Synagogue of Satan

Synagogue of Satan
Synagogue of Satan

Thanks to Neotherm over at Gavin Rumney’s Otagosh, we now have the complete picture and proof that the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia is the Synagogue of Satan. Using Scripture and Scientific Proof, including British Israelism, Neotherm has settled any dispute over who really runs the Armstrongist Churches of God. Following is the composite of his posts:

I will not repeat the incontrovertible genetic evidence against the validity of BI. But let me argue within the more restricted boundaries that Franz uses. In his line of reasoning and other similar lines of reasoning, the Irish records are held in high esteem. But these esteemed records address the racial origins of the Irish people and the monks who kept the records did not trace them to Hebrews. In fact these records trace the Irish people to Japheth. One can examine publications containing these records to establish that. When Herman Hoeh encountered this fact, he altered the ancient genealogies to reflect a descent from Shem. His justification for doing this (I think mentioned somewhere in the compendium) was that the monks had changed the genealogies to hide the true identity of Israel. But Hoeh offers no historical support to establish that the monks did this and Hoeh, in fact, is the distorter of genealogies.

The identification of the US and the UK with Israel does not by itself unlock prophecy. One must know the other nations as well, such as the Assyrians. For this one must resort to the Table of Nations in Genesis 10. (Sorry for the genetics again.) But these people are really a family that lived in the Middle East and are descended from one man, Noah. Geneticists know approximately where and when the diverse haplogroups of the human family developed and it was not within the confines a few generations in a single family in the Middle East. I believe that the Table of Nations is historical because we can find references in classical history to these people migrating to and living around the shores of Mediterranean (where they remain today). But these people all had the same haplogroup as Noah. And Noah had the same haplogroup as other people in that region of the world. And that is haplogroup J. Essentially, all the people in the Table of Nations are closely related and are haplogroup J. They all looked like Mediterraneans in appearance. This family, though historical, does not account for all the people in the world. They were strictly regional.

To verify this observation, if the Table of Nations accounts for all the racial diversity in the world then this idea should harmonize with genetics. Hoeh and other WCG ministers long maintained that the Blacks brought to north American as slaves were Canaanites. This means that Canaan should have had one of the sub-clades of the haplogroup E1b. But National Geographic extracted Phoenician DNA and discovered it to be haplogroup J. This means that Noah and Ham, only a generation or two earlier, were haplogroup J. Canaan was not the progenitor of Sub-Saharan Africans. He was the progenitor of Phoenician people who were Middle Easterners and were indistinguishable from Jews and other Mediterraneans. When we look at ancient representations of Phoenicians, we do not find Sub-Saharan Blacks. We find graphical renderings of Mediterranean people. Hoeh would have made the argument that Noah, Ham, Shem and Japheth were racially the same but he would not have accepted the argument that Canaan was racially the same as Noah, Ham, Shem and Japheth. He would have asserted that Canaan’s mother was Black and that is how Canaan became the progenitor of Black people. This is nonsense from a genetic and historical perspective. We should then expect to find all the Black people with the haplogroup J instead of E1b, as in reality.

The Bible is about the Jews (haplogroup J). It is not about Celts living in the British Isles (haplogroup R1b). BI is nothing less than an instantiation of the principle contained in the Book of Revelation referred to as the Synagogue of Satan – people who represent themselves as Jews racially but are not. Some of the Armstrongite ministers from the South (always the source of repugnant racism) have taken this anathema further and have claimed that the people we know as Jews are not really Jews. As one of their prominent evangelists told me, the real Tribe of Judah is located somewhere on the North American continent and the Jews look like just regular British-derived Americans. (Hence, Jesus must have looked like and Anglo-Saxon – not one of those dark-skinned Middle Eastern people.)

Another observation: I do recall that Hoeh addressed the issue of why the people in the Middle East do not resemble modern “Israelites” who were Northwest Europeans as we know from BI. Hoeh claimed that the Canaanites were Negroid. They were racially Blacks and were to be identified with the modern day West Africans. (This was later subtle justification why the slavery practiced in early North America was really not that bad to many in the WCG. God prophesied that the Canaanites were to be enslaved. Israel was just God’s tool for doing this.) Hoeh claimed that the Negroid Canaanites spread widely through out the Middle East and intermarried with the locals. This resulted in the Negroidization (that may be a pejorative word – I am not sure – if so, I apologize) of the Middle Eastern populations, hence, darker skin, curly or kinky hair, black hair and black eyes. But the Israelites escaped this admixture.

