Alice C. Linsley
My sister recently took a course in Anthropology which exposed her to the discipline of kinship analysis. On the final exam 25% of the questions dealt with kinship. This question in particular posed a real challenge: “The biblical pattern of tracing genealogy is patrilineal.” The answer that the professor wanted was “True.” Since my sister has followed my Genesis research for many years she knew that this statement is only partly true.
Analysis of the structure of the Genesis "begats" reveals that lineage was traced through both the ruling father (patriarch) and the mother, if she is the cousin or niece bride. All the rulers of Genesis had two wives. One was a half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham) and the other was a patrilineal cousin or niece (as was Keturah to Abraham). The first wife was the sister bride, married at a fairly young age. She was the wife of the man's youth. The second wife was taken close to the time of the man's ascent to the throne.
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. Joktan is the progenitor of the Joktanite clans of Arabia.
Lamech the Younger (Gen. 5:26), son of Methuselah by his cousin wife, ascended to the throne of Lamech the Elder (Gen. 4:20-22).
The maternal line of the cousin/niece wife is traced through the cousin/niece bride’s naming prerogative. For example: Irad’s daughter married her patrilineal cousin and named their first born son Jarad after her father. (Irad and Jarad are linguistically equivalent names.) Irad is mentioned in Genesis 4:18 and Jarad is mentioned in Genesis 5:15.
The pattern continues to the time of Jesus Christ because the Horite ruling caste practiced endogamy, that is, they intermarried exclusively. Here we see the pattern in Moses' family.
Moses' father had two wives. Ishar was his cousin/niece wife. She named their firstborn son Korah after her father. Korah the Younger ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather. This means that Jochebed was Amram's half-sister wife. All of the people in this diagram are descendants of or kin to Seir the Horite (Gen. 36).
Note that there are two named Esau in the diagram above. This suggests that Esau the Elder's daughter married Isaac and named their firstborn son after her father, according to the cousin-bride's naming prerogative. This would mean that Esau was not a twin to Jacob, but his half-brother. As such they would not have been in competition to rule over Isaac's territory. As Isaac's firstborn son by his cousin wife, Esau would rule over the territory of his maternal grandfather in the hill country of Seir/Edom (which is what he did). Jacob would have been sent away from Esau to rule in another place, which is what happened.
The Cousin/Niece Naming Prerogative
The cousin/niece bride's naming prerogative pertained to noble wives, not to concubines. Each ruler had two concubines. These were handmaids to his wives. So Jacob had two wives: Rachel and Leah and two concubines: Bilhah and Zilpah. Bilhah was Rachel's maid and Zilpah was Leah's maid. Likewise, Abraham had two concubines: Hagar (Sarah's maid) and Masek (Keturah's maid).
Only the firstborn sons ascended to rule over the maternal and paternal thrones. This is a Kushite marriage pattern and is found among the Kushite pharaohs. For example, the Kushite ruler Amenhotep III was the father of Akhenaten the Younger who was named by Amenhotep's cousin wife after her father. This means that Akhenaten the Younger ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named. Egypt under the Kushites always had two thrones and Horus who was called the "son of God" was said to be the one who united the peoples.
The firstborn son of the half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father. So Isaac was Abraham's heir. The firstborn son of the cousin/niece wife ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather. So Joktan, Abraham's son by Keturah, ascended to the throne of Joktan the Elder, after whom he was named. Other sons were given gifts and sent away to establish territories of their own. Many of the Bible's greatest figures were sent-away sons. This marriage and ascendency pattern drove Kushite expansion and has been confirmed by DNA studies.
The Anthropolgical Evidence
The “begets” of Genesis 4 and 5 present a very old kinship pattern which I have diagrammed and analyzed using E.L. Schusky’s Manual for Kinship Analysis, one of the most important books of the 20th century because it presents a method for understanding ancient kinship patterns such as described in the Bible. Kinship patterns are like cultural signatures. Once a pattern is identified, it can be used to trace the original homeland of a people or peoples. This means that analysis of the kinship pattern presented in Genesis 4 and 5 can direct us to the homeland of Abraham’s ancestors. Although Abraham never lived in Africa, his ancestors did. They were ethnically Kushite and the antecedants of the Abrahamic faith are found in ancient Kush.
