Monday, September 28, 2015

Metal Workers of West Africa

The first workers of metal in the Bible are associated with the ruling line of Kain. One of his descendants, Tubal-Cain, "forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. Tubal-Cain's sister was Naamah." (Gen. 4:22)  Naamah married her patrilineal cousin Methusaleh and named their first born son Lamech after her father.

Watch this fascinating video that shows the smelting of iron from ore by a West African smith family. Watch as the elders make charcoal, dig ore and flux, build the kiln, fire the kiln, offer sacrifice, smelt the iron, and finally forge the iron into tools. The women play an important role also.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

32,000 Year Old Flour Processing Plant

Here is a  photo of the Grotta Paglicci in southern Italy where a 32,000-year-old grinding stone was found.

Photo credit: Marta Mariotti Lippi

The Early Gravettian inhabitants of Grotta Paglicci (sublayer 23 A) are currently the most ancient hunter–gatherers able to process plants to obtain flour. They also developed targeted technologies for complex processing of the plant portions before grinding. The present study testifies for the first time, to our knowledge, the performance of a thermal pretreatment that could have been crucial in a period characterized by a climate colder than the current one. The starch record on the Paglicci grinding stone is currently the most ancient evidence of the processing of Avena (oat).

Read the report here.

Related reading: 77,000 year old mattress; 70,000 year python stone; 80,000 year old mining operations; The tool makers of Kathu; Fully human from the beginning

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Fully Human.. from the beginning

Alice C. Linsley

Regular readers of Just Genesis know that I am an "old Earth" creationist. I also recognize the reality of genetic mutation and species adaptation. However, I find no physical support for the Darwinian theory of common ancestry of humans and apes. In fact, the material evidence supports the biblical assertion that humans are a "special creation" and were fully human from the beginning.

 Image by John Hawks, one of the co-authors of the paper describing these bones.

The bones from the cave in South Africa were recovered by the Rising Star Expedition. The bones were found in a chamber named Dinaledi, accessible through a narrow chute about a hundred yards from the entrance of the Rising Star Cave. The cavern in which the fossils were found has only fine sediment and no evidence of water transport of material from any outside source.

Parts of the skeletons resemble modern human anatomy while other skeletal remains resemble the australopiths, like Lucy. In other words, this burial pit contained the remains of people who ranged in appearance about as much as modern humans.The bones/bodies were deposited over “some period of time.”


The cave burial of so many archaic humans suggests these people practiced ritual burial. No stone tools, clothing or other artifacts have been found in this burial site. There are numerous sets of bones from multiple individuals of different ages and sexes. There are many more bones awaiting further excavation.

Next week there is to be a 2-hour PBS-Nova presentation which will address these two years of research. It will be interesting to see how this is presented.

Jeffrey Schwartz thinks that the H. naledi remains represent two or more different species. He makes his case in Newsweek: “Why the Homo Naledi Discovery May Not Be Quite What it Seems”. On the other hand, John Hawks states that "The variation within the collection is not high, it is extraordinarily low." Hawks reports: "Homo naledi has a mosaic of features that include some that compare most closely to more primitive australopiths, and others that compare more closely to Homo. How do we know that this is one species rather than a jumble of species mixed together? Simple: every feature that is repeated in the sample is nearly identical in all individuals that preserve it."

Archaic humans or sub-human evolving by various branches to modern human?

Friday, September 4, 2015

Ft. Worth Talk

For those interested in the address I gave at the July 2015 International Catholic Congress of Anglicans.

Prayer of Archbishop William Laud
O gracious Father,
we humbly beseech thee for thy holy Catholic Church;
Where it is corrupt, purify it;
where it is in error, direct it;
where in any thing it is amiss, reform it.
Where it is right, establish it;
where it is in want, provide for it;
where it is divided, reunite it;
for the sake of him who died and rose again,
and ever liveth to make intercession for us,
Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord.


