Wednesday, August 18, 2010

A paternity test for Abraham

Our knowledge of DNA keeps getting a stronger connection to ethnic studies and human ethnic history. I'd like to go on record hoping that someone, at some point, gets permission to run a DNA analysis on the human remains that are in the tomb said to belong to Abraham and Sarah. There are also tombs in other places reputed to belong to Jacob and to Ishmael. In some cases, of course, more than one site has been proposed for the tombs, with one site having more ancient attestation than the other. But if a DNA test could be done in a non-destructive way on remains that old, I'd be interested in the results. The cultures of that region are very geneaology-conscious, but the history has also been turbulent. Have these cultures succeeded in keeping track of their patriarchs?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Martin LaBar said...

Now that's an interesting thought.

By the way, I ran the first comment through Google translate, Chinese to English. It came out thus:
Are there items in the law of a fool's Law: "A fool organization, Hengda to equal two-thirds of."

Weekend Fisher said...

LOL. I keep deleting the Chinese spam because on the occasions when I've followed the link and then run the resulting page through a translator, the results have been decidedly NC-17.

You were/are working on or associated with a gene-testing product, right? I'd chip in for a plane ticket to get you closer to Hebron if you could talk your way past the guards at the tombs with said DNA test kit.

Though a letter to IAA (is that the right alphabet soup?) might be more to the point ...

Take care & God bless
Anne / WF