The Binary Distinctions of the Horites

Alice C. Linsley

How Binary Distinctions Shaped Horite Culture


Archaic Nilotic peoples were attuned to the patterns observed in nature and aligned their thinking with those patterns. This is evident in their burial practices and in the astronomical alignments of their monuments and in their binary theological perspective which framed the Biblical worldview.

The binary sets are expressed in the distinctions and separations within "kinds" or essences. The waters (firmament) above are separated from the waters below. Male and female are of the same kind yet distinct. Other binary sets include heaven-earth; God-mankind; day-night, sun-moon, and life-death. One of the entities in the binary set is superior to the other in strength, brilliance, glory, or purpose and its lesser is a reflection of the greater. So humans reflect the image of the Creator, the moon reflects the light of the sun, and Adam recognizes the woman as distinct from him but of his essence, i.e.,  "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh..." (Gen. 2:23)

The superiority of one of the entities of the binary set kept the Horites from slipping into the dualism that characterizes many world religions.

Observed natural entities were associated with gender, numbers and symbols. The sun, for example, was associated with a male ruler over the universe and represented the masculine principle of rule and insemination. It was the emblem of Re, the father of Horus. Hathor, Horus’ virgin mother, was believed to conceive the son of God by the overshadowing of Re. Because of this association of the sun with maleness, the ancient Egyptian rulers exposed themselves to the sun’s rays to turn their skin reddish brown (edom, odam, adam). Their royal wives, on the other hand, were covered with chalk to make them white like the moon.

In the Song of Songs the sister bride praises her beloved whose skin is dark as the tents of Kedar because he, like David, was made to work in the sun by his brothers. The tents of Kedar were woven with the black wool from the Nubian desert goats. His dark skin is associated with the masculine virtues of the sun. The sister bride was "made white" through the application of a white chaulky powder. Her pale skin is associated with the feminine virtues of the moon.

The moon was associated with femaleness or the feminine principle. This intuitive association extends to semen and milk. The sun inseminates the earth and the moon stimulates female reproduction and lactation. Because the moon affects water, tides, and body fluids in a repeating cycle there is a natural association of the moon with the periodicity of the menstrual cycle. Many ancient peoples associated pregnancy with the moon and in France menstruation is called “le moment de la lune.”

In a dualistic view, the sun and the moon are equals so both are worthy of veneration. In a binary view, one of the entities of the binary set is always superior and to venerate the lesser entity is a form of idol worship. This is what stands behind the Joshua 24 criticism of Terah. (Note this is not a criticism of Abraham.) There is no other verse in the Bible to support the view that Terah, a Horite, worshiped the moon god contrary to the practice of his ancestors who regarded the sun as the emblem of the Creator. Abraham's Horite ancestors did not worship Napir/Sin as was done in Ur and Haran and later in Mecca. The Horite ruler-priests were devotees of Horus who was called "son of God," and his emblem was the sun, the same emblem as his father Re.

Genesis 1:16 expresses the binary view in these words: "God made the two great lights; the greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night."



Binary Distinctions and Blood

Blood was also viewed according to a binary pattern. A distinction was made between the blood work of men in killing and the blood work of women in birthing. The two bloods represent the binary opposites of life and death. The blood shed in war, hunting and animal sacrifice fell to warriors, hunters and priests. The blood shed in first intercourse, the monthly cycle and in childbirth fell to wives and midwives. The two bloods were never to mix or even to be present in the same space. Women did not participate in war, the hunt, and in ritual sacrifices, and they were isolated during menses. Likewise, men were not present at the circumcision of females or in the birthing hut.

The mixing of life-giving substances with the blood shed in killing was absolutely forbidden among the Afro-Asiatics. This is why the Israelites were commanded never to boil a young goat it its mother’s milk. It also places into context the Judeo-Christian teaching against abortion, which mixes birth blood with killing blood, thus perverting the binary distinction between male and female to a point of desecration. It is also significant that among tribal peoples, brotherhood pacts are formed by the intentional mixing of bloods between two men, but never between male and female. The binary distinctions of male and female are maintained as part of the sacred tradition.

Early man had an intuitive anxiety about blood. We see this in the belief that the blood of Abel cries to God from the ground (Gen. 4:10). Anxiety about the shedding of blood is universal and very old. The sacrificing priesthood likely came into existence the first day that blood was shed and the individual and the community sought relief of blood anxiety and guilt.

As a point of fact, the first blood shed in the Bible was shed by Eve when she gave birth. This is significant because it places life-giving blood ahead of the blood shed when Cain killed Abel.

The second shedding of blood was when God made clothes of animal skins for Adam and Eve. Here we see the first sacrifice of animals for the benefit of humans. This places God at the center between the life-giving blood and the blood shed by Cain when he killed his brother. Between the two bloods (birthing and murder) God sacrifices an animal to provide for the needs of humanity. In this sense, God is the first Priest and that first animal is a symbol of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

According to the cosmology of Abraham’s people what is at the sacred center is of God. The image of blood at the center speaks of the blood of the Incarnate God. We glimpse this mystery of the sacrifice on the mountain where God has Abraham cut into half a 3-year old ram, a three-year old heifer and a three-year old she-goat (Gen. 15:9-21). This story and the story of the Three-Person God apparing to Abraham at Mamre (Gen. 18) are very old. The symbolism of the number 3 suggests the Egyptian/Kushite divine Triad.

When the sun set and it was dark a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between the animal pieces. On that day God promised Abraham that "this country" would be given his descendants. Here the descendants are not specified as Jews. As Abraham was a Horite and so were his sons and daughters, he would have understood this to mean that "this land" was to be a Horite possession.

God moved as a fire between the sacrificed animals that Abraham had cut into halves. God trailed across a bloody strip of earth, like a scarlet thread. God passed through it to confirm an unconditional covenant with Abraham concerning the land for his descendants.

The scarlet thread that hung from Rahab’s window brought salvation to her and to her household. The scarlet smudge over the doors in Egypt brought deliverance from the death of the firstborn. These images of blood speak of God’s prevenient grace whereby blessing precedes every human act, thought or intention.


Related reading:  The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ; Ontology and the Philosophical Project; Levi-Strauss and Derrida on Binary Oppositions; God as Male Priest; Blood and Binary Distinctions; Afro-Asiatic vs Aryan Religion: The Horse as Example; The Scarlet Cord Woven Through the Bible

Reality is Cross Shaped

Alice C. Linsley


The directional axes of east-west and north-south comprised the most fundamental metaphysical distinctions made by Abraham's people and underpin the more complex cosmological understanding of the ancient Afro-Asiatics whose Dominion extended from west central Africa to the Indus River Valley and beyond.

This religion venerated the Sun and its apparent east-west movement. The Sun was the emblem of the Creator and the source of life and light on Earth.  The overshadowing of the Sun at high noon marked the temporal center, and noon on the mountain top marked the spatial center. This is the significance of sacred pillars and mountains (bnbn in Ancient Egyptian) that connected heaven and earth.

Abraham's Nilotic ancestors believed that Earth emerged as a peak rising out of a universal sea. Life began when the Sun rested exactly at the peak of that mound. This is likely the origin of the belief that a woman of their Horite priestly lines would be overshadowed by the Creator and would conceive the Seed of Genesis 3:15.  In Orthodox iconography sometimes the pregnant Theotokos is drawn as a mountain.  As such, she became the sacred center, the tabernacle of God, the new mount Zion. For Abraham's ancestors the swelling of Sun, river and the female belly spoke of the Creator's power to give life.

