Saturday, September 29, 2018

`If Jesus had type AB blood it would mean... he had two separate human parents!'

© Stephen E. Jones[1]

Anonymous

This is my response in this separate post, to your presumed comments

[Above (enlarge): "The Annunciation" [by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary in Luke 1:26-38], by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) in 1898[2]. It was shortly after this that Mary, a virgin, conceived in her womb by the Holy Spirit, her first-born son, Jesus (Mt 1:18-20):

"30And the angel said to her, `Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. ... 34And Mary said to the angel, `How will this be, since I am a virgin?' 35And the angel answered her, `The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God ... 38And Mary said, `Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.' And the angel departed from her."]

of 18Sep18 at 7:07 AM and 18Sep18 at 7:53 AM on the same topic, less than an hour apart, under my posts, "Re: Shroud blood ... types as AB ... aged blood always types as AB, so the significance of this ... is unclear" and "Re: Shroud: I had a quick question regarding blood evidence." Your words are bold and prefaced by ">" to distinguish them from mine.

>However, it seems that everyone is missing the elephant in the room. You have consulted "everyone" on this? I must have missed your call! Every once in a while a commenter (who is presumably `young enough to know everything'!) on this my blog claims that he/she has discovered something against the Shroud and/or Christianity that no one else had thought of. But these are arguments from ignorance: `I don't know the answer to X, therefore no one else knows the answer to X'!

>If Jesus had type AB blood it would mean, unless he received Mary's complete chromosome makeup-as in two sets of 23, and she was type AB, Then he had two separate human parents!

No. Even if Jesus was merely a man (which He isn't-see above), He could not "have received Mary's complete chromosome makeup-as in two sets of 23." Even an XX male, requires chromosomes from a father and mother:

"XX male syndrome is a rare congenital condition where an individual with a female genotype has phenotypically male characteristics that can vary between cases. In 90% of these individuals the syndrome is caused by unequal crossing over between X and Y chromosomes during meiosis in the father, and results in the X chromosome containing the SRY gene, as opposed to the Y chromosome where it is normally found. When the X with the SRY gene combines with a normal X from the mother during fertilization, the result is an XX male"[3].
Parthenogenesis, where the offspring receive only their mother's chromosomes, is effectively impossible naturally in humans that survive more than a few days:
"Parthenogenesis in humans never produces viable embryos, though, because unfertilized eggs lack specific instructions about gene expression from the sperm. In general, our cells have two functional copies of each gene — one inherited from the mother and one from the father. For some genes, however, only one copy is ever used, while the other remains dormant. Some of the signals for which copies should be turned off come from the sperm cell. So, if there's no sperm, certain genes will be overexpressed, and the `embryo' will die when it is only about five days old"[4].
Even the "closest thing to a human virgin birth that modern science has ever recorded," a boy whose cells contain identical X-chromosomes all from his mother and Y chromosomes from his father, had a father[5].

As I stated in my reply comments of 18Sep18 at 2:55 PM and 18Sep18 at 3:10 PM: Jesus would have received Mary's 22+X chromosomes (including the blood type chromosome 9) and He would have received from God the Holy Spirit [see again above] (Mt 1:18,20; Lk 1:30-31, 34-35) 22+Y chromosomes (also including chromosome 9).

See human chromosome map (karyotype) below:

[Above (enlarge): "The 22 autosomes are numbered by size. The other two chromosomes, X and Y, are the sex chromosomes. This picture of the human chromosomes lined up in pairs is called a karyotype"[6].]

>So, the shroud I believe is really the shroud of Jesus, I assume that you are an Internet troll, pretending to hold the pro-authenticist position so that you can attack Christianity. One clue is that pro-authenticists tend to capitalise "Shroud" (which is also good English - the Shroud being a proper noun) but anti-authenticists tend to write "shroud," wrongly uncapitalised.

>but the science here is really bad. No. The problem is the philosophy of Naturalism (`nature is all there is-there is no supernatural'), which rules out in advance supernatural explanations.

>There are three possibilities regarding Jesus' DNA.

