The Africa Chesterton Never Knew

AFRICA

By G.K. Chesterton

A sleepy people, without priests or kings,
Dreamed here, men say, to drive us to the sea:
O let us drive ourselves! For it is free
And smells of honour and of English things.
How came we brawling by these bitter springs,
We of the North?—two kindly nations—we?
Though the dice rattles and the clear coin rings,
Here is no place for living men to be.
Leave them the gold that worked and whined for it,
Let them that have no nation anywhere
Be native here, and fat and full of bread;
But we, whose sins were human, we will quit
The land of blood, and leave these vultures there,
Noiselessly happy, feeding on the dead.

Alice C. Linsley

I am a great fan of the work of G.K. Chesterton and a member of the Louisville Chesterton Society. Each month we meet to discuss another of Chesterton's memorable writings. The conversation is often lively. We admire Chesterton's intellect and commitment to the received tradition or the "faith once delivered" to the saints, yet we also recognize his weaknesses and prejudices, for which he makes no apologies.

Chesterton reflects his time and ethnicity. He lived before the major discoveries in anthropology that would have enhanced his 1908 portrayal of archaic man in Orthodoxy and he shared the typical British disdain for the inhabitants of that "dark continent" Africa. In his poem Lepanto, he contrasts the light of Europe with the "death-light of Africa" and speaks of how the struggle against darkness is to be expected in this life. His poem Africa reflects his view of the Boer War fought between the British Empire and the two South African Boer republics. Chesterton considered this a war of British imperial expansion motivated by greed for gold and diamonds and he did not support it.

Chesterton's opposition to imperialism (he opposed Hitler for the same reason) is commendable, but his opening line - A sleepy people, without priests or kings - is regrettable. It presents an inaccurate picture of the origins of the very priesthood that Chesterton regarded as essential to Christianity.

Africa was never without priests and kings. It is the point of origin of the oldest known priesthood and the oldest known line of rulers. Africa is the urheimat of all the practices associated with the ruler-priests of ancient Israel, the Habiru (Hebrew). Among the Habiru were the Shasu whose name for the Creator was YHWH. They were Nubians. The Christian priesthood emerges from the priesthood of the Horites, that ancient caste of ruler-priests who anticipated the coming the Seed of Ra by the overshadowing of one of their virgins. 

Biblical Anthropology has served to uncover what has been hidden behind racist interpretations of the Bible for too long. Today Africa is recognized as the cradle of modern humans, the crucible from which the linguistic diversity of modern languages came forth; the land where men were first circumcised and animals first sacrificed to cover sins.

Related reading: Who Were the Horites?; The Origin of Circumcision; Phoneme Study Pinpoints Origin of Modern Langauges; The Dispersal of Archaic Humans; The Nubian Context of YHWH

Almighty God, who didst grant to thy servant Gilbert the gift of a ready tongue and pen, and didst endue him with zeal to use the same in thy service: Mercifully grant to each of us, that we may well and truly answer anyone who asks of us a reason for the hope that is in us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Destruction of the Temple: Rabbinic Interpretations

Literary critic Adam Kirsch is reading a page of Talmud a day, along with Jews around the world. This article appears here.

Last month, in Tractate Shekalim, Daf Yomi readers encountered two priestly families known as the House of Avtinas and the House of Garmu. Each of these clans was the hereditary keeper of one of the Temple rituals: The House of Avtinas was responsible for making the incense burned in the Temple in Jerusalem; and the House of Garmu was in charge of baking the shewbread. In this week’s Daf Yomi reading, in Tractate Yoma, we heard once again about how these families refused to share their recipes, treating them as a kind of trade secret. This irritated the Temple authorities, who tried to bring in craftsmen from Alexandria as replacements; but the replacements proved unable to do things the right way, and the families had to be hired back at twice their old salary.

What should we think of the House of Avtinas—were they greedy and selfish for withholding their incense recipe, or did they have some more respectable motive? In Yoma 38a, the Gemara offers contrasting opinions about this. After the Temple was destroyed, Rabbi Yishmael recounts, he was walking along the road and he came across a descendant of the House of Avtinas. “I said to him: Your fathers sought to enhance their honor and sought to diminish God’s honor.” But now that the Temple was gone and the priestly families had lost their prestigious roles, “The honor of God remains as it was, and he diminished their honor.”

