Re: Culture's effect on Genetics

From: Derek Gatherer (d.gatherer@vir.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 15 Feb 2006 - 10:23:32 GMT

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    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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