1. Jesus DNA consists of 46 chromosomes, two identical pairs of 23 from Mary, which would not produce a viable human You are setting up a strawman and then refuting that:

"A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent"[7]
This is not even a possibility (see "Parthenogenesis" above).

>unless Mary's DNA was devoid of lethal recessive (the immaculate conception removed a lot more than just original sin!). The Immaculate Conception, that "Mary was sinless, or conceived without original sin" is an un-Biblical Roman Catholic doctrine, which was not even the latter until 1854[8]. As a Protestant I regard it as false.

>Also here Jesus would have been female. Yes. But see above on "strawman"!

>2. Jesus had only 23 chromosomes, again leaving lethal recessive uncovered unless Mary's DNA was devoid of lethal recessive- see #1. Here also, Jesus would have been female. There is no such thing as an "only 23 chromosomes" human. Again see above on "strawman"!

>3. Jesus somehow obtained another set of 23 human chromosomes to join with Mary's 23 chromosomes- human male chromosomes. This is claiming that Jesus was merely human (He is human but not merely human - see below) with a human father. Why all the `beating around the bush'? If you are a philosophical naturalist, then `nature is all there is-there is no supernatural', so that is your only real option. But as well as the Strawman fallacy, you are also committing the fallacy of False dilemma:

"A false dilemma is a type of informal fallacy in which something is falsely claimed to be an `either/or' situation, when in fact there is at least one additional option"[9].
And that additional option is what the Bible (and therefore Christianity teaches) summarised in the doctrine of the Incarnation:
"In Christian theology, the doctrine of the Incarnation holds that Jesus, the preexistent ... second hypostasis [Person] of the Trinity, God the Son ... taking on a human body and human nature, `was made flesh' and conceived in the womb of [the virgin] Mary ... The doctrine of the Incarnation, then, entails that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human, his two natures joined in hypostatic union. In the Incarnation, as traditionally defined by those Churches that adhere to the Council of Chalcedon, the divine nature of the Son was united but not mixed with human nature in one divine Person, Jesus Christ, who was both `truly God and truly man'"[10].

That is, at the molecular biological level:

4. Jesus received a set of 23 chromosomes (22 + X) from His mother Mary and a set of 23 chromosomes (22 + Y) from God the Holy Spirit (Mt 1:18-20; Lk 1:30-35).

>The science is available to determine 1, 2, or 3. So, someone is covering it up. No one is covering anything up. See above on your argument from ignorance!

>Yes God can do anything, but, unless the Holy Spirit is a human male, This shows that all along you knew of Christianity's explanation. See above on you being a troll. But God doesn't have to be a human male for God the Son (Jn 1:1-2,14; Gal 4:4; Php 2:5-7; Col 2:9; 1Tim 3:16; Heb 2:9,14,17) to have "emptied Himself" (Php 2:5-7) into a human male sperm cell, which the Holy Spirit hen inserted into the womb of the Virgin Mary to form Jesus, the God-man. As you yourself admitted, "God can do anything" (Mt 19:26; Mk 10:27; Lk 1:37; 18:27)!

>something interesting and beyond human science has happened here! Indeed it did! See above.

Notes
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. "File:Henry Ossawa Tanner - The Annunciation.jpg," Wikimedia Commons, 7 August 2018. [return]
3. "XX male syndrome," Wikipedia, 11 September 2018. [return]
4. Moyer, M.W., 2007, "Can a Virgin Give Birth?," Slate, 21 December. [return]
5. Cohen, P., 1995, "The boy whose blood has no father," New Scientist, 7 October. [return]
6. "How many chromosomes do people have?," Genetics Home Reference - NIH, 25 September 2018. [return]
7. "Straw man," Wikipedia, 9 September 2018. [return]
8. "Immaculate Conception," Wikipedia, 15 September 2018. [return]
9. "False dilemma," Wikipedia, 13 August 2018. [return]
10. "Incarnation (Christianity)," Wikipedia, 30 September 2018. [return]

Posted 29 September 2018. Updated: 7 November 2023.

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