Saturday, August 29, 2015

Adam According to Mesopotamian Tradition





Sunday, August 16, 2015

Joseph of Ar-Mathea: Fact and Fiction




Mark 15:42-64

This account is paralleled in the other Gospels. John 19 adds: Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds.
Joseph and Nicodemus were fellow members of the Sanhedrin who came to be followers of The Way.

Alice C. Linsley

There is a great deal of medieval elaboration surrounding Joseph of Arimathea. One account says that he brought Jesus as a teenager to England. Local legends say that among the places they visited were St Just in Roseland and St Michael's Mount.  A 12th century account connects Joseph to the Arthurian legends and names him as the first keeper of the Holy Grail. It is said that he hid it in a well at Glastonbury, now called the Chalice Well. There is no evidence to support either of these inventions. The association of Joseph with Glastonbury in Somerset added to the status of Glastonbury by associating it with a prestigious Christian who was known to have been in Cornwall to the southwest.

In Matthew 27:57-8 and John 19:38-40, Joseph is described as a "man of means." Jerome's Vulgate version calls him nobilis decurio. The term decurion was often used for an official in charge of mines. It is also said to be part of Cornish tin-miners folklore that there is a saying and song that "Joseph Was a Tin-Man and the miners loved him well." Joseph apparently had business dealings in Cornwall where it is said he visited the The Ding Dong Mine.

Mining in Cornwall and Devon began as early as 2150 BC. The Ding Dong Mine is one of the oldest mines. An old miner told A. K. Hamilton Jenkin in the early 1940's: "Why, they do say there's only one mine in Cornwall older than Dolcoath, and that's Ding Dong, which was worked before the time of Jesus Christ." (Hamilton Jenkin, A. K. Cornwall and its People. London: J. M. Dent; p. 347)

The inhabitants of Cornwall were involved in the manufacture of tin ingots. The area has prehistoric tin mines, stone monoliths, and iron age fortresses. Joseph probably had Jewish friends and family living in the area. The presence of Hebrew is evident in place names like Marazion, meaning "sight of Zion" and Menheniot, which is derived from the Hebrew words min oniyot, meaning "from ships." Menheniot was a center of lead mining.

These metal workers and miners were among the Damoni, an early population of Cornwall. Dam-oni means "red people." Their ancestors were the builders of the great shrines like Carnac in Brittany because the stone monoliths in Damnonia are like those in Carnac, though smaller. On the Nile the ancient shrine at Karnak was built with huge stones by skillful craftsmen. Kar-nak means place of rituals. The red skin Annu/Onnu/Ainu also built Heliopolis on the Nile, called "On" in Genesis 41. They were the builders of pyramids also.

Kar is a archaic root that refers to a circular place of ritual. Ki-kar refers to a circle, as in Exodus 25:11: ki-kar za-hav ta-hor, meaning "circle of pure gold." (In the Anchor Bible Commentary on Genesis, E.A. Speiser recognizes that kikar refers to a circle.)

Tumulus in Cornwall


The ancient masters of stone monuments, tombs and mining operations also built sacred circles in reverence to the Sun, the emblem of the Creator.

Joseph and the Ar Clans

Joseph was a kinsman of Mary and Jesus. They were of the Horite line of Matthew, and related to the Ar clans. That is the meaning of the name Ar-Mathea.

Many ancient Hebrew are associated by their names with the Ar patrimony. Two examples are Aroch (1 Chr 7:39, Ezr 2:5, Neh 6:18, Neh 7:10) and Ariel (Ezr 8:16, Isa 29:1, Isa 29:1, Isa 29:2, Isa 29:2, Isa 29:7). Ariel means “Scribe/Messenger of God.” It appears that the Ar clans were known as royal scribes, and messengers or prophets. This is further suggested by the name Ar-vad. Vad means “to speak” in Sanskrit.  The root is vd, which also refers to seeing. In Ancient Egyptian vidjet refers to the Eye of Horus, the son of the Creator. In Serbian, vidjet means "to see." There are many connections between ancient Nilotic words and those found in Serbia and Northern India were the Kushite Saka ruled for many thousands of years.

