Posted on 10/03/2004 6:45:44 PM PDT by yonif
According to the written and oral traditions of the three major religions of the Western world, Abraham was a real person who lived in the Middle East nearly 4,000 years ago. According to each respective tradition, he was the first of the Fathers of the Jewish people, fathered the Arab nations and Islam, and laid the conceptual basis for Christianity. Tradition relates that he may have influenced early Eastern religion, as well.
Abraham is the first to be called a Hebrew - Ivri -- one who passes over from one side to the other. He received this title because he actually crossed over Euphrates River, in present day Iraq, as he traveled to the Promised Land at the call of God. Philosophically, he earned the distinction as a Hebrew for his clarity of truth, for at a time that the entire world was of one opinion, he was of another. He was born, according to the Talmud, into a world that had largely lost recognition of the one God -- the Creator, Sustainer, and Supervisor of the universe. He recognized at an early age that there must be only one Creator and Prime Mover of all. It was not a popular opinion at the time, but he was a fighter for truth and freedom, and he placed his life on the line for his belief. In his lifetime, he continually faced and passed major tests of his strength of conviction and commitment to his vision of truth of the reality and unity of God.
The Jewish people regard Abraham as their original forefather, the father of Isaac, and the grandfather of Jacob. Abraham is also revered as the forefather of the Arab nations and Islam, as he was also the father of Ishmael, his son through Hagar, Sara's Egyptian princess handmaiden. The Koran reports that Abraham and Ishmael raised the foundations of the Kaaba, the cube-shaped black stone structure in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which is Islam's holiest shrine. During the annual Haj pilgrimage, Moslems from all over the world circle the Kaaba, reinforcing the central role of Abraham and Ishmael in Islamic faith. Christianity, as well, regards Abraham as a Patriarch. He is the acknowledged father of monotheism, the progenitor of Western religion.
Can recent genetic research give some indication of the existence of the historical Abraham?
Recent genetic studies of the Jewish people clearly indicate that the roots of the Jewish nation can be traced to the Middle East. This research confirms the geographical origin of the core of every major Jewish Diaspora community. (See: "Jewish Genes.")
Furthermore, the discovery of the "Cohen Gene" -- the genetic signature shared by the majority of Kohanim -- the Jewish priestly family worldwide, is an indication that this signature is that of the ancient Hebrews. (See:, "The Cohanim - DNA Connection")
Based on the DNA of today's Kohanim, the geneticists have dated their "Most Common Recent Ancestor" to 106 generations ago, approximately 3,300 years before the present. This is in agreement with the Torah's written and oral tradition of the lifetime of Aaron, the original High Priest and founder of the Kohen lineage. Further genetic studies have found that the CMH-the Cohen Modal Haplotype-a haplotype of the MED (J) haplogroup-is not exclusive to Kohanim, and not unique to Jews. It is also found in significant percentages among other Middle Eastern populations, and to a lesser extent, among southern Mediterranean groups. A haplotype is a group of distinct DNA markers -- neutral nucleotide mutations, which when found together indicate a lineage. These particular markers were discovered on the Y-Chromosome, which is passed from father to son, without change, thus establishing a paternal lineage pattern.
All of the above is scientific fact, which has only become known in recent years. Using these findings as a basis, perhaps we can speculate and consider some implications of the findings.
If the CMH is the genetic signature of Aaron, the father of the Kohanim, it must also have been the genetic signature of Aaron's father, Amram, and that of his father, Kehat, and of his father, Levi. Levi's father was Jacob who also must have had the CMH as his Y-Chromosome genetic signature, as did his father, Isaac.
Thus we arrive at Abraham. Abraham was only seven generations removed from Aaron, a matter of a few hundred years. Genetic signatures change slightly only over many generations. Thus, it is very reasonable to assume that the CMH, the most common haplotype among Jewish males, is therefore also the genetic signature of the Patriarch Abraham.
This would explain why we also find the CMH in high numbers among Arabs and other Middle Easterners today. These peoples traditionally claim to be the progeny of Abraham through his son Ishmael, who would also have to be carrying Abraham's male genetic signature. These markers are also found among some southern Mediterranean and European peoples.