Though Hoeh never discussed the appearance of Jesus to my knowledge, the direct deduction from his claim of Negroidization of non-Israelites that one may make is that Jesus looked like a Northwest European not a dark Middle Easterner. In fact, through genetics, we know this model of racial development is false. The early Palestinean Jews were haplogroup J as they are today. They were surrounded by other peoples, including the Phoenicians, who were also haplogroup J. They all looked alike – like modern day native Middle Easterners. They were not darkened by Negroidization. One does not find the appropriate subclades of E1b among them to posit a Negroid admixture. What we find instead is the Europeanization of the Jews who filtered through the European sphere. The Ashkenazi populations reflect a substantial fraction of haplogroup J1 and J2. But they also reflect significant fractions of R1a and R1b – classic Indo-Europeans. The Jewish community absorbed people from the resident Gentile population in Europe. At one point, they absorbed an entire tribe of people called the Khazars who are thought to have been haplogroup R1a. I do not think the Khazar absorption is even controversial among Ashkenazi Jews. I read an article on it in Commentary Magazine a few years ago where it was treated as mundane fact.

The net effect of this is that Christ looked like a Middle Easterner. He did not look like a Northwest European. His appearance would have made him totally unacceptable in the First Baptist Church in Cleveland, Mississippi. And you can understand why Armstrongites from the South breathe a sigh of relief when considering the doctrine of British-Israelism. This makes Jesus a White guy. And since Jesus is the express image of God, it makes God a White guy. And since Adam looked like God, it made Adam a White guy. All those people of color are mutational outsiders (and this is what the WCG originally taught). What more could a White Supremacist ask for than a religion like Armstrongism that apotheosizes the White race.

And then there is the case of Rahab the Harlot. Back in the early Seventies, I witnessed an explosive sermon given by Dr. Charles V. Dorothy in the Field House in Big Sandy, Texas. Dr. Dorothy was a “kinder, gentler” version of Herman Hoeh. I believe this occurred near the Spring Holy Days. His sermon dealt with the invasion of Palestine by the Israelites. He spent a considerable amount of time establishing that Salmon was one of the spies sent to have a look at Jericho and gave Rahab a “scarlet thread” as a symbol of the Royal Line of Judah. Salmon and Rahab also became an item. In accord with orthodox Hoeh preachments, Dorothy described Rahab as a Canaanite and Negroid. Then at the conclusion of the sermon he stated that this same Rahab is represented in the genealogy of Christ and that Christ had some Negroid ancestry. At this point, Dorothy stopped for a moment and scanned the audience. There was complete silence – what one might call “explosive” silence. Recall that this is a huge issue. Noah was pure in his generations and Gerald Waterhouse used to preach that HWA was, like Noah, pure in his generations. This racial purity seemed to be essential for being used as an first-class instrument of God. Then Dorothy, in a raised voice, told the audience “I know you are shocked at this. I can see it on your lilly-white faces.” I would not have been surprised if Dorothy had been bodily removed from the pulpit but there was no response – just silence.

Hoeh had inadvertently, through his argument that the Canaanites were Negroid, made Jesus to be of some Negroid descent and mixed racially. A wholly unacceptable outcome to the racist WCG. There was never any further discussion of Dorothy’s sermon that I knew about but I was at the periphery in Big Sandy. I do not know what ever happened to Charles V. Dorothy. I do know that some time later Ken Hermann had an article in one of the WCG publications about Rahab. Without historical support, he asserted that Jericho was Moabite city and that Rahab was a Moabitess. Thus he transformed without quibbling a city that has been considered by everyone to be within the Canaanite pale into a Moabite (read Hebrew) city. Thus, Ken Hermann purified the racial pedigree of Christ and a loose end was tied down.

The fact is, this is all nonsense. The Canaanites were haplogroup J just like the Jews. Jesus no doubt descended from a long line of haplogroup J people and because of the isolation of these populations, he was very likely to have had no admixture, if that were to make a difference. I just saw a special on the History Channel about excavations taking place in some of the ancient Palestinean cities. The anthropologist/archaeologists involved posited that the similarities between the indigenous Canaanites and the invading Jews was so great that the Jews might have been a branch of the Canaanites. They suggested that the differences among these people were political rather than racial. There is nothing in the genetic analysis that would invalidate this view. These people were all in the same gene pool, patrilineally and matrilineally. Canaan was Shem’s nephew, the Bible tells us.

