Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders

Sunday, March 29, 2020

The Noachian Bottleneck and the Refutation of Herman Hoeh’s Theory of the Origin of Nations


Figure 1.  Phylogenetic Chart of Human Haplogroups




Figure 2. Clans of the Sons of Noah from Genesis 10

The Noachian Bottleneck and the Refutation of Herman Hoeh’s Theory of the Origin of Nations


By Neo
Herman H. Hoeh was a historian trained at Ambassador College. He is known for his two volumes of alternative history titled The Compendium of World History. He also established a racial history of mankind for the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) in his published article titled The Origin of Nations! Racial policy implemented in the WCG was predicated on Hoeh’s unconventional theological anthropology. Later in life, he purportedly denied the validity of his work. I will refer to Hoeh’s viewpoint as a “theory” in this article but in the past in the WCG it was regarded as the inspired truth brought to the church by Hoeh and bearing the ideological imprimatur of Herbert W. Armstrong. Based on the science of genetics, this article will establish that Hoeh incorrectly redefined human racial history.

Noachian Genetic Bottleneck


According to the traditional interpretation of the events of Genesis, Noah was the forefather of mankind. This premise was also fundamental to Hoeh’s theory. Everyone on earth is descended from Noah according to the genealogy in Genesis 10. While that is the tradition, a counterpoint is that this genealogy has been unjustifiably labeled “Table of Nations” in some Bibles. The Biblical text itself gives it a much more focused scope and refers to the genealogy as the Clans of the Sons of Noah.

If we assume that Noah was a real person and his descendants were real people, named in the Genesis 10 genealogy, and that Noah was the progenitor of all of postdiluvian mankind, this means that the events of the Great Flood produced a genetic bottleneck. A genetic bottleneck is a population collapse with diminished heritable diversity among the survivors. The eight survivors in the Ark represented mankind’s entire gene pool. And this gene pool lacked diversity because it consisted of Noah, his sons, and their wives. Five out of the total of eight survivors were related. Hoeh theorized that all postdiluvian racial diversity transited The Flood through the wives of Ham and Japheth. Shem was a racially pure Caucasian but Ham and Japheth had non-Caucasian wives. And from this small gene pool all the races of mankind today proliferated. 

Evidence of this view of human racial history should be mapped into the human genome. But it is not. If this theory were true, given a date for the Flood of only a few thousand years ago, all of mankind should have the same Y Chromosome haplogroup as Noah which is inherited through the male line. The descendants of Shem should have Noah’s Y Chromosome haplogroup and a single Caucasian mtDNA haplogroup (mitochondrial DNA inherited through the female line). The descendants of Ham and Japheth would have Noah’s Y Chromosome haplogroup but mtDNA haplogroups from their non-Caucasian wives. All of humankind would now share a tiny gene pool consisting of one Y Chromosome haplogroup and four or fewer mitochondrial haplogroups.

The hallmark of a good theory is that it explains reality. Hoeh’s theory fails this test. Its prediction of the current genetic configuration of the earth’s population is incorrect. Instead of the tiny gene pool Hoeh’s theory would predict, we have a great diversity of Y Chromosome haplogroups, not just one. And we have a plethora of mtDNA haplogroups among and within racial clusters, not just four or fewer. In other words, there is no genetic evidence that there was ever a collapse of the human population to produce a Noachian Bottleneck. This implies that the Flood was a local event that did not affect the bulk of mankind with its great diversity of existing haplogroups. (I will mention that I do believe that Noah was an actual historical figure. But I believe that the Great Flood was a local event and seems to have found its way in a mythicized version into the traditions of many Middle Eastern people. )

A Genetic Interpretation of the Genesis 10 Genealogy


Let us assume that Noah was not allegorical but a real person. Let us also assume that the genealogical table in Genesis 10 reflects actual people and their genetic relationships. How would we then interpret the genealogy in Genesis 10 under the constraints of genetics?

Genetic mutation that formed human haplogroups is a very slow process. It happened over hundreds of thousands of years. This means that Noah and his descendants in Genesis 10 genealogy were all of the same Y Chromosome haplogroup. This may be deduced as follows: first, they are all descended from Noah and bear his haplogroup in all masculine lines; second, there was not enough time, in a few generations spanning a few hundred years, for any significant number of mutations to occur that would give rise to a haplogroup divergent from Noah’s haplogroup. This means that Noah did not give rise to the different nations of the earth but to a collection of clans which were all of the same race.