The perpendicular axes of north-south and east-west form a cross and this is the oldest known symbolic mark. Its great age is testified by its appearance on prehistoric rocks in Sudan, on Paleolithic ostrich shells in Southern Africa, and in the Proto-Saharan Thamudic scripts.


Nilotic Cosmology

In ancient times, the Nile was identified with the Milky Way which arches over the Earth from the extreme south to the extreme north. The Nile was viewed as Earth's Milky Way. The north-south axis was represented by the northward flow and the east-west axis was represented by the water's span from horizon to horizon. The center of the river at noon was regarded as the sacred spatial and temporal center. This cosmology is reflected in ancient Nilotic imagery, especially at Elephantine Island (Yebu). Even before Elephantine, the directional poles and the movement of circumpolar stars comprised an element of religion and were a factor in the construction of ancient monuments.

Andrew Collins notes "the earliest Neolithic cult centres, the prototypes of stone circles and chambered barrows everywhere, were directed roughly north-south. Since the north was a direction of death and rebirth at Çatal Hüyük, I quickly realized that the focus of attention at places such as Karahan Tepe and Göbekli Tepe was the movement of circumpolar stars around the northern celestial pole, for there was no Pole Star in c. 9500-9000 BC. I looked closely at the Skyglobe astronomical program for these dates, and realised that only one constellation could have been the object of their gaze, and this was Cygnus, which in European starlore is the celestial swan. However, there is clear evidence that in Ancient Mesopotamia Cygnus was seen as a raptor bird, while in classical myth it was occasionally seen as a vulture, the symbol of the transmigration of the soul in the Neolithic cult of the dead."

The Pole Star was only one way by which the ancients could determine true north. Their cosmology was binary, which means that no pole can isolated from its opposite. The poles are binary opposites and in the binary worldview on of the opposites is regarded as superior in some way to its opposite. Among the Horites, north and east were the superior directions but they were never considered in isolation from south and west. The Nilotic worldview was characterized by binary sets such as male-female and sun-moon.

The intersection of the axes was represented by X or T in ancient glyphs. This cross-shaped cosmology is fundamental to the binary distinctions and metaphysical tensions that characterized the ancient Nilotic worldview. The great contribution of Jacques Derrida, an Arabic-speaking North African Jew, was to re-introduce to Western Philosophy this binary approach to meaning.

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 most ancient Biblical approach to meaning, that of the Semites and their Kushite ancestors.

Among the Horites, North and East Were the Superior Poles

Among Abraham's Horite people the Pole Star was an important celestial marker.  Beside this, they were metal workers who had discovered that magnetized iron particles pointed to magnetic north. In fact, the word compass (kom-pas) is originally an Egyptian word. Horite rulers were buried with their heads to the north and their faces toward the east.

All the rulers among Abraham's ancestors had two wives. The wife of the man's youth was a half-sister and the wife on his later years was a patrilineal cousin or niece. The wives lived in separate households on a north-south axis. In Abraham's case, Sarah lived in Hebron and Keturah lived in Beersheba. Sarah, as the first wife, ranked above Keturah. Only the firstborn son of the half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his father.  So Issac became Abraham's heir, though he was not Abraham's firstborn son.

The placement of the wives' settlements reflects the Horite belief that the Sun was the Creator's solar boat or chariot which He rides daily to survey his territory from east to west. This idea was apparent even before Noah. Lamech the Elder (Gen. 4) is portrayed as a braggart not only because he boasted of killing a man, but also because he set his wives on an east-west axis, thereby setting himself up as God.

The Sun's east-west path was thought to be the Creator's circuit, stretched "as far as the east is from the west."  The Almighty comes as a bridegroom from the tent of the Sun and makes his circuit from east to west. (Psalm 19)

While north was associated with death and judgment, its opposite was associated with birth and renewal of life. South symbolized earth, fertility and birth. It was to the south that Abraham went seeking a second wife. Abraham, still without a heir, consulted the Moreh at the Oak between Bethel and Ai. His next move, chronicled in Genesis, was a journey to Beersheba in the Negev. There he married his patrilineal cousin Keturah, by whom he had five sons.

Marriage to a second wife was required before a Horite chief could ascend to the throne. Abraham's marriage to Keturah enabled him to become the ruler over a territory hat extended between Hebron and Beersheba. It did not provide him with an heir since the firstborn son of the cousin wife ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named. The sons of concubines and the younger sons of wives were given gifts and sent away to establish territories of their own. They are the sent-away sons who expanded the Kushite dominion far beyond in the Nile. The marriage and ascendency pattern of Abraham's Horite caste drove Kushite expansion into Europe, Mesopotamia, Southern India, Cambodia and even Japan. The Kushite migration out of Africa has been verified by DNA studies.



Ethical Implications

The ethical implications of a cross-shaped reality are evident. There is a geometrical quality that suggests lines, angles and boundaries. The boundaries fixed by the Creator can be observed in genetics, climate cycles, and in time and space. Abraham's people wanted to discern and respect the boundaries since they perceived of them as having been established by God. Worship, rituals such as the blessing of the Sun, gender distinctions, laws concerning purity among the ruler-priests, all these reflect concern to distinguish between the binary sets of Heaven-Earth; God-Man, Pure-Defiled, and Life-Death and to serve the greater.

In this cross-shaped Reality, the only safe place, metaphysically speaking, is the sacred center. After all his deconstruction, Jacques Derrida concluded that there is a center and that something is there. He spoke of this something as "presence." He claimed that throughout the history of Philosophy this metaphysical presence is called by different names, “God” being one of them. This is uncomfortable for those who hold to materialist ideologies. They are baffled by the metaphysical. It is terrifying for those who claim there is no Creator. If there is something, a "presence" (to use Derrida's term) at the metaphysical center, it must surely be of greater power and authority than they. Even the Atheist exhibits existential angst about the possibility that any form of authority depends on God's existence (Romans 13:1).

Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors were famous sky watchers. For them a lunar eclipse was less significant than a solar eclipse because they regarded the sun was as superior to the moon. This was not an arbitrary preference nor does it represent mythological ignorance, as Materialist and Atheists often assert. Rather it is 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."  In our time, the idea that one entity is greater than another meets with great resistance. Many are lost in an ethical wilderness without a compass.

Ethics for Abraham's people meant being spiritually present at the center of X; finding the sacred center by reference to earth's spokes: north-south/east-west, and by reference to the binary sets observed in the order of creation. The late Rabbi Kaduri appears to have found that sacred center in contemplation of the tradition he received from his Horim.

Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri

Before he died at age 108, Yitzhak Kaduri left a signed note indicating Messiah's identity: Yeshua - Jesus. A few months before, Rabbi Kaduri had surprised his followers when he told them that he met the Messiah in dreams and visions. Kaduri gave a message in his synagogue on Yom Kippur, teaching how to recognize the Messiah. His manuscripts, written in his own hand for his students, have cross-symbols painted by Kaduri all over the pages.

Many Jews have attempted to explain away the crosses, arguing that the great Rabbi Kaduri was not a Christian. Only God knows. However, Rabbi Kaduri was wise and prayerful, and he knew the cosmology  of his ancestors. Perhaps this lead him to Jesus, the Son of God, at the sacred center of our cross-shaped reality. Perhaps he found the One who his people have been awaiting.



The Sun Among Abraham's Horite People

Aspects of the ancient solar symbolism are found in the Bible and in historical texts. Psalm 92:2 describes the Lord as “a sun and a shield.” The Victory Tablet of Amenhotep III describes Horus 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).