My last observation: British-Israelism is an occult belief. In the Book of Revelation it is described as emanating from the Synagogue of Satan. It is described as the idea that there are people who claim to be Jews but are not. Armstrongites would be on this like a cheap suit with the idea that they are not saying that they are Jews. They are saying that they are Israelites and that is different from being Jew. You know, the Northern Ten Tribes, the Anglo-Saxons, etc.

But that is begging the question. They are assuming BI is true in formulating their response to this issue when BI is the issue at question. Genetics tell us that this debate cannot be addressed in that way. There is no way in biology that Jacob with haplogroup J, like all the people of the MIddle East at that time, could give rise to people who are haplogroups R1b and R1a (Celts, Anglo-Saxons). That is just as farfetched as your pet dog giving birth to a cow. We know that R1b and R1a were already in existence at the time of Jacob. We know that R1b and R1a did not originate in the Middle East. And to seal the case, we know that R1b and R1a developed from haplogroup P not haplogroup J.

So the writer of the Book of Revelation was referring to the correct model and not the BI model, if you believe in the inspiration of the Book of Revelation. Under the correct model both the Northern Ten Tribes and the Jews, Levites and Benjamites in the south were all at the same place in the gene pool and can be subsumed in the generic term Jew. The Lost Sheep of Israel were just the Jews in Diaspora.

I would not on my own think of the gross error of BI as anything but silliness. Like the various stripes of conspiracy theories. It would be on the par of all that droll malarkey about the Federal Reserve being run by the Illuminati. But Revelation says it is different. It is in fact an occult belief. Something that pulls you close to the Synagogue of Satan. To me BI is like a Hazard sign. We have many of these signs on the doors of facilities around where I work. It is warning to the innocent. If you see this sign stay away, be warned. And Armstrongism wears that sign. But as with every hazard, sometimes the naive will enter in just to satisfy their curiosity, much to their regret.

Herr Professor Doktor Hermann Hoeh: I don’t know about you but I find it an excursion into black humor to think that the WCG theorist in racial pseudoscience was a mid-Twentieth Century German. I do not believe that Hoeh carried a torch for Nazism. But his role seems archetypal for that time period. I spoke with Herman Hoeh in the Field House in Big Sandy back in the early Seventies. I had just read a book entitled “America B.C.” by Barry Fell. I was enthusiastic about the book because I thought it seemed to support some of Hoeh’s ideas from his Compendium of World Historoy. I was disappointed to find that he did not share my enthusiasm. Instead he took the side of the critics of the book. I was also disappointed in his demeanor. He was unfriendly, unpersonable and unsmiling. He coldly answered my question and gave me short shrift. I walked away with the impression that my interest in history, his professional field, was just an irritation to him like a fly that had landed on his sleeve. (I think many WCG lay members naively were not familiar with the vast differences between the public and private personas of WCG leaders.)

A friend of mine was a married student at Big Sandy. He met Hoeh after church services one day. My friend was carrying his toddler son. When my buddy introduced himself, Hoeh turned to the people standing around and said “Look, he has a long, sharp nose and his son has a short nose.” That was all that Hoeh said to him. While Hoeh’s eccentricity was legendary, oddly his credentials as a historian within the WCG were unchallengable. Early in my years with the WCG, I learned that Hoeh was related to history in the same way that HWA was related to doctrine in the eyes of WCG lay members. If an historical concept bore the imprimatur of Hoeh, it was fact and if you didn’t thoroughly believe it maybe you had an attitude problem.

But for those of us who were history weenies, something about Hoeh rises to the surface over time. He did not just document and verify history using published sources. He actually created history. It was as if someone had given him the mandate to research historical sources and find anything that could be used, with a great measure of creative license, to support HWA’s world view and, in particular, British-Israelism. His Compendium is really a story about how Israel (read the British derived peoples) have always been the important people throughout the history of the world. Nothing that ever happened that was important happened without the influence of Israel. This was similar in principle to Nazi archaeologists directed to dig up the evidence for an Aryan-centric history from the ground. Of course the archaeologists found what bits and pieces they could and laid on a thick and “creative” shellac of misinterpretation. One of Hoeh’s favorite creative techniques was to find two names that are similar and from this, without any other support, postulate a real connection of some sort, causal or derivative. Hence, Saxon is really ‘Saacs Sons. Most of you are trained in this.

