Joel in Anthropological Perspective

Alice C. Linsley


Joel is a book with some significant anthropological details about the religious life of the kingdom of Judah after the time of Solomon's son Rehoboam. Rehoboam was the first king of Judah. To the north of Judah was the kingdom of Israel. The first king of Israel was Jeroboam.

Both kingdoms strayed from God's calling to be a people devoted to Him and to be a light to the nations. God sent prophets to both kingdoms to call them to repentance. Both kingdoms were to remember God's power to save from sin and to restore fellowship with Him.

In the northern kingdom of Israel there were two centers of worship, one at Bethel and the other at Dan. These were shrines at high elevations. The central image at these shrines was the golden calf, the same image that was fabricated by the Horite Hebrew priest Aaron. It represents a bull calf that is to be sacrificed to make atonement for the sins of the people.

The sacrificial bull calf was shown overshadowed by the sun, a sign of divine appointment for the Horite Hebrew. This is a Messianic image. Aaron is not criticized for making this image. However, the people are criticized for worshiping the image. Here a distinction must be made between the symbolism of the golden bull calf and the actions of the people. To express this for people today, we might speak of the distinction between worshiping the cross instead of the Messiah who was sacrificed on the cross.

In the southern kingdom of Judah, the only center of worship was at the Temple in Jerusalem. The fate of Judah and the Temple is described as the destruction that comes after swarms of locusts. This is an image of waves of invading warriors that leave nothing behind them.

The drama of agricultural devastation is central to the theme. Seeds shrivel under clods of dry earth. The fig, pomegranate, palm, and apple trees are barren and withered. Here is an image of faithless Judah (probably around 350 BC). The theme of Joel is the need for repentance in order for the land, the people, and Jerusalem to be restored.

The priests of the Temple weep because there is no wine or grain to offer before the LORD, and there is no oil for anointing. Gladness dries up (Joel 1:12 and 1:16). This constitutes a call to repentance, a time of mourning and fasting. The prophet is warning the people of Judah to repent.

The people are being warned by the sounding of the shofar (shown above) from the ramparts of Zion. There is time to heed the prophet's warning. As bad as circumstances are, Joel declares that things will get worse for Judah and all the nations because the "day of the LORD" brings darkness and gloom, earth quakes, eclipses, and a blood moon. The stars cease to shine. The apocalyptic imagery so popular during that period is used to emphasize the cosmic impact of human faithlessness. "Yet even now" says the LORD - "Turn back to Me with all your hearts...turn back to the Lord your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in kindness...: (Joel 2:13). The LORD promises restoration, as with Job and Naomi (Joel 2:25 and 3:1).

The curved ram's horn represents the warrior defending his stronghold. The ram's horn, called shofar, was blown at the high places to sound the alarm and to call the warriors to arms. The ram is often spoken of in terms of war, perhaps one reason the great warrior Alexander found it a compelling image. His image appeared on coins with him wearing the ram's horns (shown below). Consider also the conflict that arises between the ram and the he-goat in Daniel 8.

The ram provided by God on Mount Moriah was a symbol of the son of God, Horus. Horus was said to rise in the east as a lamb and set in the west as a ram in mature strength. He was called Horus of the two horizon, which expressed two aspects of his nature as both meek and fierce. The ram was shown as the divinely appointed sacrifice on ancient monuments, and was a symbol of Jesus among early Christians.

Little personal information is provided about the writer. His name in Hebrew is Yo' El. Some sources says this means "Yahu is God." Yahu was a common name for the High God in Judah. Numerous official seals (bullae) have been found in Jerusalem excavations with the divine name Yahu. Royal officials attached the name to their names. Examples include Hilqi-Yahu, Shebna-Yahu, and Palti-Yahu. 

