Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders
Debunking British Israelism, the Pet Doctrine of Armstrongism
Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People
I am certain the Lost Tribes of Israel are alive and well. I know, for example, the the exiled tribe of Dan sojourned across Europe and named many rivers, towns, and countries during it's travels, such as the Danube River, Donegal, and Denmark. The tribe of Ephraim settled in Britain; the word "British" is of course derived from the ancient Hebrew word beriyth, which means "{covenant." The Israelites, "Issac's sons," naturally became known as Saxons. And Queen Elizabeth and her linage are direct descendants of King David and the legitimate heirs to the Israelite throne. It's all clear.
How do I know this? Because the Worldwide Church of God tells me so, or at least it used to. That's the Pasadena, California sect founded by an ex-advertising agent, Herbert W. Armstrong, in the early 1930's.
Armstrong was a devout believer in what is called British Israelism or Anglo-Israelism, a movement originating centuries ago and still alive today that maintains that most Britons are descendants of ancient Israelites. Armstrong got his start in 1931, when he launched the hit program The World Today on the Radio Church of God. His message mixed elements of Judaism with a dash of Seventh-day Adventism and a sprinkling of pagan mysticism. He cooked up quite a stew. He preached that the Bible was a "coded message not allowed to be revealed"-that is, until he cracked the secrets. He was willing to share its hidden wisdom with anyone and everyone, particularly those who would cough up 25 percent or more of their income to help spread the "the word." When Armstrong died in 1986, the WWCG claimed more than 150,000 members and an annual budget of $130 million. His successors ultimately abandoned Anglo-Israelism for an evangelical Protestantism,, although numerous Armstrong family members and friends founded sects that preserve some of the zanier claims of the elder sage.
The search for the missing Lost Tribes ranks right up there in biblical mythology with the quest for the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail. The mystery of their whereabouts has encouraged a motley crew of true believers, mystics, zealots, troubadours, and out-and-out fakers. It is so alluring and central to questions of Western identity than an equally unusual assortment of truth seekers has more recently joined in the quest: anthropologists and geneticists.
13 comments:
And the bottom line is that DNA refutes British Israelism... again.
Armstrongists have been proven wrong.
You can go home now.
[Honestly, no one cares how sincere you are when it comes to your annual evaluation: You have failed, God is not with you, you believe lies (for no particularly good reason) and your religion should come to an end, but you can't think up any alternatives now that you are completely compulsively deluded into thinking it is true, even though you have been debunked as kooks. And you don't listen. You flunk. Better luck next year. And no, nobody thinks you are worth anything.]
Douglas, you say ‘And the bottom line is that DNA refutes British Israelism... again.’ But is your statement actually true?
I have posted on this before, but you never seem to answer. I have tried typing ‘can races be identified by DNA’ into Google, and all the sources seem to be saying that the reality is that race can NOT be determined by DNA.
And some of them have high credentials.
For example:-
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/
elsi/humanmigration.shtml
(The US Government human genome project) states:-
"Will genetic anthropology establish scientific criteria for race or ethnicity?
DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other. Indeed, it has been proven that there is more genetic variation within races than exists between them.
You would think they should be qualified to know - and they state ‘There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity.".
There are plenty of other sources that state much the same – a couple of random examples:-
http://newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/mole00/mole00404.htm
http://backintyme.com/essays/item/44
So who do I believe - the experts or Douglas Becker?
Questeruk, if you google your search in a different way, you will find that Douglas Becker is right that human lineages can be traced. Admittedly, you also are right that humans can't be divided into distinct races through DNA analysis, but that is not the same question. Within a species, a race clearly differentiated by a consistent cluster of traits, and human populations show too much genetic overlap for racial boundaries to be defined. However, we do inherit certain genes from our forebears, and some of these clearly identify lineages, which are not the same thing as races. You are not arguing with Becker, you are arguing past him, basing your objection on a different phenomenon.
Here is how the process works, according to the Human Genome Project: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/humanmigration.shtml
How do genes tell the story of our ancient ancestors' migrations?