I always wondered how the Hoeh of later years regarded the Hoeh of earlier years. My theory was that he would mellow and maybe even recant. I heard a rumor that he had renounced the Compendium saying that “it was all wrong.” Ray Kurr, whose family befriended Hoeh, told me in the Eighties that Hoeh hated to be asked questions concerning history. Hoeh just wanted to be treated like any other lay member. Kurr also told me that people mistakenly believe that Hoeh does not want to be called Dr. Hoeh anymore but that Hoeh actually preferred the title. Somewhere along the line, I heard that a German AC student was going to marry a Southeast Asian AC student and that Herman Hoeh was in support of this. All these events, though secondhand, made me think there was now a kinder, gentler, less eccentric Herman Hoeh.

But this was not the case. I carried on a correspondence with Hoeh, then a member of what is now GCI, just before he died. I asked him about the racial theories that supported both WCG theology and WCG policy in the early years. He would not admit that there was any such thing. He would only offer that the WCG was merely reflecting the mores and values of the larger society in which it was embedded. In other words the WCG was “going along to get along.” I cited numerous documented arguments against his claims from WCG literature. But Hoeh would not admit to any of it. He sent me instead newspaper clippings about how Blacks were treated in the Fifities in the United States, as if I did not know about that already. He had a guy I knew from AC and who used to work in the correspondence department in Pasadena write me a hypothetical letter of apology as it should have been if the WCG had recanted of its racism. This just seemed contrived. He finally sternly asserted that I should be more forgiving and referred me to a recent article that appeared in a GCI’s Odyssey on forgiveness. My question was if WCG had been guilty of nothing like he asserted, what do I have to forgive? I finally concluded that his total lack of transparency might have been because he thought a lawsuit of some sort was lurking in the shadows. But a plausible answer is that Hoeh always fabricated history. And, perhaps, this “history” that he was now relating to me that provided a sinless backstory for the WCG was what he had created for himself in his last days.

— Neotherm

13 Replies to “Synagogue of Satan”

  1. There are some things that Neotherm gets right, and other things that need cleaning up.

    The first thing that needs to be cleaned up are those references to Noah and the Table of Nations in Genesis. To be sure, the human species is a family, but unfortunately Genesis sheds no light on the specifics of that fact. Noah and his ark is pure mythology. Nor were there any Adamic or Noachian population bottlenecks. Science gets rid of Noah, Ham, Shem and Japheth, and simultaneously cuts off genealogies tracing back to them off at the knees.

    Far and away the strongest haplogroup “signal” in populations of the British Isles is indeed R1b. No doubt, the data is very clear. It’s over 50% of the population.

    However, it’s an oversimplification to say that the Jews or Phonecians are all haplogroup J or that black people are all E1b. Here is what haplogroup research says about modern Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish populations:

    Ashkenazi Top 5:
    E1b1b 20.5%
    J1 19%
    J2 19%
    R1a 10%
    G2a 9.50%
    Total 78%

    Sephardic Top 5:
    J2 25%
    J1 22%
    G2a 15%
    R1b 13%
    E1b1b 9%
    Total 84%

    It’s simply not possible to build up a haplogroup picture like this for any ancient population, such as Phonecians or Canaanites, so any claims as to the predominant haplogroup present within ancient Phonecian or Canaanite populations is not secure. You can’t say much if you’re working from a sample that’s too small.

    Furthermore, how does anyone “know” that the historical Canaanites were black and not more typical middle easterners? Crucially, since there’s no corroborating textual or archaeological evidence for the enslavement of the Jews in Egypt, the Exodus story, 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, or Joshua’s conquest, and despite the fact that the Israeli government has made finding such evidence a high priority because it would serve to establish Zionist territorial claims, the failure to produce this evidence has scientists concluding that either the Jews entered “the land of Canaan” as waves of immigrants, or that the Jews are simply a Canaanite population.

  2. Danny, indeed: On the Painful Truth Website, right next to Educational Links, there is “The Feast Days are of Pagan Origin” .pdf by Nada Tahiri. In it, the question of the origin of the Israelites is examined and it may well be that they are Canaanites. It seems clear that in any event, the Jews and Arabs of today did share a common male ancestor and not one which relates to the Western Europeans.

    It hasn’t really been addressed here yet and my plan is to address it in the future, that many of the books of the Bible are known to be forged. This is not some atheist plot or anything, it’s actually Christian Bible Scholars making the call. II Peter is said to be a definite forgery. The 4 gospels were not written by the men they are named after. Many of the epistles of Paul are also forgeries. The epistles of James and John are said to be forged.

