Nadene Goldfoot
Jochebed saving her newborn son, Moses, by placing him in a basket to float down the Nile, out of harm's way. With her is her daughter, Miriam. Women who converted would be given the Hebrew name of Miriam.
The Parents of Moses (1391-1271 BCE) were Amram and Jochebed of the tribe of Levi, where the Jewish line of Cohens originated from. Moses had been united with his older brother, Aaron, and had deemed him to be the priest of the new religion he was creating, later to be called Judaism. From Aaron's descendants came the Cohens or Priestly line with special duties. Aaron died on Mt. Hor, on the bordeer of Edom, at the age of 123. In rabbinic legend he is regarded as the personification of piety and the spirit of peace, but he was also showed with his faults as well. He was persuaded to make the Golden Calf while Moses was on Mt. Sinai. It shows the mentality of the people at that period. Moses had a big undertaking ahead of him.
Why should I believe in this tale of our history that comes from the 5 books of Moses, the Torah? Most all the world doesn't give it much credence, including many some of today's Jews. Many refer to it as a fairy tale set up to push the political beliefs of the Jews and their hold on the land once called Palestine.
I believe in this story and so do others. I love it when DNA , a science of today that can find something like a tag each of us carries showing where we were made, proves the case of the Torah's authenticity.
The connection between the Egyptians and Moses and the Israelite tribes shows much in DNA. J1, which is the tag of a DNA test of Y haplogroups, is called the Cohen gene. Actual men serving as the ancient Cohen in the synagogue, bear this DNA . We had a Hochfeld cousin who was a Cohen in the synagogue, reading first from the Torah before the Levites who were 2nd, and then the Israelites. DNA showed that he was also the bearer of the J1 Cohen gene, the Y haplogroup. It's true. This is not a matter of a fairy tale. People of Moses's day knew nothing of DNA.
Genetic studies among Cohanim from all over the world reveal the truth behind this oral tradition. About 50 percent of Cohanim in both Sephardic and Ashkenazic populations have an unusual set of genetic markers on their Y chromosome. What is equally striking is that this genetic signature of the Cohanim is rarely found outside of Jewish populations.
The Y chromosome also keeps track of time. Small mutations occur in the DNA being passed on, and these changes build up with each generation. Like the tick of a clock, the number of these mutations is a measure of time passed. By looking at the differences between Y chromosomes in the Cohanim, researchers can estimate roughly how many generations ago members of the priesthood had a common ancestor. Remarkably, the evidence suggests the Cohanim chromosomes coalesce at a date that corresponds with when the priesthood is thought to have begun.
What researchers may have found is a marker indicating paternal connection to the people from whom the ancient Hebrews emerged—potentially a powerful tool that enables us to look into the history of many Judaic populations.
J-M267 , the J1 Cohen marker of the Y haplogroup of my relative, Hochfeld, is very common throughout the Levant and Semitic dominations by J-P58, but some specific sub-populations have notably low frequencies. Syrian Sunnis of Hama have 47.2%. The Ismaili group of Damascus, Syria, had 58.8%. Palestinians had 32.7%, and they had many coming from all over the Middle East that called themselves Palestinians.
Cohanim Jews had 46.0%. Their test was run by Hammer and Behar in 2009. Those tested were the remnant of Cohens left after the Holocaust, a group of 215 tested. Think how many Cohens were slaughtered in the Holocaust, lost to us. it shows that many of today's Jews have been of the Cohen line of Aaron.
Jerusalem, Israel. A group of Cohanim (Members of Levi Tribe) and models of Herod's temple ritual tools during a simulation of the Passover sacrifice.
It happens that Jews are divided between the Cohens, the Levites, and the Israelites. The Levites were a special group being Aaron and Moses were of this tribe. Moses gave his closest relatives the greatest responsibilities to bear. Scientifically, Cohens are the descendants of Aaron specifically. Levites are all the descendants of of Levi, and Israelites are all the other 11 tribes out of the 12 of Jacob. They all 12 tribes would be 1st cousins with a lot of ? times removed from each other. So, those Jews bearing J1 are from the tribe of Levi and specifically from Aaron, the brother of Moses. They have the biggest job of all of the Jews and were never allocated land by Joshua after entering Canaan. Big Job-no land means no pay in real- estate. That's the way it was to be. They were to be the teachers of their religion and go from tribe to tribe, teaching. They would live with their cousins.
One does have family membership in being Jewish with the occasional converted included, as long as they had a Jewish mother. Even that is changing in this generation, for there are many Jews where only the father was Jewish and the mother did not convert. However, many Romans had been converting into Judaism at the exasperation of Roman emperors who put a stop to that in the 300s CE (AD) in their meetings. From thereon, Jews did not proselytize. After Christians had used forced conversions on Jews, Jews realized it was one of those things they did not want to ever do to others; so it has been the practice that if any person asked to be converted to Judaism, they would be turned down 3 times, needing to consider the steps they are taking and then will be considered. So the DNA of Jews has been that which scientists love to study.