When DNA is passed from one generation to the next, most of it is mixed by the processes that make each person unique from his or her parents. Some special pieces of DNA, however, remain virtually unaltered as they pass from parent to child. One of these pieces is carried by the Y chromosome, which is passed only from father to son. Another piece, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), is passed (with few exceptions) only from mother to child. Since the DNA in the Y chromosome does not mix with other DNA, it is like a genetic surname that allows men to trace their paternal lineages. Similarly, mtDNA allows both men and women to trace their maternal lineages.
Both the Y chromosome DNA and mtDNA are subject to occasional harmless mutations that become inheritable genetic markers. After several generations, a particular genetic marker is carried by almost all male and female inhabitants of the region in which it arose. When people leave that region, they carry the marker with them. By studying the genes of many different indigenous populations, scientists can trace when and where a particular marker arose. Each marker contained in a person’s DNA represents a location and migration pattern of that person’s ancient ancestors.
For example, roughly 70% of English men, 95% of Spanish men, and 95% of Irish men have a distinctive Y-chromosome mutation known as M173. The distribution of people with this mutation, in conjunction with other DNA analyses, indicates that the men's ancestors moved north out of Spain into England and Ireland at the end of the last ice age.
I think one of the big things supporting the Armstrong claims for British Israelism is that the British royal family believes it. Although I am not 100% sure, I think they derive their family tree from Geoffrey of Monmouth, but I am not sure, since a unified British "throne" has been around since the seven kingdoms were united in the 9th and 10th centuries under pressure from Danish incursions, and Geoffrey lived and wrote during the 12th century. He may have been called upon by the king to construct a glorious lineage for himself out of a few threads of truth and much imagination, since today he is roundly debunked by scholars. Geoffrey seems to indicate that all of royal houses of Europe make their claim of royalty based upon a founding patriarch who numbered among the surviving descendants of King Priam of Troy who managed to escape during its fabled defeat. I am not sure why Trojan blood would make a convincing claim that someone should be your ruler, but apparently that must have held some sort of cache back in the day.
Of course, what I find strange is that if you believe in British Israelism, you kinda hafta take Geoffrey of Monmouth at face value, and according to him, the name Britain is not derived from any Hebrew word, but from Brutus, the descendant of Priam who settled on that rainy isle.
I myself have not studied the ins and outs of what DNA evidence says about the migrations of various peoples, however, I thought that the English people were a collection of Germanic peoples, Angles and Saxons, who came from northern Europe, not Iberian peoples who came up from the South. Perhaps those genetic markers are referring to selected Celtic peoples, such as Scots, Picts, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, etc.?
Questeruk, you are correct that DNA does not identify races.
Retired Prof, you are correct that DNA can be used to trace genetic lineage.
DNA evidence can be used to determine both the paternal and maternal lineages. The paternal Y-Chromosome has been shown to be stable such that DNA samples can be taken from two different people today to see if they have a common ancestor or not.
In the case of Western Europeans, those from the British Isles and the United States, the lineage as given through "haplogroups" is different from those who are from Israel (assuming each being within one deviation of the mean for the DNA of the residents of the respective nations).
This is lineage, not race.
DNA refutes the proposition of British Israelism, showing that the haplogroups of the groups diverge and they do not have a common paternal ancestry (the one which counts in Old Testament geneologies). British Israelism is a fraud. It is promoted by kooks.
It's easy to be confused if you do not have a background in science, technology and / or logic.
Questeruk, I was not ignoring you, I simply have not noticed your comments before.
Retired Prof did an excellent job of explaining the proposition.
DNArefutesBI.com which contained the relevant information was taken down because of the lawsuit threatened by Wade Cox through his Spokane based attornies, Paine and Hamblin. You can see the issue for yourself at the site.
I would have otherwise directed you to the site. You may find articles covering the topic on the Armstrong Delusion blog by Casey Wollberg.
The issue is being resolved (but it is a matter of technology, not legal issues).
Anon, your guess that the genetic marker M173 could have been passed on by the Celtic inhabitants of Britain who were invaded by Germanic tribesmen in the 5th century is plausible. Given the time of origin at "the end of the last ice age," it could have originated even earlier, in the people who inhabited western Europe before Indo-Europeans (i.e. Celtic, Italic, and Germanic speakers) moved into the region.
We know there were people in Iberia ahead of them, because their descendants constitute a remnant population in the Pyrenees: the Basques, whose language is not closely related to any other European language family. So it is possible the gene variant could have arisen among those early inhabitants and spread as they and their descendants intermarried with members of invading populations.