Analysis of the pattern shows that Cain and Seth married the daughters of a Kushite chief named Enoch. These brides named their first-born sons after their father. So it is that Cain's firstborn son is Enoch and Seth's firstborn son is Enosh. The names are linguistically equivalent and derived from the Kushitic root NK, not from Hebrew. Nok's territory was in west central Africa which was part of the ancient Afro-Asiaric Dominion referred to in Genesis 11:1.
Before a man could become chief in his father's place, he had to have 2 wives. The wives maintained separate households on a north-south axis. Their households marked the boundaries of the chief’s territory.
The wives were placed on a north-south axis rather than on an east-west axis because these chiefs, with the exception of Lamech the Elder, did not want to set themselves up as God, whose emblem was the sun which makes a daily journey from east to west. Lamech's wives were Adah (dawn) and t-Zillah (dusk), suggesting that he regarded himself as equal to God.
Where does one find this kinship pattern today? The pattern is found among Nilotic and Kushitic rulers and metal working chiefs in Niger, Sudan, Nigeria, Horn of Africa and Arabia. Emmanuel Kenshu Vubo, of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Buea, Cameroon, has done a good deal of research on this among the peoples of Cameroon.
Related reading: The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; Sent-Away Sons; Kushite Brides; The Marriage Structure of Abraham's Horite People
My sister recently took a course in Anthropology which exposed her to the discipline of kinship analysis. On the final exam 25% of the questions dealt with kinship. This question in particular posed a real challenge: “The biblical pattern of tracing genealogy is patrilineal.” The answer that the professor wanted was “True.” Since my sister has followed my Genesis research for many years she knew that this statement is only partly true.
Analysis of the structure of the Genesis "begats" reveals that lineage was traced through both the ruling father (patriarch) and the mother, if she is the cousin or niece bride. All the rulers of Genesis had two wives. One was a half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham) and the other was a patrilineal cousin or niece (as was Keturah to Abraham). The first wife was the sister bride, married at a fairly young age. She was the wife of the man's youth. The second wife was taken close to the time of the man's ascent to the throne.
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. Joktan is the progenitor of the Joktanite clans of Arabia.
Lamech the Younger (Gen. 5:26), son of Methuselah by his cousin wife, ascended to the throne of Lamech the Elder (Gen. 4:20-22).
The maternal line of the cousin/niece wife is traced through the cousin/niece bride’s naming prerogative. For example: Irad’s daughter married her patrilineal cousin and named their first born son Jarad after her father. (Irad and Jarad are linguistically equivalent names.) Irad is mentioned in Genesis 4:18 and Jarad is mentioned in Genesis 5:15.
The pattern continues to the time of Jesus Christ because the Horite ruling caste practiced endogamy, that is, they intermarried exclusively. Here we see the pattern in Moses' family.
Moses' father had two wives. Ishar was his cousin/niece wife. She named their firstborn son Korah after her father. Korah the Younger ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather. This means that Jochebed was Amram's half-sister wife. All of the people in this diagram are descendants of or kin to Seir the Horite (Gen. 36).
Note that there are two named Esau in the diagram above. This suggests that Esau the Elder's daughter married Isaac and named their firstborn son after her father, according to the cousin-bride's naming prerogative. This would mean that Esau was not a twin to Jacob, but his half-brother. As such they would not have been in competition to rule over Isaac's territory. As Isaac's firstborn son by his cousin wife, Esau would rule over the territory of his maternal grandfather in the hill country of Seir/Edom (which is what he did). Jacob would have been sent away from Esau to rule in another place, which is what happened.
The Cousin/Niece Naming Prerogative
The cousin/niece bride's naming prerogative pertained to noble wives, not to concubines. Each ruler had two concubines. These were handmaids to his wives. So Jacob had two wives: Rachel and Leah and two concubines: Bilhah and Zilpah. Bilhah was Rachel's maid and Zilpah was Leah's maid. Likewise, Abraham had two concubines: Hagar (Sarah's maid) and Masek (Keturah's maid).