This anecdote suggests, though obliquely, what an enormous upheaval the destruction of the Temple must have created in Judean society. The priestly hierarchy was large and well-established, constituting the upper class of the nation; now they were suddenly rendered useless, like aristocratic émigrés during the French Revolution. There is even a hint of satisfaction in Yishmael’s words. The Talmud makes no secret of the fact that the priests’ ostentation and hunger for prestige sometimes made them unpopular. The fall of the House of Avtinas must have looked to some people like their just deserts.

Here, as often, it is useful to supplement the Talmud’s account of Second Temple-era Jerusalem with the one offered by the historian Josephus in The Jewish War. Josephus was himself a priest, and his sympathies were wholly with the established upper class of first-century Judea. But reading between the lines, it’s possible to see that the great Jewish revolt of 66-70 C.E., which attempted to cast off Roman rule and ended in catastrophe, was in large part a class revolt as well. The priests ruled Jerusalem under Roman authority, and during the war the priesthood was constantly urging the people to reconcile with their Roman overlords. The movement known as the Zealots—radical anti-Roman militants, who occupied the Temple at the beginning of the rebellion—were fighting against not just foreign rule, but priestly collaboration as well. (One of the first acts of the rebels was to burn down the offices containing debt records, a move that surely increased their popularity with the Jewish poor.)

It is typical of the Talmud’s apolitical approach that none of these conflicts are visible in the rabbis’ discussion of the priesthood and the Temple. The unpopularity of the House of Avtinas is attributed simply to their stinginess about the incense recipe, not to any larger economic or political grievance. And even this black mark is wiped away in another story told by Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri.

One day after the destruction of the Temple, Yochanan relates, he came across an elderly survivor of the House of Avtinas, who handed over a scroll containing the formula for making incense. “As long as the House of my forefathers was extant, they would not pass it on to anyone,” the old man said. But now the chain of transmission was broken, and he had no choice but to entrust it to Yochanan: “Be careful with it,” he begged. Now that they were so humbled, Akiba ruled that their bad reputation had been erased: “It is prohibited to mention them unfavorably.” The episode is like a parable of the way religious authority was handed over, after the Temple’s destruction, from the priests to the rabbis who interpreted Jewish law.

The fall of the House of Avtinas leads the Gemara to reflect on the matter of posthumous reputations. The rabbis mention a man named Ben Kamtzar, who knew a technique for writing with four pens simultaneously but refused to teach it to anyone. “About Ben Kamtzar and his counterparts,” the Gemara quotes a phrase from the book of Proverbs: “But the name of the wicked shall rot.” What this means, the rabbis explain, is that the names of wicked people become unpopular, so that people no longer give them to children—much as no one today would name a child Adolf.

More troubling is the rabbis’ conclusion that certain names are so tainted by wickedness that people who bear them are subject to divine punishment. In I Samuel 22, for instance, we read about one Doeg the Edomite, who carries out an order from King Saul to slaughter a family of priests who were in league with David against him. Doeg’s rampage—he is said to have murdered 85 priests in one day—is a good reason for him to be counted among the wicked whose names will rot.

In Yoma 38b, the rabbis tell about a young boy who lived during the time of the Jewish rebellion, named Doeg ben Yosef. This Doeg was his mother’s favorite: “Each day his mother measured his height in handbreadths and donated gold equivalent to the weight that he gained to the Temple.” When the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, however, the city fell victim to starvation, and Doeg’s mother ended up killing and eating him. (Josephus, too, reports cases of cannibalism during this terrible period.) Why did this happen to Doeg? The rabbis answer that it was because of his name, which was a wicked name: “See what befell him.”

Did the rabbis really believe that people deserve to die because their names? This seems manifestly unjust, and indeed it seems to have bothered Rabbi Elazar, who quickly revises the rule: “A righteous person is praised for his own actions, and a wicked person is cursed not only for his own actions but also for the actions of his wicked counterpart.” By this logic, a good person with a bad name will not suffer for it, but someone who lives up to the wickedness of his name will receive extra punishment. (Where this leaves poor Doeg ben Yosef, who was just a child, remains unclear.)