    I am currently reading “Pseudoscience and Extraordinary Claims of the Paranormal” by Jonthan C. Smith. He quoted Carl Sagan — extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I have finished reading my copy of
    “The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails” edited by John W. Loftus. The bottom line is that Herbert Armstrong and his hireling henchmen made quite extraordinary claims of pseudoscience and the paranormal. Armstrongists don’t want to admit that, but they don’t even have a standard Christian religion — it’s just delusion. British Israelism is just one of their many delusions which invalidates any credibility they might have.

    The irony is that we are “the bad guys” — they have the truth (that’s what they ASSUME) and they can make up excuses where they attempt to either explain away or ignore scientific and historical fact. Yet they expect us all to respect them and their opinions even though they are spouting pure crap.

    It’s insulting.

    They should be the ones on the defensive.

    It is my observation that they have nothing but contempt for God because they violate His Principles and Laws given in Scripture and nothing happens to them. They therefore think they are OK and have the truth. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    While I recognized some problems with the Neotherm text, I felt that it was worthwhile because it does give his experience in real history of the Worldwide Church of God and its charlatans spouting nonsense. It’s particularly disturbing to have caught Herman Hoeh deliberately lying to make things turn out with a “the end justifies the means” ethic.

  3. It’s all good. That’s what the comments section is for, right?

    Bart Ehrman and John Loftus. Good stuff. These guys really are doing god’s work now, in a manner of speaking.

    I knew Herman Hoeh myself. On the plus side, though he was clearly erudite and eccentric by disposition, he was also affable and generous to a fault. Despite the fact he’d been drawing a 6-figure income for decades, when he died, the bank accounts were empty and Isabella’s mind was slipping. I am not sure where the money went, but by all appearances, he didn’t spend any of it on himself besides the extra home-cum-storage-facility on Vanora. And he was a shameless dumpster diver and packrat. Whether he would have been diagnosed clinically as a “hoarder” or not, I am not sure, but he did hoard. I think he was constantly trying to optimize utility for everyone and everything around him.

    On the negative side, just because he seemed like an “intellectual” that doesn’t mean he was one. He wasn’t a great thinker, a scholar, or someone who valued truth or integrity. He was politically astute, and was (in)famous for his evasive answers which often took the form of non-answer riddles intended imho to stave off having to address the issues, but hopefully without the questioner realizing it. His occasional sermons would be 60-90 minutes of undiluted obfuscation. When he decided to remain with Joe Jr., I gave up on him and essentially cut ties, for reasons I’ll get to. I think to those who knew him, if there had been any doubts about his integrity, he confirmed them post 1994.

    Hoeh just happened to be the “right” guy who showed up at the “right” time, and was able to ride a wave of money and in-church respectability. He said that had he come along 10 years later, he would have been a nothing and a nobody in WCG, and I am sure he was right about that. It was the role of a lifetime, and it was one he enjoyed playing. It enabled him to be the great sage, the absent-minded professor, the philosopher, and the paternalistic and magnanimous wish-granter. It enabled him to feel both charitable and superior to always be in the position of having things to give away. And the whole charade was great fun so long as he was never forced to have to face any accountability or rapprochement. And as luck would have it, he never was.

    He was also more than willing to prostitute his “intellectual” appearance, and play the role of a “scholar” to help whoever happened to be his boss sell the plausibility of whatever horseshit they came to him with for a paycheck. That’s what the compendium was. In ’91-’92 he told me about his abhorrence of what was going on up on the 4th floor of the Hall of Ad, all the four-letter words they used, and how he believed they had no self-control or integrity. He told me about their two-faced dealings, lies, and confided in me the certainty of all those changes that would shortly come down the pike when the denials of all those things were still official. Then, he turned around and, for a paycheck, once again helped a new boss to do all those things he had previously spoken of privately with horror and scorn. So, that enabled me to get an absolute, undeniable fix on the man who refused publicly to ever let himself be pinned down. For a paycheck, he was willing to play a part, and it seemed that part was always in demand, and it was a wave he was happier riding than not.

    And in a funny way, I feel like a good case could be made that Joe Jr., and Hoeh were/are very similar people. He too wound up in the right place at the right time to play the part of a wise and magnanimous man. Now that I don’t believe in god anymore, I think Joe Jr. began to believe his own propaganda that by making all those changes he was doling out a large helping of tough love, but ultimately doing everyone a favor…meanwhile profiting handsomely for his troubles. But I don’t suppose Joe has any more private, personal integrity than Hoeh did. It gets in the way of too much money.

    1. Danny wrote: ‘On the negative side, just because he seemed like an “intellectual” that doesn’t mean he was one. He wasn’t a great thinker, a scholar, or someone who valued truth or integrity. He was politically astute, and was (in)famous for his evasive answers which often took the form of non-answer riddles intended imho to stave off having to address the issues, but hopefully without the questioner realizing it.’

