DNA Project, General

T. Cherian: I think part of the reason why …

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Comment posted Familytree – Syrian Christians DNA Project Information by John Mathew.

T. Cherian:

I think part of the reason why Nasrani’s are interested in determining a possible Jewish connection is because, for the most part, Nasrani history has been pretty poorly treated. Hence, people are interested in knowing who their fathers were. And since we are, for the most part, Christian, a possible connection to the people from whose culture and religion Christianity sprung is pretty tantalizing.

Nasranis have diverse origins which include ethnic Persian immigrants (who were Nestorians), ethnic Aramean immigrants (who were Nestorian, until the last 400s years during which a few Jacobite Aramean families immigrated), ethnic Indians (since the former intermarried with the latter, and since Indians may have been converted by the former), and Jews.

All of these groups may have had unsavory characters. Does one despise one’s ancestry simply because one of one’s ancestors, or kinfolk, were despicable? There are despicable Syrian Christians (personally, I include many of the current bishops of the various Nasrani churches in this category), but I wouldn’t cease to call myself a Nasrani simply because my relatives/compatriots were undesirable. So your reasoning is strange.

I do think that there are a lot of frauds and idiots in our community who are using horribly shoddy reasoning to point to a Jewish connection. In fact, I think the majority of the claims are ridiculous (e.g,. the stupid stories some pull out of nowhere to claim, as fact, that there were Jews in Kerala from the time of Solomon; or that Thomas came to India to preach to the Jews; or that the Nestorians were lost tribes of Israel). These have no rigor nor the hint of any scientific method behind them — just fantasy.

However, erasing those idiots, one can still see that there are some substantial aspects about our people and culture. For example, Pesaha in the Nasranis is unparalleled in any other “Christian” community. It is almost certainly a remnant of a Jewish component that formed a part of our ancestors. And there’s the Cohen Modal Haplogroup that is present in our people as well that pretty clearly indicates who some of our ancestors were.

So, throwing out the mystics, the wishful thinkers, and the intellectually-defective hypothesizers — throwing this out, there is still a kernel of interesting fact that suggests some Jewish ancestry. And that should be accepted for what it is. Whether Hitler was a Jew or not … means nothing at all. Stalin was Georgian Orthodox: similarly despicable as Hitler, perhaps far worse due to the sheer numbers of people he murdered, does that mean the Georgians or the Byzantine Orthodox should renounce their origins?