Jews and Arabs and Their DNA

Nadene Goldfoot                                                

  The lands of Aram, Ammon, Moab, Edom, Egypt, Nabatu,  are Arab lands

Both Jews and Arabs came from Abraham, and Abram, whose name was changed with good reason to Abraham, came from the great city of Ur of the Chaldees that was on the ending of the Euphrates River in what is today's Iraq.  It was what we could call today, Arab land. Then Abraham was more Arab than anything.

Though Arabs came from Arabia originally, you could call all the surrounding lands of Israel as Arab land.  Each state has most likely been endogamous for generations going back thousands of years.  That is, they have found spouses from their own surroundings, their own people, just as the Israelites had been doing.  Each area had built up their own DNA Y haplogroup and  mitochondrial  haplogroup or male and female line.                                            

Along came a migration of people from Ur to Canaan and eventually their 12 sons of Jacob  by 4 women of which 2 were sisters and 2 were most likely Egyptians, became 12 tribes.  These men were whole and half brothers with 4 of the 12 having Egyptian mothers.  It was the tribes of Gad and Asher, then Dan and Naphtali who were half brothers to Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun.   This means they all started with the common ancestor of Abraham, so were all carrying the remnants of those genes,  plus many others passed down by relations before and after that.  A direct male line would still be bearing the very same haplogroup of the male line, Y, with possibly a mutation of genes here and there.  Possibly that line could have hit rock bottom with no more males to carry on the line; either by not marrying and leaving sons, or sons dying in battle or disease, and others taking their place who were of other lines.  

The 10 tribes who were taken away by the Assyrians were the northern tribes, leaving Judah, some of Benjamin and some of Ephraim. They assimilated into the tribe of Judah.  

It's only been in the last few years that we have developed the knowledge of this DNA.  Otherwise, people had to depend strongly on memorized genealogy, and then written genealogy of their family lines.

                                           

    

   Carl Zimmer, Cece Moore, Yaniv Erlich, and Karl Skorecki were panelists at the Jewish genomics conference in November.

Prof. Karl Skorecki is the Dean of Bar-Ilan University’s Azrieli Faculty of Medicine in Safed. Born and raised in Toronto Canada, he received his MD degree from the University of Toronto.

Dr. Karl Skorecki, important man in genetics,  professor at Technion — Israel Institute of Technology, where he directs the laboratory of molecular medicine, and talked to me at the “Jewish Genomics Evening: Heritage to Health,” held on November 19 at the New York Genome Center in lower Manhattan. The program was designed to “explore how the revolution in genetic research … has transformed the way we think about Jewish identity.” He considered a hypothesis: if the Cohanim are descendants of one man, they should have a common set of genetic markers -- a common haplotype -- that of their common ancestor. In our case, Aaron HaCohen.

Prof. Skorecki’s current major research interests are in human population and molecular genetics, having started with research studies tracing founding patrilineal and matrilineal lineages in Near East and Jewish populations which has now extended to genome-wide studies including many global populations, with an emphasis on kidney disease population disparities. His research has been reported in leading scientific and medical journals and books with more than 250 publications and close to 8000 citations.

Amazingly, I find the holy bible, the Tanakh, a book of genealogy.  It is heavy into recording the parentage of people.  Not only is it recorded in the first 5 books of Moses, but Chronicles at the end is just such a record.  

The first mixing of Israelite genes with Arab genes happened when Abraham, who had married his niece, Sarah,(an endogamous state in those days)  had also taken as a spouse for the purpose of producing a child as Sarah seemed to be barren, was Hagar, handmaiden of Sarah.  Hagar conceived Ishmael.  So Ishmael was the half brother of Isaac.  They each passed down the Y haplogroup of Abraham.  

                                              

The next generation has Isaac's son, having unidentical twins who were Jacob and Esau.  Jacob is the one who went on to have the 12 sons of the 12 tribes of Jacob, the hallmark of Judaism, while Esau turned out to be very different from his twin.  He also left the family and went to live with the neighboring state, the Edomites of Edom (Gen.36:1) and Jacob went through an experience earning him the name of Israel.   

The Cohens, men whose origins are from Aaron, brother of Moses, who Moses gave the responsibility of Priest, was a duty handed down from father to son.  They were from the tribe of Levi.  Other sons of Levi, not part of Aaron's line, became the Levites.  The line of Aaron has been found to carry the Cohen gene of J1, as scientists have named it.  Today, Cohens have been DNA tested and that's their Y haplogroup.  Oral communication of father telling son has worked amazingly well.  Science proves that this is true.

