Sub-Saharan DNA of Modern Jews

Alice C. Linsley

A DNA study that compared the genetic makeup of Jewish populations from around the world with African populations has found that modern Jews can attribute about 3 to 5 percent of their ancestry to sub-Saharan Africans. Researchers from the Harvard Medical School estimate that the exchange of genes occurred approximately 72 generations ago (or about 2,000 years). Lawrence Schiffman, professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at Yeshiva University, believes the intermixing may have occurred during the Hellenistic period (c. 320–30 B.C.E.), when Jewish communities were resident in many North African coastal cities, or during the First Temple period (c. 950–600 B.C.E.) (Read more here: DNA Suggests Early Jewish Links with Africa - Biblical Archaeology Society)

Dr. Harry Ostrer, director of the human genetics program at the New York University School of Medicine, led a study that compared the genetic makeup of Jewish populations from around the world with African populations. Ostrer found that modern Jewish populations have "African" ancestry. Of course, the term "African" lacks definition. Some Jews have married African Jews. Jews who have preserved ethnic purity where possible will have inherited genetic material from the early Hebrew who were mainly a Nilotic population.

David Reich, associate professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues decided to explore further and found that modern Jews can attribute about 3 to 5 percent of their ancestry to sub-Saharan Africans.

Lawrence Schiffman, professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at Yeshiva University, believes the intermixing may have occurred during the Hellenistic period (c. 320–30 BC), when Jewish communities were resident in many North African coastal cities, or during the First Temple period (c. 950–600 BC), when the Israelite kings, including Solomon, had trade relationships with Africa. (Read more here.)

The Lemba are a Bantu-speaking population in southern Africa with claims of Jewish ancestry. They have a high frequency of the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH), especially in their Buba clan which is the senior, priestly clan among the Lemba people of Zimbabwe and South Africa. The CMH Y-chromosome signature is associated with Jewish priestly descent. CMH has been traced back roughly 100 to 106 generations, or approximately 3,000 years ago.

The Hebrew dispersed widely before Judaism

Before Abraham's time (c. 4000 years ago), the Hebrew ruler-priest caste had already dispersed widely. Noah established his territory in the region of Lake Chad. The words Borno and Benue mean "Land of Noah". The local Kanari people refer to Lake Chad as Buhar Nuhu, meaning "Sea of Noah".

Some descendants of Cain, the Kenites, lived in the land of Canaan in the time of King David. Some descendants of the Hebrew ruler Het (Gen. 10) also lived in Canaan in the time of Abraham. They are identified in Genesis 23 as Hittites.

The Nilotic Hebrew Nimrod built cities for his father-in-father Asshur in Mesopotamia.

There is considerable archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic evidence that Jews who have preserved their ethnicity by marrying only Jews from the ruler priest lineages are descendants of the early Hebrew ruler-priest caste. That caste was organized into 2 ritual groups (moieties): the Horites and the Sethites. The earliest known site of Horite Hebrew worship is at Nekhen on the Nile.

The language of Abraham in Mesopotamia was Akkadian, the oldest known Semitic language. It appears to be a linguistic bridge between some of the older Afroasiatic languages and the Indo-European languages.

The Indian scholar Malati J. Shendge has concluded that the language of the Harappans of the Indus Valley was Akkadian. The Indian linguist Ajay Pratap Singh explains, "Comparisons of Akkadian and Sanskrit words yielded at least 400 words in both languages with comparable phonetic and semantic similarities. Thus Sanskrit has, in fact, descended from Akkadian."

Reformed Jewish Magazine reported in 2008 that "DNA research of male and female lineages has shown, for example, that certain tribes in Africa and India have Jewish roots."  (See Religious and Cultural Exchanges Between Africa and India.)

There have been multiple movements of people out of Africa as has been confirmed by various studies. One study indicates that the ancestral population of India separated from sub-Saharan African populations only around 54,000 years ago. (Deep history from the genomes of India - John Hawks)

Related reading: More East Africa-Asia Connections; King Tut and the Dispersion of R1b; DNA Studies Confirm Mixed Ancestry of Modern Jews; Horite and Sethite Mounds; Competition Between the Horites and the Sethites; Ashkenazi Represent Judeo-Khazar Admixture

Galit Dayan: "Jews" Lived in Dynastic Egypt

Pharoah’s papyrus scrolls may not seem the most reliable sources for investigating the story of the Israelite’s Exodus, but Egyptologist Galit Dayan has found in them much compelling evidence to support the historicity of the biblical tale.