      I think we all have had a uncle or relative that we have seen this behavior in. He did what he had to do to make a paycheck. It is a form of prostitution yes, but people all over this earth have ethics we cannot agree with. This is after all, the way of mankind. Making a buck off the weak minded.

  4. If you look at the composition of Y-chromosome haplogroups that make up the Jewis population you will find, as cited by Danny, the following:

    E1b1b 20.5%
    J1 19%
    J2 19%
    R1a 10%
    G2a 9.50%

    Genetic research indicates that E1b originated in North Africa. R1a is an Indo-European haplogoup. G2 occurs in South Russian. None of the haplogroups, because of their geographical origination are good candidates for the original Jewish haplogroup. Instead we find a dense concentration of haplogroup J in the Middle East.

    What this tell us is that the modern Jews are not a pure people. People moved about and intermarried. Not just Jews. Hitler was E1b. But if you combine the statistical profile with the geographical distributions, most geneticists would have no trouble deducing that the Jews originated as haplogroup J.

    The Phoenicians samples are small. But there is the historical support of an incursion of Phoenicians in an area of central Italy where the modern population is now predominately haplogroup J.

    Via physical anthropology, it is possible to tell if the Phoenician skeletal remains are compatible with Sub-Saharan Blacks skeletons and they are they are not.

    I do believe that Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth existed as real historical people. But they were not separate races. They were all haplogroup J and they were simply clans of a large and racially homogeneous family. Notice that I said this is what I “believe”. I have alternate explanations for Adam and The Flood.

    — Neotherm

  5. Neo,

    There’s no such thing as a “pure” people. There never has been.

    Why are you even looking for a candidates for an “original” Jewish haplogroup? Where is the evidence that there ever was a single “original” Jewish haplogroup? Why shouldn’t we think that the Jewish/Arabic people are a composite people whose origins are not singular? Why isn’t that a simpler, and therefore more probable interpretation?

    The other problem is that I doubt this “pure people” hypothesis is falsifiable. Regardless of what the data was, would you not reach the same conclusion that the Jews all “started out” as single haplogroup, because of religious dogma? Do you even need the data at all? Couldn’t you reach these conclusions from the bible alone?

    It looks to me like you’re mashing up dogmatic claims with the scientific data from haplogroup research, when those two things are oil and water. The fact you’re willing to entangle them at all casts serious doubt upon your ability to reach unbiased conclusions.

    Any citations to back up your conclusions? Care to name some of these “most geneticists” that might have published anything to the effect that the Jews were originally all haplogroup J? That a historical “Noah” was haplogroup J? Or that the ancient Phoenicians were haplogroup J? Better make sure you’re examples are reputable secular geneticists, such as members of the National Academy of Sciences. If you’re really citing scientific orthodoxy, as you’ve asserted, and not your own private, individual Armstrongism creation science, then this should not be hard to do.

    Not trying to be overly argumentative here, but it just seems these conclusions are not warranted from the data. The “warrant” is coming from somewhere else.

  6. I do not think my arguments pivot on the existence of a pure people. Y chromosomes trace only the masculine line and the mitochondrial chromsomes trace only the matrilineal line. There may in fact be other racial elements that are not revealed by either of these tags. Some American Blacks are R1b but I would not describe them as British. But the tags tell me that someone who is Y Chromosome J is not able to produce someone who is Y chromosome R.

    The further you go back in history, the greater the isolation of populations, the greater the homogeneity of populations. Short of getting in a time machine and going back into ancient history and swabbing the cheeks of a few thousand peoples in some society, we cannot be sure of any of this. We only know what it is plausible.

    I believe the genetics does not support BI because Haplogroup J Jacob could not give rise to a haplogrou R1b Joseph. My guess is that you believe that genetics does support BI according to some scenario you might construct. Perhaps, you would say that all Jews were originally R1b. The small representation of R1b among the Ashkenazi is the original stock and kinship to the British people is clear. J1, J2, G and others are absorbed Gentiles. I believe that the evidence taken as a whole obviates that.

    While you think I am unable to come to unbiased conclusions, I doubt that you are able to come to any conclusions at all.

    And I do not intend to spend time debating an internet boor.

    — Neotherm

  7. Ah. I see. I am “internet boor.” And thus labeled, I can be dismissed without having to addressing the issues. Obfuscation 101. Where are those peer-reviewed scientific publication citations I was asking for to support your outlandish claims of what “most geneticists” have concluded? Predictably absent. Yet I am the luddite, neanderthal, boor?