As the discussion goes on, the Gemara turns to other biblical examples of righteousness—such as Abraham—and wickedness—such as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Rabbi Elazar uses a biblical allusion to support the beautiful idea that “Even for one righteous person the world is created”: After all, when God created the world, he “saw that it was good,” “and good means nothing other than righteous.” Rabbi Yochanan adds that God never allows the world to be completely without righteous people: “No righteous person [tzaddik] departs from this world until another comparable righteous person is created.” Tzaddikim are rare, but God “planted some of them in each and every generation.” This statement seems to be connected to the Jewish folk tradition that there are 36 tzaddikim in each generation, though we might not know exactly who they are.

Toward the end of chapter 3 of Yoma, the Gemara turns to consider a line from Proverbs: “If it concerns the scorners, he scorns them, but to the humble he gives grace.” According to Reish Lakish, this saying is connected with the mystery of sin and free will. God gives us the freedom to sin, and he won’t stop us from doing evil; but if we resolve to do good, he will actively help us. Reish Lakish offers a metaphor: Imagine a merchant who is selling both foul-smelling naphtha and sweet balsam. If a customer comes to purchase naphtha, the merchant will sell it, but he says, “Measure it for yourself”: He doesn’t want to get too close to the bad smell. With balsam, on the other hand, the merchant says, “Wait for me until I can measure it with you, so that you and I will both be perfumed.” As always, the moral realism of the rabbis is impressive: They don’t deny the human propensity to evil, but they insist that goodness remains possible and divine.

***

Alice C. Linsley

In response to Adam Kirsch's article, I would like to address the following four points:

1. Adam Kirsch makes the excellent observation that the ruler-priest class in the first century had become quite corrupt. To maintain power they had compromised with the Roman authorities. They made a display of righteousness, but were motivated by greed and the desire for power. When Jesus appeared they lumped him with the zealots, but some who knew him, recognized that he fit the pattern of the Messiah. These righteous priests accused others in the Sanhedrin of bringing false charges against Jesus and of trying to destroy him by acting contrary to the Law. This caused further division within the Sanhedrin and at least two priests risked everything to serve Jesus: Joseph, of the prestigious priestly line of Matthew, and Nicodemus. The two priests buried Jesus' body and bore witness to the empty tomb.

2. Names tainted by evilness include Cain, Esau, Onan, Er and Korah. Cain, though a murder, was granted grace and mercy and became a great ruler who established cities. He is one of the "mighty men of old."

Judah's sons Er and Onan were destroyed when they refused to fulfill the Levirate law and spilled their seed on the ground (Gen. 38). However, Er's line was not cut off. The name Er appears in Luke's ruler list as one of the Virgin Mary's ancestors. This is Er, the son of Joshua, shown in the diagram at left.

In Genesis, Esau is the victim of trickery and betrayal by his brother Jacob. When Jacob returns from Paddan-Aram, Esau greets him warmly and offers to help him settle his wives, children and flocks in the land. In this action, Esau embodies forgiveness. It has been noted that the name Esau is also spelled Issa and Yeshu, both variants of the name Jesus.

There are two named Esau in Genesis and both represent respected leaders among their people. Esau the Elder married the daughter of Elon. Their son Eliphaz married a daughter of Seir the Horite (Gen. 36). Esau the Younger, Jacob's brother, married a high ranking Horite woman named Oholibamah. Her name means Exalted Tent or High Tabernacle, and she is a type of the Virgin Mary.

Likewise, Korah, Moses' half brother, was destroyed in the rebellion in the wilderness, yet the name Korah is attached to many Psalms. The rabbinic attempt to paint all people with certain names as cursed clearly fails when we turn to the Scriptures themselves. Unfortunately, in modern Judaism the Talmud has greater authority than the Scriptures.

The Talmud encourages this perception: “My son, be more careful in the observance of the words of the Scribes than in the words of the Torah." (Talmud Erubin 21b)

SUNY history professor, Robert Goldberg, writes; “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.”

Note that the Talmud is not studied for information about Messiah. It is largely anti-Christ in tone. In Sanhedrin 43a it says that Jesus the Nazarene was executed because he practiced sorcery. Sanhedrin 106a says Jesus' mother was a whore: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.” The Talmud teaches that Jesus was illegitimate and was conceived during menstruation; that he had the soul of Esau; that he was a fool, a conjurer, a seducer; that he was crucified, buried in hell and set up as an idol ever since by his followers.

