The Sons of Aaron and Levi
“Who may abide the day [now present] of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver” (Malachi 3:1-6).
All those calling upon the name of the LORD in hope, faith and love are seeking a blessing. Though God’s chosen people are still blinded to their Messiah, yet the blessings and mercies of God are certain, as are his judgments.
“As the glorious Messenger of the Covenant is now present to sit as the great Judge, we may well ask the question propounded by God’s Prophet of old [Malachi 3:1-6] … A part of the prophecy of Malachi 3 seems to have an application to fleshly Israel. The Lord reproves them, showing that His course toward them as a people had been in conformity to His Covenant with them at Mt. Sinai. But they had been unfaithful to their part of the Covenant. At the appearing of this great Messenger of the New Covenant, which is to supersede the old Covenant, He will purge God’s ancient people. The time is now due for favor to begin to be restored to them; but before their full restoration they must experience further chastisement for their purification and preparation for the great Messiah” (R.5442:5).
A special privilege of service in the Kingdom is the birthright specifically of the natural children of Levi, but are they indeed an identifiable separate population, excepting by Divine insight?
Current genetic research seems to answer, “Yes.”
The sons of Levi were taken in place of all Israel’s first-born to serve as the priests of the Holy Nation (Exodus 13:2, Numbers 3:40-51). The Bible speaks of how the priesthood was established with the appointment of Aaron of the tribe of Levi as the first high priest. The children of Levi from the sub-family of “Kohath” had the special privilege of priesthood.
Recognition of this connection of Jewish males descended from the priestly line continues to this day, even though the temple services ended with its destruction in 70 AD. It is determined by strict patrilineal (i.e. from the father) descent. The subsets of male Jews comprising the priesthood were known as “Kohanim,” hence the variants on the name “Cohen” in English represent this claim to priestly descent.
This led a curious group of scientists to put to the test whether this claim could be validated by showing a unique family relationship among those bearing this priestly surname. This began with the scientists knowing that each parent contributes only one chromosome that determines the sex of the child. It is critical to know that these sex determining chromosomes come only from the father, since a mother carries two “X-X” chromosomes and will always contribute one of these chromosomes to her child, which will always be an “X” chromosome. It is the father with an “X-Y” chromosome combination who may contribute either an “X” chromosome, in which case there will be another “X-X” chromosome pair and he will have a daughter, or a “Y” chromosome, in which case there will be an “X-Y” pair and a son will be born.
Accordingly, scientists skilled in determining family relations through genetic inheritance found clear differences in the frequency of the male or “Y” chromosomes inheritance patterns between Jewish priests and their lay counterparts. Using this new technique, biologists have traced the diaspora of Jewish populations from the dispersals that began with the Babylonian captivity to the modern communities of Europe and the Middle East. The analysis provides genetic witness that these communities have, to a remarkable extent, retained their biological identity separate from their host populations, evidence of relatively little intermarriage or conversion into Judaism over the centuries.
Dr. Lawrence H. Schiffman, chairman of the department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, said the study fit with historical evidence that Jews originated in the Near East and with biblical evidence suggesting that there were a variety of families and types in the original population. He said the finding would cause “a lot of discussion of the relationship of scientific evidence to the manner in which we evaluate long-held academic and personal religious positions,” like the question of who is a Jew.1
The study was conducted by Dr. Michael F. Hammer of the University of Arizona with colleagues in the United States, Italy, Israel, England and South Africa.2 The results accord with Jewish history and tradition, refuting theories like those holding that Jewish communities consist mostly of converts from other faiths, or that they are descended from the Khazars, a medieval Turkic tribe north of the Caucasus Mountains that adopted Judaism.
THE ANALYSIS
The analysis by Dr. Hammer and colleagues focused on the “Y” chromosome, which is passed unchanged from father to son. In principle, all men should therefore carry the identical sequence of DNA letters on their “Y” chromosomes, but in fact occasional “misspellings,” that is miscoding of the four “letters” has occurred, and because each misspelling is then repeated in subsequent generations, the branching lineages of errors form a family tree rooted in the original Adam.
These variant spellings are in DNA that is not involved in the genes and therefore has no known effect on the body. But the type and abundance of the lineages in each population serve as a genetic signature by which to compare different populations.
Based on these variations, Dr. Hammer identified 19 variations in the “Y” chromosome family tree. The ancestral Middle East population from which both Arabs and Jews are descended was a mixture of men from eight of these lineages. Among major contributors to the ancestral Arab-Jewish population were men who carried what Dr. Hammer calls the “Med” lineage. This “Y” chromosome is found all round the Mediterranean and in Europe.
Another lineage common in the ancestral Arab-Jewish gene pool is found among today’s Ethiopians and may have reached the Middle East by men who traveled down the Nile. But present-day Ethiopian Jews lack some of the other lineages found in Jewish communities, and overall are more like non-Jewish Ethiopians than other Jewish populations, at least in terms of their “Y” chromosome lineage pattern. The ancestral pattern of lineages is recognizable in today’s Arab and Jewish populations, but is distinct from that of European populations, and both groups differ widely from sub-Saharan Africans.
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.
Each Arab and Jewish community has its own flavor of the ancestral pattern, reflecting their different genetic histories. Roman Jews have a pattern quite similar to that of Ashkenazis, the Jewish community of Northern and Eastern Europe. (Ashkenaz, in Genesis 10, is the Hebrew word for Germanic tribes.) Dr. Hammer said the finding accorded with the hypothesis that Roman Jews were the ancestors of the Ashkenazis.
Despite the Ashkenazi Jews’ long residence in Europe, their “Y” signature has remained distinct from that of non-Jewish Europeans. On the assumption that there have been 80 generations since the founding of the Ashkenazi population, Dr. Hammer and colleagues calculate that the rate of genetic admixture with Europeans has been less than half a percent per generation.
Jewish law tracing back almost 2,000 years states that Jewish affiliation is determined by maternal ancestry, so the “Y” chromosome study addresses the question of how much non-Jewish men may have contributed to Jewish genetic diversity. Dr. Hammer was surprised to find how little that contribution was. “It could be that wherever Jews were, they were very much isolated,” he said. “The close genetic affinity between Jews and Arabs, at least by the “Y” chromosome yardstick, is reflected in the Genesis account of how Abraham fathered Ishmael by his wife’s maid Hagar, and when Sarah was then able to conceive, Isaac.”
– Richard Doctor
(1) Wade, Nicholas, “Y-Chromosome Bears Witness to Story of the Jewish Diaspora,” New York Times, May 9, 2000.
(2) Hammer, Michael F., et al., “Y-Chromosomes of Jewish Priests,” Nature (Vol. 385), January 2, 1997.