Palti-Yahu was an official in time of King Zedekiah of Judah (Ezekiel 11:1,13). A seal with the name Shebna-Yahu appeared on the lintel of a tomb at Siloam in Jerusalem. Shebna-yahu may have been the High Priest Shebna during the time of King Hezekiah. Another seal from the 7th century B.C. names Hanan, son of the priest Hilqi-Yahu, the priest. Hilqiyahu is better known as Hilkiah. Hilkiah was the High Priest during the reign of Josiah.

In the ancient world, royal officials commonly affixed the names of God to their names or titles. A Horite Hebrew priest served as a vizier to Amenhotep III and his son, Akhenaten. The ruler-priest's name was Abdiel, meaning "servant of El." His Egyptian title was ‘Apir-El, which means priest servant of El.

It is also possible that Yo' El means "El reigns over all" or "El appoints." El is another name for God among the ancient Hebrew. This aligns with what we are told about Yo' El's father. In verse 1, we read that Joel is the son of Petu'El. Petuel or Pethuel is said to be an Aramaic name, but it resembles the ancient Egyptian word PT which means sky or heaven. In ancient Egyptian nb pt means "lord of heaven." So Petu'El could refer to the God of heaven. Joel may be claiming to be a deified "son" of God. For the original readers this certainly would have lent great authority to Joel's message.

Related reading: The High Places; Aaron was Buried in Edom; Solar Symbolism of the R1b Peoples; Yahu Seals; Ram Symbolism for Messiah; Jesus: From Lamb to Ram

The Horite Hebrew Wisdom of Elihu

Alice C. Linsley

"There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job..." (Job 1:1)

Job was a Horite Hebrew of the clan of Uz. Uz was a grandson of Seir the Horite ruler of Edom (Genesis 36). Edom was where Abraham the Hebrew settled. Jeremiah speaks of Edom as one of the ancient seats of wisdom.

The divine name YHWH was known among the Horite Hebrew of Edom before the time of Moses. According to Jewish tradition, Moses was born around 1393 BC. However, the name YHWH appears in connection to the Seirites of Edom as early as 1500 BC. Lists of place names in the Nubian temples of Soleb and Amara West record six toponyms associated with the Horites of Edom, “the land of Shasu.” A monument of Ramesses II claims that he “has plundered the Shasu-land, captured the mountain of Seir; a 19th Dynasty letter mentions “the Shasu-tribes of Edom,” and Ramesses III declares that he has “destroyed the Seirites among the tribes of the Shasu.”

The description of Job fits that of the Horite Hebrew ruler-priests. Though accused of being a sinner by his friends, Job was a righteous man who "feared God and shunned evil" (Job 1:1). He rose early to offer prayers and burnt offerings for his children, one by one. He comes to be afflicted by a "ha-satan," the Accuser. Satan's power is limited as he is a creation. He must ask God's permission to afflict God's servant and God puts limits on what Satan may do to Job. The Hebrew did not regard God and Satan as equals. The faith of Abraham was not dualistic.

The trial of Job in which Satan acts as the accuser parallels Zechariah 3:2-6 where Satan accuses the High Priest Joshua (Yeshua/Jesus). In that trial God acquits Joshua and commands that he be clothed in pure garments and crowned with two crowns (ataroth). This points to Jesus who, as the Son of God, would wear a double crown according to Horite Hebrew expectation. The double crown represents how Messiah unites two peoples: the faithful of Israel (Old Covenant) and the faithful of the Church (New Covenant).

Elihu is the last of Job's kin to speak. In Strong's Concordance Elihu is said to mean "He is my God". However, it is more likely that the name relates to God's Word since El refers to God and hu was a Horite word for the divine Word that overcomes chaos. Hu refers to the authoritative word in ancient Egyptian belief and is mentioned in the Old Kingdom Pyramid texts (PT 251, PT 697). There is a close resemblance to the Logos of John's Prologue in that Hu is depicted as the falcon of the Son of God, or the ram, the totem of the Son that overcomes death. (A ram was provided for sacrifice on Mt. Moriah).