Besides the Jews, there are other populations that share the "Abrahamic Genetic Signature" as their primary Y-markers. These include Lebanese, Syrians, Druze, Iraqi Kurds, some southern and central Italians, and Hungarians. It is also found among some Armenians. These may be descendants of Abraham through his grandson Esau, brother of Jacob, some of whose progeny, according to Talmudic tradition, founded the early roots of the empire of Rome. As Isaac's son and Abraham's grandson, Esau would also have had these same Y-chromosome lineage markers. Please keep in mind that this part is the author's speculation only.
The Jewish Kohanim have maintained the Abrahamic lineage to the highest degree among the Jewish People. Jewish is not a genetic definition -- other peoples, through marriage and conversions, have joined the Jewish People. However, being a Kohen is a genetic definition -- father to son starting from Aaron, the High Priest. And despite their having been scattered throughout the world for over 2,000 years, the extended family of Kohanim have maintained their genetic integrity equivalent to the highest percentages of the other Middle Eastern groups which never left the region.
. Based on the dating of the Most Recent Common Ancestor of the Kohanim as approximately 3300 years, it is not unreasonable to assume that it is the male descendants of Patriarch Abraham today who possess this DNA signature. However, Abraham may not be the exclusive source of these markers, for they are a component of a more ancient Middle Eastern gene pool.
"From Me, behold, I make My covenant with you, you shall be the father of many nations... And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make of you nations, and kings shall come from you." Genesis 17:4, 6
The promise and prophecy of God to Abraham was that he would be the progenitor of great nations, that his descendents -- literally "his seed" -- would be numerous "as the stars in the heavens and as the sands on the seashore," (Genesis 22:17). And indeed, the number of people in the world today with the "Abrahamic Genetic Signature" is too large to count precisely. A reasonable estimate is in the hundreds of millions.
Very cool!
The Bible's right again.
Thanks for posting.
Another reason that there could be a high percentage of these markers in non Jewish middle easterners is forced conversion to Islam of Jewish women and children.
Ping.
Is the author trying to say that Abraham invented God?
Is the author trying to say that Abraham invented God?
I got from it that he pointed to God for a world that had forgotten Him.
What I homed in on is the "father of Islam" thing. Abraham may have fathered the Arabs but Satan is the source of Islam.
Assuming you are not poking fun at the sentence structure: No, he is recognizing Abraham as the originator of a theology, a way of thinking about God. In this case, monotheism, thinking about God as one being rather than many beings (polytheism).
I find this article to be fascinating on many levels. BTTT
"...at a time that the entire world was of one opinion, he was of another..."
Some things do not change too much, do they?
These particular markers were discovered on the Y-Chromosome
THIS is interesting.......
Abraham was only seven generations removed from Aaron, a matter of a few hundred years.
Abraham lived to be over a hundred years old which was more commmon than today. The author is using the typical modern formula of a generation equaling approximately 40 years to satisfy his statement. Having said all of that, the rest is very interesting and I'm glad I got to read it.
Even the geniuses at MIT are beginning to see the connections. :)
Human populations are tightly interwoven
My Dad wonders:
Hi, [mamaduck],
< snip >
regarding the article linked below,
someone should ask in what sense Abraham can be called the "father"of Islam.
Father of Ishmael, and thus progenitor of the Arab people, to be sure, but
Islam came into objective existence hundreds of years after Abraham's death,
and with at most only a tangential connection to the beliefs and the faith
held by Abraham. Genes do not a body of religious tenets construct.
Dad
Anyone?
There was an excellent piece done on PBS a couple of years ago on the Kohanim tribe of Africa. It was one of the most riveting things I'd ever seen on PBS and ever since, I try to follow the latest on this so thanks for posting.
This merely underscores that fear is the fountain of hostility.
"As Ismael had a different mother, we need the gene tracing from Sarah to match the Abraham Gene. Then we can prove who the tribes are.
Getting closer. But I wonder what this will be in the hands of the God hating world set. A death sentence?"
