Not exactly a relict, but there was a study a few years ago that confirmed that the living male Jews claiming to be in the high preistly lineage had a common male ancestor, roughly at the right time for Aaron. Uncertanties in molecular clocks and in the date of the Exodus would both limit the precision.
Dr. David Campbell
Old Seashells
46860 Hilton Dr #1113
Lexington Park MD 20653 USA
bivalve@mail.davidson.alumlink.com
That is Uncle Joe, taken in the masonic regalia of a Grand Exalted Periwinkle of the Mystic Order of Whelks-P.G. Wodehouse, Romance at Droigate Spa
---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Woodward Norm Civ WRALC/TIEDM <Norm.Woodward@robins.af.mil>
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2001 09:07:20 -0500
>Hmm....had they established that the relic had been circumcised?
>
>I believe that Luke was the only Gentile writer in the Bible, with the
>possible exception of Job...
>
>Have there been other relics, besides, of course, the shroud of Turin, that
>has been recently tested for authenticity, of note?
>
>Norm
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Marcio Pie [mailto:pie@bu.edu]
>Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2001 7:25 AM
>To: asa@calvin.edu
>Subject: Genetic characterization of the evangelist Luke
>
>
>I thought this could be of interest. It seems that these methods based on
>evolutionary biology are not so useless after all :^).
>
>Marcio
>________________________________
>
>Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 98, Issue 23, 13460-13463, November 6, 2001
>
>Genetic characterization of the body attributed to the evangelist Luke
>
>Cristiano Vernesi*, Giulietta Di Benedetto*, David Caramelli, Erica
>Secchieri*,
>Lucia Simoni, Emile Katti*, Patrizia Malaspina§, Andrea Novelletto¶, Vito
>Terribile Wiel Marin, and Guido Barbujani*,**
>
>* Department of Biology, University of Ferrara, Via Borsari 46, 44100
>Ferrara, Italy;
> Institute of Anthropology, University of Florence, 50125 Florence,
>Italy; Genetics
>and Biometry Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, University of Geneva,
>1227 Geneva, Switzerland; § Department of
>Biology, University of Rome 2, Tor Vergata, 00133 Rome, Italy; ¶ Department
>of Biology, University of Calabria,
>87030 Arcavacata di Rende, Italy; and Institute of Pathological Anatomy,
>University of Padua, 35121 Padua, Italy
>
>
>Historical sources indicate that the evangelist Luke was born in Syria,
>died in Greece, and then his body was transferred to Constantinople, and
>from there to Padua, Italy. To understand whether there is any biological
>evidence supporting a Syrian origin of the Padua body traditionally
>attributed to Luke, or a replacement in Greece or Turkey, the mtDNA was
>extracted from two teeth and its control region was cloned and typed. The
>sequence determined in multiple clones is an uncommon variant of a set of
>alleles that are common in the Mediterranean region. We also collected and
>typed modern samples from Syria and Greece. By comparison with these
>population samples, and with samples from Anatolia that were already
>available in the literature, we could reject the hypothesis that the body
>belonged to a Greek, rather than a Syrian, individual. However, the
>probability of an origin in the area of modern Turkey was only
>insignificantly lower than the probability of a Syrian origin. The genetic
>evidence is therefore compatible with the possibility that the body comes
>from Syria, but also with its replacement in Constantinople.
>
>
>** To whom reprint requests should be addressed. E-mail: bjg@unife.it.
>
>www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.211540498
>
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Marcio R. Pie
>Department of Biology
>Boston University
>5 Cummington St.
>Boston, MA 02215
>
>Phone: (617) 353-6974
>FAX: (617) 353-6340
>http://people.bu.edu/pie/
>
________________________________________________________________
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