The association of the name Ar with the scribal caste is further demonstrated by the discovery of Aramaic scrolls from Arsames, the satrap, who wrote to his Egyptian administrator Psamshek, and to an Egyptian ruler named Nekht-Hor. (A.T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire, Chicago, 1948, pp.116-117) Numerous historical persons are identified as Ar: Ar-Shem, Arsames, Artix, Araxes, and a Jebusite ruler called Araunah who sold King David a threshing floor upon which David constructed an altar.

The Ar are identified with the "sea peoples" whose range extended the length of the Mediterranean and to the Black Sea. They also ruled the major water systems of Central Africa. They were highly effective warrior-priests and kingdom builders. Dr. Catherine Acholonu explains, "In Nigeria the caste under reference is the Ar/Aro caste of Igbo Eri priest-kings, who were highly militarized in their philosophy." The rulers were served by expert stone masons and metal workers. The stone masons built their great temples and tombs and the metal workers fashioned weapons and symbols of authority. The metal workers were called the Nes, Neshi or Nehesi. The Neshi still function as priests in Igboland (Nigeria). The metal-working Nes of Anatolia are their kin. The Anatolian Nes (or Nus or Nuzi) spoke a language called Nesli.

Nehesi means "One who serves Hesi." Hesi was another name for Hathor, Horus' mother. Throughout the ancient world shrines were dedicated to both Horus and Hathor. These were mound cities with water sources. Tell-Hesi, a 25-acre archaeological site in Israel, is an example. It was the first major site excavated in Palestine, first by Flinders Petrie in 1890 and later by Frederick Jones Bliss in 1891 and 1892.


Bronze figure of a smith (7th-8th century B.C.) was discovered in Vranište, Serbia.

Joseph is identified in the New Testament as being of Ar-Mathea. That is not a location. It identifies his lineage and his caste. He was a mining expert and a tomb builder. He provided his own expertly excavated tomb for Jesus’ burial. Joseph visited the Ding Dong Mine in Cornwall.

Mining in Cornwall has existed from the early Bronze Age around 2150 BC. In 1600 BC, Cornwall experienced a trade boom driven by the export of tin across Europe. Pytheas of Massilia, a Greek merchant and explorer, circumnavigated the British Isles between about 330 and 320 BC and produced the first written record of the islands. He described the Cornish as civilized, skilled farmers, usually peaceable, but formidable in war. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus named Cornwall Belerion, meaning “The Shining Land", the first recorded place name in the British Isles. Cornwall was one of the few parts of Britain where the dead were buried in ancient times.

As a member of the Sanhedrin, Joseph of Ar-Mathea was qualified to ordain priests, so it is likely that some of the Christian priests in Cornwall were ordained by him as early as 60 AD. Eusebius of Caesarea (AD 260-340) wrote of Christ's disciples in Demonstratio Evangelica, saying that "some have crossed the Ocean and reached the Isles of Britain." This was likely a reference to the Seventy who Christ commissioned (Luke 10) and Joseph is numbered among them, according to John Chrysostom (347-407), the Patriarch of Constantinople, who wrote that Joseph was one of the Seventy Apostles.

According to Gildas's De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae there were Christians in Britain as early as 46 AD. Tertullian (AD 155-222) wrote in Adversus Judaeos that Britain had already accepted the Gospel in his lifetime. These Hebrew/Habiru Christians would have had priests among them. We know from the Bible that there were skilled metal workers among the Horite priests. Aaron fabricated a golden calf and Moses made the bronze serpent on a staff. The earliest high ranking rulers in Cornwall would have served as priests with powers equivalent to bishops as early as 46 AD and probably earlier than this. The episcopacy of Evodius of Antioch dates to 53–69 AD. The episcopacy of James of Jerusalem must correspond to that, as he died before 69 AD, and the episcopacy of Linus, the first bishop of Rome, dates to 67-79 AD.

