The Eternal Son Comes Down From Heaven

When Jesus instituted Holy Communion in the Upper Room was He drawing on received tradition or inventing something new?  Is the Passover the only pattern whereby we understand Jesus' self-sacrifice or are there other threads in Scripture which shed light on the sacrament?

In John 6:51, we read these words concerning Jesus:  "I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world."

Note that the bread comes down from heaven. Such was the case with the manna in the wilderness and probably John 6 refers to to the wilderness experience. However, Holy Communion involves flesh and blood so we do well to look for other antecedents that involve being fed with both elements. We find one antecedent in the book of Job, one of the oldest books of the Bible. Here the mother vulture nourishes her young with flesh and blood. Consider Job 39:27-30:


Does the vulture (nesher) mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high? She dwells and abides on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place.
From there she seeks the prey, and her eyes behold afar off.
Her young ones also suck-up blood: and where the slain are, there is she.


This is an image of a mother nourishing her young with bloody bits of flesh from the carcasses of the fallen. In Exodus19:4, we read: Ye have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and, how I bare you on vulture's (nesherim) wings, and brought you unto myself.

The Hebrews living in Egypt would have understood the force of this metaphor since the Vulture was one of the emblems of Egyptian power. Images of the vulture mother of Nekhbet of Elkab are shown with outspread wings on the grand monuments and temples of ancient Egypt. Its counterpart is the mother scorpion of Hierakonpolis.The scorpion, like the vulture, represented Hat-hor's devoted care of Horus, who was called the son of God. He is the pattern by which some of Abraham's Jewish descendants recognized Jesus as the promised Son. Only the Son of God can nourish us with his own eternal Person. Only His eternal Person can bring us eternal life.

C.S. Lewis, who knew languages and mythologies, saw that even the pagans of Europe had dreams of the god who dies and rises again as this idea appears in their literature. In Mere Christianity, Lewis writes that God "sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean ... about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men." It is the life that comes from receiving into ourselves the body and blood of the Eternal Son.

Related reading: "The Ostrich in Biblical Symbolism"

The Biblical Meaning of Eve

Eve is above Adam and yet subject to Adam. This is the mystery of Christ's relationship to the Church to which St. Paul points. Christ elevates the Church and yet she is subject to Him.

Rembrant's Adam and Eve

Alice C. Linsley

To understand the meaning of Eve we must consider her story in the context of the hierarchy that the ancient Afro-Asiatics saw in creation. In this hierarchical order Eve is the crown, being the last created.  If we think of a pyramid, God would be above the peak and below him would be Eve. She is the perfect companion of Adam and the two share the same essence as creatures made in the Creator's image.

As heaven and earth are binary opposites in the biblical framework, so Adam and Eve represent the binary opposites of male and female. Further, male virtues are associated with east and north and female virtues with the west and south.  The dominance of each depends on a counter-clockwise cycle, as the Sun rises from the east and crosses through high noon to the west, making its daily circuit.


Gender Reversal

Likewise, Adam and Eve reverse dominance.  Eve, being made from Adam's rib, has Adam as her head.  Eve, being the last created, has Adam at her feet. So Eve is both above Adam, as the crown of creation, and below Adam, as one subject to him.  Eve is Adam's crown and Adam is Eve's crown.  (I'm reminded how crowns are worn by the bride and the groom in the Orthodox wedding ceremony.)

His his 17th century Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram, Cornelius a Lapide noted that there is “frequent exchange of gender in Hebrew: the masculine being used in place of the feminine and vice-versa, especially when there is present some cause or mystery.” Eve's creation speaks of a gender reversal which in the Bible signals a sacred mystery.


Order Reversal

There is another layer of reversal in Eve's story.  It involves a reversal of order between Eve, made in the image of God, and the serpent who God put in subjection to humans. Think in terms of a standing ladder with rungs. God in Heaven is at the highest rung of the ladder. Adam and Eve share the second and third rungs, often reversing positions. Lucifer, having been cast down, is at the bottom, symbolized by a creature that slithers with its belly in the dust. In Lucifer's attempt to rise to the top, he seeks to invert the ladder by making Eve subject to him.  John Chrysostom understood Eve's sin in this light: as the exchange of her heavenly crown for the serpent's dust.  Eve exchanged her glory for a baser image.  In submitting to the serpent's will, she allowed the inversion of the divine order in creation.