    Second, the genetics thoroughly refutes BI! I don’t know how you could have even skimmed my comments and missed my rejection of both Noah and his ark, biblical population bottlenecks and call the Hebrew scriptures “pure mythology” and still think that I would in any way be trying to support the completely bogus notion of BI! Obviously, you did not even skim them. Therefore, I cannot be sure what your comments are even a response to. Far from supporting BI, I say that you have not freed your mind sufficiently from the quagmire of theology to yet allow the data to speak for itself. So you’ve dispensed with BI? A step in the right direction, to be sure. But you have not yet gone NEARLY far enough.

    Second, I wouldn’t use the pro-semitic racist word “gentile” if I were you. Only a racist would decide he belonged to a “chosen people” because, in the words of the ineffable Christopher Hitchens, “Slavery in antiquity was this: ‘You lose. Our civilization has conquered yours. You now work, you the victims, you work for us…’ You can easily see how it happened. It is only with the arrival of religion that it is said in holy books, certain people are born as a race or people to be the masters and others to be dispensable, either to be slaughtered or when most of the slaughter is done, for the remainder to be kept, often female, as slaves. In every holy book from the original holy books of the Jewish people to those mistakenly adopted by the christian religion, to the koran, to the book of mormon, slavery is mandated, and those who are born into it, usually by a different colored skin, are clearly, plainly, identified, usually as the sons of Ham or some such nonsense. Pseudo-ethnological garbage. That’s what’s different…And that’s what you can’t accuse the Babylonians and the Sumerians of doing.

    Third, while you are correct that “someone who is Y Chromosome J is not able to produce someone who is Y chromosome R,” and yet, when it suits you, you are content to wipe away all the data and replace it with conclusions derived from Hebrew mythology, such as “Noah was haplogroup J.” Sure, and while you’re at it, what haplogroup was Herakles? Because that would tell you what haplogroup Zeus was. Sheer nonsense.

    The British Isles are 60-80% R1b. So are MANY black people, not just in the Americas, but in sub-Saharan Africa, most notably, the Kirdi people of Northern Camaroon, of which some tribes are 90%+ R1b (V88)! What does this tell us? Well, one thing it does is refutes the pseudo-ethnological garbage “table of nations.” Sons of “Ham” indeed.

    The further you go back in history, SOME populations may have been isolated. But NOWHERE on earth would this be less true in antiquity than in the middle east. There is no reason to assume antique haplogroup monocultures in middle eastern populations, where peoples of very different origins were variously pressed together and then depopulated to somewhere else.

    Fourth, and at the risk of repeating myself, given that there is no corroborating textual or archaeological evidence for the mythological “table of nations,” the enslavement of the Jews in Egypt, the Exodus story, 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, or Joshua’s conquest, either the ancestral root of the Jews/Arabs entered the middle east as waves of immigrants, or else they were the historical Canaanites.

    Either way, why don’t we either assume that 1) it is too soon to interpret the data because the original markers may have been washed out, and perhaps all the fathers of the modern Jewish people were Babylonians, or 2) perhaps the Jews have 3 distinct ancestral signals EIb, J1, and J2, which would mean the Jews are a fusion of 3 earlier populations?

    Indeed, however, you are surely correct that there is no reason to waste too much time talking to boorish neanderthals on the internet who truck out their ancient mythology and sprinkle a little “science” on top to give it an air of respectability. So with this clarification for the other readers of this blog, I sign off.

    Caveat emptor. Let the reader beware not to buy Neotherm’s boorish (and racist!) mythology with a little “science” sprinkled on top to spice it up. A few sprinkles of data do not science make.

  8. Forgetting for the moment that we have a returning Israelite with an Assyrian name recorded as having inquired about keeping a memorial associated with the captivity right in the Bible, look at the above recipe lists of haplotypes of modern people! Just the introduction of the Cuthites into the northern covenant lands gave birth to the pejorative nature of the term “Samaritans” in the time of Jesus. At what point do we throw up our hands and admit that the characteristics of people have been so changed that you can’t really call them Israelites any more, let alone actually breaking that down more specifically into Manassites and Ephraimites? It is ridiculous.

    If we were speaking of chemicals here, and you combined just two ingredients, one a deadly gas called Chlorine, and another, a highly explosive metal called Sodium, and you formed salt, which is a compound necessary for and beneficial to life, what fool is going to insist that, no, God still calls that Sodium?

