Occasionally this board sees silly arguments snuck onboard by cranially-cramped posters who don't realize just how silly they really are.
One such claim is that certain Native Americans now inhabiting the Western Hemisphere display signs of Jewish genetics--which dyed-hard Mormons suggest supposedly proves (according to their loony LDS Sunday School logic) that these Native Americans are descendants of Book of Mormon Lamanites who allegedly rowed in from the Middle East hundreds of years before Mormonism's white Jesus entered the scene.
Let's examine the science that puts such faithfully-ignorant, last-stand Mormon arguments to rest in a genetically-marked grave.
From a "Jewish Times" article headlined, "Research Unearths Jewish Roots in Colorado Indians":
"A population of Native American Indians from the U.S. state of Colorado has been found to have a genetic mutation typical of Ashkenazi Jews."
--(Catch #1: These "Colorado Indians" got their Jewishness not courtesy of Book of Mormon travelers from the Middle East back before Mormon Jesus-time, but from European Jews during the time of Christopher Columbus).
Continuing from the "Jewish World" article:
"The finding [of a genetic mutation found in Colorado state Native Americans typical of Ashkenazi Jews] suggests the presence of common roots that date back to the days of [drum roll, please] Christopher Columbus.
" . . . [T]he so-called 'Ashkenazi mutation' is a deleterious modification in [the] BRCA1 gene which increases risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. Researchers from the Sheba (Tel Hashomer) Medical Center in Israel found it in the DNA of descendants of those Indians who moved from Mexico to Colorado some 200 years ago.
"The same mutation was earlier tracked in Hispanic Americans whose ancestors also arrived in the United States from Mexico and South America.
"Computer analysis of genetic data has revealed that the two groups should have a common ancestor--a Jewish person who moved from Europe to the New World as far back as 600 years ago [Note: not 600 years before Jesus]--[a]t around the same time that Christopher Columbus discovered America, and the Jewish population was expelled from Spain."
--(Catch #2: These "Colorado Indians" exhibit no signs of Jewish cultural traditions).
Again, from the "Jewish World" article:
"In their publication in the 'European Journal of Human Genetics,' the team, led by Eitan Friedman, notes that Colorado’s Mexican Indians do not seem to have any traditions that would link them to Jews."
("Research Unearths Jewish Roots in Colorado Indians," by "Ynet news," on "Jewish World," 1 June 2012, at:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4236708,00.html)
Actually, this is not really new news at all.
RfM poster/exMormon/molecular biologist/senior research scientist Simon G. Southerton, Ph.D., in his book, "Losing a Lost Tribe; Native Americans, DNA and the Mormon Church," describes the ethnic group of Jews known as the Ashkenazi--and how they don't factually or actually fit the Mormon myth.
Southerton first explains who, ethnically speaking, the Ashkenazic Jews are:
"Of the estimated 14 million Jews living today, most are derived from two ethnic groups known as Ashkenazian and Sephardim, distinguished by their most recent place of exile. Ashenazic Jews, by far the most numerous (-80%), have resided in northeastern Europe for centurlies, particularly in the Rhineland. Sephardic Jews number about 700,000 and previously lived around the Mediterranean, predominately in Spain . . . . The two communities are culturally linked . . . even though they have been in relative isolation from each other during the past 500 years . . . . Most Sephardic Jews now share present-day Isreal with a similar number of Ashkenazim."
Southerton further writes that although "Jews are more closely related to other Semitic populations than they are to European people or to the more distant African populations[,] . . . somewhat unexpectedly Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews share closer genetic ties with each other than they do with groups in neighboring Semitic communities . . . [and] both have maintained a relatively high degree of isolation from surrounding foreign populations."
Southerton then proceeds to map out the Ashkenazic Jews' European DNA:
"Paternal and maternal genealogies display the strong genetic links [Jewish] Middle Eastern groups have with Europe. Virtually all of the individuals in Middle Eastern populations have maternal DNA lineages found frequently among Europeans. Those European lineages have been classified into distinct lineage families on the basis of specific DNA mutations . . . ."
Citing a 2004 study (Gonzalez, et al) of maternal DNA lineages among Middle Eastern and European populations involving 565 Ashkenazi Jews from 15 different populations in Europe, Southerton notes that "[t]he most common female line in Europe is the HV group, which occurs at a frequency of almost 70% in Spain [Note: Spain was the home country of Christopher Columbus]. A characteristic of the Ashenaizim populations is the high frequency of the K lineage (32%), typically occuring at low frequencies in most other European populations."
Southerton adds that "[t]he research [also] shows conclusively that the inception of the Jewish priesthood predated the division of world Jewry into the Ashkenazic and Sephardic ethnic groups over 1,000 years ago."
(Simon G. Southerton, "Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA and the Mormon Church," Chapter 9, "The Outcasts of Israel," under the subheadings, "The House of Israel," "Jewish Molecular Genealogies" and "Sons of Aaron" [Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 2004], pp. 122-23, 126)
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Dealing with Mormon apologists who wouldn't know science from a hole in the ground in the Hill Cumorah is like shooting fish in a barrel that is "tight like unto a dish."
--link to earlier RfM thread:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,687897,687897#msg-687897Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2013 05:24PM by steve benson.