Missed One
Unless she's subsequently picked it up, Serial Blogonomy has missed a Mormon story, courtesy Jimmy Akin.
genetic research has the potential to solve other historical puzzles. One that I've been waiting for lo these long years is word about where the so-called ten "lost tribes of Israel" ended up. There is some genetic evidence indicating that some of them ended up in Africa, but I'm still waiting for a fuller picture.
Now there's evidence (which is really just the last nail in the coffin) for where they didn't end up, and it's bad news for the Mormon Church. Ever since the Book of Mormon was written, Mormons have held that the American Indians were descendants of immigrants from Israel.
NOPE.
Just as it's possible to find a lost tribe with DNA evidence, it's also possible to lose one.
Anthropologists have long-maintained, and genetic studies are confirming, that American Indians are descendants of immigrants from East Asia, not the Middle East. A new book by a former Mormon bishop now explores the matter, and he admits where the evidence points.
Mormon apologists have seen the handwriting on the wall on this one for some time, and they have been doing what Mormon apologists typically do when faced with scientific evidence contary to historic Mormon belief: change their claims.
Jimmy links to a Christianity Today article. Excerpt:
In Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church (Signature Books), research scientist Simon G. Southerton of Canberra, Australia, notes that none of the nearly 7,500 DNA-tested Native Americans shows any link to ancient Israel. More than 99 percent show an Asian heritage. The Book of Mormon, however, says that Israelites emigrated to the Americas 2,600 years ago, with the now-extinct Lamanites and Nephites becoming the ancestors of American Indians.
Perhaps we'll eventually find out that the ten lost tribes ended up in the Himalayas...
Comments
The rabbis in Israel who decide who is or isn't Jewish (and therefore who may immigrate under Israel's "Right of Return" law) immediately declared them members of the lost tribes. That set off the airlifts during the famine and civil wars there.
When I met them at a Youth Hostel, where they were learning Hebrew and adapting to their new home, it was mostly men -- about 17 for every woman who'd made it across the desert to the airlift site. Most of their wives and kids were forced to remain behind, which naturally made the men distraught. With the second airlift a few years later, what was left of their families were reunited.
As for genetic links, a DNA study in 1998 of 5,000 men throughout the diaspora who identify themselves as Cohens, or descendents of Moses' brother Aaron, found that more than 95% do indeed come from a single male ancestor.
Anyway, this has nothing to do with Mormons.
Cool post.
-Anne