Apostle Letters, Early Reference, Indian Tradition, Thomas the Apostle

Jackson: Okay I see where you get your 1000 …

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Comment posted Letters of St. Thomas the Apostle to Edessa from India by John Mathew.

Jackson:

Okay I see where you get your 1000 BC figure now, the MCRA.

You wrote: “That says how old or when did this Y-DNA (of a family) migrate to its present place and distributed into the various families.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but literally the MCRA is the Most Recent Common Ancestor on the pure patriarchal lineage. It does not indicate when any migration to Kerala took place. It just says that the various patriarchs of the various Malabar families who have this marker had their MCRA at around 1000 BC. That is all. It does not indicate *at all* that the MCRA was in Malabar.

But, I don’t doubt that there may have been Jews in India at that date. I don’t know, to be sure, but I don’t really doubt it.

What I doubt is people trying to paint the entire Malabar Nasrani community as a group of Jewish Christians based on one dimensional information — such as DNA results. Yes, Jews were here. Yes, they intermarried. And yes, they may have passed on some customs (e.g., Pesaha, possibly). But *no* our religion was not Jewish Christianity. It was bonafide Syriac Christianity, as judged by historical reports, monuments, etc. The latter is based on fact; it is not a myth, it is quite solid and well-supported.

DNA results indicate one’s patriarchs. It doesn’t indicate one’s who set of ancestors, and it doesn’t indicate one’s creed. And for the matter at hand, it doesn’t indicate when those people immigrated to India.

Finally, as far as I know, Solomon’s trade with Malabar is only a hypothesis based on Biblical readings (and I don’t find much controversy here either). However, I’ve not seen any accounts in India/Kerala history that mention this. Do you have a source that complements the Bible-based hypothesis.