Actually wouldn't one need to have Abraham's actual DNA before anyone could genetically claim to have come from Abraham. I have not heard anyone claim to have discovered Abraham body or do a DNA analysis to start from.
As to your other point, the Heavenly Father is in control and things are happening just as foretold.
In the book, "Adam's Curse" Sykes says that there are about 16 million Genghis Kahn y chromosomes residing in today's male population. I wonder how many of Abraham's y chromosomes there are today?
Genesis 16:3
So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife.
Genesis 16:9-16
9. Then the angel of the LORD told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." 10. The angel added, "I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count." 11. The angel of the LORD also said to her: "You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. 12. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers." 13. She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the One who sees me." 14. That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi ; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered. 15. So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. 16. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael. |
Not necessarily so. If you could prove that only Jews had a gene and nobody else, the gene change would have had to have come from the Jewish bloodline roots. Which root would be difficult.
As they have found a gene that is present in both Arabs and Jews without being present in the general population, It had to have come through Abraham. It could have come from Abrahams parents too, but that is not the point. If you found a gene that was in all the Jewish bloodlines but not in the Arab blood lines, it would have had to come from Sarah or her parents, as Ishmael was the servants son, not Sarahs. The trick is to have a blood line from all of the tribes of Ishmael to show that all of his sons carried the trait. If on son did not, then the genetic flag came from a son not the father.
If the Arabs carry the trait, then the only place the blood lines converge is back at Abraham. This is not exact science like finding Abrahams tomb with his remains, but it is pretty darn close. Statisticly, as more blood samples get matched from known family trees, the picture will come into clearer focus.
Wonderful! Another example of modern science validating the truth of ancient Biblical writings.
I don't know much about genetics but I have an uneducated assertion. Sarah was apparently Abraham's 1/2 sister so she had many of his genes. Also, Isaac married his wife Rebekah who was a close relative, apparently the granddaughter of Abraham's brother. Jacob, Isaac's son, then married Rebekah's brother's two daughter's Leah and Rachel. Since there was so much intermarrying among close relatives would the genes have "double whammies"? If you traced them back could you tell where they started to mingled in a way as to be from the same very close gene pool? Also, starting from Abraham's and Sarah's generation down you had the Jews who were descendants of the same family intermarrying. Would the very strengh of the genetic pool show up as a definite genetic marker? I am not sure if I explained what I am getting at but hopefully it makes some sense. Should they not have very heavy genetic indications that they are from Abraham's and Sarah's linage? It is interesting how important it was to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that they all had wives from only their close relatives.
I don't know much about genetics but I have an uneducated assertion. Sarah was apparently Abraham's 1/2 sister so she had many of his genes. Also, Isaac married his wife Rebekah who was a close relative, apparently the granddaughter of Abraham's brother. Jacob, Isaac's son, then married Rebekah's brother's two daughter's Leah and Rachel. Since there was so much intermarrying among close relatives would the genes have "double whammies"? If you traced them back could you tell where they started to mingled in a way as to be from the same very close gene pool? Also, starting from Abraham's and Sarah's generation down you had the Jews who were descendants of the same family intermarrying. Would the very strengh of the genetic pool show up as a definite genetic marker? I am not sure if I explained what I am getting at but hopefully it makes some sense. Should they not have very heavy genetic indications that they are from Abraham's and Sarah's linage? It is interesting how important it was to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that they all had wives from only their close relatives.
As you know, Moshiach has to be a descendant of King David on his father's side to be Moshiach.
Sorry for the double posting but lately when I hit post it acts like it is posting and goes to the thread page but the post is not there. So I go back and hit post again and then sometimes it comes up once on the thread and sometimes twice. Has anybody else been having this problem?
Didn't Abraham have 6 sons by Keturah? THese were the progenitors of the Medians among others.
Jeremiah 33:17-21
17. For this is what the LORD says: `David will never fail to have a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel,
18. nor will the priests, who are Levites, ever fail to have a man to stand before me continually to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings and to present sacrifices.'"