Elihu is of the clan of Buz. Buz, Huz and Uz were a three-clan Hebrew confederation. I Chronicles 5:14 tells us that the son of Buz was Jahdo (Hebrew Yahdo), and Jahdo's son was Yeshishai, the Aramaic form of Yeshua/Jesus. With the names Yahdo and Yeshishai we see the initial Canaanite Y that indicates a divinely appointed ruler.

Assuming that Elihu is an historical person, he likely was the brother-in-law of Tamar's son Hezron. (See dark triangle below.) Tamar was the daughter of a shrine priest. This suggests that Elihu lived with his father Barachel in the territory of Buz, but belonged to the household of Elihu, his maternal grandfather, also a priest. Elihu's mother would have been the daughter of Elihu the Elder. In other words, we have further evidence of intermarriage between two Horite Hebrew lines: the ruler-priest lines of Judah and Elihu the Elder.


Evidence of endogamy among the Hebrew Lines of Judah and Elihu (2019)

   Judah                                                    Elihu the Elder

      ∆    =   O Tamar                                                                       ∆

                       Hezron  ∆  =  O Elihu the Younger’s sister                                 O Elihu’s mother

                                                                                                                              ▲Elihu the Younger

Both Elihu the Elder and Elihu the Younger were of the ruler-priest caste and ancestors of King David. Elihu the Younger takes us beyond the wisdom of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. He moves us from the retributive justice espoused by Job's three friends to the reality that "God is greater than any human being. Why then quarrel with Him for not replying to you word for word? God speaks first one way and then in another, although we do not realize it." (Job 33:12-14 NJB)

Related reading: The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Three-Clan Hebrew Confederations; The Double Crown of Horus; What Abraham Discovered on Mount Moriah; The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative

Blaming the Evil Canaanites

These standing stone at Tell Gezer date to the period of the standing stones erected on Salisbury Plain in England around 2500 BC. Photo: Dennis Cole

Alice C. Linsley

There were many religious practices among the Canaanites, but most of the shrines and temples were at elevated sites, called "high places" in the Bible. Most of the high places of the Judean and Edomite hills were under Egyptian control from about 2000 to 1178 BC.

In Hebrew, the high places and fortified mounds are called "ophel" (Hebrew עֹ֫פֶל). The root of the word ophel is OP and pertains to a complex of interrelated ideas: seeing (optic); armed guards (opiltes); walled towns (oppida), and sun shrines (O'piru) served by a caste of priests known in the ancient world as Abru, Ha'piru, Ha'biru and 'Apiru. Abru is the Akkadian word for priest, and the English word Hebrew come from the word Habiru.

Through archaeology and biblical anthropology, we have come to know a great deal about the peoples who lived in Canaan. Their shrines were built at high elevations near water systems and they were later fortified. They were masters of stone work and left behind standing stones of monumental proportions such as those at Tell Gezer.

The term "Canaanite" refers to many different peoples, some of whom were ethnically Nilotic. Genesis 10:15-19, traces the Canaanite peoples to an otherwise unknown descendant of Noah named "Canaan."

"Canaan fathered the Sidon his first-born, then Heth, and the Jebusites, the Amorites, Girgashites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites. Later Canaanite clans spread out. The Canaanite frontier stretched from Sidon all the way to Gerar near Gaza and all the way to Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim near Lehsa."

There were Horite Hebrew priests at many of the Canaanite shrines long before the Jews returned there from Babylonian exile. The Deuteronomist is a post-exilic source with an agenda. The Deuteronomist Historian presents the Canaanites as decadent, idolatrous, and deserving of being displaced from the land, even exterminated. Doubtless, there were practices surrounding fertility that were contrary to the purity code of the Horite Hebrew. These made it easy to cast all Canaanites as decadent.

The Deuteronomist mentions the destruction of Jericho, a pre-pottery Neolithic (PPN) settlement (10,500 to 9,500 BC) whose prestige as a fortified shrine city surpassed that of Jerusalem. There is evidence of competition here.

