Biblical Genetics Dr. Robert Carter

In this, the 5th episode in our series on biblical genealogy, Dr Rob explains the origins of the nations that surrounded (and still surround) Israel. He explains who the Philistines, the Phoenicians, the Aramaeans, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and the Edomites were while adding lots of interesting little factoids that help us better understand the Bible.



Notes and links:



Egyptian mummies and Hebrew perfume

Who were the Philistines?

The 'Table of Nations' (Genesis 10  and 11)







The descendants of Seir, the kings of Edom, and the chiefs of Edom







 

In this fourth installment in a series on biblical genealogy, Dr Rob works through three challenging details that must be overcome if one is to use those genealogies to build a chronology of biblical history: how to link Genesis 5 and 11, how old Terah was when Abram left Haran, and how old Abram was when God made the "Promise".

In this third installment in our series on biblical genealogy, Dr Rob explains why the data in Genesis 5 and 11 are so important. These are not just lists of names. The added ages allows us to piece together a timeline of biblical history. Problem is, you can't directly connect the two passages. A several-year ambiguity is created when you try. There are other interesting factoids that pop out when one studies the chronogenealogies, so you will enjoy this episode much.



Links:



SCAPER (a creationist organization in Norway)

Undeland Mission farm

The biblical minimum and maximum age of the earth

Biblical chronogenealogies

LXX vs MT articles

Length of the Egyptian Sojourn

In this second installment on biblical genealogy, Dr Rob explains why all those names (or at least most of them) in the Bible are so important. This should be encouraging to anyone who struggles to read the Bible for comprehension.

This is the first in a multi-part series on biblical genealogies. To understand what we are dealing with, we first need to know that there are two completely different types of name lists in the Bible. The first, an ancestor tree is easy. Ancestor trees are balanced and have a known number of people at each level. Even better, nearly all biblical ancestor trees only list fathers, so there is but one person at each level. The second, descendent trees, are the stuff of genealogical nightmares. Dr Rob makes it all easy.



Here are some helpful images.



Ancestor trees:







2. A descendant tree:







3. A mixed tree:







 

Human-chimpanzee similarity is a hotly-debated topic in the evolution-creation wars. Are we 98, 95, 90, or 85% similar? One way to get at the question is to ask what is the longest stretch of DNA that is shared between the two species. This is a very difficult question to answer! But, unperturbed, Dr Rob set out to answer it. Will our fearless hero be able to pull it off? Spoiler alert: not quite, but the path of discovery is still very interesting.



LastZ github.com/lastz/lastz

LastZ chaining github.com/hillerlab/make_lastz_chains

Mummer4 mummer4.github.io/

Blast blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi

Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium primate projects github.com/marbl/Primates

Python python.org/



Standard Bases:



A: Adenine

C: Cytosine

G: Guanine

T: Thymine (in DNA)

U: Uracil (in RNA)



Ambiguous Bases (IUPAC Codes):

These codes are used when there is ambiguity in the nucleotide present at a particular position:



R: A or G (puRine)

Y: C or T (pYrimidine)

S: G or C

W: A or T (Weak)

K: G or T (Keto)

M: A or C (aMino)

B: C, G, or T (not A) (B comes after A)

D: A, G, or T (not C) (D comes after C)

H: A, C, or T (not G) (H comes after G)

V: A, C, or G (not T) (V comes after U; U is replaced with T in DNA)

N: Any base (A, C, G, T) (N for any nucleotide)





Silver Comet Trail silvercometga.com/