Related reading: Stone Work of the Ancient World; The Priesthood in England; Red and Black Smiths; Was King Arthur a Horite Ruler?; Was Constantine as Saka Ruler?Haplogroup R1b

Monday, August 10, 2015

Jesus Fulfills the Edenic Promise

Alice C. Linsley

Messianic expectation predates Abraham and appears to have originated among the priest caste that served in the temples and shrines of archaic Eden which stretched from ancient Nubia to Syria. Some of these priests were called Horim or Horites, and they were known in the ancient world for their purity of life.

The Horite priests were an extremely ancient caste going back to biblical Eden. It was to their ancestors that the Creator made the promise that a woman of their ruler-priests lines would conceive the Seed of the Creator (Gen. 3:15) by divine overshadowing. This is called the "Edenic Promise." The Angel Gabriel told the Blessed Virgin Mary that she would conceive by the overshadowing of the Spirit. She is the Woman of Genesis 3:15. Her son is the Divine Seed.

Samuel's father was Elkanah, a Horite priest with two wives, so was Amram, Moses' father. Moses also had two wives, as did Abraham, Jacob, etc. It is the pattern of Horite rulers whose ancestors are listed in Genesis 4, 5 and 10. Some of these rulers dispersed far from their ancestral homes and established kingdoms in Syria, Southern Europe, Northern India and even the Tarim Valley of China. Horite priests were found among the "Saka." According to Hindu sacred texts, the Saka ruled the ancient world for 7000 years. They were ethnically Kushites. Genesis calls these rulers of the archaic world "the mighty men of old."(cf Nehemiah 3:16)

These mighty rulers controlled the water commerce and the high elevations which is where they built their fortified palaces. The boundaries of their territories were often marked by the the residential settlements of their two wives, and usually on a north-south axis. Nimrod's territory extended along the Tigris River between Calah and Ashur. Likewise, Cain's territory extended between Kano and Nok, Terah's between Ur and Haran, and Abraham's between Hebron (where Sarah resided) and Beersheba (where Keturah resided).

Wherever these rulers established territories they spread their Horite religion, including the hope of a Righteous Ruler who would overcome death and lead his people to immortality. A few even claimed to be that ruler in order to strengthen their power. Sargon is an example. Sar and gon are African words, and both refer to a ruler. The replication of the meaning king indicates that Sargon would have meant "King of Kings" or "Most High King." He claimed that his mother miraculously conceived him while she was praying in the temple at Azu-piranu, the House of God. Sargon was born in an O-pirû, House of the Sun. The Sun was the emblem of the Creator and gold (oros) was associated with the sun.

In the ancient world, a temple was considered the mansion (hâît) or the house (pirû/biru) of the deity. Those men who served in the temple were called Ha'biru, which in English is Hebrew. They served the Creator and the Creator's divinely appointed ruler. They preserved the ancient religious laws concerning ritual purity and sacrifices. Because they regarded the sun as the Creator's banner or standard, much of their religion is based on the solar arc. Horus rose in the east as a lamb and set in the West as a ram. Now we see the significance of the ram caught in the thicket. The Creator's qualities were often expressed in terms of the sun's properties: warmth, light, and constancy.

Among the desert Nilotes the dung beetle (scarab) also spoke to them of the Creator. This beetle rolls balls of dung along the ground and deposits them in its burrows. The female lays her eggs in the dung ball and when the larvae hatch, they feed off the dung until they emerge from the earth. The orb of the lowly beetle replicated on earth the solar orb of the Creator. Both were seen to sink below the earth and were believed to give life to those buried in the earth.

When it came to resurrection of the body, the heart would be weighed in the afterlife. The body of the pure heart would rise from the dead, as the sun rises in the morning. This is the significance of the dung beetle scarab, placed over the mummy's heart. The emphasis on having a pure heart is found throughout the Scriptures, especially in the Psalms.

