The Oldest Known Religion

 

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917)

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

British anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor proposed that religion evolved in stages from animism to polytheism to monotheism. He attempted to trace this evolution of religion to support his theory. The relationship between "primitive" societies, and "civilized" societies was a key theme in 19th century anthropological literature.

In his two-volume work Primitive Culture (1871) Tylor posed polytheism as an intermediate stage that coincided with the emergence of distinctions of rank: "As chiefs and kings are among men, so are the great gods among the lesser spirits. They differ from the souls and minor spiritual beings which we have as yet chiefly considered, but the difference is rather of rank than of nature" (vol. 2, p. 334).

Animism is the belief that significant animals, plants, rocks, streams and sacred places possess vitality/anima and participate in some way in spiritual experiences. Animistic communities recognize blood as the primary substance of life. Blood was symbolically represented by red ocher and red ocher burials were universal expressions of the hope for life after death.

Polytheistic religions recognize multiple deities, though often one is ranked higher than the others (henotheism). Polytheism describes late Egyptian religion which was highly syncretistic. However, elements of the earlier belief in God Father (Re) and God Son (Horus) remained in Egyptian religion.

Tylor and his contemporaries Herbert Spencer and James Frazer sought to align evolutionary theory with their perceptions of the development of religions. Their writings presented "primitive" populations as intellectually inferior with childish beliefs in magic, and incapable of monotheism. In fact, the data indicates that exactly the opposite is true: the more primitive the population's lifestyle and the more closely connected to the earth for survival, the more likely the population is to believe in a beneficent Creator God.

The dogmatism of early evolutionary anthropologists appears to have blinded them to the evidence that belief in a supreme High God predates polytheism. Long before the early kingdoms rose in the Ancient Near East, populations living in the Upper Nile Valley believed in God Father. 

Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

Against the evolutionary anthropologists stood Andrew Lang, a student of Tylor who contended that the historical evidence reveals that “primitive” peoples tended to monotheism or henotheism. Lang concluded in 1898 that the idea of the Supreme Being, the High God or "All Father" existed among many primitive tribes prior to Western contact. Comparative studies of creation stories confirm this. 

While studying tribal peoples in northern Nigeria, Dr. Charles Kraft asked a local chief, "What did your people believe about God before the missionaries came?" The old chief told this story:

"Once God and his son lived close to us. They walked, talked, ate, and slept among us. All was well then. There was no thievery or fighting or running off with another man's wife like there is now. But one day God's son ate in the home of a careless woman. She had not cleaned her dishes properly. God's son ate from a dirty dish, got sick, and died. This, of course, made God very angry. He left in a huff and hasn't been heard from since." (Charles Kraft, Christianity in Culture, Orbis Books, 1990, p. 153)

The German ethnologist Wilhelm Schmidt (1868–1954) coined the term "Urmonotheism" to speak of the primitive worship of a High God as opposed to a pantheon of gods. In his 12-volume Der Ursprung der Gottesidee (The Origin of the Idea of God), Schmidt argued that the earliest religions were monotheistic or henotheistic with a conception of the High God as dwelling above in the sky or heavens.

When I taught World Religions the required text taught that the oldest known religion is Hinduism. However, the evidence of ancient texts, anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics does not support that assertion. The rudimentary Messianic Faith is expressed in the religion of the Horite and Sethite Hebrew and can be studied in such ancient documents as the Coffin Texts, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and the Pyramid Texts. Many of the Pyramid Texts predate the oldest Hindu texts by at least 1200 years.

Contrary to another popular opinion, monotheism was not invented by Pharaoh Akhenaton and transmitted to the Jews through Moses. Moses, the Horite Hebrew, was the recipient of a much earlier tradition that should be identified as "Messianic" since it held that God Father had a divine son. 

Winfried Corduan's book In the Beginning: A Fresh Look at the Case for Original Monotheism argues that the evolutionary paradigm held by early secularist anthropologists such as Tylor is spectacularly wrong, and informed anthropologists know it. 

Why is the erroneous theory perpetuated? Probably because the dominance of evolutionary paradigms has not yet passed, and only a few are willing to acknowledge that belief in God Father and God Son is the oldest known religion.

Related reading: Competition Between the Horites and the Sethites; On Blood and the Impulse to Immortality; Dr. Winfried Corduan on the case for original monotheism (podcast); The Case for Ancient Monotheism (video); The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Andrew Lang Reflects on his Mentor E.B. Tylor 

Judaism is Not the Faith of Abraham

Alice C. Linsley


The Apostle Paul wrote a great deal about the Messianic Faith and how it is expressed in the promises made to Abraham the Hebrew. Paul stresses that those who follow Jesus Messiah have been made partakers of those ancient promises (Galatians 3:7-9). He exposes as a false teaching the Judaizers' insistence that the Messianic Faith requires adherence to the laws of Judaism.