    BB

  9. Why would God alternate between blessing and punishing the small proportion of J-haplotype in one group of mongrel peoples, while completely ignoring the J-haplotype found in all other mongrel peoples around the world, and this, thousands of years after the life of the supposed originator of J? It could only make sense to a conspiritorialist!

    BB

  10. –Evaporated into the ether the first time–

    Where are those peer-reviewed scientific publication citations I asked for to support your outlandish claims of what “most geneticists” have concluded? Predictably absent. In place of addressing the issues, you’re simply going to resort to the distraction tactic of name-calling, And thus labeled as an “internet boor” I can thus be dismissed without anyone noticing how religious (read: indefensibly unscientific) your argument is? Yet I am the luddite, neanderthal, boor?

    Second, the genetics thoroughly refutes BI! I don’t know how you could have even skimmed my comments and missed my rejection of Noah and his ark, biblical population bottlenecks and call the Hebrew scriptures “pure mythology” so as to still think that I would in any way be trying to support the completely bogus notion of BI! Obviously, you did not even skim them. Therefore, I cannot be sure what your comments are even a response to. Far from supporting BI, I say that you have not freed your mind sufficiently from the quagmire of theology to yet allow the data to speak for itself. So you’ve dispensed with BI? A step in the right direction, to be sure. But you have not yet gone NEARLY far enough.

    Second, I wouldn’t use the pro-semitic racist word “gentile” if I were you. Only a racist would decide he belonged to a “chosen people” because, in the words of the ineffable Christopher Hitchens, “Slavery in antiquity was this: ‘You lose. Our civilization has conquered yours. You now work, you the victims, you work for us…’ You can easily see how it happened. It is only with the arrival of religion that it is said in holy books, certain people are born as a race or people to be the masters and others to be dispensable, either to be slaughtered or when most of the slaughter is done, for the remainder to be kept, often female, as slaves. In every holy book from the original holy books of the Jewish people to those mistakenly adopted by the christian religion, to the koran, to the book of mormon, slavery is mandated, and those who are born into it, usually by a different colored skin, are clearly, plainly, identified, usually as the sons of Ham or some such nonsense. Pseudo-ethnological garbage. That’s what’s different…And that’s what you can’t accuse the Babylonians and the Sumerians of doing.

    Third, while you are correct that “someone who is Y Chromosome J is not able to produce someone who is Y chromosome R,” and yet, when it suits you, you are content to wipe away all the data and replace it with conclusions derived from Hebrew mythology, such as “Noah was haplogroup J.” Sure, and while you’re at it, what haplogroup was Herakles? Because that would tell you what haplogroup Zeus was. Sheer nonsense.

    The British Isles are 60-80% R1b. So are MANY black people, not just in the Americas, but in sub-Saharan Africa, most notably, the Kirdi people of Northern Camaroon, of which some tribes are 90%+ R1b (V88)! What does this tell us? Well, one thing it does is refutes the pseudo-ethnological garbage “table of nations.” Sons of “Ham” indeed.

    The further you go back in history, SOME populations may have been isolated. But NOWHERE on earth would this be less true in antiquity than in the middle east. There is no reason to assume antique haplogroup monocultures in middle eastern populations, where peoples of very different origins were variously and repeatedly pressed together and then depopulated to somewhere else.

    Fourth, and at the risk of repeating myself, given that there is no corroborating textual or archaeological evidence for the mythological “table of nations,” the enslavement of the Jews in Egypt, the Exodus story, 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, or Joshua’s conquest, either the ancestral root of the Jews/Arabs entered the middle east as waves of immigrants, or else they were the historical Canaanites.

    Either way, why don’t we either assume that 1) it is too soon to interpret the data because the original markers may have been washed out, and perhaps all the fathers of the modern Jewish people were Babylonians, or 2) perhaps the Jews have at least 3 distinct ancestral signals EIb, J1, and J2, which would mean the Jews are a fusion of at least 3 earlier populations?

    Indeed, however, you are surely correct that there is no reason to waste too much time talking to boorish neanderthals on the internet who truck out their ancient mythology and sprinkle a little “science” on top to give it an air of respectability. So with this clarification for the other readers of this blog, I sign off.

    Caveat emptor. Let the reader beware not to buy Neotherm’s boorish (and racist!) mythology with a little “science” sprinkled on top to spice it up.

  11. Very interesting !! Thank you . I am J2a1B ydna from Britain and have often suspected that the whole world coming from Noah could never have been possible . My mtdna is J .

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