Posted on 11/19/2001 3:41:35 PM PST by Sabramerican
Or we're from Mars.
I give you odds.
"There have been confirmatory studies on the mitochondrial chromosomes published in the magazines Science and Nature which came to the same conclusions. It is beyond debate at this point."
That would be interesting to see. So far I have only seen Y-chromosome studies.
I think that again the important point is that these studies do not show absolute purity. They only show relative purity. These studies show for instance that Ashkenazi Jews may be genetically closer to Middle Easterners than European Gentiles. But by the same token they show they are closer to European Gentiles than are Middle Easterners. So mixing is part of the equation.
I just object to the claim that Jews are 100% pure. This is clearly preposterous for there are Ashkenazic Jews with rather Nordic characteristics as well as black Jews with Negroid characteristics. Surely it is impossible to claim that both the Ashkenazic Jews and the black Jews are 100% racially pure descendants of the same ancestors. They couldn't possibly have diverged that much in only 2,000 years. Thus there must have been some mixing. The only debate is as to the degree of mixing. Even the proponents of the Khazar hypothesis believe that some Jewish priests went to Khazaria.
I'm not Jewish, but I've been trying to trace my bloodlines back in Ireland.
Actually, the study above confirms that the Ethiopian Jews who Israel opened its doors to were not of the same gene pool noted in commonality with the Oriental, Sepahardic, Ashkenazic Jews and other Middle Easterners. Hence, they were converts. This does fit the Biblical "Table Of Nations" which indicates the Blacks were descendants of Ham and the Jews and Arabs, Shem.
Insofar as the Khazar thesis, I think it is plainly obvious now that it was a gross overstatement by Koestler in his "The Thirteenth Tribe". No doubt some admixture in Eastern Jewry but not to the extent claimed by Koestler in any fashion.
That is one hypohesis. I am not convinced of it. Anyone can verify for himself that Arawak Indians living in the equator are much lighter than the Africans living in the equator. Similarly the Eskimos live farther north than the Swedes, yet the Eskimos are darker. Whichever the case 2,000 years are not enough. The Afrikaners have lived in South Africa for 400 years and they as white as the Dutch living in Holland.
Secondly the black African Jews are not merely dark-skinned. They have Negroid facial features. When I speak of "Negroid features" I am not talking of skin color. The people of India are brown-skinned but they are Caucasoid.
Traditionally, Jewish culture has essentially been exclusionary by nature. Thus, you may be correct in that the past mixtures have blended into the surrounding populations, while the "purer" groups have continued with Jewish culture.
This particular strategy may not be working any more. In order to maintain any Jewish population base in the US, the Jewish community must develop mechanisms to reach out and include the mixed children. As I mentioned, these mixed kids now make up the majority of Jews' children. Without them, there simply won't be enough Jews to maintain any sort of population base or culture in America.
Yes. The Ethiopian Jews do not have the Jewish Y-chromosome. But there are other African Jews, I forget their name right now, that have been proven to have the Jewish Y-chromosome. In fact, one study showed that these black Jews actually have a higher degree of purity in the priestly "Cohen" Y-chromosome than the Ashkenazic Jews.
"Insofar as the Khazar thesis, I think it is plainly obvious now that it was a gross overstatement by Koestler in his "The Thirteenth Tribe". No doubt some admixture in Eastern Jewry but not to the extent claimed by Koestler in any fashion."
That may well be.
As I've written before, sometimes, but not always, you can distinguish physically between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews. But among ourselves, the only difference- that counts- is certain difference in customs. For example Ashkenazi Jews don't eat corn on Passover, the Sephardi do. Neither of us denies the descent or legitimacy of the other.
"The first striking thing about the Y chromosomes of the Lemba is that you find this particular chromosomal type (Cohen modal haplotype) that is characteristic of the Jewish priesthood in a frequency that is similar to what you see in major Jewish populations. Something just under one out of every 10 Lemba that we looked at had this particular Y chromosomal type that appears to be a signature of Jewish ancestry. Perhaps even more striking is the fact that this Cohen genetic signature is strongly associated with a particular clan in the Lemba. Most of the Cohen modal haplotypes that we observe are carried by individuals of the Buba clan which, in Lemba oral tradition, had a leadership role in bringing the Lemba out of Israel."
That must be a new tradition. Corn comes from America, right?
I always heard that the Ethiopian Jews were the descendents of King Solomon and the Ethiopian woman described in the Song of Solomon. Or was it David and the queen of Sheba? Now I'm getting confused. I guess I had better read the Song of Solomon again, I haven't visited that little book in years.
The Lemba are not from Ethiopia, they are from South Africa.
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/07-Jews-As-Nation/section-9.html
"Recently, Kohen Madol Haplotype testing has been performed among the Lemba; these tests have proven the Lemba to have the highest concentration of the gene marker than any known halakhic Jewish group. This is reported in an article titled "Decoding the Priesthood" by Peter Hirshberg and Jane Logan, in Jerusalem Report (May 10, 1999 issue). According to this article, the Lemba have the same proportion of the gene as "Western" Jews and a remarkably high frequency among their Buba clan, a senior clan parallel to our Cohens. "
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