  His interpretation runs contrary the historical reality that the priesthood of the Church is continuous with the sacerdotal priesthood of Abraham and his Horim. Instead of questioning the Roman Catholic narrative of priestly succession from Peter as the Rock upon which the Catholic Church was founded, he invented a notion of the priesthood that departs from Holy Scripture and lacks facticity. His is a false picture of the Christian priesthood and, as with all falsehoods, causes division in the Body of Christ.

Related reading:  What is a Priest?; Christianity Lacks Originality; Martin Luther on Genesis; The Horite Marriage and Ascendancy Pattern; Mary's Ruler-Priest Lineage; Why I am Not a Protestant; What is the Priesthood?; The Talmud Versus the Doctrine of the Lord; The Priesthood in Anthropological Perspective

Moses's Wives and Brothers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pattern of Two Wives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


The Youngest Son Rules

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

Zipporah and the Flint Knife

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

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

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


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


NOTES

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

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

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

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