Two weeks before Passover, on March 17, Dayan presented her research to an audience of more than 200 at Sinai Temple. Dayan, who earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is the wife of Jacob Dayan, Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles, told the group that linguistic evidence reveals an ancient and deeply involved Jewish presence in Egypt that eventually disappears. To illustrate, she drew remarkable parallels between the language of Egyptian papyrus (hieroglyphs), the haggadah and the Bible, all of which contain references to the Exodus story. In piecing together these manuscripts, Dayan framed an Exodus narrative based on facts of Egyptian history and language to prove her theory that a mass Exodus did occur and that it happened during the reign of Ramses II.

In each of the Egyptian manuscripts Dayan discussed, the same familiar characters are mentioned: Moses (“an Egyptian name”), Pharoah, the Red Sea/Sea of Reeds (“Yam Suf” in Hebrew), Hebrews, Israelites and the presence of slaves in Egypt.

In one manuscript, known as the Ipuwer papyrus, there is an eerie description of chaos in Egypt: “Plague is throughout the land,” Dayan’s translation reads, “blood is everywhere — the river is blood ... and the hail smote every herd of the field ... the land is without light and there is a thick darkness throughout the land ... the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt — from the firstborn of Pharoah that sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the prison. ...”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Dayan said with dramatic effect, “this is an Egyptian papyrus that is describing the same plagues that we have in our haggadah.” She explained her view that the 10 plagues were not random punishments inflicted by the Jewish God upon Egypt, but a “declaration of war” on the entire Egyptian system. Each plague, she said, corresponds to a different Egyptian god and the element of creation over which they held dominion. This means the plagues were not merely grave misfortunes but the most humiliating insults to the Egyptian people.

Read it all here.

Do you see the flaws in this Dayan's presentation?

Moses and his kin cannot be termed "Jews" as that term can be applied only after the Babylonian period. Moses' family was Horite. His brothers Aaron and Korah were Horite priests. Aaron is Harun, a reference to Horus. Korah means "shaved one" as the priests in Egypt shaved their heads and bodies before their term of service in the temples.

The Habiru in Egypt were the Shasu of YHWY. Nubia is the point of origin of the Holy Name.

The examples Dayan cites are all found in published texts from the Ancient Near East.  For example, the Nile water turning to blood relates to the fact that the ruler-priests mixed red ochre powder into the Nile water and mixed it with barley to make it look like blood (See James B. Pritchard's The Ancient Near East, Vol. I, page 4). This "blood water" was ritually consumed in their "communion" with Re, whose solar rays gave life to the Nile. Given the solar symbolism, this pertains to Ra and his son Horus and is a Christological image, not an image of the Passover. See The Urheimet of the Canaanite Y.


Related reading:  The Nubian Context of YWHY; Horite Temples; Moses' Wives and Brothers

Noah's Sons and Their Descendants

Alice C. Linsley

The earth was not re-populated by Noah's sons after a worldwide flood, but there is genetic evidence that these archaic rulers did have many children. Their R1 DNA has been found from Lake Chad to the Nile Valley to Europe and China.

The Hungarians, for example, claim to be descendants of Noah's son Japheth. In the Hungarian origin stories, Nimrod had two sons: Magor and Hunor. Magor is the equivalent of the Afro-Asiatic name Magog and the Hungarian word Magyar. Magyar is the name for the Hungarian people. Some Magyar still live in the Upper Nile area where they are called the Magyar-ab, the Magyar tribe.

This study compared the Y-DNA of Hungarians with other Finno-Ugrian populations to understand why modern Hungarians have so little of the typical Uralic haplogroup N1c. A few individuals from a 10th-century cemetery were tested and half of the individuals belonged to N1c. Ob-Ugrian is in the the macro-haplogroup N, with its sibling M, and is a descendant of haplogroup L3, originating in the Nile Valley. The Ob River is the main river of Western Siberia. It originates far to the south in the Altai Mountains and flows northward until it empties into the Kara Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean). Ob is an Afro-Asiatic word meaning ruler. Some rulers among the ancient Horites had the title Oba and the first ruler of Petra in Horite Edom was called Obadas.

According to Toomas Kivisild "the lack of L3 lineages other than M and N in India and among non-African mitochondria in general suggests that the earliest migration(s) of modern humans already carried these two mtDNA ancestors, via a departure route over the Horn of Africa."  Kivisild notes that the DNA is consistent with the caste practice of endogamy.