Create in me a pure heart, O God. (Ps. 51:10)

Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. (Ps. 51:6)



The expectation that a Righteous Ruler would come who would overcome death and save his people, has a very early expression in the Re-Horus-Hathor narrative. HR (Horus) was regarded to be co-equal and co-eternal with his father Ra. He was spoken of as the fixer of cosmic boundaries. Horus was invoked to send favorable winds. The four winds often appeared as birds at the four quarters of the heavens announcing the accession of Horus' deified ruler on earth. On the walls of Amenemhat III's burial chamber at Hawara Horus is depicted at the cardinal points and associated with the resurrection of the ruler. The four forms of Horus: the man, the jackal, the falcon, and the baboon top the canopic jars holding the ruler's organs.

Jesus showed Himself to be the eternal Son of the Father when he calmed the wind and the waves on the Sea of Galilee. This understanding of the Cosmic Ruler is reflected in many words of ancient origin. Horos refers to the boundaries of an area, or a landmark, or a term. From horos come the English words hour, horizon, horologion, horotely, and horoscope. The association of Horus with the horizon is seen in the word Har-ma-khet, meaning "Horus of the Horizon." Today the word horoscope connotes astrology, but the word originally referred to an "observer of the hours."

In the time of Abraham's ancestors, the priests of Horus (called "Horites" in the Bible) were dedicated to observation of the planets and constellations. They observed that the planets and the constellations have an orderly clock-like movement. They conceived of this order as fixed and established by the generative force which makes existence possible (logos, nous, ruach, etc.) The Horite priests were the earliest known astronomers and it is likely that horo pertains to the celestial archetypes surrounding Horus, the son of Ra, born to Hathor. Hathor's animal totem was a cow. She is shown at the Dendura Temple holding her newborn in a manger. He was often shown as a calf with the solar orb between his horns as a sign of divine appointment.

The Horites were devotees of Ra (R) and his co-equal son HR (Hor, Horus) an Hathor (HTR) who they believed was conceived miraculously by the overshadowing of the Sun. This is about celestial archetypes, not about a historical person. The idea that God might appear in human flesh did not yet exist, only the celestial archetype which was acknowledged in funeral practices and in popular feasts and fasts.

One such festival involved a 5-day ceremony in which Horus was said to have died by his brother's hand. The people fasted as a sign of grief for his death. On the third day the priests led processions to the fields where grain was sowed in the fields. Jesus described his death as a seed of grain falling into he ground and dying (John 12:20-26). St. Augustine noted that 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 their ceremonies and celestial archetypes express their yearning for a deified king who would rise from the grave and deliver his people from death.

At some point the Horim came to believe that the ancient hope would take the form of a Divine Man. This happened well before Simeon's time. 


The "consolation" extends back to Eden. The Horites believed that the promised Seed of the Woman would be born of their ruler-priest lines and they expected Him to visit them. In Mark 7:24, this expectation was fulfilled when the Son of God visited Tyre. Mark explains that there Jesus “could not pass unrecognized.” Though Jesus was rejected in Jerusalem,he was recognized in Tyre. Tyre is associated with the Edenic Promise. 


The New Testament speaks about Jesus as both ruler and priest. He is the firstborn from the grave and by his mighty resurrection He delivers to the Father a "peculiar people." He leads us in the ascent to the Father where we receive heavenly recognition because we belong to Him.

Heavenly recognition for the Horites was never an individual prospect. Heavenly recognition came to the people through the righteousness of their ruler-priest. Horite rulers took this seriously, some more than others. The best were heavenly minded and the worst were so earthy minded that they shed much blood enlarging their territories. All failed to be the One long-expected as evidenced by their failure to rise from the grave. The true Righteous Ruler-Priest did rise from the dead. Therefore, Jesus, the Son of God, has the power to deliver captives from the grave and to lead them to the throne of heaven (Ps. 68:18; Ps. 7:7; Eph. 4:8).

Related reading:  Genesis in Anthropological PerspectiveTheories of Change and Constancy; The Re-Horus-Hathor Narrative; Ignoring Anthropologically Significant Data; The Dung Beetle and Heavenly Lights; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection; Miners Venerated Hathor