Language families and DNA lineages show certain similarities, but you can't convert one directly to the other because although speakers can give up their original language and adopt a new one, they can't delete their original genes.
Here's a twist on the royals that you might not have heard. According to some conspiracy theorists, the "elites" of this world (royals. bankers, politicians, uber-rich) are actually a race of shape-shifters and are actually reptillian from, you guessed it, outer space. They even call the queem, "Elizardbeth". Now that's a little more fun than the worn out old british israelism theory. Since COGers love conspiracy theories, I would love to see what they do with this one. Disclaimer-no I personally don't believe it. I just like listening to conspiracy theories, they are better than soap-operas.
Wouldn't the fact that the Dutch, , English,Swedish, Norwegians, Swiss, French, and whoever else wishes to be anglo seem to have any proclivities for the Hebrew language be enough to question the non connection?
Besides, I think the 12 tribes are made up as part of the cultic fairy tale so I guess that settles it.
M.T.Genome
M.T., at Ambassador one of the many things that made me doubt that HWA could possibly be an apostle of God was his assertion that YHVH had somehow maintained the tribal integrity of each of ten Hebrew tribes and distributed them to separate countries in Europe that spoke several different languages, all more or less related to one another but not to Hebrew. The proposition that every decision made by individuals or families to move to new locations and every seduction to copulate, both marital and extramarital, that took place during the diaspora could possibly be worked out so as to come up with that result defied all logic.
Also the similarities between individual Hebrew words and the modern words HWA cited as evidence were so few they could all be coincidences.
Later I learned that language changes have to be taken into account, something HWA knew nothing about. For example, if the tribal name "Dan" had come into Germanic during the period he claimed it did, it would have changed pronunciation to sound like "thon." Hebrew "beriyth" would have appeared in Germanic and Old English as "peryd" and in Middle English as "perid." Today it might rime with either "beard" or "heard."
The summer after I left Ambassador vowing never to return, a friend dropped by to try to persuade me to come back. He said that even if British Israelism is not true, the part about eternal life on the one hand and the lake of fire on the other certainly is. My take was and is that if a doctrine is so obviously wrong on one key point, it is safe to pay no attention to any of the rest.
So far so good.
One of the things I studied into in a bit greater detail was the groups of people whose genetics contributed to the British folk we know today. Clearly, you cannot find any similarity amongst the alleged or suspected "tribes" to the Jews, who have largely resisted assimilation for thousands of years. Britain has been a melting pot from Roman times. Picts, Celts, Angles and Saxons, Normans and other groups have cotributed to the mixture and racial impurities of British dna.
The distinct groups most closely
related by dna to the Jews are actually black people in certain areas of Africa and Ethiopia. Arabs living in the nations surrounding Israel have been shown to have more relationship via dna to Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews around the world than do British or Americans!
BB
Here's a conspiracy theory for you:
Whether the north-western Europeans are descended from the lost tribes of Israel or not I don't know for sure.
But, the people we call "Jews" (especially the Ashkenazi Jews) are a mixture of different races as well e.g. What about the conversion of the Khazer empire to Judaism?
So if we assume that the Jews are really descended from Jacob when the majority may not really be due to mass conversions to Judaism from other races like the Khazars then we're making a mistake if we then identify their DNA as being Israelite or Abrahamic when we don't even have the DNA of the Patriarchs? And then use such to compare and discount other ethnicities who might actually be more Israelite or Abrahamic than those we assume to be of the Hebrew race.
Personally I find the British-Israel theory fascinating as I do a the JFK conspiracy or 9/11 etc. But, I don't believe it's necessary for salvation anymore than knowing who the modern descendants of Gen 11 are today. Regarding the related theory that the British royal family is descended from the house of King David I believe there is no evidence for that. The only evidence we have stops with Jeremiah, Baruch and the "king's daughters" travelling to Tahpanhes, Egypt. From there we don't know their ultimate fate.
Byker Bob wrote:
"Normans and other groups have cotributed[sic] to the mixture and racial impurities..."
BB, I have never done such a thing.
(Unless you are talking about last Thursday.)
(Or during certain weekends before 1985.)
Norm
Thanks for that Douglas.
Food for thought - I will check into this whole thing a bit more before I get back to you.
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