The elevation of Talmud over Torah began well before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The hard line against Christians became more evident after the Sanhedrin relocated to Jamnia. The present form of the Talmud dates to about AD 500. By this time the rabbinic Judaism had hardened against the followers of Jesus Christ.

3. The idea that there are 36 tzaddikim in each generation is the rabbinic version of the Asian bodhisattva. The number 36 is half of the number 72 which was the number of deified rulers who would judge the world. They are called Horim. It was believed that half stayed in heaven and half served on earth. In the Qur'an these are called Houris. They have been cast as virgins in popular Islam. In a note to his fellow hijackers, September 11 ringleader Muhammad Atta reminded them of their impending "marriage in Paradise" to the 72 virgins promised in the Qur'an to the faithful departed. However, Islamic scholar Dr. Maher Hathout says that Houris refers to "beings of distinction."

These are deified rulers and to them we must add the saints. The seven angels with their seven trumpets of Revelation are accompanied by an angel who offers the prayers of the saints with a great amount of incense (Rev. 8:3). This angel is among the hosts that stand before the throne of God and who appear with the Lord at the Judgment. Consider Deuteronomy 33:2: "The Lord came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran; he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand." Seir was one of the principal regions belonging to the Horites (Gen. 36).

4. The various orders of the Temple were sub-castes including door guards, incense burners, makers of shewbread, lectors, tanners (tahash), and guardians of archives, etc. As castes, these were required to protect their trade secrets and attempts to force them to share the secrets represent a break with the traditions of the Fathers/Horim. The rabbinic interpretation that the Temple was destroyed because of the failure to share trade secrets is unfounded and represents obfuscation of the truth. Destruction of the Temple began at the very hour that Jesus hung on the Cross and the temple veil was torn from top to bottom. Jesus foretold this event when he told his disciples that the day was coming when not a single stone would remain in place. The destruction of the Temple in 70 AD was the final act in the great drama of Israel's self-destruction through the rejection of Messiah, the celestial Temple.

The true priesthood continued in the persons of Joseph of the Horite line of Matthew (Hara-mattayim or Hari-matthea), Nicodemus, and Jesus the Christ who today bestows the mantle of Melchizedek upon those He calls. In this sense, the Christian priesthood is the organic continuance of the one true priesthood that can be traced back to Eden.


Related reading: Who was Jesus?; Who was Melchizedek?; Horite Temples; Messianic Jews and the Antecedents of Judaism; Matthew's Testimony Concerning the Empty Tomb; Mary's Ruler-Priest Lineage; The Talmud Versus the Doctrine of the Lord; David's Royal City; Evidence of Castes in the Book of Ruth

Etymology of the Vav

Alice C. Linsley


Last summer I had a fascinating conversation with a very smart lady - Susan Burns - who lives on Hood Canal in Washington. She started me thinking about the VaV or tent peg/hook. Here are some thoughts that came out of that conversation. The ruler's tent was the head tent (oholibamah) and was represented by the ancient Hebrew and Arabic letter Vaw.

Tent peg /sun cradle/marks the ruler's residence

These rulers lived by and exercised terriotorial control over water system, wells, etc. People who needed water went from Y to Y, which is to say, "from water settlement to water settlement." The waw/vav speaks of an ancient world in which settlements near water were ruled by elders and a chief. Travelers moved from settlement to settlement and the ancient water laws were generally generous to those who wa-ndered. Wells were neutral ground for waring parties or enemies, but were fought over, as in the story of Moses driving away the intruder shepherds at the well of the Midianite ruler-priest Reu-el. (Exodus 2:16-19).  It was common for the river, lake, oasis or well to have a shrine over which their was a priest.  So it is not surprising to read that Moses' future father-in-law was a "priest of Midian."  As such, he was a direct descendant of Abraham by Abraham's cousin bride, Keturah.

the tent peg

The vav (waw) is designated by the letter Y in Hebrew. The symbol is much older than Hebrew.  It originated with the ancient Egyptians, Nubians and Nilo-Saharans who moved into Canaan. The Nile Valley is the urheitmat of the Canaanite Y, a lexeme of considerable complexity.  The Phoencians also employed the Y. Among these peoples the Vav was a symbol of a scepter carried by deified rulers and the Y was a solar cradle that represented the divine appointment of the ruler by the overshadowing of the Sun, the Creator's emblem. Many Horite rulers (Horim) have names that begin with the Cananite Y:  Yaqtan (Abraham's first born son), Yishmael, Yitzak, Yacob, Yosef, and Yeshua.