Tree of Life on Magyar sabertache (tarsoly) plate

Genesis tells us that Noah had three sons: Ham, Shem and Japheth. To these sons and their wives were born diverse peoples who we call "Afro-Asiatics." At the point in history of Noah's sons, they are more African than Asiatic, as is evident by the name given to Ham's son "Kush" (Gen. 10:6), the ancestral head of the ancient Kushites or Nubians who ruled the Upper Nile region. Ham is also the ancestral head of peoples identified with ancient Egypt, Ethiopia and Canaan.

It was the custom of these rulers to have 2 wives in separate households on a north-south axis. This made it easier for the rulers to control and tax commercial traffic moving through their territories. Remembering that Noah and his sons lived in the part of Africa through which the Nile flowed northward from its headlands in Nigeria, we can understand the practicality of this custom. In Canaan the commercial traffic moved in a north-south direction also.

In Genesis, 3 sons represent a tribal unity and there are many such units listed. Consider these 3-clan confederations:

Jubal, Jabal and Tubal-Kain
Ham, Shem and Japheth
Haran, Nahor and Abraham
Yisbak, Esau and Jacob
Og, Magog and Gog
Uz, Buz and Huz

Within these confederations three priest lines consistently intermarried. So the lines of Ham and Shem intermarried and the lines of Nahor and Abraham intermarried. It appears that Japheth's descendants moved out of the Upper Nile area into Europe and the Near East.

Ham
Ham was the father of great kingdom-builders whose territories spread from Nigeria to southern India.  Kush was one of Ham's sons and Kush fathered the rulers Raamah and Nimrod by 2 different wives. Nimrod build a vast kingdom in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley and Raamah's kingdom stretched from Tyre and Sidon to the cities of the Dead Sea Plain.  Raamah's sons were Sheba and Dedan, who intermarried with the people of Shem.  Genesis 10 tells us that Nimrod's son by his patrilineal cousin was Asshur, but this son technically belonged to the House of Shem. Likely Arpachshad was Nimrod's son by his half-sister wife.

Shem
Shem's descendants intermarried with the descendants of Ham. Rulers of Shem's house include Asshur, Arpachshad, Selah, and Eber. Eber's two sons were Peleg and Joktan (see diagram). These were born of different wives and the Bible tells us that a "division" took place in this generation (Gen. 10:25).  One of Joktan's sons was Sheba, the grandson of Sheba the Elder, the grandson of Kush, the son of Ham.  Sheba the elder's brother was Dedan.  The Dedanites were the first to use Old Arabic script. The Asshurites and the Elamites used a different script so it is clear that there was a division linguistically.

Japheth
The descendants of Japheth are found in Europe, Turkey, Pakistan, Mongolia and the Upper Nile. This explains the linguistic similarity between some Afro-Asiatic names and some Turkish, Pashtun and Mongolian names, including Jochi, Beri, Malik and Khan. Khan was originally a title meaning king. Today it is a common surname in Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Mongolia. It is equivalent to the Afro-Asiatic Kain or Kayan.

Genghis Khan married a woman of the Olkut’Hun, or Ogur Hun meaning the Hun clan/community. The word ogur means clan/community and appears to be equivalent to the Pashto orkut, meaning community. So ogur, orkut and olkut are cognates and likely related to the Kandahar dialect, which has Tir-hari as a principal dialect. Tir is a form of the name Tiras, mentioned in Genesis 10 and hari is a form of the word for Horite, which relates to Horus and his devotees. It appears that Genghis Khan married into a community with connections to Abraham's Horite Hebrew people.

In Genesis 9:27, we are told that "God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem." This doesn't support the view that Japheth and Shem were separated by great distances. It appears that the two lineages dwelt together and intermingled. The descendants of both Japheth and Shem are found in Europe, Turkey (ancient Anatolia), Pakistan, Bactria, Mongolia and the Upper Nile. This explains the linguistic similarity between some Afro-Asiatic/Semitic names and names/titles in Turkish, Pashtun and Mongolian, including Jochi (Joktan/Yaqtan), Beri, Malik and Khan. Khan was originally a title, meaning king. Today it is a common surname in Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Mongolia. The biblical equivalent is Cain or Qayan. Some of the Pashtun tribes adopted Malik as the ruler's title instead of Khan. Malik is equivalent to the Afro-Asiatic/Semitic Melek, meaning king.


Related reading: Where Dwelleth Japheth;  Haplogroups of Interest to Biblical Anthropologists; Was Earth Repopulated By Noah's Descendants?; Who Were the Horites?; The Extent of Noah's Flood; The Lines of Ham and Shem Intermarried; Y-Chromosome Haplotypes in Egypt; African Religion Predates Hinduism