King David descendants of European kings?

[native...@gmail.com]

Hello I would like to know if there are any medieval kings related to king David in Israel I've seen stuff saying the British queen is related if so who is she related to that is related to him thanks.

[Peter Stewart]

On Wednesday, February 7, 2018 at 4:16:17 PM UTC+11, native...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hello I would like to know if there are any medieval kings related to king David in Israel I've seen stuff saying the British queen is related if so who is she related to that is related to him thanks.

You would do well to forget this - it is imaginary.

Even allowing the most swingeing assumptions, no-one living today can trace a documented line to King David through any of his offspring much less the royal lineage through his son Solomon. The great statistician and geneticist Ronald Fisher wrote in 1929: "King Solomon lived 100 generations ago, and his line may be extinct; if not, I wager he is in the ancestry of all of us, and in nearly equal proportions, however unequally his wisdom may be distributed."

As the last part suggests, people who try to make a link have most probably missed out on a share completely.

Peter Stewart

[native...@gmail.com]

Alright I understand now thanks for you support.

[Paulo Canedo]

Dear Peter, what about the exilarch lines? The Jews accepted them as David's descendants. And the Jews are known to have kept good genealogical records.

[taf]

Peter has already responded, but I will weigh in too coming at it from a different direction. The origin of this 'stuff' claiming the British monarchy descend from King David is likely to have had one of two origins.

An Anglo-Saxon-superiority movement called British Israelism became quite popular in the early 19th century and would give rise to the white-supremacist movements in the United States (as well as some of its weirder religious cults). The central tenet of their belief system was that the Anglo-Saxons represented a Lost tribe of Israel, and were the only pure true inheritors of God's covenant with the Biblical Israelites, because the actual Jews were impostors and half-breeds. They came up with a whole chain of half-wit connect-the-dots links based on superficial word similarity and blatant misreading of the source material (of the sort of 'you can see the migration of the tribe of Dan in the names of the Danube River, Denmark and Doncaster'. Oh, and the Stone of Scone is really the stone pillow used by Jacob. Bat-crap crazy, nuttier than a fruitcake.

Well, to them, if they were actually Israelites then they needed a Davidic ruler, so they turned to the Book of Jermeiah where it reports that the daughters of king Zedekiah fled to Egypt, then to the "isles in the sea". That is obviously a reference to the British Isles (because what other islands are there, really?) so these daughters of Zedekiah must have been the ancestors of the British royal family because, . . . well, just because. It is all pretty silly.

The second possible origin for it comes from some sloppy scholarship of a few decades back, wherein the author concluded that the William of Gellone was actually a crypto-Jewish exilarch descended from king David. This got some play because William is likely an ancestor of the English kings (although I am not sure that any line is fully documented). Anyhow, the underlying thesis just represented wishful thinking, taking two contemporary people with different names and almost arbitrarily concluding they were the same. I have also seen another exilarch claim, going through a mistress of a Portuguese king that leads to the wife of George III. The critical link, as best I can tell, is completely made up, and this has fallen out of favor, replaced by an equally made-up idea that the mistress was really a black-African - don't ask, it would take longer to explain than it is worth, given that it total nonsense.

These are the only routes I have seen claimed, though there may be other claims.

taf

[Peter Stewart]

On Wednesday, February 7, 2018 at 7:18:46 PM UTC+11, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> Dear Peter, what about the exilarch lines? The Jews accepted them as David's descendants. And the Jews are known to have kept good genealogical records.

O please - this is folklore, not genealogy. In Israel there are people who imagine that a caste of hereditary priests (identified as "Kohanim") will one day re-establish worship (mostly animal sacrifice) in a third temple on the site of Al-Aqsa mosque - but even these rancorous fools don't suppose themselves to be biological representatives of King David.

In other words, Solomon's wisdom is not in more plentiful supply nowadays in Jerusalem than anywhere else on earth.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

Probably there are - lies and self-deception are very prolific breeders.

The purported "lineages" of exilarchs are flim-flam concoctions: even their most fanatical proponents can't fill in all the blanks, and there are spans of several generations without any named or documented individuals. These are bridged over by nothing but faith that any pretender (or anyone retrospectively pretended) to the status of Davidic exilarch must be descended from the last recorded scion of a past exilarch. This sacred office could never be usurped, of course, or taken up by an impostor after dynastic failure, like any counterpart rulership in the real world ...

And then William of Gellone is grafted onto the stem of Jesse based on nothing more scientific - or less stupid - than the ludicrous conspiracy-theory bloodlines of *The Da Vinci Code*. It is all putrified nonsense.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

Dear Peter, I think you should read the "Seder Olam Zuta" an excellent chronicle of the Davidic genealogy. Your views are too extreme in my opinion.
On another point the "Da Vinci Code" is not nonsense because it is FICTION, you can put whatever you want in a fiction book.

