From: Derek Gatherer (d.gatherer@vir.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 15 Feb 2006 - 10:23:32 GMT
So who is supposed to be descended from Abraham's first wife, the one
he expelled from his tent with Ishmael? I realise that the modern
term Semite is a reference to Shem, but I thought the implication of
the Genesis story was that the Arabs are Ishmaelites? (and do they
not claim to be so based on the Koran?)
At 10:08 15/02/2006, you wrote:
>Derek Gatherer wrote:
>>Okay, wearing my geneticist hat here.....
>>For a common ancestor of all the Ys within both Jewish and
>>Palestinian populations (which would be the "Y-chromosomal Abraham"
>>by analogy with the "Y-chromosomal Adam"), the date is probably
>>something like 8000-11000 BC (so the story in Genesis about Abraham
>>cannot be true if one goes with the historians who guess that
>>Abraham was ~2000 BC. If a historical figure, Abraham could have
>>been the common ancestor of many current Jews and Palestinians but
>>nevertheless only a minority in both populations as he is too recent)
>
>Responding with my RE teacher's hat on . . .
>
>I'm not intending to spark a debate about Biblical historicity, but
>it's interesting in the light of what you say to note that Abraham
>is first introduced (Genesis 11) against the background of a
>geneaological history that gives the Hebrews a place in the wider
>Semitic context ("the descendants of Shem"). Although this
>genealogical picture is apparently painted in terms of individuals,
>in fact the OT thinks of people as being so tightly bound up with
>their tribe that it's not always easy to se whether names refer to a
>person or his tribe (e.g. later references to Jacob/Israel).
>
>So although Abraham is revered as a patriarch, he of course did not
>spring from nowhere, and indeed the Bible specifically draws our
>attention to his ancestry. Talk of a Y-chromosomal Abraham may
>therefore be misguided - when talking about his genetic fathering of
>nations, the Bible places this in the context of his genetic ancestry.
>It is when talking about his theological fathering of nations, if
>you like, that the Bible emphasises his lack of memetic ancestry -
>that he was the first monotheist. (And there's a rather delightful
>Qur'anic story which makes the same point.)
>
>Kate
>
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===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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