The Deuteronomist's main concerns were to establish Jerusalem as the only place of worship for Jews as a way of melding the people into a nation. The Deuteronomist encourages the destruction of all high places except Jerusalem. The targets to be destroyed were the bamot. Bamot is the plural form of the word bamah, meaning high or exalted. The word appears in names like Oholibamah and Obamah.

The Deuteronomist revises the history of Abraham's Horite Hebrew people to present a narrative about Moses and the Law that serves to strengthen Jewish identity.The focus is shifted from the archaic Hebrew rulers and their hope for a Righteous Ruler conceived by divine overshadowing and destined to rise from the grave to centralized worship at the Jerusalem temple. This source is also responsible for reshaping the Passover and Tabernacles into national observances. He promotes the power of the Jerusalem elite, and Israel’s possession of the land. This is the beginning of political Zionism.

Related reading: How the Deuteronomist Changes the Genesis Narrative; Afro-Asiatic Influences on the Deuteronomist Historian; Fundamentalism and Syncretism in Hebrew History; The Reconceptualization of Kingship in Deuteronomy; Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in the Bible

Elements of the Messianic Faith in Early Hinduism

Alice C. Linsley

Hinduism has many layers that developed over time. As a religion, Hinduism reached its zenith in the Axial Age (900-200 BC). Today there are at least 10 Hindu schools of thought. However, at the earliest level, the Vedic texts reveals the influence of the Horite Hebrew who moved into the Indus River Valley. The earliest known site of Horite Hebrew worship, Nekhen on the Nile, dates to 3800 BC.

The earliest civilization of the Indus Valley is that of Harappa (2500–1700 BC). In Dravidian Harappa means "Horus is father." This stone relief is at Agkhor Wat. It shows Horus in the form of his falcon totem perched on the mast of Ra's solar boat. The etiology of Anghor Wat is also telling. Wat means village, town, settlement, or shrine. Anghor is ankh-Hor which means "Long live Horus!"

In Mannika's best-known work, "Angkor Wat: Time, Space and Kingship" she argues that the dimensions, alignment, and bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat speak of Suryavarman II as the divinely appointed king.

The idea of a universal king who is divinely appointed to rule is much older than Angkor Wat. It is found in the oldest layers of Hindu thought. The Sanskrit word cakravartin and the Pali word cakkavattin refer to a righteous king who rules over the entire world. His "messianic" rule is called sar-vabhauma. From Africa to Nepal the words sar and sarki refer to rulers and priests. The Akkadian word "sar" means king. This is the root of the royal title Sar-gon, which means High King or King of Kings. Nimrod's Akkadian name was Šarru-kīnu, which is usually translated “the true king.”

Messianic expectation appears to have originated among the Horite Habiru (Hebrew), a priest caste that served in the temples and shrines of the archaic world. The Habiru were in the service of the "mighty men of old" (Genesis 10), the early kingdom builders like Nimrod. Nimrod was a Kushite kingdom builder (Genesis 10:8) and the language of his territory was Akkadian.

At its earliest levels of development, Hinduism is older than Judaism, but not older than the Hebrew faith. The Rig Veda, the oldest Vedic text dates to between 1900 and 1200 BC, after the time of Abraham the Hebrew. Judaism emerges closer to 700 BC. The term "samhita" refers to the most ancient layer of text in the Vedas. Parts of the Vedic Samhitas constitute the oldest layer of Hindu tradition and include material that resembles Horite Hebrew concepts.

In the Rig Veda, for example, the number seven is sacred, and the Word of God is called Speech and is described as "a loving wife, finely robed." She resembles the Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), personified as a female (Sirach 24:8). In Sirach, Wisdom declares that she “came forth from the mouth of the Most High” as the first-born before all creatures.

In Srimad Bhagavatam 10:16 we find a parallel to Genesis 3:15 where we are told that the serpent's head will be crushed under the feet of the Woman's Son. The Hindu text reads: "The Ancient Man danced on the serpent, who still spewed poison from his eyes and hissed loudly in his anger, and he trampled down with his feet whatever head the serpent raised, subduing him calmly..." (Cited in Andrew Wilson, Ed. World Scriptures, p. 449.)