[Richard Smith]

On 07/02/18 13:36, Paulo Canedo wrote:

> On another point the "Da Vinci Code" is not nonsense because it is
> FICTION, you can put whatever you want in a fiction book.

Yes, Dan Brown's novel /The Da Vinci Code/ is fiction, though the best I
can say about it is that it's not as bad as his earlier novel, /Angels &
Demons/. As you say, you can put whatever you want in a novel.

But the genealogical ideas behind /The Da Vinci Code/ were not presented
as fiction. They come from a 1982 book called /The Holy Blood and the
Holy Grail/ by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, which purports to be a
serious work documenting allegedly factual history. It isn't. It's a
fraud.

Richard

[peter...@yahoo.ca]

The British Monarchy is very probably descended from King David - King David I of Scotland that is. My wife descends from him. I descend from his wife Maud, Countess Of Huntingdon, and her first husband Simon de Senlis or St. Liz.

As for the so-called Lost Tribes Of Israel there are none. The Bible makes that VERY clear. It clearly states that there were refugees that came into Judah when Israel was overrun by the Babylonians. I'm not going to get into the issue over whether or not the Jews kept good genealogy. I will state that while I do believe the archaeological evidence supports the existence of King David, I don't believe it's possible to connect up modern lines with him.

[taf]

On Wednesday, February 7, 2018 at 6:03:24 AM UTC-8, Richard Smith wrote:

> But the genealogical ideas behind /The Da Vinci Code/
> were not presented as fiction. They come from a 1982
> book called /The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail/ by
> Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, which purports to be a
> serious work documenting allegedly factual history.
> It isn't. It's a fraud.

The funny thing is that this all came up in court a few years back. In 2006, the authors of Holy Blood sued Dan Brown, accusing him of plagiarism. Part of their argument was that Brown had appropriated their themes and characters. The problem with this is that if Holy Blood was intended as history, as they originally claimed, then the authors could not claim history as their own intellectual property any more than someone can claim to own Henry VIII or the Salem Witch Trials. It could only be intellectual property if it was fiction. Faced with the prospect of Brown's millions, they went against everything they had said previously, and claimed that Holy Blood had always been fiction dressed up as history and not actual factual history, as they had always maintained.

taf

[P J Evans]

Arthur Zuckerman, _A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France_, (1972). A bit before Dan Brown. It's incorrect genealogically, but interesting for its coverage of the Jews in that area.

[Paulo Canedo]

Thing is, IIRC the authors originally believed what they said in the book was truth because they were tricked by the fake documents Pierre Plantard had planted in the National Library of France.

[Peter Stewart]

On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 12:36:37 AM UTC+11, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> Dear Peter, I think you should read the "Seder Olam Zuta" an excellent chronicle of the Davidic genealogy. Your views are too extreme in my opinion.
> On another point the "Da Vinci Code" is not nonsense because it is FICTION, you can put whatever you want in a fiction book.

Now you are opining that a work purporting to trace medieval people back to Adam is "an excellent chronicle of the Davidic genealogy" - get real. It is merely a record of what someone once wanted to believe, and to convince others to believe, without documentary proof. It only "excels" some other smelly old tripe of the same kind. Its valid interest today is as an effusion of folklore, not a record of history.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

I should have specified that I was talking about the part of the work from the fall of Babylon to the Persians until the time the work was written. As said in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seder_Olam_Zutta the date of writing of the work is uncertain, many have argued that it was written in the year 804 however some textual evidences suggest the enumeration of the eight exilarchs following Mar-Zutra III was added by two later scribes and that the original chronicle was actually written in the first quarter of the 6th century.
If so, the writer would certainly have had informers whose memory extended well into the 5th century and probably enough documents in Babylon and Persia to know the line for a good bunch of centuries.
I understand that I belong to a more liberal school of genealogy than you but I'm fine with it.

[Peter Stewart]

Apparently by "a more liberal school of genealogy" you mean one that makes statements shamelessly mixing the conditional with the unequivocal (for example your "If so ... would certainly ..."). If so, then I would certainly not belong to it. See the difference?

Peter Stewart

[Richard Smith]

On 07/02/18 19:27, Paulo Canedo wrote:

> Thing is, IIRC the authors originally believed what they said in the
> book was truth because they were tricked by the fake documents Pierre
> Plantard had planted in the National Library of France.

If they believed it, they were stupid, credulous fools. And I don't
think that was wholly the case.