Only the firstborn sons ascended to rule over the maternal and paternal thrones. This is a Kushite marriage pattern and is found among the Kushite pharaohs. For example, the Kushite ruler Amenhotep III was the father of Akhenaten the Younger who was named by Amenhotep's cousin wife after her father. This means that Akhenaten the Younger ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named. Egypt under the Kushites always had two thrones and Horus who was called the "son of God" was said to be the one who united the peoples.
The firstborn son of the half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father. So Isaac was Abraham's heir. The firstborn son of the cousin/niece wife ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather. So Joktan, Abraham's son by Keturah, ascended to the throne of Joktan the Elder, after whom he was named. Other sons were given gifts and sent away to establish territories of their own. Many of the Bible's greatest figures were sent-away sons. This marriage and ascendency pattern drove Kushite expansion and has been confirmed by DNA studies.
The Anthropolgical Evidence
The “begets” of Genesis 4 and 5 present a very old kinship pattern which I have diagrammed and analyzed using E.L. Schusky’s Manual for Kinship Analysis, one of the most important books of the 20th century because it presents a method for understanding ancient kinship patterns such as described in the Bible. Kinship patterns are like cultural signatures. Once a pattern is identified, it can be used to trace the original homeland of a people or peoples. This means that analysis of the kinship pattern presented in Genesis 4 and 5 can direct us to the homeland of Abraham’s ancestors. Although Abraham never lived in Africa, his ancestors did. They were ethnically Kushite and the antecedants of the Abrahamic faith are found in ancient Kush.
Analysis of the pattern shows that Cain and Seth married the daughters of a Kushite chief named Enoch. These brides named their first-born sons after their father. So it is that Cain's firstborn son is Enoch and Seth's firstborn son is Enosh. The names are linguistically equivalent and derived from the Kushitic root NK, not from Hebrew. Nok's territory was in west central Africa which was part of the ancient Afro-Asiaric Dominion referred to in Genesis 11:1.
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| The Afro-Asiatic Dominion as established by Genetic Analysis |
Before a man could become chief in his father's place, he had to have 2 wives. The wives maintained separate households on a north-south axis. Their households marked the boundaries of the chief’s territory.
The wives were placed on a north-south axis rather than on an east-west axis because these chiefs, with the exception of Lamech the Elder, did not want to set themselves up as God, whose emblem was the sun which makes a daily journey from east to west. Lamech's wives were Adah (dawn) and t-Zillah (dusk), suggesting that he regarded himself as equal to God.
Where does one find this kinship pattern today? The pattern is found among Nilotic and Kushitic rulers and metal working chiefs in Niger, Sudan, Nigeria, Horn of Africa and Arabia. Emmanuel Kenshu Vubo, of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Buea, Cameroon, has done a good deal of research on this among the peoples of Cameroon.
Related reading: The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; Sent-Away Sons; Kushite Brides; The Marriage Structure of Abraham's Horite People
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12 comments:
Fascinating! Thanks for your ongoing publishing. Rick
Thanks for reading!
I likewise enjoy your Ruminations.
Wow. This was a fascinating read. I had no idea about all of the kinship patterns in Genesis.
Shawna, There is only one kinship and ascendency pattern, though complex, for Abraham's Horite ruler-priest caste. The Bible tells us very little about the kinship patterns of other non-Afro-Asiatic peoples mentioned in the Bible, such as the Philistines.
Wow. My questions were serious and sincere, but you have deleted both of my comments without giving any reply, so thank you, very kind of you.
I didn't knew that you run a dictatorship here -- sorry, my fault.
Please sign your name on comments if you wish to have them appear.
The marriage pattern of the rulers involved children by 2 wives and 2 concubines. The selection of wives for the ruling sons was done according to a mathematical formula which apppears to have had some reference to what we today might identify as genetic combinations. This pattern pertains only to rulers and only to the Horite caste. It tells us nothing about how the average person married. Archeological evidence indicates that the average person had only one wife.
This might seem a strange question, but what if intelligent/sapient (human-like) extraterrestrial lifeforms do exist? What would this mean for Christianity? Our "Silent Planet" is, after all, just one relatively small "astronomical object" in an "infinite" (continuously expanding) universe created by an all-mighty (people seem to forget this), all-knowing, all-present, all-good God. Eerie... What is the Orthodox Church's teaching/belief regarding these things? Could this "science fiction" be in any way compatible with the belief in Christ (as true God and true man)?
