Trekking the Abraham Trail

Genesis describes Abraham's long journey from Haran to Horite territory in Canaan (Genesis 12:5). Soon pilgrims will be able to hike the 750-mile long trail linking Turkey, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Israel to retrace Abraham's path.

The Abraham trail begins in Haran and passes through the city of Gaziantep. It meanders southward, crossing the border into Syria and continues to Aleppo. The trail then moves south through Damascus before crossing the Jordanian border to the city of Amman. It then crosses over to Jericho in the Palestinian Authority, and then to the ancient cities of Nablus, Jerusalem and Hebron, where Abraham and Sarah were buried. From Nablus, one can travel to Shechem where Abraham consulted the Moreh at the great Oak (Gen. 12:6-8).

William Ury, of Harvard University, has said: "The route is already there. We are only removing the dust from the footsteps of Abraham."

Read more here.

Is Enoch a Royal Title?

Alice C. Linsley


The first three words of the Ten Commandments are:  Anochi, Havayah E-lohecha, meaning I am God, your Ruler. The Talmud (Shabbat 105a) questions the word Anochi, (I) which is an unusual form of the pronoun, as opposed to the more commonly used Ani. It is not originally Hebrew. The word comes from a time before Abraham and the cultural context is Nilo-Saharan. Anochi means "I" in the Egyptian language and is refers to the royal first person. It is likely that Anoch, Enoch and Hanock (Reuben's first born son) are variant spellings of the same word, and all refer to rulers.

The word anochi is also found among peoples who migrated from the Nile westward, such as the Igbo and the Ashante. Among the Igbo, anochie means “a replacer” or “to replace” and among the Ashante the word anokyi means "Ano Junior" or the "Ano who follows his father." In both cases, one finds the idea of succession from father to son, suggesting a line of descent. A Nigerian friend reports that anochie also means "direct heir to a throne." The biblical word Enoch is clearly associated with royal ascendancy.

Enoch is doubtless a cognate of anochi and therefore signifies heir to the throne. Analysis of the Genesis King Lists (Gen. 4 and 5) indictaes that Cain's son was Enoch because he would ascend to the throne.  The question is whose throne?  As it was the custom for these rulers to have two wives, there were two firstborn sons,  and these were heirs to different thrones.  The firstborn son of the half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father.  The firstborn son of the cousin/niece wife ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named. In other words, it appears that Cain's son by his cousin wife was the designated ruler over Enoch I's territory. 

Another Enoch is named in Genesis 5:18-24.  He ascended to the throne of his father Jared.  This Enoch was the father of Methuselah and the paternal grandfather of Lamech the Younger.  He was a contemporary of Lamech the Elder, whose two wives are named in Genesis 4:23.

As is evident from this segment of the Genesis 4 and 5 king lists, Enoch's son married the daughter of Lamech and she named their firstborn son after her father, as was the custom for the cousin bride.  Lamech the Younger would have ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named.

It is likely that the biblical name Enoch is a royal name or title and that its origins are best explained by looking to the Nilotic peoples.  Here again we have evidence that Abraham's ancestors came from Africa, as is attested by Genesis 10.

Another theory about the etymology of Enoch further suggests a connection to the Nilotic peoples. The late Achieng Oneko was a political freedom fighter in Kenya. Oneko is a common name among the Nilotic Luo. Oneko is a variant of Enoch. Nek/Neko in Luo is to die or a reference to death, which Enoch is said to have avoided by being "taken" and no more.


Related reading:  Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; The Marriage and Ascendency Pattern of Abraham's Ancestors

Nahor and his Descendants

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Abraham's older brother was Nahor. Na-Hor is a Horus name. In ancient Akkadian, Na is a modal prefix indicating service to, affirmation, or affiliation. Na-Hor indicates that this man was a devotee of HR, which in ancient Egyptian refers to the Most-High God. Horus names were not unusual among the Horite Hebrew. Other Hebrew rulers with a Horus name include Hur, a "father of Bethlehem" and Harnepher, a chief of the tribe of Asher (1 Chron. 7:36).

Nahor ascended to the throne of their father Terah that probably extended between Haran and Ur, along the Euphrates River. He was the progenitor of twelve Aramean tribes through his 11 sons and 1 daughter. Eight were children of Milcah and four were children of Reumah (Gen. 22.20-24). Since the lines of Nahor and Abraham intermarried, it serves us well to learn all that we can about Abraham's nephews.

Genesis 22:20 tells us Milcah married Nahor and gave birth to eight sons. The most notable of Milcah's sons was Kemuel, the father of Aram the Younger. Aram the Elder was one of Shem's sons (Gen. 10:22) and he had a son named Uz. Job was of the clan of Uz.

In Numbers 34:24 we find that a descendant of Kemuel was a leader of the Ephraimites. I Chronicles 27:17 says that the Ephraimite Kemuel had a son named Hashabiah who was a Levite ruler. I Chronicles 26:30 referes to Hashabiah as a "Hebronite" who was put "in charge of Israel west of Jordan in everything pertaining to Yahweh and to the service of the king." In other words, one of Lot’s relatives by his sister was a man of great authority in Israel.

In Patriarchal times the rulers among these Horite clans would have intermarried. In his commentary on Genesis, E.A. Speiser recognizes this. He believes that the “parallel treatment of the histories of Abraham and Lot is added proof that interrelationship was particularly intimate and important in early times.” (Anchor Bible Commentary, p. 146)  The intermarriage of the clans is indicated also by the meaning of the names of Lot’s sons. Moab (Muab in Egyptian) means "from the father" and Ben-Ammi means "son of kin."

Whether Moab and Ben-Ammi were Lot’s first-born sons by two wives or his grandchildren, he is presented in Genesis as a great chief with the same familial pattern as Terah, Abraham and Jacob. The marriage and ascendancy pattern involved two firstborn sons by different women. The first wife was the half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham) and the second wife was usually a cousin (as was Keturah to Abraham).

A patrilineal cousin is a first cousin who is in the same descent group as her husband. In other words, she and her cousin husband have a common male ancestor. This was the preferred marriage arrangement for rulers among Abraham's Horite people whose religion and point of origin is the ancient Nile. The rulers 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) who named her firstborn son after her father, following the cousin bride's naming prerogative.

One of Nahor's grandsons was Lot, the son of Haran. The name Lot is found in Egyptian records, as in the name of the ruler Nim-Lot. Nimlot means the “Waters of Lot.” An earlier pictograph for water was w.  A sense of this is retained in the Arabic word for sweet water: ka-w-thr, which literally means “pure water from the King.”  In the ancient world, kings dug wells and controlled all the sources of the fresh water. Lot and his Horite ruler ancestors were the great rulers of the ancient world who controlled the major waterways and built their temples and shrines along rivers, at oases, and at wells.

Related reading: Hebrew Names and Titles; Abraham's Sons;  Moses' Two Wives; The Pattern of Two Wives; The Marriage and Ascendency Pattern of Abraham's People; Lot's Daughters