The Sun and Moon as a Binary Set

Alice C. Linsley

The Sun and the Moon were considered a binary set among Abraham's Horite Hebrew ancestors. That means that the ancient Ha'biru thought of the Sun and the Moon as entities that naturally belong together, as male and female belong together. The sun represented the male principle observed in creation. It was believed to inseminate the earth and to overshadow those divinely appointed to rule. The Sun and the Moon ruled over separate dominions of day and night, but they were not perceived as being equal (dualism). The Sun was made to be the greater light (Gen. 1:16).

Study of the solar imagery in Genesis reveals that the Sun was a significant symbol for the ancient Hebrew ruler-priests. The Sun was the emblem of the Creator and the Creator's divine son. The "Seed" of Genesis 3:15 is the son of God who was expected to be born of a dedicated virgin who conceived by divine overshadowing. That is what is depicted in ancient images of Hathor, the mother of Horus. That is what was fulfilled in the Virgin Mary who conceived by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. This is portrayed in paintings of the Annunciation with the Spirit hovering over Mary in the form of a dove.

Bishop's crozier with solar serpent, a symbol of divine appointment

In Genesis, we find the Sun linked to the Moon only once: "God made two great lights--the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars." (Gen. 1:16) There are other allusions to the Sun in Genesis and none of these link the Sun to the Moon. The superiority of the Sun is reflected in the fact that the Sun is referenced or alluded to at least 10 times in the first 37 chapters of Genesis.

In Deuteronomy the Sun is linked to the Moon and stars, reflecting the astronomical interests of the Neo-Babylonians. In Exodus, the Sun is depicted as a bronze disk or a coiled serpent on Moses' staff.The golden serpent on the uraeus crown of Pharaoh was a symbol of Pharaoh's divine appointment by solar overshadowing.

Some peoples of the ancient world thought of the Sun and the Moon as the eyes of the Creator who dwelt "on high" or in the heavens. The Sun was regarded as the Creator's right eye and the Moon was the left eye. They were not regarded has having equal strength. The right eye was said to be have better vision than the left eye.

The Sun was associated with masculine virtues. This is because it is the stronger and the greater light (Genesis 1:16). The sun's rays are like seeds that fall to earth and cause plants to grow. In other words, the sun was said to inseminate the earth. The meteoritic iron found on the earth's surface was worn by chiefs and rulers because it represented power from on high.

The Moon was associated with feminine virtues because it is the Sun's companion, as the wife is to her husband. It is the smaller and weaker light in the sky. Because the Moon affects water, tides, and body fluids in a repeating cycle there is a natural association of the Moon with the periodicity of the female's menstrual cycle. Many ancient peoples associated pregnancy with the Moon. The Moon influences the female's monthly cycle which is why menstruation is called le moment de la lune ("the time of the moon") in French. The Moon also stimulates female lactation.

The Sun is empirically observed as greater in size and strength to the Moon, and the Moon reflects the greatness of the Sun (refulgent light). Likewise, the "mighty men of old" under whom science and technology advanced in the ancient world built their kingdoms through their queens. These rulers appeared with skin darkened by the Sun as a sign of divine overshadowing by which they received their and authority. However, their queens appeared with their skin covered in white powder to represent the Moon.

The solar symbolism of the Bible is masculine, never feminine. The Sun cradled between the bull's horns is a symbol of divine appointment among the Horite Hebrew and is represented by the Canaanite Y in the names of many of the Hebrew clan chiefs.

The Y designates a divinely appointed ruler (deified "son" of God), which is why it appears in the Hebrew names of many Biblical rulers: Yaqtan (Joktan); Yishmael (Ishmael); Yishbak; Yitzak (Isaac); Yacob (Jacob); Yosef (Joseph); Yetro (Jethro); Yeshai (Jesse), Yonah (Jonah), and Yeshua (Joshua/Jesus).

In the ancient world, only one female wore that symbol as her headdress: Hathor, the mother of Horus, who was called the "son" of God. She is a foreshadowing of the Virgin Mary. When Mary inquired how she should become a mother, was told by the angel Gabriel that she would be overshadowed (Luke 1).

Among Abraham's ancestors the Sun was honored as the Creator's symbol or emblem. They conceived of God as the Great Chief who daily makes his circuit between the two wives/households dawn and dusk. This is why none of the rulers listed in Genesis placed their wives on an east-west axis, except for the Lamech who posed himself as God's equal. Bible scholar Theodore Gaster noted this belief. He explained that the names of Lamech's two wives, Ada and Tzillah, refer to dawn and dusk (The Schocken Bible, Vol. 1, p. 28).