Many misconceptions surround the person of Abraham. He is not the founder of Judaism. He was not a Jew. He is identified as "Hebrew" in the Bible and the Hebrew were a caste of priests and rulers with deep roots in antiquity. The English word Hebrew and its variants 'Apiru, Abru, Hapiru, Habiru, appear in texts that date to before Abraham's time. Abraham's faith was received from his Hebrew ancestors. The oldest known site of Horite Hebrew worship at Nekhen dates to 4000 BC, about 2000 years before Abraham.

Many people think that Christianity emerged out of Judaism, but the core belief of the Messianic Faith is that the son of God would take on flesh, be sacrificed, and rise again. This belief was already evident among Abraham’s Horite Hebrew people before 3000 BC. They believed in God Father (Ra or Ani) and God Son (Horus or Enki). Jews reject the very idea that God has a son. Yet the Scriptures say that it is impossible to be saved unless one believes that Jesus is the son of God (Genesis 3:15; Proverbs 30:4, Hosea 11:1; Luke 1:35; John 3:14-17; John 6:40; John 6:69-70; John 20:31; 1 John 5:13). This is why the Apostle Paul speaks of believers being grafted into Abraham, not Judaism. Judaism is not the faith of Abraham the Hebrew.

In Galatians 3, he identifies Abraham’s Seed as Jesus Messiah. In verse 29, Paul explains, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, and heirs according to the promise” made to Abraham.

The Bible provides a great deal of significant anthropological data about Abraham the Hebrew. It also provides information that enables us to identify Abraham's territory between Hebron and Beersheba. In Abraham's time, this region was ruled by the Horite Hebrew and was called Edom. The Greeks called it Idumea, meaning “land of red people.” You will recall that Esau of Edom is described as red, and David, who had Edomite blood, also is described as ruddy or red.

Some of the Horite Hebrew rulers of Edom are listed in Genesis 36 (shown on the diagram above). The great antiquity of the Horite Hebrew of Edom is verified in Genesis 36:31, “These are the kings who ruled in the land of Edom before any king ruled over the Israelites.”

The Messianic tradition upon which the Church stands is revealed in the Bible. It is the tradition of the Horite Hebrew who believed in God Father and God Son. The Horite Hebrew are called “Horim” by Jews, which means parents or ancestors. Jesus lived in a Jewish context which did not recognize him as the fulfillment of the expectations of the Horim. This is because by Jesus’ time, Judaism was only tangentially related to the faith of Abraham.

Certainly, early Christian worship was patterned on the synagogue, with scripture readings, prayers, homilies, and days of feasting and fasting. The east-facing altar is patterned on the Horite Hebrew temple, as are church furnishings such as the tabernacle and the lamp. However, Christianity alone affirms that Messiah is the Son of God. Judaism and Islam reject the very idea that God has a son.

Judaism is the elaboration of rabbinic thought over 3000 years, and though it claims Abraham as its founder, Abraham was not a Jew. Prominent Jews readily admit this.

Rabbi Stephen F. Wise, former Chief Rabbi of the United States, wrote: "The return from Babylon and the introduction of the Babylonian Talmud mark the end of Hebrewism and the beginning of Judaism." This break came at least 1300 years after the time of Abraham the Hebrew.

For Jews, the greatest authority is the Talmud. Consider SUNY professor, Robert Goldberg’s explanation: “The traditional Jew studies Talmud because it communicates ultimate truth—truth about God, truth about the world, and most important, truth about how God wants the holy community of Israel to live.”

The Rabbis are trained in argumentation and the Talmud is a record of their disputations. One drawback is the tendency of the rabbis to debate minutiae and esoteric matters. Over time the Messianic Faith of Abraham - the main thing - became peripheral. The Talmud came to be of greater authority than the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Talmud encourages this. Consider this Talmudic exhortation: “My son, be more careful in the observance of the words of the Scribes than in the words of the Torah." (Talmud Erubin 21b), and this: "My son, give heed to the words of the scribes rather than to the words of the law." This also, "He who transgresses the words of the Scribes sins more gravely than the transgressors of the words of the Law." (Sanhedrin X, 3 f.88b)

In a 2007 NOVA interview Rabbi Shaye Cohen (Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard) admitted that Abraham was not a Jew, and he explains that, nevertheless, the narrative of Judaism presents him as the first Jew as a place to start. In other words, the narrative of Judaism ignores the biblical data about Abraham’s ancestors in Genesis 3, 4, 5, 10 and 11. It is in those early chapters that we find the anthropologically significant data about the origin of the Messianic Faith among Abraham’s ancestors.

Related reading: The Hebrew Were a Caste; The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Where Judaism and Christianity Part Ways; The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew; Hebrew, Israelite, or Jew?; The Earliest Known Site of Horite Hebrew Worship; Another Look at Genesis 3:13-15

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