At Angkor Wat in Cambodia, there is a stone relief of a solar boat with Horus flying as a falcon above the flames of the sun. Most of the religious depictions found in Southern India are also found among the Proto-Saharan peoples. There is strong evidence that messianic expectation began, not with the Jews, but with Abraham's Nilotic ancestors. They were devotees of Horus who they called "Son of God."  In a 5-day festival the ancient Egyptians comemorated the death and rising of Horus. He was associated with the rising or swelling sun and with the falling of grain into the earth.
In relation to the sun, Horus was said to rise in the morning as a calf or a lamb and to set in the evening as a bull or a ram. The east represented the present, and the west represented the future. On Mount Moriah Isaac was replaced with a ram.  To Abraham the Horite this would have meant that his offering was set aside by the provision of a greater sacrifice that was to come in the future. It would also have meant that Isaac was not the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham's ancestors in Genesis 3:15. Isaac was not the "Seed" of the Woman who would make the curse of death void, crush the serpent's head, and restore Paradise. Jesus was the fulfillment of this first promise and prophecy of the Bible.  In speaking of his impending death, He told his disciples that only the "seed" that falls into the ground and dies can give life. (John 12:24)

As St. Augustine noted, the Egyptians took great care in the burial of their dead and never practiced cremation, as in the religions that seek to escape physical existence. Abraham's ancestors believed in the resurrection of the body and awaited a deified king who would rise from the grave and deliver his people from death.

On ancient Jewish ossuaries the sun was shown as a 6-pointed star inside a circle.  This was the solar boat of the Creator, the vehicle of Light that would carry the dead to the place of rest. From that place they hoped to rise on the Last Day. In the Iron Age this mer-ka-ba was shown as a chariot. The spokes within a circle are both the rays of the sun and the spokes of the chariot wheel. This symbol likely appeared on the Ark of the Covenant. In the Ethiopian Church a replica of the Ark, called ta-bot, is displayed in the churches. It is decorated with the 6-pointed star inside a circle at the center of the ark.

The spokes inside an orb also represent the precession of the equinoxes at various angles. The precession was symbolized by X inside a circle. This morphed into the Tau, which is used by Christians to represent the upright cross.

The precession cross and the merkaba are very ancient cosmological images. They have been traced to the Horite temple at Heliopolis on the Nile. Heliopolis is called ONN in Genesis and was shown in Old Egyptian as NXN, with the X representing the Creator's presence at the sacred center. Again, the cross is central and associated with the sun. Just as the sun is a universal symbol of light, so the sign of the cross is universally found in creation. The mark of Jesus Christ is ubiquitous. Reality is cross shaped.


Related reading:  The Sacred Center in Biblical Theology; Afro-Asiatic Rulers and Celestial Archetypes; Binary Distinctions and Kenosis; Christ's Sign in Creation; Tehut's Victory Over Tehom; The Ostrich in Biblical Symbolism; Cosmology and Ethics

Solar Imagery of the Proto-Gospel

Alice C. Linsley

Christianity is unlike synthetic religions which cobble together beliefs and ideas according to the spirit of the age.  Christianity emerges out of a belief that God made a promise a long time ago to a certain people living in a place called "Eden" and that He has been busy fulfilling the Edenic Promise (Gen. 3:15) in the God-Man Jesus Christ.

Most people think of Christianity as an off-shoot of Judaism, but the core beliefs of Christians that God would take on flesh, die and rise again were already evident among Abraham’s Horite people who understood the dying and rising of God in terms of the sun’s rising and setting.  They did not worship the sun as is erroneously stated in some books on ancient civilizations. Rather the sun served as the best analogy for the Creator who ruled over the whole world.  Unlike its lesser opposite the moon, the sun makes life possible on earth. It is the great light from which the moon receives its light. In Genesis 1: 16, the sun is called the “greater light” and the moon the “lesser light.” The sun and the moon are not equals as in Asian dualism.  The sun is to the moon what the male is to the female, superior in size and strength. This is characteristic of the binary distinctions of the Horite worldview and it is offensive to many in our egalitarian society.

What Jews in Jesus’ day believed and practiced emerged from the tradition that they received from their horim, their ancestors. The elements of this tradition align with the ancient Egyptian/Kushite beliefs surrounding Hor (Horus in Greek) who appears on ancient steles and monuments as a falcon-headed man or as a falcon flying above the sun on Re’s solar boat.

Aspects of the ancient solar symbolism are found in the Bible and in historical texts. Psalm 92:2 describes the Lord as “a sun and a shield.” The Victory Tablet of Amenhotep III describes Horus 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).

Horus was the guardian of the ancient Egyptian and Kushite kings from as early as 4000 B.C. The kings were perceived to be the representatives on earth of the Ruler of the universe, the “sons” of God. From the earliest Dynastic Period, the king's name was written in the rectangular device called a serekh, which depicted a falcon perched on a palace façade. Horus as guardian and deity was manifest within the palaces and the shrines as the king himself. The king’s “horus name” was associated with gold and the sun which is the meaning of the title “Golden Horus” in which a falcon appears on the hieroglyphic sign for gold.

Horus was sometimes shown with the sun as his right eye and the moon as his left. The right eye was the one with which he saw all things, but his left eye was weaker, having been injured in combat. This reflects the binary distinctions which characterize Nilotic religion.

In the Nilotic languages, as in all the Afro-Asiatic languages, there are only two genders: male and female. The sun was assigned a masculine gender and was greater than the moon which was assigned a feminine gender. This binary set of sun-moon reflects an observed reality. The sun gives light whereas the moon’s light is refulgent. Likewise creatures of the male gender are physically larger than creatures of the feminine gender. The binary distinctions of Abraham’s Horite people were based on observable patterns in nature. By observing celestial and earthly patterns they recognized that one of the entities in the binary set is superior to its other in visible ways. Thus the worldview of the Bible is binary, not dualistic.

The solar imagery for God is very ancient and is found among extant Nilotic tribes such as the Kalenjin of Kenya who are almost exclusively Christian. The Kalenjin believe in a Creator called Asis whose emblem is the sun. While Nilotic peoples are not the only peoples to have solar imagery, their view of the sun as superior to the moon was unique among the ancient Asian religions which tended to be dualistic. Likely this is what stands behind the criticism of the ruler-priest Terah who lived among Mesopotamians who worshipped the sun and the moon as equals.  Joshua 24:2: In olden times, your forefathers – Terah, father of Abraham and father of Nahor – lived beyond the Euphrates and worshiped other gods. It is evident that this is a late interpolation, and a rather ambiguous one at that.

Religious traditions such as that of the Horites develop in a traceable way from great antiquity. Such traditions are passed down through families, clans and tribes. The core belief of Christianity concerning the Son of God can be traced to Abraham and his Horite ancestors, long before there were Jews and Judaism. In this sense, Christianity isn't original, but what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in antiquity and herein rests its authority.

Related reading:  Celestial Symbols that Speak of God; Was Abraham an Idol Worshipper?; The Sun and the Moon in Genesis; Who Were the Horites; Of Dung Beetles and Red Herrings; A Tent for the Sun

Lutheran Satire: The Best Conspiracy Ever!

You'll love this one!

