logansluf

i said it was an off-beat interpretation

Adamantia

I received an email from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee mailing list during November last year which kind of touches on this subject:

<a href="http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4307083,00.html" target="_blank">Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians</a>

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=================================
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
4201 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20008, U.S.A.
Tel: (202) 244-2990, Fax: (202) 244-3196
E-mail: adc@adc.org
Web : <a href="http://www.adc.org" target="_blank">http://www.adc.org</a>

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The offending article has indeed been removed from the journal’s website. If you search for it you’ll find this comment:

Article has been withdrawn by the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (the copyright owner), the Editor and the Publisher, and will not be available in electronic format
(Volume 62, Issue 9, September 2001 )Human Immunology : Official Journal of the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI)
<a href="http://www.elsevier.com/locate/humimm" target="_blank">http://www.elsevier.com/locate/humimm</a>

It still says he’s a member of its editorial board on the author’s homepage:
<a href="http://chopo.pntic.mec.es/~biolmol/personal/peraav.htm" target="_blank">http://chopo.pntic.mec.es/~biolmol/personal/peraav.htm</a>

Here’s the reference in case anyone wants to look it up (if it hasn’t already been ripped out that is):
261.-Arnaiz-Villena A, Elaiwa N, Silvera C, Rostom A, Moscoso J, Gómez-Casado E, Allende L, Varela P, Martínez-Laso, J. " The origin of Palestinians and their genetic relatedness with other Mediterranean populations". Human Immunology 62: 889-900, 2001.
<a href="http://chopo.pntic.mec.es/~biolmol/personal/interpub.htm" target="_blank">http://chopo.pntic.mec.es/~biolmol/personal/interpub.htm</a>

{Found a website with the text of the first message. --Muad'Dib}

[ January 15, 2002: Message edited by: Muad'Dib ]</p>

Adamantia

More on the Arnaiz-Villena paper:

<a href="http://www.scienceagogo.com/newsforum7/messages/1113.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.scienceagogo.com/newsforum7/messages/1113.shtml</a>
Some quotes from another article on this topic:
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A more appropriate action, Arnaiz-Villena says, would have been to publish the letters of complaint and allow him to respond.
But the depth of anger the article raised made such a course impossible, argues Suciu-Foca. One ASHI member was so offended by the article that he resigned, she says. "We would have had mass resignations and the journal would have been destroyed if this paper were allowed to remain." ---
I haven’t read it myself to judge whether its supposed political commentary is inaccurate.

The article below laments politics wasn’t welcome: “ by repressing Arnaiz-Villena’s research paper, Elsevier Science may have deprived the very “science” it promotes from achieving one of science’s more lofty goals -- that of making the world a better place to live.”
World Peace & Genetics:Why Not?
<a href="http://www.oasistv.com/news/12-6-01-story-2.asp" target="_blank">http://www.oasistv.com/news/12-6-01-story-2.asp</a>

Like the link below, it mentions other studies whose similar findings were announced without causing a scandal in conservative arenas...so I guess it must have been the ‘political’ rather than the scientific content which raised their ire.
<a href="http://www.bioethics.umn.edu/genetics_and_identity/biblio.html" target="_blank">http://www.bioethics.umn.edu/genetics_and_identity/biblio.html</a>

===

<a href="http://www.aish.com/societywork/sciencenature/Jewish_Genes.asp" target="_blank">http://www.aish.com/societywork/sciencenature/Jewish_Genes.asp</a>
15th July, 2000

The findings were that most Jewish communities -- long separated from one another in Europe, North Africa, the Near East and the Arabian Peninsula -- do indeed seem to be genetically similar and closely related to one another, sharing a common geographical origin.