There is empirical evidence supporting the conclusion that Noah’s descendants are all of the same race. The Adnani Arabs according to Arab genealogists are descended from Abraham through Ishmael and are classical Hebrews. They are represented in the Semitic branch of the Genesis 10 genealogy shown in Figure 2. And, also, Dr. Spencer Wells’ research for the National Geographic Society established continuity between the ancient Canaanites, Phoenicians and modern-day Lebanese based on archaeology and genetics. A finding relevant to this discussion in Wells’ research is that the Canaanites are also of the same haplogroup as the Adnani Arabs. But Herman Hoeh’s theory would have predicted that the Hamitic Canaanites would be racially different from the Semitic Arabs. In fact, Hoeh’s claim was that the Canaanites were the ancestors of the West African blacks (haplogroup E). But through genetics, we have evidence that both the Semitic and the Hamitic lines descended from Noah were racially the same and of the same Y Chromosome haplogroup.

The Bedouin Arabs are an excellent reference population that will lead to the identification of the Y Chromosome haplogroup common to the Clans of the Sons of Noah. Though the progenitor of the Jews, Abram, is identified in the Genesis 10 genealogy, the Jews do not make a good reference population. Because of the Diaspora, Jews absorbed people from other ethnic backgrounds through intermarriage. It is estimated that Ashkenazi Jews are from 30% to 60% European in ancestry resulting in a modified genotype and phenotype. But Bedouins provide a good reference population because they “are the best representatives of autochthonous Arabs” (Indigenous Arabs are descendants of the earliest split from ancient Eurasian populations, Genome Research, Feb. 2016, p. 151). Bedouins are a mix of Adnani Arabic ancestry and Qahtanie Arabic ancestry. The Adnanis trace their descent to Ishmael the son of Abraham. And the Qahtanites trace their ancestry to Joktan the son of Eber, the father of the Hebrews. Bedouins a high frequency of Y Chromosome haplogroup J. In one genetic sample, taken from Ajman, they were 100% haplogroup J (Genetic Structure of Nomadic Bedouin from Kuwait, Heredity (Edinb), November 2009, Table 3). The conclusion this evidence permits us is that Bedouins are paradigmatic Hebrews and are haplogroup J. We may infer from this that Noah, a Hebrew, and his descendants are haplogroup J.

References in classical literature may be found to some of the names listed in the Clans of the Sons of Noah. No doubt Noah’s descendants migrated widely, settling among the peoples of other haplogroups that populated the earth, giving their names to some populations, but were not the source population for all mankind. Also, some peoples who are a part or the Arab culture do not have genetic connection to the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula. An example would be North African tribes that are haplogroup E and have a North African history and heritage.

Charts in Conflict


Hoeh relied on a number of methodologies that did not have great fidelity, such as similarities in names, to identify various races. For this reason, he made many misidentifications. An example involves the Germans, Eastern Europeans and Russians. Hoeh identified the Germans and the Eastern European Slavs as Semitic. The Russian Slavs he identified as Japhetic. In his reckoning, the Germans were descended from Asshur, the Eastern Europeans from Elam, on the branch of Shem, and the Russians from Meschech and Tubal, on the branch of Japheth. These names can be located on Figure 2. But, from genetic analysis, the Germans in the east, the Eastern European Slavs and the Russian Slavs are all haplogroup R1a (see map in Wikipedia article titled Haplogroup R1a) and Hoeh’s divide between Semitic and Japhetic races here is not supported.

In brief, if one were to take Hoeh’s racial identifications and label each patriarch in Figure 2 and then label each patriarch with the haplogroup identifications from Figure 1, the resulting chart would not look anything like Figure 1 which is based on progressive mutational development connecting haplogroups. This necessary haplogroup connection in Figure 1 would be lost because of erroneous identification in Figure 2.