Related reading: Freeing God from Gender and Tradition; Seven Planets, Seven Bowls; Lamech Segment Analysis; Binary Sets and the Binary Worldview; Iron Seeds from Heaven; The Serpent on Moses's Staff; Which is the "Dark" Lover in the Song of Songs?; A Tent for the Sun; Lévi-Strauss and Derrida on Binary Oppositions

The Bible and Imagined Morality

Alice C. Linsley


The writer of this article, J. Parnell, writes, "The current debate is plagued by a binary lens." That statement needs to be unpacked before the reader can see the flaw in Parnell's thinking. He seems to mean that the discussion of homosex has polarized into two groups. Polarization and a binary worldview are NOT the same thing. 

The biblical stand against homosex, onanism and bestiality is entirely on the basis of a binary worldview. The difference between the binary view and polarization is significant. Contemporary morality would have us believe that both positions - pro and con - are equally valid (though one is more politically correct). This is dualism. In dualism the entities in a binary set are regarded as equal. Think Ying-Yang. On the other hand, the biblical writers understood that one entity in the fixed binary set is objectively observed to be superior to the other. Males are larger and stronger than females. The Sun's light is greater than the refulgent light of the Moon. 

In Genesis we read that God created two great lights in the heavens: the greater (Sun) to rule the day and the lesser (moon) to rule the night. The superiority of the male and the Sun are not value judgments. These represent empirical observation of a universal pattern. The binary worldview is found throughout the Bible and is especially evident in Genesis. Sometimes the binary distinction is rather subtle and easy to miss. Consider, for example, the binary set of hot and cool encounters with God. Abraham was visited “in the heat of the day” by God in three Persons (Gen. 18:1). The binary opposite is “in the cool of the day”, the time of God’s visitation to Adam and Eve in Paradise (Gen. 3:8). We have encounters with God described as hot and cool. We must always pay attention to such distinctions. In the first God has come to punish Sodom and Gomorrah, and in the second God has come to enjoy fellowship with the Man and the Woman. 

Truth in the Bible is told from the perspective of both the male and the female. There are both male and female prophets in the Bible. Deborah judged Israel while sitting under her tamar tree. A tamar is a date nut palm and was associated with the female principle. Many Old Testament women were named Tamar. The prophet or "moreh" consulted by Abraham sat under an oak. This tree was associated with the male principle. There is no murky middle ground. No androgenous authority figure sitting under some fanciful tree.

There are two "passovers" in the Old Testament. The passover associated with Moses involving the lamb's blood streaked on the lintel and door posts. Because of this blood, death passed over these houses. Likewise the scarlet cord hanging from the window of Rahab's house preserved those within the house when death came to Jericho. There is no denying the blood symbolism and no imaginary substitute for it.

The Bible asserts as the foremost distinction the relationship of the Creator to the creation. The Creator transcends the creation. Likewise, the Creator is greater than the creature. Were this not so, there would be no Gospel of Jesus Christ. For He who was uncreated, emptied Himself of his elevated estate to become flesh. This is the meaning of the Greek word kenosis (κένωσις)- to empty oneself. This divine action is embodied in Jesus Christ, "who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." (Philippians 2:6-8) The strong Overcomer stoops to save the weak.

Anthropologists observe a distinction also between the blood work of men in killing and the blood work of women in birthing. The two bloods represent the binary opposites of life and death. The blood shed in war, hunting and animal sacrifice fell to warriors, hunters and priests. The blood shed in first intercourse, the monthly cycle and in childbirth fell to wives and midwives. The two bloods were never to mix or even to be present in the same space. Women didn’t participate in war, the hunt, and in animal sacrifices, and they were isolated during menses. Likewise, men were not present at the circumcision of females or in the birthing hut.

The male principle involves insemination, protection of the weaker, expansion and uprightness. It is symbolized in the ancient world by meteorite showers and iron "seeds" covering the surface of the earth, by the Sun's rays shining down, the lengthening of shadows, and the high places (kar, tamana) and the standing stones and sacred pillars. The female principle involves receptivity, birthing, nurturing, fluidity and softness. It is symbolized by water, date nut palms, the swelling of gourds, being overshadowed by the Sun, and milk.