Related reading: The Empty Tomb; Matthew's Testimony Concerning the EmptyTomb

Look Upon Her Whose Heart Was Pierced

Simeon, the priest, said to Jesus' Mother: "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also."  Luke 2:35

O much sorrowing Mother of God, more highly exalted than all other maidens, according to thy purity and the multitude of thy suffering endured by thee on earth: Hearken to our sighs and soften the hearts of evil men, and protect us under the shelter of thy mercy. For we know no other refuge and ardent intercessor apart from thee, but as thou hast great boldness before the One who was born of thee, help and save us by thy prayers, that without offence we may attain the Heavenly Kingdom where, with all the saints, we will sing the thrice-holy hymn to One God Almighty in the Trinity, always now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

The Priestly Divisions

The following article was written by Rabbi Shmuel Safrai (shown right). He immigrated to Palestine with his family in 1922. He was ordained as a rabbi at the age of twenty at the prestigious Mercaz Harav Yeshivah in Jerusalem. He later received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the fields of Jewish History, Talmud and Bible. Safrai was recipient of the Jerusalem Prize (1986) and the Israel Prize (2002). He wrote over eighty articles and twelve books including Pilgrimage in the Period of the Second Temple and Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef: His Life and Teachings. He died July 16th, 2003 at age 84.


A Priest of the Division of Abijah

There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah; and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth…. Once when he [Zechariah] was serving before God while his division was on duty... (Lk. 1:5, 8)

During the Second Temple period, the twenty-four priestly divisions served in the temple at Jerusalem in a rotation system. A list of priestly divisions can be found in 1 Chronicles 24:7-18, which is usually dated by scholars to the fifth century B.C.E. (Before Common Era, B.C. in Christian terminology). There is no mention there, however, of any fixed order of service. Only in post-biblical traditions is it mentioned that the priestly divisions served according to a weekly rotation system.

The priests themselves lived not only in Jerusalem but also in other settlements in the land of Israel. When it was "time for the division to go up [to Jerusalem]" (Mishnah, Ta'anit 4:2), the priests left their homes, went up to Jerusalem for a week, and afterwards returned to their homes in Judea or Galilee.


Priestly Settlements

The organization of Second Temple priests within a framework of divisions was of great importance for the priests. Even when the focus of Jewish life shifted from Judea to Galilee in the aftermath of the Bar Kochva Revolt (132–135 C.E., Common Era, A.D. in Christian terminology), priests of the same division continued to live together. The divisions that previously had been located in Judea settled together in villages and towns of Galilee.

The names of the priestly settlements in Galilee after 135 C.E. have been preserved. Tannaitic literature (rabbinic works up to 230 C.E.) mentions some of the residences of the priestly divisions in Galilee, while the later piyyutim or liturgical poems, although written several hundred years later, preserve the full list of the locations of the twenty-four divisions. In addition, portions of this list have been uncovered in the excavation of ancient synagogues in Israel and the Diaspora (for instance, in Yemen).

Nazareth was the home of the eighteenth priestly division, ha·pi·TSETS (Happizzez). In 1962 excavators discovered in the ruins of a synagogue at Caesarea a small piece of a list of the twenty-four priestly divisions. This third to fourth-century marble fragment is inscribed with the names of the places where four of the divisions resided, including Nazareth, the residence of Happizzez. Until that discovery there was no record of Nazareth's existence before the sixth century C.E., other than in the New Testament and later Christian literary sources.

Times of Service

Abijah was the eighth priestly division. The priestly rotation began in the Hebrew month of Nissan (mid-March to mid-April), and therefore the division of Abijah would have served at the end of Iyyar (mid-April to mid-May) and again at the end of Marheshvan (mid-October to mid-November).

Although Zechariah's division finished its service at the end of Iyyar or Marheshvan, we have no way of knowing exactly when this was. The divisions rotated on the Sabbath, but the Sabbath rarely fell exactly at the end of the month. We can never be sure of the exact date when a priestly division began or ended its duty period. Priests of Abijah, for instance, may have ended their spring week of service from the twenty-eighth of Iyyar to the fourth of Sivan.

Like the other divisions, the priests of Abijah served in the temple for one week twice a year. We cannot be sure whether the events connected with Zechariah mentioned by Luke took place during the week of his division's spring or autumn service. We also do not know how the divisions compensated for the additional month of Adar that was placed into the calendar twice every seven years. Therefore, we have no way of knowing exactly when Zechariah served. For the same reasons, it is impossible to calculate the date of Jesus' birth based on the time of Zechariah's service.


Names and Lineage

Apparently, the priestly division of Abijah was named after one of the priests who returned to the land of Israel with Zerubbabel and Jeshua (Nehemiah 12:4). Another Abijah, mentioned in Nehemiah 10:7, was one of the signatories of the covenant during the time of Nehemiah, a number of generations after Zerubbabel and the first wave of returnees to Israel. This Abijah probably was a descendant of the Abijah after whom the division was named. Other priests of the Second Temple period were named Zechariah. Rabbinic works mention two such priests from the last generation before the temple was destroyed: Rabbi Zechariah ben Auvkulos (Lamentations Rabbah 4:3) and Rabbi Zechariah ha-Katsav (Mishnah, Ketubot 2:9).

According to the gospel of Luke, Zechariah's wife Elizabeth was of the "daughters of Aaron," that is the daughter of a priest. It was common in that period to refer to people of priestly stock as descendants of Aaron. For example, a first-century inscription found in Jerusalem in 1971 mentions the heroic exploits of a person who introduces himself as: "I Abba son of the priest Eleaz[ar] the son of the great Aaron."

During the Second Temple period it was quite common for a priest to marry a woman from a priestly family, and there are many rabbinic traditions attesting to this. For instance, Rabbi Tarfon states that when he was a boy he stood on the steps outside the sanctuary to participate in the priestly benediction with "Shimshon, his mother's brother" (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:11). This indicates that his uncle Shimshon was also a priest, and that Tarfon's mother, therefore, was of priestly stock. In spite of the common maxim that "one should cling to his tribe and family" (Jerusalem Talmud, Ketubot 25c), meaning that one should marry within the same tribe, or at least within the extended family, it was permissible for a priest to marry a woman outside the priestly tribe, as well as for a woman of priestly stock to marry a non-priest. The high priest Aaron himself did not marry the daughter of a priest, but rather the daughter of Amminadab of the tribe of Judah (Exod. 6:23; Num. 1:7).

Luke notes that Elizabeth was related to Mary, the mother of Jesus (Lk. 1:36). It is quite possible that Mary also was of priestly descent even though her husband Joseph, who belonged to the tribe of Judah (Lk. 2:4), was not a priest. Of course it also is possible that Mary was related to Elizabeth without being the daughter of a priest.

From here.


Related reading:  The Daughters of Priests; Testimony of Blessed John the Forerunner; Matthew's Testimony Concerning the Empty Tomb

Thoughts on Blogging

Alice C. Linsley


I maintain 5 blogs and have 5 years experience as a blogger. That doesn’t make me an expert, but I have learned a few things that might be helpful to other bloggers.

I haven’t handled all readers with patience or sensitivity, so if I have offended you, please forgive me. Forgiveness such as that expressed in the comments here would make the blogging world a much better place!

That goes for moderation of comments. It is best to be generous and let prickly or aggressive comments stand, even when they are disdainful in tone. Usually other readers will challenge the comment and sometimes a good discussion ensues.

A comment shouldn’t be deleted simply because it represents a view with which you don’t agree. That isn’t moderation; that’s censorship. It is still censorship when done under the guise of "off topic." Rarely is a comment so far off topic as to necessitate deletion.

When it comes to moderation, STUDENTS PUBLISH HERE! must be watched vigilantly for inappropriate comments and links. I’ve discovered that the word “students” attracts predators, school recruiters, and a large amount of spam geared to young people. Because the virtual world isn’t safe, I never publish identifying information with the student’s poem or short story.

Ethics Forum was created to help my college Ethics, Philosophy and World Religions students. This is a resource to which they turn when preparing their final papers. Here readers will find the latest news from around the world related to ethics, religion, and the impact of philosophy on contemporary thought. Interestingly, the topics that have attracted the most comments deal with male/female circumcision and an article that I wrote for my Ethics classes titled “What Makes a Good Society?” Ethics Forum has a small number of regular readers, but of all my blogs it has the widest international readership.