Going way back to the 12 sons, patriarchs of the 12 tribes, , Levi was the 3rd son of Jacob and Leah. Levi had one daughter, Jochebed, who was the mother of Moses, and 3 sons; Gershom (Gershon)s, Kohath (whose son, Amram was the father of Moses) , and Merari. Levi died in Egypt at the age of 137.
Arabs also have many men that carry the J1 Y haplogroup, but theirs shows a slight difference, making the tag able to show of the male was of the Jewish or Arab line. What that tells me is that there was this Y haplogroup connection between the Arabs and the Jews. The fact that a son is a Cohen is related from father to son, so it's been an oral communication, and one that is visual as probably the son has been taken to the synagogue along with the father and has seen the process. Today, since the Holocaust, is another story. Some men have no idea what they are and can take a DNA test to find out.
Going back to our Torah, Abraham and his niece, Sarah, who was his wife, had a son, Isaac. Abraham also had another son, Ishmael, by Sarah's handmaid, Hagar, who was an Egyptian. Isaac was his 1st son. The reason for this story was to stress the relationship between the Israelites and Ishmaelites and to account for the nomadic nature of the latter. Who did the Ishmaelites become? They were people who also divided into 12 tribes as told in Gen.25:12) who lived in Northern Arabia between Egypt and the Assyrian border. The Bible refers several times to their trade with Egypt. Traditionally, they are the Arab descendants of ISHMAEL and modern Arabs still claim this descent, so it's a part of the Arab history as well. Jews have always said that the Arabs were their cousins.
Esau and JacobJacob himself was a twin, but we never hear much about his older brother, Esau. They were the sons of Isaac and Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel, an Aramean man, the youngest son of Nahor and Milcah, the nephew of Abraham, and the father of Laban and Rebecca.
Jacob was the son of Isaac, son of Abraham, and Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees, an ancient Babylonian city. Archaeologists have found evidence of a flood, an extensive one, at an earlier date. Abraham, when younger and known as Abram, had migrated with his family to Haran, the site where Abram's brother had settled, named Haran, who was the father of Lot. This nephew of Abram had traveled further with him. Haran was a trading town in NW Mesopotamia. Assyrian inscriptions from this period mentions a Habiru (Hebrew) community in the vicinity which links with Moses's father, Terah, there.
Esau and Jacob
By the late 12th century BCE, the Arameans were firmly established in Syria; however, they were conquered by the Middle Assyrian Empire, as had been the Amorites and Ahlamu before them.So our Jewish patriarch, Jacob himself was half Aramean.
Arameans were also a group of Semitic tribes who had invaded the Fertile Crescent in the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium BCE (when Abaham was born) and roamed between the Persian Gulf and the Amanus Mountains. Aram and Israel had a common ancestry and the Israelite patriarch were of Aramaic origin and maintained ties of marriage with the tries of Aram. Thus, they both carry J1 or J2 male (Y) haplogroup line. How could false historian writers glean all this information way back and make up a story line so clever? Truth is always stranger than fiction. Some of that Y haplogroup must have a few Aramean genes.
They must have been fraternal twins, for they were not identical twins at all, being very different. Jacob had to trick Esau in gaining the birthright of their father, Isaac, for the betterment of the future, he must have thought. Nothing was held back as far as telling all of Jacob's faults, making the reader feeling quite sorry for Esau, the hunter in the family, while Jacob was the stay at home, cook for the family. The story relates, showing that the twins have become enemies of each other. Esau is later identified with the people, possibly descended from him, of Edom (Gen. 36:1). In the Talmud, Esau was synonymous with villainy and violence. Later, Esau in late Hebrew literature implies a coarse materialist.
The Edomites were also called the people of Idumea, which lay south of the Dead Sea and bordered on the Red Sea at Elath and Ezion Geber. They also were of Semitic origin, traditionally descendants of Esau, and lived by hunting. They in turn had dispossessed the Horite inhabitants of Seir, the area of Mt. Seir, a mountainous and easily fortified area with fertile land. Then they copied their environment by organizing themselves along tribal lines headed by a chieftain called the Allooph, later consolidating into a monarchy. The Edomites, of course, were traditional enemies of the Israelites. They fought Saul and were defeated by David who partly annexed their land. The Edomites regained their independence during the reign of King Jehoram of Judah (854-844 BCE) but wars between the two states were frequent.
They later became vassals of Assyria. At the time of the destruction of the 1st Temple, they plundered and looted in association with the Babylonians, and, being driven out from Seir by the Nabateans, occupied Southern Judah during or after the period of exile when Jews were forced by the Babylonians to walk to Babylon. The Edomites were FINALLY conquered by John Hyrcanus who forcibly converted them to Judaism , and from then on they constituted a part of the Jewish people. That means we might be carrying some of their genes, too.
Resource;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J-M267******
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Edomites.html
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/israel/familycohanim.html
https://aramean-dem.org/English/History/Evidences_of_our_Aramean_origin/Evidences_of_our_Aramean_origin.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arameans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Aaron
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4728368