The blurring of the distinction between male and female, between humans and other creatures, and between life and death is forbidden in the Bible. This is why homosex and bestiality were punished by death, and the Israelites were commanded never to boil a young goat it its mother’s milk.

Sex between humans and animals blurs the distinction of human superiority (being made in the image of the Creator). The spilling of semen (onanism) is regarded as an unrighteous deed because this too violates the fixed order in Creation. 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. This is the ancient wisdom which observed immutable patterns in nature. It is based on reality, not imagined entities or moral relativism. Such wisdom paved the way for technological advances in the ancient world and empirical science in the modern world.

Related reading: The Importance of Binary Distinctions; Binary Distinctions and Kenosis, Ancient Seats of Wisdom; Stone Work of the Ancient World; Who Laid the Foundations of Science?; The Murky Waters of Insanity

Biblical Anthropology and the Question of Common Ancestry

Alice C. Linsley


Since Biblical Anthropology concerns itself with cultural antecedents and human origins it is natural that a Biblical anthropologist would explore the question of common ancestry as it is posed by Evolution.

If humans and apes (or humans and pigs) share a common genetic ancestry there must certainly be evidence for that in the fossil record. Frankly, I do not see it. Instead, the evidence points to humans appearing suddenly and de novo about 4 million years ago. The Australopithecus afarensis and the more recent Australopithecus africanus show every evidence of being fully human despite the small cranium. I have argued here that, given the totality of other evidence that favors human identity, brain size is a less important indicator than the binary feature of the brain and of primitive thought.

For example, the cerebral hemispheres exhibit strong bilateral symmetry in structure and function. That said, the left hemisphere has some dominant features. The lateral sulcus generally is longer in the left hemisphere than in the right, and Broca's area and Wernicke's area are present only in the left hemisphere in greater than 95% of the population. Thus the human brain exhibits both functional and structural asymmetry in the binary feature.

Levi-Strauss and others have noted that the binary sets are the basis of complex thought about the world and a commonality among primitive peoples. Similarly, computer science demonstrates that great complexity emerges from binary language.

Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors named in the the Genesis king Lists observed binary sets in the order of creation, such as east-west, male-female, day-night, dry-wet, raw-cooked, life-death, and heaven-earth. The regarded one of the entities of the set to be superior in some observable way than the other. The sun is greater than the moon. The male is large and stronger than the female. In other words, the binary feature of which I am speaking entails a greater-lesser aspect which is quite different from dualism.

The Yin Yang is often cited as an example of binary thinking, but as it is understood today it represents dualism. This was likely not the case originally. The yin-yang concept appears to be rooted in a much older binary framework related to the religion of Tian, the oldest name for the Creator in China. Tian means the Most High of the Anu. The Anu or Ainu did indeed hold a binary worldview which was based on their observations of the Sun. The Sun was held to be greater than the Moon, the light greater than the shadow. So in this view too, at least in its origin, there is dominance on one side.

Further, the Ainu whose great shrine city of Heliopolis was the point to which many ancient monuments aligned, appear to have regarded this binary feature as a fixed and unchanging characteristic of Nature. I'm wondering if indeed this is a general pattern in Nature?


Related reading: The Nilotic Origin of the Ainu; African Ancestry of Chinese; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; Binary Sets in the Ancient World; A Kindling of Ancient Memory; The Binary Aspect of the Biblical Worldview; Questioning the Common Ancestry Hypothesis; Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness

Is "Good and Evil" a Biblical Merism?

Good and evil spelled in the same image

Alice C. Linsley

Merisms are a convention of poetry and prose that are found in the Old and New Testaments. A merism is an example of synecdoche in which totality is expressed by contrasting parts" (e.g. high and low, young and old). In this figure of speech a pair of opposites refers to something greater than the constituents, as in the phrase, "they searched high and low," meaning that they searched everywhere.

Merisms suggest dualism, as in Yin-Yang. However, dualism is foreign to biblical theology and to the biblical worldview which is binary. In a binary set, one entity is seen as superior to the other. The Sun is greater than the Moon in that it is the source of light. The moon’s light is refulgent. The male is larger and stronger than the female. When the Bible speaks of good and evil, it is understood that good is always greater than evil. Knowing "good and evil" (Gen. 3:5) is a merism that speaks of omniscience.