The blog with the highest volume of visits is Just Genesis. Here the comments are generally thoughtful and relevant. Given the academic nature of the research and the narrow focus of the blog, most readers are people who sincerely want to know more about the first book of the Bible. Rarely do I have to delete a comment.

My rule is to delete comments that attack someone personally. Words like pompous, disturbed and boring signal the need for scrutiny. This is when I track the comment using Feedjit and I make a note of the origin of the comment for future reference. It is helpful to keep in mind that these words usually project on someone else the very traits that describe the person making the comment.

Sometimes a reader will email me rather than post a comment. This is a good way to express criticism or concern because it allows us to converse more candidly offline. Often these conversations stimulate my thinking and I will write about them at the blog.  I have some good internet friends whose acquaintance I first made by this means.

Biblical Anthropology is my newest blog. Here I publish research in my field of interest that doesn't relate directly to Genesis or Ethics.  These are occasional papers and of interest mainly to anthropologists.

There is an INDEX of topics with links at Just Genesis, Ethics Forum, Students Publish Here!, and Biblical Anthropology to facilitate web searches and I try to keep these up-to-date.  If I fall behind in this task it is because I actually do have a life outside of blogging! : )

Blogs can provide a valuable means of communication, inspiration, learning, debate, and encouragement. They also can be used to disseminate evil ideas and images, to inflict pain and to belittle. The blog owner is responsible for what happens and most of us take this responsibility seriously.

The Marriage and Ascendancy Pattern of Abraham's People

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.

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

Response to Fr. Behr's Talk on Women Disciples

Alice C. Linsley


I listened to Fr. John Behr's talk on Women Disciples and laughed (a dismayed laugh). How true it is that there is nothing new under the Sun! As a friend said, "After one has heard this stuff for so long in TEC it is now amazing to hear it cropping up in the Orthodox Church."  She's right.  I too hear echoes of Episcopal clergy who abandoned Holy Tradition 25 years ago in Fr. Behr's ruminations.

Here are key points of his argument:

1.The early Fathers don't say much about what it is to be Man and Woman. - False.

St. John Chrysostom says volumes about man and woman and the importance of a right relationship in marriage. His sermons are very deeply grounded in Scripture, unlike the message of Fr. Behr. He doesn't want to talk about praxis, only theoria. That means he wants to set aside the clarity of Scriptural teaching on being made Male and Female!

2. Times have changed. Understandings of science on "sexuality" require that we adjust our view of Male and Female. - False

People who lived in Abraham's time knew about homosex and condemned it as a violation of God's order in creation. As people of the Bible we don't accomodate the biblical worldview to pseudo-science. There are only two genders - Male and Female and these were created by God at the beginning. There is no continuum of sexuality. That is a myth perpetuated mainly by gay/lesbian activists. Male and Female are an aspect of the fixed order of creation. Those born with gential confusion are less than 1% of the world's population and most of these know which gender they are and can be helped through surgery. Homosex is regarded as a disease in many countries, like addiction to pornography. India's Minister of Health made this comment last week. He said that homosexuality is a disease introduced from the sex-obsessed West.


3. The focus should be on what it means to be Human "after the stature of Christ." - False.

The Gospel is about the Son of God who came into the world to save sinners, to crush the serpent's head, to make void the curse, to set Eve free, and to restore Paradise. He did this as the "Son" of God. His being male is of great significance. Only a son could receive a kingdom from his Father and Jesus' kingdom is an eternal one, as we recite in the Creed.

This view that Jesus Christ came to perfect a genderless Humanity is nonsense and demeaning to both men and women. At the day of Resurrection we will rise in our bodies as male and female, not as genderless angels.

The Eastern Orthodox churches historically have resisted modernism and egalitarianism. Orthodox resistance was heartily demonstrated at the 1978 Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission in Athens. Here the Orthodox delegates soundly rejected all possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood. However, Church of England clergy, feeling pressure from their Episcopalian cousins in the United States, were ready to discuss the question and opened Pandora's box.

The Orthodox are again under pressure to accommodate to the world. While most are standing firm on the Church's teaching, St. Vladimir Seminary wavers. Some seminarians at St. Vladimir believe that women should be ordained priests. It is a good thing that I have no authority there. I would dismiss every seminarian of this mindset, seeing that they do not discern the foremost necessity for a Priest, which is to preserve Holy Tradition.

The seminarians hardly can be blamed when their professors and their Dean encourage them in this waywardness. Bishop Kallistos is credited with opening the door. Thomas Hopko wrote in the Forward to Woman and the Priesthood (St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1999) that Bishop Kallistos “has moved in the direction of greater tentativeness about the possible ordination of women as priests and bishops in the Orthodox Church. He demonstrates less conviction about the authority of the traditional Orthodox practice on the issue, and questions his own rather firm arguments against the ordination of women…” (work cited, p. 1)

Personally, I'm not impressed with the way things are heading at St. Vlads. If such nonsense isn't headed off now we'll be fighting to preserve the true Faith in Orthodoxy. As one who has been through "the Anglican wars" I don't relish the prospect of more battle wounds.

Related reading:  Should St. Vlads Confer a Degree on Rowan Williams?; The Paradigm Shift in the Orthodox Priesthood; Luther Was Wrong About the Priesthood; Genesis on Homosex: Beyond Sodom; Passing Conversation with Priestess Kaeton; Ideologies Opposed to Holy Tradition; God as Male Priest; Sweeping Away Gender and the Biblical Worldview

Miriam, Daughter of Y'shua

2000-year-old ossuary of Miriam, daughter of Y'shua

Researchers from Bar-Ilan and Tel Aviv universities published a study confirming the authenticity of an obtained ancient ossuary with unique historical implications that was plundered by antiquities robbers.

The 2,000-year-old ossuary, a stone chest used for secondary burial of bones, belonged to a daughter of the Caiaphas family of high priests.

The front of the ossuary bears an Aramaic inscription from the time of the Second Temple saying “Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas, Priests of Ma’aziah from Beth Imri.”

The high priest Yehosef Bar Caiaphas is known for his involvement in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, but the prime importance of the inscription is the discovery that the Caiaphas family was related to the Ma’aziah priestly course, one of the 24 divisions of Kohens that took turns maintaining the schedule of offerings at the Temple in Jerusalem.

From here.


Miriam was a common name in Jesus' time and before.  The name is Meri in ancient Egyptian, Mania in Siamese, and Mari or Meru in the Nilo-Saharan languages.

The inscription on the ossuary is helpful in determining how the daughters of the ruler-priests were memorialized.  If we apply the same formula to the Virgin Mary, this is what we have:

"Miriam Daughter of Joachim Son of Pntjr (Panther) Priests of Nathan of Beth Lehem"

From the earliest predynastic times, ntjr designated the king among the Kushites. The name Panther or p-ntjr likely meant "God is King."

It is certain that Mary was of the ruler-priest caste 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.

I Chronicles 4:4 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.

Joseph's family lived in Nazareth which was the home of the eighteenth division of priests, that of Happizzez (1 Chronicles 24:15).  The words happi and ntjr originate in the Nile Valley, as do the names of many of the ruler-priests listed in the genealogies in Luke and Matthew. Melchi, a name that appears twice in Mary's ancestry, means "my image" in Amharic.

Ma'aziah is Amaziah who ruled over Judah from 769 to 781 B.C. His mother was Jodah who is listed in Luke 3:27. As a member of this priestly family Caiaphas was probably born in the hills south of Bethlehem. This is not Yosef Bar Caiaphas, the Roman appointed high priest who interrogated Jesus. Miriam's paternal grandfather might have been the brother of Yosef.