Implications for British Israelism


The evidence cited in this article thus far supports the conclusion that the Hebrews, including Abraham and his sons, are haplogroup J. Since this is true, the British people are unrelated to these clans. The British people are haplogroup R which has a separate extensive history based on genetics and archaeology. Some will assert that the Jewish population contains some haplogroup R, particularly the Ashkenazi who have a history of intermarrying with Europeans. This presence of haplogroup R in the Jewish population may then be pretextually used to link the Jews racially to the people of Britain. But by establishing that Abraham was haplogroup J, using the Bedouin Arabs as a reference population, we can identify the Abrahamic element in the mix of haplogroups in the Jewish population. This Abrahamic element is haplogroup J. A similar analysis can be used to identify the tribe of Asshur as Y Chromosome haplogroup J. Archaeogenetics has identified haplogroup J and haplogroup G among excavated ancient Assyrian remains. From this approach, we know that the native Assyrian haplogroup is J. This means that the ancient Assyrians did not give rise to the Germans who are haplogroups R1a and R1b. It is worthwhile mentioning that haplogroups are not the full story but autosomal studies must also be considered. In such studies the Jews group autosomally with other Middle Eastern populations that have a higher frequency of haplogroup J.

Critics and Unicorns


Some of the material in this article appeared on this blog some months back and there were two principle criticisms:

1. One critic stated that the large time spans for the existence of modern man were fabulous. I think the point was that God had to create the racial diversity putatively reflected in Genesis 10 because there had not been enough time for that diversity to evolve – Adam was created around 6,000 BP supposedly. My view is that Adam may have been created sometime in the Neolithic but the earth was then already populated by other sentient hominids. Statements in Genesis point to this. Adam, in this view, was the father of mankind in spirit but not genetically.
2. Another critic persisted in asserting that there was no way to determine the haplogroup of Abram short of actually swabbing Abrams cheek and submitting this sample to DNA testing. I recall that this person contended that Abram might well have been haplogroup R – the haplogroup of the British people – and this could not be disproven. This is somewhat like this critic requiring me to disprove there is such an animal as a unicorn by my looking everywhere in the universe. First, it is a fool’s errand to take this kind of unending approach and, second, the critic can always say that my search may not have been thorough enough. Circumstantial evidence suffices for Abram and for unicorns. Any reasonable mind would understand that. It can be easily deduced from indirect conditions that Abram was haplogroup J – like Ishmael, Joktan, the Bedouins and the Canaanites. 

Conclusion


Herman Hoeh’s theory of racial history has a principal flaw from which other flaws emanate. The flaw is the belief that Noah was the progenitor of the racial diversity that we know in the human population today. Hoeh should not be taken to task too harshly for this. Many Christian denominations at one time interpreted Noah’s role in this way and some still do. There was no Noachian Bottleneck as one might expect if the account in Genesis is interpreted to insist on a global flood. Noah and his family were all of the same race and genetic affinity. Racial policy of many different perspectives can be formed but it cannot be rooted legitimately in the anthropology of Genesis 10. But then Herman Hoeh did not have the benefit of the science of genetics to aid him in his historical analysis and reconstructions. We do have this advantage and it would be a regrettable intellectual dishonesty to neglect this advantage.
-->

13 comments:

  1. Before Copernicus, most Western astronomers subscribed to a theory of planetary motion that was intricately and extraordinarily detailed, with use of epicycles multiple layers deep to explain the visible reality, and which did so with apparently perfect accuracy.

    Most Armstrongites will look at NO2HWA's long and detailed post and simply say, "Well, I guess we don't really understand DNA and genetics as well as we think we do, as this very complex explanation, like Ptolemy's epicycles, will eventually be replaced (viz. Occam's Razor) with a simpler explanation in harmony with scripture."

    ReplyDelete
  2. There's a very simple explanation for all this: God did it. Insufficient genetic diversity? God provided it. No relationship between the British and ancient Ten Lost Tribes Israelites? God did it. He said he would sift the Israelites through the nations, and he did, so much that we cannot recognize the descendents of the Israelites. We wouldn't know anything about Ephraim and Manasseh were it not for the written record which was explained by Herbert Armstrong and Herman Hoeh. The same answer applies to any other issue where science and the Bible disagree. How did koala bears get on the ark? God did it. Two koala bears were miraculously flown to the Middle East, or perhaps someone went and got them during the 120 years when Noah was building the ark. Eucalyptus leaves were also provided to meet the nutritional needs of the koala bears. Existing civilizations don't mention a worldwide deluge? No problem: God did it. He made it look like no flood happened to pull the proverbial wool over our eyes. Is my tongue in my cheek? Maybe. If so, God did it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Articles like this prove nothing to its reader. As I've mentioned before, it's a near law that unless one is very knowledgeable in a field, one can easily be misled or deceived. One sees this constantly in the investment industry, and many other fields.