Others say about our religion the same things we say about theirs: "heresy", "myth", "superstition" etc. -- and then smile cynical. (We judge each other on hearsay.) They also have their God-men, their saints or heroes, their holy or sacred books, dogmas, rituals (not to mention the people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), traditions, icons, prayers and so on, and so on. (You call it "potato", I call it "solanum tuberosum"...) Other tribes (as the Hebrews of old) also consider/ed themselves to be "God's chosen people". Now does this prove anything? I don't know. I only observe.
By the way, couldn't Adam (and Eve) be just a "symbol" for the whole of humanity?
And what on Earth were the "sons of God" and the "Nephilim" or "giants" mentioned in the Old Testament? (The "ancient astronauts" hypothesis and the so-called "cargo cults" come to my mind...) Interestingly, Jesus used to call Himself "the Son of Man" and not "the Son of God"...
And what, without the devil would there be no evil in the world? Who then tempted the devil?
And here is another question worth (?) pondering: what would have happened if the Jews and the Romans would have refused to crucify Christ? If God already knows what men will choose (good or evil) and do -- then what purpose have our lives anymore?
I cannot believe in a God that is so petty and detail-obsessed that He needs to plan and control every single moment of the life of every single human being and of the entire history of the entire world. (Call me an ignorant, but I would call this "fate" -- and I don't believe in fate.) I believe the Church, beginning perhaps with Cyril of Alexandria, has corrupted and distorted the teaching of Christ -- His teaching seems (to me) to be in direct contradiction with the teaching of the Church. We should rather follow His example than offer Him empty praise.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." (Mohandas Gandhi/disputed)
Ishmael,
You will find intelligent answers to your questions in essays that have already appeared here on Adam and Eve, the Nephilim, UFOs, etc. Use the INDEX. Topics are arranged alphabetically and linked for ease of navigation.
Alice, I'm still trying to grasp the whole 'horite' 'kushite' concept, I was completely unfamiliar with it.
I thought Prince Thutmose (per Graham Phillips was Moses since he disappeared during the Exodus and officially disgraced) was Amenotep's first-born son, and Akhenaten (who made monotheistic Aten-ism the state religion of all Egypt) replaced him as pharaoh.
Is this resolvable with what you write here? "Only the firstborn sons ascended to rule over the maternal and paternal thrones. This is a Kushite marriage pattern and is found among the Kushite pharaohs. For example, the Kushite ruler Amenhotep III was the father of Akhenaten the Younger who was named by Amenhotep's cousin wife after her father. This means that Akhenaten the Younger ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named. Egypt under the Kushites always had two thrones and Horus who was called the "son of God" was said to be the one who united the peoples.
The firstborn son of the half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father. "
It is difficult to work out who was who because these rulers were known by throne names, Horus names, and various other titles. However, the two son pattern and the naming of the firstborn of the cousin wife after her father are found among the Pharaohs. See this for more:
http://biblicalanthropology.blogspot.com/2011/06/identifying-king-tuts-father.html
Here is an example of how a ruler-priest name changes: The Yoruba "Esu" is the Egyptian "Shu" and the Hebrew "Yeshua" appears to be a variant using elements of both.
I can definitely see the pattern you are talking about; however, I think that your assertion that Jacob and Esau were half-brothers, and not twins, bears the burden of proof, considering the story of their birth in Gen. 25:22-26 asserts not once, not twice, but thrice (v. 22, 23, and 24 each explicitly state this) that the two were in the same womb. Additionally, the prophet agrees (Hos. 12:3). I am curious to hear how you overcome this difficulty?
Steve,
I did not intend to assert that Jacob and Esau were half-brothers, simply to suggest the possibility and to explore it.
The oracle concerning "two nations" in Rebekah's womb deserves more attention. Esau was red and hairy. This indicates that with him the Ainu DNA was dominant. What did Jacob look like? It is interesting that the author of Genesis does not provide this information. If they were twins, it is likely that Jacob was dark-skinned. With Ainu twins it happened sometimes that one had a red skin tone and the other a darker, even black, skin tone.
See this:
http://biblicalanthropology.blogspot.com/2012/06/does-genesis-10-describe-ainu.html
Lots to explore here. Thanks for the comment!
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