Caiaphas is also spelled Ka-yafa.  Ka is the Kushitic word for king and yafa means beautiful.

Imri was the father of Zaccur who helped to rebuild a section of the wall of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 3:2). This priestly branch had been in captivity in Babylon. The Jews returned to Palestine between 338-315 B.C. The location of Beth Imri is not known. Some believe that it may be Beth Ummar located south of Bethlehem.

Y'shua is related to the name Shua. Shua was Judah's mother-in-law.  She is a descendant of the Shua mentioned in 1 Chronicles 7:32, a daughter of Eber.



Related reading: The Peoples of Canaan; Kushite Wives

Kushite Wives

Alice C. Linsley


Abraham's ancestors were ethnically Nilo-Kushitic. Their royal lines intermarried, so that the rulers are often associated with Kushite wives.  Kushite wives are found among the Horite clans and many of the greatest figures of Biblical history married Kushite brides. The names of these wives often represent the Kushite clans to which they belonged. Abraham had two Kushite wives: Sara and Keturah. Their names represent two Horite clans: the Sa-ra and the Ketu-ra.

Judah had two Kushite wives. One was named Shua and she was Judah's half-sister. (Genesis actually names two daughters of Jacob: Dinah and Shua.) By his two wives Judah had two firstborn sons: Er and Onan. Their names represent two Horite territories. Er (Ur) is the eastern territory of the Asiatic Horites in Ur, and Onan (Onn) is the western Horite territory centered at Heliopolis on the Nile. All of these Horites were ethnically Kushite.

Er would have been Judah’s firstborn son by his “Canaanite” wife, the daughter of Shua. Shua is a woman’s name and related to the word Y’shua, meaning salvation. The first Shua is mentioned in 1 Chronicles 7:32 as the daughter of Eber. She lived seven generations before Judah in the land of Canaan. Evidently one of her descendants married Judah.

Moses also married a Kushite wife, his half-sister.  Moses' father and mother were Kushites. His father's name was Amram which designates a ruler among Abraham's Horite people. This is the origin of the word Aramean, which also refers to the language spoken by the Asiatic Horites who lived in the territory of Aram, the son of Shem (Gen. 10:22). He is the first Aram mentioned in the Bible. That his throne continued is evident from the fact that he had a descendant named Aram. Aram the Younger was the son of Kemuel, Abraham's nephew (Gen. 22:21). Rebecca was Aram's niece.

Aram the Elder apparently had two wives.  One resided in Aram and the other in Paddan-Aram.  Rebecca lived in Paddan-Aram.


Abraham’s Two Wives Were Ethnically Kushites

Let us consider the case of Abraham’s two wives, Sa-ra and Ketu-ra. Both are named for Kushitic clans and were the daughters of Horite rulers, as evidenced by the name of their God, Ra. Sara was the daughter of Terah who controlled the Euphrates between Ur and Haran. After Abraham settled in Canaan, she resided at Hebron. She was Abraham's wife and his half-sister. They had the same father, but different mothers (Gen. 20:12). In other words, their father Terah had two wives.

This information is consistent with the kinship pattern of Kushite rulers who maintained two wives in separate households on a north-south axis. One wife was a half-sister and the other was a patrilineal cousin or niece.

The Sara constitute the largest population group in Chad. Sara society is organized by patrilineal descent from a common male ancestor. There is a 3-clan confederation such as characterizes Abraham's people. The qir ka are the eastern Sara, the qin ka are those living in central Chad, and the qel ka are the western groups. According to legend, there were giants among them. (The Sara make up to 30% of Chad's population. About a sixth are Christians and live in southern Chad. The Sara people include the Ngambaye, Mbaye, and Goulaye.)

Sara’s name is associated with laughter twice in Genesis. She laughed when she heard that she would have a son (Gen. 18:13) and she laughed when her son was born (Gen. 21:6). Here we have recognition of a linguistic connect to Abraham’s Kushite ancestors. The initial צְחֹק (in a rare participial form) refers to Sara's joyful laughter upon giving birth to a son. This relates the name Sara is derived to the Kushite word saran, meaning joy. The final N enhances laughter to joy. The word saran is also found in Hindi and is usually translated refuge. The word was probably introduced into India by the ancient Sudra (Sudanese) who established the Har-appa civilization. (Har-appa means Horus is Father.)

Genesis tells us that the name of Sara's son is also associated with laughter. The name Isaac is Yitzak in Hebrew. Here we see the root zak which means laughter in Amharic.

The association of laughter with the name Sara is suggested by the Hausa verb to laugh which is dara. Dara and Sara may be regarded as cognates since the letters d and s are interchangeable in the Proto-Saharan languages spoken by Abraham’s Kushite ancestors.

Ketu-ra was named for the Ketu-Jebu, a branch of the biblical Jebusites. She was the daughter of Joktan who controlled the well and the metalworking industry at Beer-Sheba and its surrounding area. These wives marked the northern and southern boundaries of Abraham’s territory.


Two Wives Represent Two Thrones

Sarah was Abraham's sister wife and Keturah was Abraham's cousin wife. The cousin wives named their firstborn sons after their fathers, a pattern that makes it possible to trace their family lines. As Levi-Strauss noted in 1949, in a patrilineal system the mother and son do not belong to the same clan. In Genesis we have evidence that the firstborn of the cousin bride belonged to the bride's father's house, not to her husband's house. So Keturah's firstborn ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named. The firstborn of the sister-wife ascended to the throne of his biological father. So Issac ruled after Abraham while Joktan, Keturah's firstborn son, ruled after Joktan the Elder. He is the progenitor of the Joktanite clans of Arabia.

Sarah's brother was Haran, a name connected to Harun which is the Arabic form of the name Aaron. Aaron's father was Amram. (Ran is the linguistic equivalent to ram, meaning exalted or ruler.) Abraham and his two wives belonged to the great ruling clans of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion. They controlled the major water systems from the Nile to the great rivers of Pakistan and India.

Har-ran means "mountain of Ran/chief" just as har-meni means "mountain of Meni."  Mount Meni is the likely location of Noah's Ark. Today is is called is "Mount Kenya" in East Africa, but the assumption persists that the ark landed in the Ararat mountains of (H)Ar-menia. Ararat is the Arabic word for vehemence.

Since ran is the equivalent of ram, Ha-ram would then be equivalent to (H)Aram. This refers to the Aramaean kingdom (see map). Aram and Paddan-Aram were two settlement in this kingdom.  Rebekah came from Paddan-Aram ("field belonging to Aram") to marry Isaac in Beersheba. Aram means "exalted."  The name can be traced from Shem to one of Nahor the Elder's grandsons. It is the same root as Amram, the name of Moses' father. He too was a Kushite ruler-priest with two wives. Ishar was his cousin/niece wife and Jochebed was his half-sister wife.

Now it makes sense that Moses married a Kushite wife (Numbers 12:1). She would have been his half-sister and the wife of his youth. Zipporah was his patrilineal cousin or niece who he married later. This is the marriage and asendancy pattern unique to the Kushite rulers who were devotees of Horus who was called "son of God."

This also explains why Korah resisted Moses' leadership. As the firstborn of Amram by his cousin-wife, and Moses' elder brother, Korah's right to rule was supported by a long-standing tradition of primogeniture (right of the firstborn son). This pattern was often over-ruled by God who came to the aid of sent-away sons to whom He delivered a kingdom. Many of the Bible's greatest figures were sent-away sons. These include Abraham, Ishmael, Jacob, Moses, and David. The eternal Christ was sent-away in the sense that He left His preincarnate glory with the Father before all the worlds were created to come to this earth, sent by the Father for the redemption of sinners.

