:: OK, But I'm still a bit skeptical that the ancestry of joseph can be accurately traced for 42 generations. i can't trace my ancestry back 42 generations, can you. Is it likely that an ordinary carpenter of the first century could have done so? Anyway i don't pretend to know the truth about this. i'll assume for the time being that the genealogy is valid. Please do and note that it wasn't Christ who taught the lineage. The Sadducees of Christ's day spent lots of time with geneologies. In fact, it was quite common for Jewish children to learn geneologies as the Jews of Christ's day were fanatically traditional. You will see from the following history that their penchant for geneologies is actually what drove them to resettle that area and that the population of that time was exclusively composed of people uniquely predisposed to studying geneologies. Matthew wrote this well established geneology down because he found it intrinsically associated with his gospel message which emphasized Christ as the son of David.
My point is won for the house of Jacob/Israel is built on 12 sons, all of which were born of Jacob to either of two sisters Leah and Rachel or to two maids Bilhah and Zilpah. Question the bloodline of the maids if you wish for their ancestries are not established but take note of the fact that the Matthew geneology has Christ coming through Judah, Jacob's fourth son born to Leah. Leah was Rachel's sister and the daughter of Laban, the Aramean. Remember Aramean.
Now to consider the racial makeup of Jews in Christ's day one must take the previous 10 centuries of Jewish history into account. About 930 B.C. the nation of Israel divided into two distinct kingdoms, the northern kingdom of Israel which was composed of the ten northern tribes (not Jews) and the southern kingdom of Judah which was composed of the two southern tribes of Judah and Dan (Jews). In 722 B.C. Israel was destroyed by the decaying Babylonian empire and in 586 B.C. so was the southern kingdom. After the Persians conquered Babylon, the "Edict of Cyrus", in 538 B.C. allowed the return of conquered peoples to their homeland. The southern kingdom, having taught its traditions well to its children, returned to occupy Israel. They simply all remebered where they came from. The northern tribes (The Ten Lost Tribes) did not remember their heritiage so well and wandered north over the Caucas mountains. If you want to know where the word caucasion comes from, take a guess. If you guess wrong, take another look at some basic anthropology texts which focus on the time period of 500-400 B.C. and the region of Mesopotamia. You'll read of strange white mountain people.
The Jews of Israel which occupied that land at the time of Christ were almost exclusively descendants of Judah and Dan. So find a reputable anthropological serologist who claims that the Aramean's of the Old Assyrian Period and the Palestinian Jews of the Roman Era were not caucasiod and I will happily concede victory to you, Nikhil.
But mind you, if you go asking about on campus, you're apt to get some screwy looks from those in the know. The first thing they will ask you is to reveal your agenda. You see, most eastern campuses are well aware of a claim by the Morman church that those ten lost tribes came over here in reed boats at the time of Christ and occupied what is now the eastern U.S. coast. Any good serologist is going to tell you that no caucasiod has been dug up that dates back 2000 years. They are all mongoloid. Now, if you wish to also argue that the Book of Morman is true in order to win your argument, I'm going to have a fit!
:: Erm? That woudl come as a surprise to generations of Europeans who regarded middle-easterners (Jews, arabs, etc.) as a separate race from teh Europeans.
Interestingly, there is ample anthropological evidence which suggests that those white mountain people decribed above wandered west to populate northern Europe and eventually, England. In the area north of the Caucas mountains they carried the name sacca-suni (phonetic) in the local tongue (I forget which) which meant sons of Issac and the cognate Saxon has its basis there.
:: The Hebrews were brown, as Deep Daddio said. The Falasha Jews of Ethiopia claim to be a part of teh 12 Tribes of israel, and they're certainly black. teh Israeli Government has honored their claim by airlifting them all to Israel. But this is really foolish on my part. i'm buying into this whole ridiculous terminology of "white", "black", etc. The scientific consensus is that 1) race has no biological meaning, and 2) skin color is a particularly absurd claim for drawing distinctions, since it tells us precsiely nothing about teh relatedness of different human groupings.
Speak truth if it suits you
disregard it when it doesn't
but know that is cannot be isn't
and that was will never be wasn't
S.G.
:: Incidentally, according to St. John of Patmos, God is not white nor black, but GREEN. 'And HE that sat thereon was to look upon like a jasper and a sardius stone....' (Revelation 4:3)
And He has wings too according to Psalms 36:7. Would you like to argue that Christ's ascension was just Him flying home?
:: 2 questions, Stuart. firstly, what do you mean by 'If God exists"? Let's say that there exists a being that corresponds to the Hindu view of God, but not very closely to the fundamentalist Christian one. would you then say 'Yes, God exists, but He's different from how I thought?'
secondly, do you LITERALLY believe that evreything in the Bible is true as written? What about when Leviticus sanctions slavery?
Leaving your tangents aside; should I die only to find myself standing in front the Hindu God, I shall not presume to spraypaint Him my color. Do you take my point, Mr. Jaikumar?
Stuart Gort
None.