Now 46% (99/215) of Cohanim are from the group J1-P58, compared to 14% of non-Cohanim (87% of Ashkenazim are in a larger umbrella of J). So J1-P58 is likely to be the start of the Cohen line (or a subgroup).Jan 7, 2020                          

Pashtuns of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India have cultural remnants of the northern tribes of Israel. it's been difficult getting them to test as they say they know who they are and follow their own set of rules. The present thought is that they are remnants of the 721 BCE attack of Assyrians who took them away.  Now, 2,743 years later, we discover our connections.   

                                             

              Current Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan is a Punjabi Pathan (Pashtun)

G2b is a major Y chromosome haplogroup, and yet unique. It was found among Pashtuns, who are classified as Iranic and on much lower scale among all major Jewish groups, Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians,

Haplogroup G is found at modest percentages amongst Jewish men within multiple subgroups of haplogroup G (Y-DNA)The majority falling within the G2b and G2c category. Haplogroups that are more commonly found amongst Jews are E1b1b1c, (M123)E1b1b1a (M78)and especially J1 or J* (12f2b) J2a* (M410) J2a1b (M67) T (M70) Jewish ethnic divisions, ranging from about a third of Moroccan Jews to almost none reported among the Indian, Yemenite and Iranian communities. (see Resources below of first 2 listings for more information).  

                                                              

    

       Solomon, son of David, son of Jesse, grandson of Ruth and Boaz,  a Levite, and his wife of a neighboring Arab state.  We say we are cousins of the Arabs, and we are, very distantly.  

I realize that the spouses of the Israelites have been Arabs a great part of the time, mixing the DNA with that of Abraham, who was also an Arab from Ur, Iraq.  Each individual group, practicing endogamy, which was the obvious way to find a spouse, developed into their own special line on their genealogy tree. 

Here is the Y haplogroup name of Palestinian Arabs:

                                                     n      E      G   I       J    L  N  R1a-R1b  T

Arabs (Palestine - Muslim)	AA (Semitic)	143	20.3	7	6.3	55.2	0	0	1.4	8.4	1.4	Nebel2001[1]
Arabs (Palestine - Christian)	AA (Semitic)	44	31.8	11.3	0	9	0	0	0	0	0

 Look at the difference between the Muslims and Christian Arabs. n must stand for the number of people in the study. For my purposes, I only am listing the Palestinians. E was very predominant with Christians.  So was G.  Muslims carried 55.2% of 143 men  with J. Christians carried 9% of 44 men with J.   R1a is also found with Levite Jews as well instead of the J.  They may have had to step in to take the Levite position in the synagogues when there were no more J's.  

Listed were notable ethnic groups and populations from Western Asia, Egypt and South Caucasus by human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups based on relevant studies. The samples are taken from individuals identified with the ethnic and linguistic designations in the first two columns, the third column gives the sample size studied, and the other columns give the percentage of the particular haplogroup. (IE = Indo-European, AA = Afro-Asiatic) Some old studies conducted in the early 2000s regarded several haplogroups as one haplogroup, e.g. I, G and sometimes J were haplogroup 2, so conversion sometimes may lead to unsubstantial frequencies below this chart. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_populations_of_the_Near_East

                                                  

Testing for Saudi Arabia is taking place.  Saudi Arabia is divided into 13 administrative areas: Al-Baha, Al-Jawf, Asir, Eastern Region, Hail, Jizan, Madinah, Makkah, Najran, Northern Border, Qasim, Riyadh and Tabuk. According to July 2009 Census figures, The Saudi Population has reached an estimate of 28,686,633 (including 5,576,076 non-nationals).

The main two ethnic groups are Arabs and Afro-Asians at an approximate of 90% and 10%, respectively. The Arabs of Saudi Arabia today are generally descended either from the fiercely independent Bedouin tribes which for centuries scoured the deserts, or from the cosmopolitan settled communities which thrived on the trade routes up and down the east and west coasts, or settled in Makkah.  They show a big % of their population being J.  I saw a few G and E as well.  

 Resource:

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/saudi-arabia/about/background and 

http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/culture-miscellaneous/difference-between-arabs-and-jews/

https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2018/09/what-haplogroup-do-pashtuns-be.html

https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-haplogroup-we-be.html

https://www.jfedstl.org/2013/05/02/dr-karl-skorecki-speaks-about-genetics-of-being-jewish/

https://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48936742.html

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22137890/ ?? over my head