The same idea is found in Psalm 91:12-13 - "They will bear you up in their hands, that you do not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread upon the lion and cobra, the young lion and the serpent you will trample down."

However, this expectation was expressed about 1000 years before Psalm 91 in the Pyramid Texts. "Horus has shattered (tbb, crushed) the mouth of the serpent with the sole of his foot (tbw)" (Utterance 388)

Scholars from India acknowledge the Nile-Indus connections. The Indian archaeologist, B. B. Lal contends that the Dravidians came from the Upper Nile (Nubia/Kush). Lal writes:

"At Timos the Indian team dug up several megalithic sites of ancient Nubians which bear an uncanny resemblance to the cemeteries of early Dravidians which are found all over Western India from Kathiawar to Cape Comorin. The intriguing similarity extends from the subterranean structure found near them. Even the earthenware ring-stands used by the Dravidians and Nubians to hold pots were identical."

The Indian historian and anthropologist Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has written: "We have to begin with the Negroid or Negrito people of prehistoric India who were the first human inhabitants. Originally they would appear to have come from Africa through Arabia and the coastlands of Iran and Baluchistan."

The Indian scholar Malati J. Shendge has concluded that the language of the Harappans of the Indus Valley was Akkadian, the language of the territory of Nimrod the Kushite. The Bible scholar, E.A. Speiser, found that names taken to be Indo-European were often labeled "Hurrian" [Horite] only to be identified eventually as Akkadian. The Horites were widely dispersed and spoke the languages of the people among whom they lived. Thus scholars today use terms like Hurro-Akkadian, Hurro-Urartian, and Canaano-Akkadian.

The Indian linguist Ajay Pratap Singh explains,"Comparisons of Akkadian and Sanskrit words yielded at least 400 words in both languages with comparable phonetic and semantic similarities. Thus Sanskrit has, in fact, descended from Akkadian."

Related reading: The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative; The Horite High Places; Who Were the Sumerians?; The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Horite Names From Nuzi (2700-2500 BC); The Shrine City of Nekhen

Who Were the Sumerians?

Alice C. Linsley


The evidence of anthropology, linguistics, DNA studies, and archaeology indicates that the Sumerians were likely dispersed cattle-herding Proto-Saharans who moved into the northern regions of Eden where the climate conditions in this riverine terrain during the African Aqualithic made the land ideal for grazing. The Proto-Saharans moved into Mesopotamia before 7000 BC. They developed a way of life that centered around the ancient water systems.

In Genesis, Eden is described as a vast well-watered world that extended from the source of the Nile in Ethiopia to the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

This Eden belt has an arc shape that corresponds roughly with the drought zone of the early 1970s when Lake Chad began to shrink rather dramatically and the smaller lakes of Egypt's desert virtually disappeared. The arc extends in three directions from the southern Sahara near the Benue Trough in Nigeria to the Nile and there bends up-river (south) to the equatorial East African rift valleys, and northeast toward present day Jordan, Israel, Syria, and Iraq.

The height of this ‘aquatic civilization’ came in the seventh millennium BC, when higher rainfall made rivers longer and wider, and caused lakes to burst their basins (Butzer et al., 1972; Zinderen Bakker, 1972).

Around 7000 BC, Lake Chad expanded enormously and overflowed via the Benue and Lower Niger rivers into the Atlantic. In East Africa the small lakes in the Kenya rift valley and in Egypt's desert rose and many of the water systems became connected. This was a time of flooding and probably when Noah lived (c.4200 BC) in the region of Lake Chad. The region is called Borno or Benue, both mean "land of Noah."

The Dispersal of the Sumerians

The Sumerians established settlements between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The rivers and their tributaries provided abundant water for sheep and cattle. The Sumerian herding of sheep and cattle is a recurrent theme in early Sumerian art and literature.