The Greeks introduced the waw/vav to the Latin alphabet:  Ύψιλον (Úpsilon).  In Spanish, the letter Y is called the i griega,  in Romanian i grec, in Polish igrek - all meaning "Greek i". It is derived from the Phoenician waw which the Phoenicians borrowed from the Egyptians.

The waw/vav orignally symbolized the crook/hook of the ruler or the tent peg of the ruler's tent.  As a lexeme this represented a cluster of related ideas including:

• the ruler himself
• the ruler's authority
• the ruler's territory
• the ruler's clan or tribe
• the ruler's resources such as his flocks and water sources

Consider the importance of wells in the lives of biblical figures.  Ishmael's life was saved when an angel revealed a well or spring to his mother. Abraham's servant found Isaac a wife at a well.  Moses met Zipporah at a well. Jesus met the Samaritan woman (Photini) at Jacob's Well.

Many words in various languages still reflect this ancient world.  Consider these examples: wa-ter, wa-gon, va-gabond, va-grant, va-gar meaning "to wander" (Spanish), wa-kdar meaning "ruler" (Pashto), and ya-raki meaning "power" (Persian).

Related reading:  The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y; Mother and Son Pierced; Egyptian Shrines on the Horus Way; Water Systems Connected the Nile and Central Africa; The Jordan River; Wells and Brides; The Migration of Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; A Woman at a Well; Susan Burns on Hadhramaut of Arabia

Priests, Shamans and Prophets

Alice C. Linsley


Anthropological study of the Bible helps to clarify the roles of three ancient religious offices: priest, shaman and prophet.  This clarification is especially important today because there is confusion, even obfuscation, about these offices in the academic community. This is evidenced in the textbooks used to teach World Religions (a subject that I teach on the college level).

A widely used World Religions text mentions priests in three contexts, none of them representing the original context of that office. The first instance refers to the ordination of women as priests in the Anglican Church, an innovation which has caused division in that communion. As I was once an Episcopal priest, I understand this innovation and its dangers better than many who write on this topic.

The second reference is to Shinto priests, who are really shamans since they consult the spirits of the ancestors, often engaging serpents as their mediums. Such practices are explicitly forbidden to priests in the Bible.

The third reference is to pagan priests and priestesses of ancient Greece. Study of their practices reveal that they were not priests, but oracles or seers whose trances parallel the practice of shamans.

Priests and shamans have one thing in common: they act as intermediaries, but that is where their similarity ends.


Priests and Shamans Represent Distinct Worldviews

The priesthood is verifiably the oldest known religious institution and appears to have originated in the Nile region. It is quite distinct from the other ancient religious office, that of the shaman. Underlying shamanism is the belief that spirits cause imbalance and disharmony in the world. The shaman’s role is to determine which spirits are at work in a given situation and to find ways to appease the spirits. This may or may not involve animal sacrifice. Underlying the priesthood is belief in a single supreme Spirit to whom humans must give an accounting, especially for the shedding of blood. In this view, one Great Spirit (God) holds the world in balance and it is human actions that cause disharmony. The vast assortment of ancient laws governing priestly ceremonies, sacrifices, and cleansing rituals clarifies the role of the priest as one who offers animal sacrifice according to sacred law. The priest was forbidden to consult the spirits of the ancestors as shamans do in trance states.

Priests are intermediaries between the Creator and the community, not between the spirits and the community. Both offices are intermediary, but their worldviews are quite different. When sickness, sudden death, or a great calamity such as flooding or plague affects the community, the shaman investigates the cause and seeks to balance benevolent and malevolent energies. When the community served by the priest experiences hardship, deprivation and loss, the priest calls the people to repentance and seeks to restore the community to the peace of God.  In ancient times, this sometimes meant seeking out the offenders by using the binary system of divination represented by the Urim and Thummim. These represent numerous binary sets. The urim would have a number of associations which would be assigned the opposite meaning with the thummim. Using these tools involved more than yes-no questions. It involved deriving meaning from the directional poles, gender, numbers and reversals. The morehs or ancient prophets apparently used the same approach when rendering counsel such as that given to Abraham by the moreh at the Oak of Mamre (Gen. 12:6).