The inversion of divine order is the demonic inversion of reality. What is real and true is turned on its head and presented to the unsuspecting as the real and true. We live in an age when most people are fooled by the Father of Lies.


Why Eve and not Adam?

Various theories are offered as to why the serpent approaches the woman rather than the man.  Some opine that women are more vulnerable to suggestion or more easily prompted by the sensual. Yet the story doesn't permit this interpretation, as the woman enjoys perfection until after the Fall.  The reason the serpent approaches Eve rather than Adam has nothing to do with an inherent flaw in the woman. Instead the answer rests in the Tempter's character as one who desires to tarnish the crown of God's creation.  Lucifer hates "the Woman" (Gen. 3:15) who as the Mother of God brought forth the Son who crushes the serpent's head.  Eve's story speaks symbolically about the darkness that always seeks to overcome the light or about the evil that continuously seeks to thwart God's plan of salvation.


Eve as Adam's "kind"

In pagan myths there is a suggestion that Adam's first wife (called Lilith) had sexual relations with the serpent.  In many ancient cultures the serpent was a phallic symbol. This is foreign to the Genesis text which speaks of creatures reproducing according to their own "kind".  Bestiality is a serious violation of the order of creation in the biblical worldview. Lucifer attempts to blur the boundaries apparent in the order of creation, so he encourages bestiality and homosex.

Eve is the same kind as Adam as she.is bone of his bone and flesh or his flesh. She is God's unique provision for the man not to feel alone in the world.  Adam is surrounded by living things yet senses that he is alone.  God declares that it is not good for the man to be alone. This is a picture of how “kind” goes with its own kind. The idea of reproducing according to one’s own kind is inherent.  Further, God told the original couple to be fruitful and multiply.  Since Lucifer has no role to play in this, he works doubly hard to tarnish the gift of sex.


Eve's Name Supplies a Clue

The Hivites are descendants Ham (and probably Seth) which means that they are ethnically Kushites (Genesis 10:17). The name Hivite  resembles the name Eve.  Eve is spelled hwh and likely represents a pictograph of the ruler and his two wives. The w or Hebrew vav is a solar symbol designating the ruler.

The Y symbolized a cradle for the sun, the emblem of the Creator.It also designated the ruler's residence and his appointment by the Creator. The ruler's tent was the oholibamah or exalted tent and was represented by the ancient Hebrew and Arabic letter Vaw. This was a solar symbol in the Canaanite script. The urheimat of the Canaanite Y was the Upper Nile Valley.

Tent peg /sun cradle/marks the ruler's residence
This also represents the long horns of the cow worn by Hathor, the mother of Horus, son of Ra. She conceived by the "overshadowing" of the Sun.

It solar symbol for Horite rulers is found in these names: Yaqtan (Abraham's first born son); Yitzak, Yishmael, Yacob, Yosef, and Yeshua. The vav is sometimes referred to as the tent peg. It designated both the residence of the ruler and the ruler's status as one appointed by the Creator.

The marriage pattern of Abraham's ruler-priest ancestors involved two wives living in separate households on a north-south axis. The first wife was a half-sister, as was Sarah to Abraham. The second wife was usually a patrilineal cousin. The first born son of the half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his father and his mother was a queen within his territory. This pattern is evident among the ancient Kushite rulers who united the Nile Valley. It suggests that Eve is the archetypal queen.


Further reading: Adam and Eve: The Blood and the Birther; Hierarchy in creation: The Biblical view; The Meaning and Etymology of the Name Eve; The Pattern of Two Wives; Abraham's Complaint; The Queen Mother in the Kingdom of Kush by Dan'el Kahn

Hierarchy in Creation: The Biblical view

Were it possible to study DNA from the different peoples listed in Genesis 10, we would find that the majority could be classified in Y-DNA Haplogroups R1a, R1b, and J, and mtDNA Ls, M, N, H, and R and their dispersion is shown on this map.