Related reading: The Pattern of Two Wives; Who Were the Kushites?; Who Were the Horites?; Sarah's Laughter; The Nigerian Boundary of the Jebu-Sheba-Joktan Confederation

Nilotic-Kushitic Celestial Archetypes

Alice C. Linsley


According to the linguistic historian Christopher Ehret, traditional Afro-Asiatic religion was originally henotheistic. Henotheism is belief in a supreme creator God with lesser assisting semi-divine powers in a hierarchical ranking, like a pyramid. While each community was headed by a hereditary ritual leader, each clan had guardians from among the lesser powers (along the line of guardian angels). In ancient Egypt these powers were represented by animals and insect totems and/or plants. Only one power was represented as a man - Horus - who was called the "son of God" and who was served by a caste of royal priests called "Horites."

Ehret refers to the ritual priests among the Kushites as the '*wap'er'. They were accorded significant political authority alongside the ruler. The *wap'er presided over the rituals directed toward the High God and acted as the intercessor and prophet of the God. These are the ruler-priests, called har-wa and sarki in ancient Egypt. A seventh century Assyrian text says that Sar-gon's birthplace was a city on the banks of the Euphrates called Azu-piranu. It was a Horite shrine as evidenced by the word piranu. The Hapiru devotees of Horus called a temple O-piru, meaning "House of the Sun." Azu is the East African name for God - Asa. So Azu-piranu means “House of God” and is equivalent to the Hebrew word Beth-el. Horite ruler-priests were called Hapiru in Akkadian and Habiru in the Kushitic languages. The Egyptians called these temple attendants ˁpr.w, the w being the plural suffix. This has been rendered '*wap'er' by Christopher Ehret.

Dr. Dan Kashagam, General Secretary of the African Unification Front, explains that, "Africans had various terms that referred to the different offices of government. A king in ancient Kush titled 'Ko' or 'Nesu Biti', a female Head of State was Gore, a female Head of Government was Kandake, a diplomat was Akiki, a governor was Peshto etc. These institutions were fully developed and already in use by 3,800 BCE... along with very sophisticated state and parliamentary protocols that defined responsibilities of the leaders and the citizens towards each other.

The most famous name for a parliament in Africa is the word 'Pharaoh'. The word actually translates 'great house', a common African expression for a senate or national parliament. Variants of the phrase might be Lesser House - to indicate a provincial parliament. The term pharaoh does not refer merely to a physical building, or a dynastic line, although it may have had dual meaning in later centuries. The actual term for king in ancient Egyptian is nesu biti."

It is to Ko for "king" and sa for "great" that we must turn now. In the following list of cognates, we note how the K and Sa frequently appear in the Afro-Asiatic languages.

malku - king (Ugaritic)
melek - king (Hebrew)
bo kor - king (Kushitic) Ko or qo was an honorific suffix for rulers, as in the rulers Sheba-ko and Tahar-ko.
kan or khan - male leader, derived from the word Kain, the first ruler in the Bible.
kandake - female leader, spelled Candace in English Bibles.
ko/ka - king (Kushite/Egyptian)
ko-Re (qore) - Re's appointed ruler/son
sar - king (Sumerian/Accadian) Sargon is related to the Chadic word for king - gon lere.
sara - son of Ra or Ra is great (Egyptian)
sarru - king (Babylonian/Assyrian)
sarki - ruler-priest (Chadic and Sudra/Sudanese of India and Nepal)

Dr. Kashagam mentions the term Nesu biti, another reference to king. However, it refers specifically to the ruler of a united kingdom comprising the Upper Nile and the Lower Nile. Nesu biti contains the signs for papyrus sedge and bee. Sedge was the symbol of the Upper Nile and the bee was the symbol of the Lower Nile. The titles Nesu biti and Sa Ra ("Son of Ra" or "Ra is great") appear together in cartouches that have been found in the tombs of Egyptian and Kushite rulers.  These rulers were believed to be the "sons of God" on earth (Gen. 6:1,2).  The Ko was the deified ruler who ruled over two lands, which is why he wore a double crown. The Kushite rulers united the peoples of the Upper and Lower Nile to one another and united the peoples to the deity Ra (Re).

Christians will note that the celestial archetype applies to Jesus Christ, and is manifested in a pronounced way at his baptism at an ancient Kushite river shrine called Nim-Ra on the Jordan. Nim-Ra means the "waters of Ra" and this location is between Mannaseh/Ephraim (west) and Mannaseh/Gad (east). There the river became the sacred center when Jesus was manifested as the Son of God.

Rivers among Abraham's Kushite ancestors represent numerous archetypes, including the serpent and the place of connection, and the sacred center. The ancient Egyptians and Kushites were great sky watchers. They observed that the Pole Star (Vega or Wa'gi in Arabic) and the Sun were sometimes visible at the same time on opposite sides of the Nile. This was an auspicious connection. The Nile would have been considered the place of meeting, a sacred center.

Likewise, the clan of Manasseh held land on opposite sides of the Jordan. On the west side Manasseh and Ephraim were considered of the "house of Joseph." On the east side, Manasseh (M-nasheh) and Gad (Gd)were a confederation of the "house of Jacob." Joseph represents the Hamitic/Kushitic/Egyptian heritage of the people. As the Biblical anthropologist Susan Burns points out, "Joseph is the patriarch of the ceph tribes. Ceph is suph (papyrus)." Jacob symbolizes the Semitic/Aramaic/Mesopotamian heritage of the people, symbolized the gd ha-nasheh, the sinew which was touched by the angel of the Lord.

Manasseh/Ephraim of Joseph and Manasseh/Gad of Jacob

Susan Burns writes at her blog, "This sinew is called gid ha'nasheh in Hebrew. The sciatic nerve begins at the heel of the foot and travels up the back of each leg to the base of the spine. This nerve is enclosed in a protective sinew that is common to all mammals. When the angel touched his own thigh, the thigh of Jacob was damaged. The connection Jacob had with his angel was located in the gid or sciatic nerve."

There is a relationship between nasheh and nahushtan, the bronze serpent on Moses' rod. Reeds, sinews, veins, lightening and rivers are like serpents. It is easy to see how prehistoric man might have thought of lightening as God's serpent. Where it struck there was a connection between heaven and earth. That place would be considered the sacred center, just as the Nile was the sacred center between the Pole Star and the rising sun, and the Jordan was the sacred center between M-nasheh/Ephraim and M-nasheh/Gad.

In the older Proto-Saharan languages spoken by Abraham's Kushite ancestors N at the end of the word designates 2. In Dravidian appa is father, but appan means fathers.

At the beginning of the word N designates 1 and refers to the deity, as in the Egyptian ntr - god/deity, a compound of N and TR, meaning pure. The original root for vein, river, tongue, serpent, sinew and lightening was NS. The S originally would have been a pictograph representing a serpent or anything serpentine. It also indicates "great" and can mean "Man" (Egyptian - sa), and throne (Proto-Saharan es or is). NS suggests connection between heaven and earth, and between deity and man. The serpent was a sacred symbol to the Kushites, especially to the metalworking clans such as the Hittites who called themselves NS (Nes).

Manasseh was divided because Joseph's other son was of the House of Potiphar and probably stayed in Heliopolis, Egypt. This is consistent with the marriage and ascendency pattern of firstborn sons among Abraham's Horite people. The firstborn of the ruler's half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father. So Isaac ascended to the throne of Abraham. The firstborn son of the ruler's cousin/niece wife ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named. So Joktan, Abraham's firstborn son by Keturah, ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named. Joktan the Younger was the progenitor of the Joktanite Tribes of Arabia.


