Κατα Λουκαν 1:46-55

Luke 1:46-55 (Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition [emphasis added])

Nota Bene, the King James Version has Luke 1:55 as:

“As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.”

Likewise the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition has Luke 1:55 as:

“As he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed for ever.”

But for such purposes, significant is only the Greek:

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Matthew 1:1

As unsatisfactory as this answer is, in the middle of the second decade of the XXI century, that may well be the best summary of where things stand. Library shelves, certainly, but perhaps one may even say libraries, are full of monographs and other studies that have been produced over centuries running and that have considered this matter from every imaginable angle. Over very recent decades improvements in genealogical DNA testing have introduced potentials in the field of genetic genealogy, isolation of haploid genotypes (haplotypes), and so forth, that most of us find fascinating. Indeed perhaps we are too captivated by the genealogical aspects of this rapidly developing science, at least we Christians, who believe that all people are the created children of the One and only God, who made us in His image and likeness.

Still, writing these words is unlikely to bring about any diminution in interest, but maybe a few words of caution will be digestible. Firstly, recognize a distinction between the actual scientific results of any investigations, and the way that such are presented in papers you may read and lectures you may audit. Consider the source, and wait for results to be replicated by other laboratories and institutions. Then consider what interests may underlie, what relationships may exist among, those others too.

Very few adherents of Rabbic Judaism — well, none in fact — are going to want to admit of anything that questions their separateness. This situation is itself curious, not a desire for actual separation, of living out a life separately, but a desire to convince others, and themselves, that they are in fact separate, are set apart. In pre-Shoah times the emphasis was quite different, though of course genealogical DNA testing also had not yet come about.

And one might interject a sub-theme, that one is presented here with the spectacle, not of a numerically and militarily dominant Christian power trying to ferret out who is a Jew, with a view toward persecuting or expelling the same. Accepting that levels of assimilation, and thus the difficulty of the task, varied from place to place over the centuries, but still at some basic level, when the Jews were sought out so that they could be expelled from, for example:

• Brittany in 1240, or
• England in 1290, or
• Hungary in 1367, or
• France in 1394, or
• Mainz in 1012 or 1474, or
• Ravenna in 1491, or
• Spain, Sicily and Sardinia in 1492 by the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, or
• Krakow in 1495, or
• Portugal (complicated mix of forced conversions and expulsions) in 1497, or
• Naples in 1541, or
• the Papal States (except Rome and Ancona) by Pope Saint Pius V in 1569, or
• Venice and the Adriatic Islands (not much enforced) in 1571, or

... well, let us stop here for now. This list could be expanded enormously from where things stood centuries before the Nazis and their Nürnberger Gesetze (which, unknown it seems to 99 percent of people in The West, actually deemed as non-Jews huge numbers of people who were Jews by Talmudic law and by self-identification). And of course the argument facially in evidence is a two-edged one, at least two-edged, that is:

Christian powers were, everywhere if not always, despicable and vindictive in their perennial scapegoating of this subtle people, or there were in fact some fundamental and ultimately inescapable characteristics in the Jewish people which made and makes it impossible for them to abide in harmony over the long hall with Christians within Christendom.

But returning to the point at hand, to expell a people there had to be a people to expell, so in these earlier times it was the problem of the expelling power to determine that this or that man was that separate creature, a Jew. Of course, depending on the level of assimilation, this may not have been much of a problem. In our late XX and early XXI century times it is, in significant part, the problem of the Jew to establish to others, and to himself, that he is something, is someone, set apart, that Jews do in fact (still) exist as a discrete and insular people, and indeed as a people with genetic continuity back to the Aaronic priesthood and in fact back to Abraham. When once genetic genealogy, genealogical DNA testing and analysis, enter this purview, take a guess how Jews will relate to the matter. Obviously, the vast majority will embrace findings which support their separateness and continuity in Abrahamic descent.

This, not monotheism and the Tanakh, is the essence and epicenter of Jewish identity.

Minor additions or subtractions will be tolerated. But with any finding which suggest, worse yet purport to prove conclusively, a fundamental discontinuity — allow that means a large Asiatic-Khazar genetic admixture or (conversely?) a large European one, that Jews are in fact just our fellows — expect rejection and obfuscation whereever such are possible.

Interesting times.

Christ Before...the People
Антокольский-Antokolsky (1840-1902)
Celebrated Russian-Jewish sculptor