These Jewish communities are more closely related to each other and to other Middle Eastern Semitic populations -- Palestinians, Syrians, and Druze -- than to their neighboring non-Jewish populations in the Diaspora.
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<a href="http://www.csulb.edu/%7Ekmacd/genetics.htm" target="_blank">http://www.csulb.edu/%7Ekmacd/genetics.htm</a>
May 9, 2000 (from the NY times)
Another finding, paradoxical but unsurprising, is that by the yardstick of the Y chromosome, the world's Jewish communities closely resemble not only each other but also Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese, suggesting that all are descended from a common ancestral population that inhabited the Middle East some four thousand years ago.
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Experts find genetic Jewish-Arab link
<a href="http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/11/06/News/News.14948.html" target="_blank">http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/11/06/News/News.14948.html</a>
Monday, November 6 2000

DNA research carried out at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School and University College in London has shown that many Jews and Arabs are closely related.

A previous study of 1,371 men from around the world by geneticist Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona, with collaboration from Oppenheim, found that the Y chromosome in Middle Eastern Arabs was almost indistinguishable from that of Jews.
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US scientific journal pulls anti-Israel paper
<a href="http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/11/26/News/News.38752.html" target="_blank">http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/11/26/News/News.38752.html</a>
Monday November 26, 2001

CX

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned it but <a href="http://eawc.evansville.edu" target="_blank">Exploring Ancient World Cultures</a> at the University of Evansville website is a fantastic resource for information on antiquity starting as far back as Sumer in the Uruk period (around 3500 B.C.E.) which is regarded by many to be the first human civilization and which certainly predates Israel. And from which Babylon derives much of it's theology which is in turn absorbed to a significant degree by the Israelites (probably during the Babylonian captivity). The most notable of course is the story in Sumerian mythology of Ziusudra and the Flood and the Babylonian analog of Utnapishtim found in the Epic of Gilgamesh (which predates the story of Noah by some 1200 years or so)

[ January 15, 2002: Message edited by: CowboyX ]</p>

Pantera

There was a thread on the Arnaiz-Villena paper in the political forum last year.

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=12&t=001665&p=" target="_blank">Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians</a>

I posted <a href="http://journals.ohiolink.edu/pdflinks/011104192555453386.pdf" target="_blank">this link</a> to the article, which may work for some people, if it's still up. (It's theoretically restricted to Ohio-State University computers, but seems a bit leaky). {Added - don't bother, they finally got round to removing the article}

My own view is that tyhe paper should not have been accepted in the form it was published in because it contained a large amount of material which was essentially little more than (not necessarily inaccurate) political commentary on the Middle-East conflict, which was completely irrelevent in a paper on human genetics. Whether telling libraries to rip it out of Journals after the fact was a measured reaction though I am less sure about.

[ January 15, 2002: Message edited by: Pantera ]

[ January 18, 2002: Message edited by: Pantera ]</p>

Adamantia

Yes, it’s all too reminiscent of book burning I think...

However according to the quotes in the posting above, "We would have had mass resignations and the journal would have been destroyed if this paper were allowed to remain.”, therefore the course of publishing letters of complaint and letting the author respond wasn’t an option...I find it especially vile that he wasn’t allowed to see the accusations against him.

Boro Nut

What a wonderfully descriptive phrase. Consider it stolen for my own use.

Femme Savante

Last year I took a class (at University of Colorado-Denver) on the history of the old testament. Below, I've pasted in some of my notes from our discussions on the Canaanite people's correlation to Judaism. I hope this is helpful.

Circa 1,400 1,250 BCE, there were a lot of slaves in Egypt (collectively known as Hapiru [Hebrew]).

Canaanite Correlation to Judaism

The Abrahmic tribe absorbed Canaanite influence. After returning from slavery in Egypt, the tribe was vast and diverse about 300,000 men.

A Religion of El, Ashera, et. al.
1 Baal incorporates the qualities of both the Year-King (fertility) god and the War god.
2 Deity develops and continues over time.
3 There is a trinity god: father, son, and holy ghost.