Priests and Prophets

Analysis of the genealogical data in the Bible indicates consanguine (blood) kinship between ruler-priests and prophets.  Examples are the sons of the ruler-priests Elkanah and Zacharias. Elkanah's son was Samuel who served in a monarchial role and was called a "prophet." Likely he was a cousin of Eli’s sons, who were priests (and rejected by God).  Zacharias’ son was John the Baptist, who was called a prophet.  He was of the ruler-priests lines.  He was the cousin of Jesus, who the Bible designates the “Great High Priest.”  All of these individuals were descendants of Abraham and his ancestors who were Horites. 

The Horite ruler-priest caste is the oldest known priesthood and it is logical to assume that it provides the pattern whereby we are to understand the origins of this religious office. As the ruler-priests lines intermarried exclusively (a trait of castes), there is a consanguine tie between the lines of the rulers listed in the Genesis genealogies. This is not generally understood, but it is critical to perceiving the blood kinship of the greatest biblical figures: Noah, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ.

While there is not a single example of a woman serving as a priest in the Bible, women did serve as prophets.  Three were especially famous: Huldah, Deborah and Anna. All were of the ruler-priest lines, and Deborah was said to be a "judge," though none served as priests. Huldah’s fame was such that the King sent his wise men to consult her.  The Bible tells us that “all of Israel” came to consult Deborah at her tamar (date nut palm) between Bethel and Raamah. When Jesus was presented in the Temple, the priest Simeon and the prophetess Anna testified that He was the Promised One, the Son of God who would bring salvation to the people.  These descendants of Abraham’s Horite people lived in expectation of the Incarnate Son of God who would fulfill the promise made to their ancestors in Eden.  So it is that Simeon and Anna were able to discern rather quickly the identity of the son of Mary and Joseph. This is not to exclude the aspect of supernatural revelation, which was evidently a factor in their recognition of Jesus as the Savior.


Marrying That Christ Might be Born

The Horites originated as a caste of priests who were devoted to the veneration of Horus, who was called “son of Ra.” Ra was the name of their High God, the Creator. The veneration of Horus has been traced back to the oldest Kushite-Nubian temples and shrines of the Sudan. In light of this information, those who distain Christianity have claimed that it borrowed the Horus myth to lend importance to the Jesus myth. This explanation fails to take into account the blood ties of the Horites, a more logical explanation for the continuation of messianic expectation from the most ancient times in Kush to the time of Jesus and his followers.

Either Christians borrowed the Horus myth or Christianity emerges in an organic way from the belief system of Abraham and his Horite people. If we decide that Christians borrowed the Horus myth, we must explain why they should have selected this particular myth. I know of no other religions that prefigure Jesus Christ, the Son of God, other than the faith of Israel as it emerges out of the faith of Abraham's Horite people.

Kinship patterns are highly resistant to change. The kinship pattern of Abraham's people survived Egyptian and Babylonian captivity, and existed in Jesus’ time as evidenced by the prominence of ruler-priests (members of the Sanhedrin) such a Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. This unique kinship pattern continued to the time of Jesus and then stopped soon after His death and resurrection, as if the pattern had fulfilled its purpose. The ruler-priest caste disappeared as an institution in Israel when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.

Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He will receive an eternal kingdom from the Father. He is the Son of God, the fulfillment of the Edenic Promise of Genesis 3:15. He is able to conquer death and deliver sinners from the curse of death. This is the core of Christian belief. Surrounding this are attendant beliefs which logically follow. One is that to receive eternal life, we must acknowledge our need for mercy, forgiveness and salvation. Another is that God does this for us out of His boundless love. John wrote, "This is the revelation of God's love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him." (1 John 4:9)

Related reading:  Who Were the Horites?; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology; The Genesis King Lists; The Prophetess Anna; Eden: A Well Watered Region; Shamanic Practice and the Priesthood