19. The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah:
20. "This is what the LORD says: `If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night no longer come at their appointed time,
21. then my covenant with David my servant--and my covenant with the Levites who are priests ministering before me--can be broken and David will no longer have a descendant to reign on his throne.
I have, from time to time.
Eclipse Brings Claim Of Medieval African Observatory
New Scientist ^ | 12-4-2002 | Stuart Clark
Posted on 12/04/2002 5:22:25 AM PST by blam
5 posted on 12/04/2002 10:46:14 AM PST by JudyB1938
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/800406/posts?page=5#5
Jewish Genes"One theory proposes that Jews, migrating from the Rhineland and neighboring regions spoke an old form of German which provided the basis of Yiddish. Other scholars reject the German origin of Yiddish. These linguists see Yiddish grammar as fundamentally Slavonic, with modern Yiddish developed by incorporating large numbers of German and Hebrew words into the context of a basically Slavic grammar and syntax. There has not been enough historical evidence to decide between such theories. Now, with the newly developed genetic methods, it is possible to test these ideas, for example to see if there was a significant Slavic contribution to modern Ashkenazic Jewry."
by Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman
2000
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
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Science has not demonstrated that offspring produced by close relatives creates different races.Isolated populations, iow close relatives, is exactly what produces ethnic groups or "races".
George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent
I disagree with this part also. Levi was the father of one of the twelve tribes which went into Egypt and we know from the Bible that they were there for 400 years before being led out by Moses. According to this, Aaron was Levi's great-grandfather (Aaron, Amram, Kehat, Levi) and that had to stretch back 400 years. Even the Bible described Abraham at 90 as being old to begat a child.
That said, however, this is a fascinating article. Particularly about the Hungarians, as their language is considered by a lot of linguists not to be Indo-European. I also wonder about that tribe in Afghanistan that is reported to have hung onto Jewish traditions in its culture. Can't remember the name; begins with a "P" I think.
Very interesting!
Thanks!
You're right; I had forgotten about Keturah. IIRC, the Medianites who bought Joseph were distant cousins.
I'm not qualified to answer this, but I'll give it a go. As you note, Abraham as certainly the father of the Arab people. Though Islam is a body of religious beliefs, one of the things that made Mohammed's sayings spread like wildfire was that they came from a brother Arab. The Arab tribes were losing their culture and traditions at the time and their world was becoming increasingly violent (I know, I know). Many of them were familiar with Christianity and Jewish, as was Mohammed, but they were looked at as foreign religions. So what Mohammed heard from God sounds at times a lot like elements from both of those religions. But what made it so popular is that it was perceived as indigenous. So, Abraham, father of the Arabs, would have also been seen as father of their religion. Plus, legend quickly included him with the Kaaba.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
The world still sees "Biblical literalism" and rejection of the demythologization of the Bible as a purely hillbilly phenomenon, and the Fundamentalism of Orthodox Judaism is invisible beneath the Jewish community's cloak of historic oppression by chr*stians. Articles like this are a beginning of correcting this misunderstanding, but it is only a beginning. Jews (not Fundamentalist Protestants or anyone else) have the obligation to defend HaShem and the Torah from the skeptics and blasphemers.
Of course, Orthodox Jews are far from alone in this silence. Non-Orthodox Jews (including some "traditional" Sefaradim and "Modern Orthdox" 'Ashkenazim), Roman Catholics, and non-Fundamentalist Protestants are fanatical promoters of "the Bible as mythology," while more mysterious groups like Eastern and Oriental chr*stians apparently live in some other dimension and refuse to make their position on the issue known (shame on them!).
This is one ma`aseh tov, but we need more.
Nope. God does not lie. What we "see" in the material world is not all there is.
Any two humans without genetic disorders (IOW, those with 23 chromosome pairs) who are fertile and of opposite genders can produce offspring, so there's only one race, the human race. When populations are isolated, traits which stand out (one of the classic studie being "hitchhiker's thumb" among the Pennsylvania "Dutch") probably originated in a single mutation, or wound up very common despite its recessive nature, because by chance the original carrier is the forebear of everyone in the population.
ping
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