Sumerian relief from Ur showing sheep and cattle (c. 2600 BC).

Some of the settlements became royal cities from which the surrounding region was governed by the king or the vassal of a high king. The Sumerian city-states included Eridu, Nippur, Lagash, Kish, Ur and Uruk (Erech). These became shrine cities similar to those found along the Nile at Heliopolis, Nekhen and Nekheb.

Among the Sumerians and Akkadians there resided a royal caste of priests who served the kings in their daily worship and also in funeral rituals. This practice was well established in ancient Egypt. Matthew J. Adams' comprehensive study (2003) addresses ancient Egyptian references to “royal mortuary complex attendants” designated by the non-compounded hntjw-š. He notes that land for plowing was set aside for the priest attendants of the "dual pyramid town" by royal decree (p. 27).

The ancient priests also served as royal advisors, scribes, physicians, astronomers, and temple architects. Beginning around 2000 BC, they supervised the construction of ziggurats in Mesopotamia. These were stepped temples, usually with seven tiers. The number seven was a sacred number for the ancient priests. The connection between the words for priest (Akkadian: abru) and the number seven is evident in the Nilotic (Luo) word for the number seven, which is abiriyo.

The word "Hebrew" is derived from the Akkadian word abru, meaning priest. Variants spellings include 'Apiru, Ha-biru and Ha-piru. The word refers to priests who served at the temples of the ancient Sun cities. The Sun temple was called O-piru, meaning "house of the Sun." The Habiru were already widely dispersed in the 14th-13th centuries B.C. Their dispersion was driven by a marriage and ascendancy pattern in which some sons were sent away to establish their own territories.

The Sumerians borrowed words from the Akkadians as early at 4000 BC. Some Sumerian words came into Hebrew through Aramaic. Abraham's brother Na-hor (meaning a devotee of Horus) ruled over the territory of their deceased father between the rivers of Mesopotamia. Three of the Egyptian Armana tablets identify this region as "Naharin" which means "Land of Horites." Genesis 25:20 and 28:2 call this region Paddan-Aram, meaning "field" or "land of Aram." The link between Aram (Land of Arameans) and Naharaim (Land of Horites) is evident in the description of the region as Aram-Naharaim in Gen 24:10; Judg 3:8; and Ps 60:21.

NImrod was one of the Hebrew rulers who dispersed into Mesopotamia . He was the son of Kush (Gen. 10:8). The language of Nimrod's territory was likely Sumero-Akkadian. Nimrod's cultural context is more Nilotic than Mesopotamian. He is associated with Calah on the Tigris River, known today as the city of Nimrud. Calah (Akkadian 'Kalhu') appears to have been the northernmost point of his territory in Mesopotamia. Nimrod's territory extended along the Tigris between Calah and Ashur. Likewise, Terah's territory extended between Ur and Haran. In the Bible, we first meet Abraham in Ur because he was a descendant of Nimrod the Kushite kingdom builder (Gen. 10). Both Abraham and Nimrod were Hebrew rulers whose ancestors served as ruler-priests along the Nile.

The shrine city of Urkesh (Tell Mozan) was between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It was inhabited before the time of the Hurrians. The artifacts there suggest that the Horite Hebrew priests influenced the religious symbolism. The Temple of the Lion is an example (2200 BC).

This bronze foundation peg in the form of a snarling lion comes from Urkesh. Pegs like this were placed in foundation deposits under temple walls. Their appearance in northern Mesopotamia represents the adoption of a practice from the Horite Hebrew. The earliest lion imagery dates to Naqada IIC, circa 3200 BC. (See Nekhen News, p. 8.) Nekhen is the oldest known site of Horite Hebrew worship (4200 BC). 

Related reading: The Scope of Genesis 1-11; The Shrine City of Nekhen; Horite and Sethite Mounds; The Substance of Abraham's Faith; The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative; Sun Cities of the Ancient World; The Prudhoe Lions