Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Steve Oren" <soren AT enteract.com>]

Since strange things happen to scholarly findings when they get into the 
popular press, could we ask for citations to the scholarly sources of these 
claims?

                                                                              
                                                                 Steve Oren
                                                                              
                                                                 Chicago, IL


----------
> A year ago, I presented on the ANE list the results of a Y-chromosome study
> conducted on Jews of various origins as published in the press. The study
> showed that Jews of all communities, except for Ethiopian Jews, were more
> closely related to each other than to the non-Jewish populations of the host
> communities. Moreover, Jews taken together as a whole were shown to be most
> closely related genetically to Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese.
> I then asked the following questions:
> 1) What is the importance of these findings for the history of the People of
> Israel and the accuracy of Biblical traditions?
> 2) Is it now possible to write a genetic history of the peoples of the 
> Ancient
> Near East?
> For this, I was roundly attacked amd called a racist, even a Nazi.
> Only one of all the letters I received related specifically to my questions.
>
> Today, on the "anniversary" of that auspicious event, I did a web search on
> ProQuest on what had been written on the matter of Y chromosomes. I was
> astounded by the vast number of research and other scientific articles that
> had appeared in the past year on the subject of Y
> chromosomes and their importance in traciong the genetic history of homo
> sapiens, of whatever ethnic origins, in various continents of the world.
>
> It is no longer possible for biblical and Ancient Near Eastern scholars to
> ignore the flood of information now beginning to pour in on genetic 
> history. I
> realize that some of this is going to hurt the pet theories of some 
> important
> scholars, theories that have made their careers. But that's the way the 
> cookie
> crumbles. Darwin's "Origin of the Spedcies" hurt a lot of Creationists.
>
> For starters, for all you non-biology majors, I refer you to:
>
> Hillel Halkin, "Wandering Jews -- and their Genes", Commentary 110 (Sept.
> 2000), 54-61.
>
> This article is couched in language that any educated layman can understand 
> -
> though he may not like its conclusions.
> Sincerely,
> Jonathan D. Safren
> Chairman
> Dept. of Biblical Studies
> Beit Berl College
> 44905 Israel
>
>
>
>
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