A question about Hebrew Geneology.

[Narile]

If this has been asked/answered already I appologize, I did a search, but didn’t see anything obvious so am assuming that it hasn’t been.

The question is this, does the House of David still exist genelogically, and if it does, do its members know this? I mean does any one alive today have genelogical trees that show decent from King David?

Just something I was pondering while skimming the bible myth thread.

[Ice_Wolf]

There’s a hang of a lot of sites on this.

http://www.google.com/search?q=+"King+David"+jewish+genealogy&hq=&hl=en&lr=&safe=off is Google search I did.

And here’s some of the sites, including the usual bunch of hopefuls declaring the British Queen as part of that big wide family:
http://www.cornerstone-pca.org/matthew_1117.htm
http://www.orthohelp.com/geneal/yohasin.HTM
http://www.abcog.org/grimaldi.htm
http://www.outreachjudaism.org/mary.html

They probably do know about it, Narile.

[Narile]

Thanks. Was just curious.

[zev_steinhardt]

I don’t know if anyone today can conclusively prove they are descended from David, but there are a number of families that do claim descent from him.

In addition, there are a number of individuals in the past who are known to descend from David and are universally accepted as Davidic descendants. One would simply need to prove descent from one of them. One famous example is Rashi, the noted Bible and Talmud commentator who lived in France from 1035-1100.

Zev Steinhardt

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

Of course, there is always the question of “what constitutes proof?” Zev correctly identifies what would be viewed as “proof” within the traditional Jewish community. However, that’s far from “proof” that might be accepted by a scientific board of inquiry. Such a board of inquiry would need to start with the problem that there’s no “proof” (beyond Biblical texts) of the existence of King David himself, at least not at the moment of this writing (Biblical Archaeology is a fast-developing field.)

There is a stone inscription that (most likely) refers to “House of David”, implying the existence of a Davidic dynasty, and thus indirectly implying the existence of a King David to start the dynasty. However, that’s far from conclusive.

[curwin]

I just got the following text from a Jewish genealogical mailing list:

More Remarkable Results with DNA Testing

In recent issues I have talked about the brick wall that exists
in tracing Eastern European Jewish ancestry because of the
paucity of documents prior to 1800 and the fact that Jews of that
region did not have hereditary surnames before that date. There
is one area where the brick wall does not exist: rabbinic
genealogy. If you are descended from a famous rabbi, there is a
good chance you can trace your ancestry back for centuries, and
some claim, even millennia.

Many Jewish genealogists can trace a portion of their ancestry
back to the 11th century because they can demonstrate descendancy
from the great rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac, known as Rashi, who lived
in France from 1040-1105. An example of such a genealogy can be
found at http://www.nodabyehuda.com/. There is even an alleged
ascent from Rashi to King David, but it is likely flawed with
missing generations. I found one site,
http://dpt-info.labri.u-bordeaux.fr/~loeb/tree/biblical.html
where the author demonstrates his ancestry back to Adam–132
generations. Note that on this tree the time span from King David
(#34) to Rav Khai (Hai) Gaon (#97) is 2,050 years, 64 generations
for an average of 32 years per generation–possible but unlikely.

A remarkable incident occurred recently involving two
distinguished rabbinic families: the Charlaps and the Shealtiels.
Both families have trees that describe descent from the last
exilarch, King Hezekiah (#47 on the above-mentioned tree) who
lived 727-698 BCE. Each family claims to be descended from a
different son of the king, implying the only kinship between the
two families is a common ancestor 2,700 years ago!

The two families decided to test the theory of kinship by using
the services of Dr. Neil Bradman of London, England, who was one
of the scientists responsible for demonstrating that there is a
Cohanic DNA trait among Jewish men who claim to be the direct
descendants of the first Jewish priest, Aaron. They submitted
many DNA samples from both the Charlap and Shealtiel families–
men who claim to be direct paternal descendants of King Hezekiah.
The results? They all have common Y-chromosomes. They all have a
common ancestor in their direct paternal line thus proving they
are one family genetically.

There is an description of the pre-DNA Shealtiel family research
claiming descent from King David at
http://www.shealtiel.org/david.html. There is a fascinating
history of the Shealtiel family at
http://www.shealtiel.org/history.html.

The Charlaps have a site at http://www.charlap.org. Arthur
Menton, a member of the Charlap family, has published two volumes
on his family’s history, titled “Book of Destiny: Toledot
Charlap” and “Ancilla to Toledot Charlap.” The first book is a
narrative description of the family’s history. The Ancilla is
primarily the family tree. Avotaynu sells both books. Additional
information can be found at
http://www.avotaynu.com/bookrefj.htm#charlap.

[cmkeller]

The problem with descent from Rashi is that Rashi himself only had daughters, so no one would be able to claim the kingship on his account, as it must be a straight father-to-son line. And I’m pretty sure that Rashi was an only child.

However, there are other families whose descent from King David had been accepted by their contemporaries. I suppose the Exilarchs of Baghdad descended from Bustenai (there are records of them at least into the 11th or 12th centuries)might have some claimed descendants.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

One is, of course, reminded of Pooh-Bah, who can trace his ancestry back to a “pre-Adamic primordial blob of protoplasm.”

(I’m going from memory, so I may have got that a bit off.)

[Chronos]

From that mailing that curwin quoted:

Each family claims to be descended from a different son of the king, implying the only kinship between the two families is a common ancestor 2,700 years ago!

I don’t see how that implies that this is the only kinship. I mean, even if that’s where the paternal lines converge, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any maternal connections more recently. In fact, if these are large families, it’s probable that there’s a crossing currently, that is, a living Charlap man who has a living Shealtiel wife, or vice versa.

[curwin]

*Originally posted by Chronos *
I don’t see how that implies that this is the only kinship. I mean, even if that’s where the paternal lines converge, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any maternal connections more recently. In fact, if these are large families, it’s probable that there’s a crossing currently, that is, a living Charlap man who has a living Shealtiel wife, or vice versa.

But the DNA test checks for traits passed down only through the paternal line. So this means that the only “paternal” kinship is from the king.

[curwin]

I just got this from the same mailing list:

In the last issue of “Nu? What’s New?” there was reference to the
Charlap and the Shealtiel families having as a common ancestor, King
Hezekiah, who lived 727-698 BCE. In reality, they are descended from the
Exilarch Hezekiah who died in 1056 CE, a mere 945 years ago. So the DNA
matching described in the article demonstrated kinship that originated
nearly a millennium ago not 2,700 years ago.