B El Religion
1 The patriarchs of Israel absorbed this religion.
2 It evolved into a Yahweh religion in Moses' time.
3 Only some elements of the Ashera religion were assimilated.
4 The J(Yahweh) and E(l) authors preferred different deities.
5 Moses spent his adulthood in the Sinai desert amont the nomadic Midianite tribe. Jethro was the father of Zipporah, Moses' wife.
6 Story of the burning bush and Yahweh as the the champion god.
7 Oral tradition predates written history.

C Archaeological Finds
1 Ugarit -- Tell Mardikh, Syria. Ugaritic texts date from 1,400 BCE (Gilgamesh) were discovered in 1920s CE, translated in the '50s CE. These were an early Canaanite text.
2 All the El names for Canaanite gods are found in the Ugaritic texts.
Yahweh was not a Canaanite god.
3 Yahweh may have been the tribal War god of the Midianite tribe.

D Circa 1974-80 CE, finds at Ebla (near Haran)
1 In 1980 CE an entire library archive was discovered.
The stone tablets were in excellent order and condition.
2 These are the property of the University of Rome, so the Vatican is heavily involved.
3 There is a library of 15,000 tablets dating back to 2,400 2,000 BCE.
4 The tablets are written in a Semitic, proto-Canannite proto-Hebrew, language. Hebrews are descended from Canaanites.
5 At Tell Mardikh in the 1980s CE, famliar names were found in the Ebla tablets:
Abrahm
Esaom
Ishmaelu
Israelu
Davidu
Jerusalema
Megiddo
These are ancestral names; Ebla was the ancestral culture of the Hebrews.
6 When did the split occur, and why?
Competition for land & resources.


Correlations between pagan religions and the Bible

A Sea serpent -- god = Elohim (Canannite gods).
1 Job 41:1 -- God answers Job.

[ January 18, 2002: Message edited by: Femme Savante ]</p>

RyanS2

Hmm... Yahweh , (YHVH actually, or Yahveh), not a Canaanite god? I suppose, in some senses, that is correct. This is from mostly from Cross, "Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic" pg. 69, and Albright, W.F. "Yahweh and the gods of Canaan".

"Most interestingly, the name of the Hebrew deity 'Yahweh' seems to have its cognate in the Canaanite 'ha-yail'/ 'hay ya-il' "El exists, endures." The South Canaanite verbs yahwi, yahu and yahi are most easily recognized as imperfect and jussive causatives meaning 'to procreate' or 'to bring a child into being.' Paul Haupt, long defended by W.F Albright, believes that Exodus 3:14 was originally yahwe asher yahwe as being in the third person singular rather than the first person singular. Since 'asher' is used rarely in early Yahwistic poetry and replaced in Hebrew the relative particle 'du' or 'zu' no earlier than the beginning of the Iron Age, it follows that the formula is to be reconstructed as 'yahwi du yahwi.' This is parallel to several formulas in Ugaritic texts as referring to El. A couplet spoken by Baal has it 'ki qaniyumu olamu'/ 'ki darda-ru du yakaninunu' "Indeed our creator (El) is eternal" / "Indeed ageless is he who formed us." Also there is 'du yakaninu' in the couplet 'toru il abuhu'/ 'iI malk du yakaninuhu,' "Bull El his father"/ "King El who created him (Baal); and 'il du yaqniyu...,' "El who created..." The verse from Deuteronomy 32:6 can also be compared:

'hI hw byk qnyk hw shk wyknnk'

"Was he not thy father, who created thee, who formed thee and brought thee into being?"

There is much accumulated evidence that strongly supports the view that yahwe, yahu and yahi are causative imperfects of the Canaanite-Proto-Hebrew verb hwy, "to be." As in its use referring to the Canaanite El, it means that he (El) manifests his existence or renewed life (in the case of dying and rising gods) in the procreation of sons. The Hebrew 'yahwe sabaoth' find its original setting in the liturgical name of the ark of the covenant: 'yhwh sb'wt yshb (h)krbyn.' The epithet 'yoseb kerubim,' "who is enthroned on the cherubim" of course applies to the shrine at Shiloh and its successor at Jerusalem."