The serpent tells the woman to eat of the forbidden fruit so that she will become like God, that is, "knowing good and evil" (a merism). Yet God knows more than good and evil. He knows the distinction between good and evil. Good and evil for human fallible understanding is a merism: two sides of the same coin, but for God, these are not of one piece. Good is superior in every way, eternal, and real. Evil is inferior in every way, limited, and illusory. God is Good. What is evil? Though we speak of the Devil as the author of evil, we can only point to the outcomes of evil. The Devil hides his true nature whereas God reveals His true nature.

 Sometimes figures of speech and literary conventions do not do justice to biblical theology.


A merism is a figure of speech which references parts that comprise a whole. To express this another way: a merism expresses opposite edges and unity at the same time, as can be demonstrated by a Möbius strip. To say that “they searched high and low” means that they searched everywhere. The set is often used to express the whole range of experience. The expression “night and day” represents a 24-hour cycle, a whole.

When we speak of night and day, we are speaking of two experiences with a range of in-between experiences: pre-dawn and dawn; twilight and dusk. In speaking of day and night we have a binary set. Hidden within this set is the more mysterious binary set dawn and dusk. One of the contributions of Martin Heidegger's work was to point out that Husserl's meriology has levels of complexity that Husserl failed to explore.

Paul uses merisms in Romans 8:38,39. The full meaning of this passage is not evident until we have explored what he intends by using death-life (all of human existence and experience); angels-demonic powers (all of the supernatural); present-future (all time); and height-depth (the whole cosmos). Paul intends us to understand that nothing in natural human experience, nothing in the supernatural realm, nothing in time, nothing in space, nothing exists that can separate the Christ one from the Christ, for their nature is one and inseparable.

Paul's message reflects Jesus' explanation about his relationship to the Father. Jesus spoke of his nature as being one with the Father and of the same essence with the Father. The distinction of Father and Son does not require a difference in essence or a separate existence.

Merisms are common in the Bible, but not every binary set is intended to refer to something greater. Sometimes the stress is on the distinctions between the two entities. For example, "male and female" constitute the whole of humanity, but also the distinction between them. In the biblical worldview there is no gender continuum, there is male and female with distinct roles and functions necessary to human existence and survival. It is important to pay attention to context lest every binary set be taken as a merism. It is equally important to recognize a merism as a sign pointing to something larger, a whole.

In Genesis 1:1 we find another merism: "the heavens and the earth." If "heavens and earth" is a merism, this refers to the whole cosmos. Likewise, in Psalm 139 the psalmist declares that God knows "my sitting down and my uprising up,” which is to say that God knows all the psalmist's actions.

Cyrus Herzl Gordon suggested that the biblical phrase “good and evil”( טוֹב וָרָע ) is a merism. Good and evil – as in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - expresses a pair of opposites that refers to something greater than themselves. The tree symbolizes all that can be known. That a merism is intended is made evident from the context of the narrative. The snake tells the woman that by eating of the forbidden fruit her eyes will be opened and she will become like gods, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:5) Adam and Eve were barred from eating this fruit because such a property rightly pertains to God alone.

Related reading: Binary Sets in the Ancient World; Levi-Strauss and Derrida on Binary Oppositions; The Biblical Worldview is Binary; Heaven or Heavens: Does it matter?; Howard Gardner on Revising Good and Evil

The Binary Aspect of the Biblical Worldview

By Alice C. Linsley
Special to virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
July 12, 2013

"All my life I have loved edges; and the boundary-line that brings one thing sharply against another."--G.K. Chesterton (Autobiography)

"Limitation as limitation is good. Any limitation makes something, as an outline takes some shape. This is the true and thrilling meaning of the tale of Adam and Eve. God put something forbidden in their garden because without limit things are without form and void. The dark stem of the strange tree threw up all the green and gold. But they clamoured for 'infinity'... They destroyed the outline of Eden. They ate the one thing that kept everything else sacred. Immediately they had everything and therefore nothing."--G.K. Chesterton (From the Notebooks of G.K.C, The Tablet, 4 April 1953)

The Biblical worldview has a binary feature that is expressed in the language of the Biblical writers. This worldview distinguishes the Biblical belief system from Asian dualism. In a dualistic worldview the entities of the binary set are regarded as complementary and equal. This is symbolized by the ying-yang.

In dualism, reality is comprised of opposite but equal principles (male-female, night-day, spirit-matter, heaven-hell, God-man). One entity in the set is no greater than the other. The idea of divine condescension is meaningless in this context, as is the idea of God entering history.


Read it all here.


Related reading: Questioning the Common Ancestry Hypotheses; Biblical Anthropology and Common Ancestry