Related reading: Pepinakht-Heqaib: Upholding the Rights of Two Sons; The Peoples of Canaan; The Sacred Center in Biblical Theology; The Kushite Marriage Pattern Drove Kushite Expansion; Sister Wives and Cousin Wives; Recovering the African Background of Genesis

The Religion of Tamar of Timnah

Alice C. Linsley

The Romanian anthropologist Mircea Eliade wrote extensively on the ritual nature of archaic societies. He noted that feasts, fasts, ceremonies and the construction of monuments were patterned after celestial archetypes. Religious observances, as well as the arrangement of residences in the village and the division of labor corresponded to events in the heavens such as the daily rising of the sun, the solstices and the equinoxes. Social structures among Abraham’s Kushite ancestors developed according to the celestial archetypes that they observed in the heavens.

The Kushites were great observers of Nature.  They noted correspondences between celestial and earthly phenomena and they believed that heaven and earth were connected.  They looked for evidence of connections. To give an example; serpentine lightening strikes the earth from above and serpents strike upwards from the earth. The point of connection is the sacred center, halfway between heaven and earth. Observed correspondences and connections were taken as facts upon which they could base their understanding of the world. In this sense, the ancient Kushites were quite scientific.

They observed a binary quality in nature, one aspect of which was gender. The binary sets of east-west and north-south were another. They also observed a distinction between ruler and ruled. This means that they saw a hierarchy in Creation. Conceptually, the structure of the world was regarded as triangular. They were fascinated by the geometric properties of the triangle which is evident in the construction of pyramids and ziggurats. Hierarchy is evident also in their multi-tiered cosmology which pictured the Creator at the peak of the heavens. The Apostle Paul refers to this when he relates his experience of caught up by the Spirit and taken to the third heaven (II Cor. 12:2). He explains the supremacy of Christ by saying that he ascended “far above all the heavens.” (Eph. 4:10)

We find the hierarchical concept in the supremacy of humans over animals and the supremacy of the creatures of earth over the plants. These tiers are the "kinds" of which Genesis speaks, each tier reproducing according to its own kind. The Creator's design entails boundaries which are generally recognized in reproductive science.

Seeds produce plants when they fall to the ground. Human semen produces humans. 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. 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). In the Biblical worldview onanism represents a violation of the divine order in creation.

This takes us to the strange story of Judah and his cousin wife, a daughter of Shua "a Canaanite" (Gen. 38:1-11). Shua's daughter bore Judah two sons: Er and Onan.  The name Onan is Onn (Heliopolis), a Horite shrine on the Nile. Joseph married Asenath, the daughter of the "priest of Onn" (Gen. 41:45). It is likely that Joseph’s brother Judah also married into this prestigious priestly line. The first born of Shua was Er, but Onan was likely the first born of Judah's cousin-wife. If so, she named her firstborn after her father.

Er was married to Tamar, the daughter of a Horite priest, but he "offended Yahweh and Yahweh killed him."  Following the levirate law, Onan then married Tamar to produce an heir for his dead brother.  Here we encounter a clue that this story is a late interpolation intended to slur the Canannites. It falls in the same category as the curse of Ham and the incest of Lot.  It clearly represents a time well after the people named in the story because it fails to recognize that Er already had an heir.

That Er's line continued is evident from the appearance of his name.  One of Joshua's sons was a descendant of Er by Joshua's cousin-wife.

Onan's motivation in not impregnating Tamar appears to be the security of his heir by his sister-wife. Tamar was his cousin/niece wife and her firstborn son would ascend to the throne of her father, who isn't named in the Biblical text. Apparently, Onan's spilling of his seed was motivated by fear of a son who might rule in competition to his heir. At this time Horite land holdings were smaller than those of the great Kushite kingdom builders such as Nimrod (Sargon the Great). Evidently, there was greater competition between ruling sons.

Onan's denial of a son to Tamar was serious because the anticipated "Seed" of Genesis 3:15 might come by a cousin/niece wife.  Indeed David's ancestry is traced to Tamar and Judah as is that of the Son of God.

The key to understanding this story lies with the identity of Tamar's father.  He appears to have been connected to the shrine of Hathor at Timnah. Hathor was the virgin mother of Horus who was called "son of God.'  Here is a celestial archetype to make note of because it is the pattern whereby Abraham's Jewish descendants would come to recognize the identity of Jesus, the only begotten Son of God who was born of the virgin Mary.

Hathor (later called Isis) was the patroness of metal workers. Timnah was famous for its copper mines.  It was at the entrance to this shrine that Judah had intercourse with Tamar (Gen. 38:12-30). This strongly suggests that Tamar was the daughter of the Horite ruler-priest at Timnah. This suggestion is strengthened by what happened after Judah discovered that Tamar was pregnant.  He called for her execution according to the law pertaining to the daughters of priests (Lev. 21:9). She was to be burned alive.

Judah is not presented in a positive light in this story, but Tamar is. Judah ends up praising her initiative whereby she fulfilled the requirement of the law. Judah says about her "She was more righteous than I." (Gen. 38:26)


The Horite Shrine at Timnah

Timnah is the site of the world's oldest copper mines. The mines are at least 6,000 years old and there are newer ones as well, totaling about 10,000 shafts. The oldest mines were worked almost continuously by Kushite and Horite metal working clans until the Roman Period. There are ancient rock carvings showing Kushite warriors in chariots, holding axes and shields. A temple dedicated to Hathor was discovered at the southwestern edge of Mt. Timnah by Professor Beno Rothenberg of Hebrew University.

The highlighted circle marks the location of the Hathor Shrine.

The Chalcolithic metal works at Timnah were found at the Wadi Nehushtan in the foothills along the western fringe of the southern Arabah Valley. The smelting works, slag and flints at this site were found to be identical to those discovered near Beersheba where Abraham spent much of his time.  The metal workers of Timnah and the metal workers of Beersheba were kin and the patroness of their mining and smelting operations was the virign mother of Horus who was worshipped by the Horites.  In other words, these were Horite metal workers. In his book Timna, Rothenberg concluded that the peoples living in the area were "partners not only in the work but in the worship of Hathor." (Timna, p. 183)

So it appears that Judah brought forth twin sons by the daughter of the priest of Timnah, one of the oldest Horite shrines know to exist outside of Kush. She was a woman of high social rank whose people patterned every aspect of their lives on the celestial archetype of Horus, the son of God. They believed that Horus was born at the winter solstice because from that day forward the Sun grows in strength. The ancient Egyptian ritual involved placing a male baby before the image of Isis and the priests brought gifts to the "divine son".

The Horites observed the death of Horus (Osirus) in a 5-day festival. The first 3 days were marked by solemnity (as Plutarch noted in Isis and Osiris, 69). The last 2 days were a time of feasting and rejoicing. Horus is said to have died on the 17th of Athyr. His death was commemorated by the planting of grain. On the third day, the 19th of Athyr, there was a celebration of Horus’ rising to life. It is no coincidence that Jesus alludes to the Horite myth when describing his passion and resurrection. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (John 12:24) He identifies himself as the "Seed" of Genesis 3:15.

The Horites believed in the "second death" (Rev. 21:8) and prayed that this would be avoided. They offered sacrifice for and prepared the bodies of their dead in the hope that their bodies might rise to life at a future time.


Related reading:  The Afro-Asiatic Metalworkers; The Peoples of Canaan; The Bosom of Abraham; Nilotic-Kushitic Celestial Archetypes