    PS, 8.28, many diverse cultures make mention of a flood. Koala bears? God must have used His angels to put them on the Australian continent, minus predatory animals such as lions and tigers, for which they have no defence.

    ReplyDelete
  4. 6:27pm You're not very good at paying attention are you? It's NEO's long and "detailed" post. Not Gary's!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous (8:28):

    I have seen this argument before. I believe the Young Earth Creationists have a version of this. Some of them, maybe all, believe that God created fossils in the ground to give the impression of a lengthy history of the earth when the earth is really only about 6,000 years old.

    The issue is Why would God orchestrate a deception? Why would he make people believe something that was not true? Why would he bear false witness and place himself among the transgressors? What god do you really worship?

    The overt deception and the accompanying self-deception comes out of Armstrongism and not God.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anon 4:39 AM, you're not very good at paying attention, either. Apparently you didn't notice this at the bottom of the post:

    Posted by NO2HWA at 6:17:00 PM

    It's a ramble by "Neo" [sic] but it was posted by/because of NO2HWA. Now stop being an ironically hypocritical ass and start commenting on the content of the thread.

    ReplyDelete
  7. To his credit, Hoeh dismissed his own Compendium work as bunk, in his later years.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous 3/29 @ 8:28 is a hilarious parody of the ignorant reasoning that underpins biblical literalism. NEO has written a logical explanation that is supported by science, and he is spot on about God's role as a deceiver (I thought that was Satan's role). If God has deliberately tricked NEO, the scientists and me, then "He" isn't much of a God and not worthy of our worship or attention! Come on folks, God gave us these brains to use!

    ReplyDelete
  9. So, what is your solution, 2:23? Reject or ignore the information presented by NEO for fear of being deceived? I would expect that a seeker of the truth would want to educate himself or herself, to study and acquire more knowledge on the topic, soas to evaluate it with proper understanding. That is the true antidote to being deceived. Problem is, as Armstrongites in the past, we were schooled to maintain very heavy confirmation bias in favor of HWA's teachings, and to actually reject verifiable facts which countered them. So, brainwashing is a bigger problem than not knowing enough, a condition which can be very easily rectified by doing due diligence and allowing additional input if only the brainwashing would permit that.

    BB

    ReplyDelete
  10. Well written paper. Citations would help the serious reader verify the various technical details. Most of us don't have genetic studies readily available or the time to Google the details. Still it is a very serious article from one who has a professional grasp of the complexity of the DNA molocule, nuclear DNA, and mapping. The technical aspects of the article and deep genetic research should not be taken lightly.

    ReplyDelete

  11. https://creation.com/noah-and-genetics


    If your sole objection to this article is that it comes from creation.com then you might want to take a deep look at your prejudices.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous (6:29)

    I had a look at the website you mention and found to contain a number of unsupported assertions. I don't have time to parse through it all so let me select just one point. The author of the article wrote:

    "One more line of evidence {of a bottleneck} crops up in the amount of genetic diversity that has been found within people worldwide. Essentially, much less has been found than most (i.e., evolutionists!) predicted"

    The words in curly brackets are mine. In fact, there is a large amount of genetic diversity found among people worldwide. Then we can have a debate over what constitutes a "large amount" and what constitutes "a small amount." So let us say that there is sufficient diversity that the putative Noachian Bottleneck could not have happened. Too few haplogroups and too little time for mutation.

    What you should do is read about genetics and after you accumulate some understanding, come back to the web article you discovered and read it again. Don't tuck it away in your hip pocket and assume that what you read on "Banned by HWA" was wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  13. From 8:55pm

    "Still it is a very serious article from one who has a professional grasp of the complexity of the DNA molocule, nuclear DNA, and mapping."


    Molocule? Molocule? Seriously?

    Let's try molecule, ok.

    ReplyDelete