Dr. Alice C. Linsley


Conceptually, the triangle or pyramid was regarded as the structure of the world by the ancient Afro-Asiatics. They were fascinated by the geometric properties of this shape. This is evident in the construction of pyramids and ziggurats. It is also evident in their multi-tiered cosmology which pictured the Creator at the peak of the heavens.

We find the hierarchical concept in the biblical order of creation, with the Human ranked above the other animals and the animals ranked above the plants. Within these tiers are what Genesis calls the "kinds", each reproducing according to its own kind.  The Creator's design entails boundaries which are generally recognized in reproductive science. These boundaries were largely honored by the Afro-Asiatics.

Onanism was an unrighteous deed because 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).

Bestiality and sodomy are also serious violations of the biblical order of creation. By extension, it was forbidden even to sow two different seeds in the same field, as was the blending of different fibers. The prohibition against mixing types, be they seeds, fibers or blood, upholds the distinction between this side of the boundary and that side, against confusing the holy with the unholy, or blurring the distinction between life and death, as happens when a baby goat is boiled in its mother's milk (forbidden three places in Scripture). Ultimately, the binary distinctions are God's way of ordering our thinking so as to preserve our lives and souls.

Pslam 8:6, which parallels the names Enoch and Adam, provides further evidence of this triangular hierarchy. Kain's first-born son was named Enoch and Seth's first-born son was named Enosh. These are linguistically equivalent names.  The name appears later in Numbers as Hanoch, the first-born son of Reuben. The point is that the names Enoch/Enosh/Hanoch stand for the first-born son in the ruling lines. He is the ruler-designate, and an historical figure. He is paralleled in Psalm 8 with Adam, the First Created Man, to whom the mandate was given to "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that move on earth." (Gen. 1:28) This is not a mandate to exploit, as is so often misrepresented by secularists. It is an assertion about the uniqueness of Mankind and our place in the order of creation. 

It is against this conception of the hierarchy in creation that we understand the nature of Eve's sin. She who represents the queen over the created order submits herself to the will of a creature who slithers on the ground. In this the original hierarchy or order in creation became inverted. Instead of listening to the Creator, Eve listened to the serpent, basest of creatures. Instead of taking from the tree of life, she took from a tree that brought death. Death already existed, as evidenced by the extinction of many species even before humans appeared on the surface of the earth. So, Eve's disobedience did not introduce physical death to the world, it brought spiritual death. This is how the Church Fathers understood the Fall. Such death could be overcome only by God acting in time and space.

The First Known Missionary Mandate 

The command to disperse and fill the earth meant that the Hebrew descendants of Adam. Eve, Cain and Seth would go into all the world with their Messian Faith in God father and God Son. Genesis 11 says that the Hebrew ruler-priest caste moved east into Mesopotamia. That has been confirmed through numerous studies in various fields: DNA studies, early migrations, linguistics, ancient texts, archaeology, and anthropology. In Mesopotamia they constructed elevated temples with observation towers. The Bible refers to these simply as "high places." The early Hebrew ruler-priests were known to do this in the service of the early kingdom builders like Nimrod. 

Apparently, life was very comfortable in the fertile plain of Shinar, and the Hebrew were content to ignore the command given to their forefathers to disperse and fill the earth (Gen. 1:28), spreading their Messianic Faith. Genesis 11:1 notes that the people spoke one language with common words/roots. Historically, that too is accurate. They spoke Akkadian, the oldest known Semitic language. Pentecost speaks of the ultimate fulfillment of what God purposes from the beginning. The Jews who had gathered in Jerusalem from many parts of the world heard about Messiah's coming, death, and resurrection, and they took that message to their homelands, some of which were far from Jerusalem.


Related reading: The Hebrew at the Ancient Sun Cities; Abraham the Hebrew; Who Were the Kushites?; The Biblical Meaning of Eve