Posted on 11/30/2011 8:43:03 AM PST by SeekAndFind
A genetic link to some religion is superfluous to fact.
Was Christ, for instance, Catholic or Jewish?
Yeah. And what they are devoted to is the Democrat Party, and sometimes the PLO.
ML/NJ
A national religion as opposed to a transnational religion
How about just Middle Eastern or eastern mediterranean?
Judaism is historically the culture and religion of a particular Semitic ethnicity.
Hard to know what is the question here. ‘Judaism’ is a recent, made-up word which means a specific religion.
Isn’t the question: Who is a Jew? The author doesn’t like the right answer, apparently. It is a legal category determined by an ancient culture: Someone born to a Jewish mother or converted according to traditional religious procedure.
Is it? Are Ashkehnazi Jews Semitic in origin? That's doubtful.
Not at all. Ashkehnazi Jews in genetic study after genetic study show that the population originated in the Levant from Semitic people with surprisingly little admixture of any European genetics.
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In an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is one whose ancestry can be traced to the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. For roughly a thousand years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated population in Europe, despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Human geneticists have identified genetic variations that have high frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews, but not in the general European population. This is true for patrilineal markers (Y-chromosome haplotypes) as well as for matrilineal markers (mitotypes).[10]
^ “New Light on Origins of Ashkenazi in Europe”, New York Times, 14 Jan 2006
Thats highly contestable
A 2010 study by Bray et al(Natl Academy of Sciences), using SNP microarray techniques and linkage analysis, estimated that 35 to 55 percent of the modern Ashkenazi genome may be of European origin, and that European "admixture is considerably higher than previous estimates by studies that used the Y chromosome". In fact, a study also found that with respect to non-Jewish European groups, the population most closely related to Ashkenazi Jews are modern-day Italians. .
Tracing the Ashkehnazi population back to a few hundred families in Italy who it is suggested previously came from the Levant is of arguable accuracy, at the very least. To say there is "some" genetic sililarities to Mid eastern Semitics is not proof of much of anything, IMO.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/14/science/14gene.html
The researchers, Doron Behar and Karl Skorecki of the Technion and Ramban Medical Center in Haifa, and colleagues elsewhere, report that just four women, who may have lived 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, are the ancestors of 40 percent of Ashkenazis alive today. The Technion team’s analysis was based on mitochondrial DNA, a genetic element that is separate from the genes held in the cell’s nucleus and that is inherited only through the female line. Because of mutations - the switch of one DNA unit for another - that build up on the mitochondrial DNA, people can be assigned to branches that are defined by which mutations they carry.
In the case of the Ashkenazi population, the researchers found that many branches coalesced to single trees, and so were able to identify the four female ancestors.
Looking at other populations, the Technion team found that some people in Egypt, Arabia and the Levant also carried the set of mutations that defines one of the four women. They argue that all four probably lived originally in the Middle East.
A study by Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona showed five years ago that the men in many Jewish communities around the world bore Y chromosomes that were Middle Eastern in origin. This finding is widely accepted by geneticists, but there is less consensus about the women’s origins.
“Taken as a whole, our results, along with those from previous studies, support the model of a Middle Eastern origin of the AJ population followed by subsequent admixture with host Europeans or populations more similar to European”
Middle Eastern origin. The Ashkenazim originated in the Middle East. They are of Semitic origin with European admixture.
Okay,so half mid eastern, half European genes. So whats your point? "Jewish" is not a blood thing, its a religion where a lot of the coreligionists come from a similar mixed gene pool.More heterogeneously than say the Irish Catholics or Arab Muslims, wouldnt you think?..
I just dont get what the larger point is , but I so get a whiff of that "otherness" argument. Aah, the Jews.
My point is that, as I first stated - Judaism is historically a culture, a religion AND an ethnicity.
Judaism is not JUST a religion. But Judaism IS a religion.
And Ashkenazim are, as I originally stated, of Semitic origin.
Oh, okay. And all of mankind originated from Africa, so we are all Africanners, deep down in our deepest souls.
But there is no denying, based upon reality, that Ashkenazim are a community descended from Semitic people from the Middle East with European admixture.
So why the attempt to deny their Jewish ethnicity and Semitic origin?
For one thing, Ashkenazim are only one community of Jews, and there has been a tendency to conflate all of Judaism with Askenazim. Most Jews in Israel are either Sephardic or mixed gene pool, plus there are a couple hundred thousand African Jews,and tens of thousands of converts.
Out of self defense Jews stopped prosletyzing centuries ago (and prosletyzed heavily before that), but that doesent make it less of a "religion". Are Irish Catholics an ethnicity or a religion or both ? How about Arab Muslims ? .. "
Notwithstanding the inane article posted at top, one can be an agnostic Jew who follows the ethics of the Bible and the Talmuld and its moral teachings. But suggesting that Jewish is nothing more than a collection of ethnic customs, is pretty stupid (not you, the article)
You replied...”Is it? Are Ashkehnazi Jews Semitic in origin? That's doubtful.”
Nowhere did I conflate all of Judaism with the Ashkenazim.
So what made you “doubtful” of what is a reality - that Ashkenazim are of Semitic origin?
Which confirms the Apostle Paul in his persistent contrast of "faith," meaning what Christianity is based on, not your race or ethnicity, those "born after the Spirit," "born again," John 3:3, with Judaism "born after the flesh," Galatians 4:29.
"Born after the flesh" is Paul's way of describing the racial and ethnic based system, Judaism.
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