Richard

[Peter Stewart]

Quite so - two levels of foolish credulity were at work together: first, supposing that fake documents were genuine and secondly, supposing that if documents are genuine the information in them is true.

Careful assessment of sources is the beginning of responsible method. It is just plain common sense to recognise that knowing (or thinking you know) the provenance of documents does not authenticate the information contained in them or establish the motivation behind them.

Peter Stewart

[wjhonson]

Paulo you're wrong if you think the Seder_Olam_Zutta is actually genealogy.

This document has *many* problems with it. Although *some* of the named people are mentioned in other sources, some of them are mentioned in *no* other sources, which is problematic.

If someone is the "King of the Jews" you would think someone might have mentioned them somewhere.

[Paulo Canedo]

"King of the Jews" is not the most appropriate term given the fact that the men mentioned in the book did not really have a kingdom, it would be better to call such men "jewish leaders in the exile" or "exilarchs".
Yes, some of the exilarchs are quite obscure individuals. Some are mentioned in a few other jewish and persian sources. I suggest taking a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exilarch, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Iran and https://books.google.pt/books?id=h2q_Q-34GgkC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=exilarchs+in+persian+sources&source=bl&ots=htXNxc0rsg&sig=dbg1G47ItN3EnB7_BFligoi-e2E&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjL1f_lyKbZAhXDvhQKHdKgBRIQ6AEISjAD#v=onepage&q=exilarchs%20in%20persian%20sources&f=false. We have of course lost some sources from so many centuries ago in a region which has since passed through several things. My general impression is that the jews were not really about such men's doings, they merely wanted to compile their lineage so they would be prepared for when according to their religion the messiah would appear.

[wjhonson]

But you see, that makes this work non-genealogy :)

[Paulo Canedo]

I prefer to look at it as some sort of "minigenealogy". They recorded the lineage, but did not record the details of such men.

[wjhonson]

So you prefer to look at legends with no corroboration as fact.
I prefer to not.

Sure I would include these people in a tree, but I would know that there is a high likelihood that some or most of them are completely made up from nothing.

[riemorese...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, February 7, 2018 at 12:16:17 AM UTC-5, Gog Mog wrote:
> Hello I would like to know if there are any medieval kings related to king David in Israel I've seen stuff saying the British queen is related if so who is she related to that is related to him thanks.

There are some elements within Judaism who strongly believe the Temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem. For this to happen, they believe, there must be Levites to serve as the priests. There are Jewish families who consider themselves "kohanim," meaning of priestly descent. Starting about 20 years ago, DNA studies suggested a common male ancestor about 3,000 years ago for many of these "kohanim" (BTW, the common surname Cohen comes from that word). There is a useful summary in Wikipedia (with footnotes) under "Y-chromosomal Aaron."
I have heard a lecture by a rabbi in which he stated his family had a record of their priestly descent. It would not be surprising that such things might exist, even if unverifiable by outside sources. I base this on, first, the extreme religious importance of having legitimate "kohanim" to some Jews; and, second, that they would be kept privately (even secretly) because of thousands of years of vicious persecution.
Before people jump, I am only reporting what is thought by some Jews. I am not endorsing these views, nor claiming that an externally verifiable genealogy from Aaron exists at the present.

[deca...@aol.com]

There is a prophecy in Christian theology which states that a future absolute ruler (or Antichrist) of a one world government will rise and claim a descent from King David of Israel. This person will claim to be not only ruler of Israel, but of the entire world. According to this theology, the Antichrist (or one world leader) will convince many of his descent from King David of Israel. If this prophecy holds true, it will be interesting to see this person's alleged descent from King David of Israel.

[taf]

On Friday, February 23, 2018 at 12:18:26 PM UTC-8, Seumas MacThomais wrote:

> Starting about 20 years ago, DNA studies suggested a common male ancestor
> about 3,000 years ago for many of these "kohanim" (BTW, the common surname
> Cohen comes from that word). There is a useful summary in Wikipedia (with
> footnotes) under "Y-chromosomal Aaron."

Yeah, the problem is that while this nice pat story made the news, all of the followup work that showed this Y haplotype in a whole lot of Middle Eastern peoples not kohanim, that there was no higher frequency of it in Middle Eastern Jews as in non-Jews, did not get reported because it isn't nearly as 'sexy' for the papers to report, 'oh, . . . never mind." This Y-chromosomal Aaron was more like 10,000 years old, just one of dozens that are shared among Middle Eastern peoples.

(The same thing happened with the 'local man has same mtDNA as Cheddar man' story - it was later learned that this mt type is common across all of western Europe, and it would have been surprising if there wasn't someone in the area with it.)

Let's not go down this DNA rabbit hole. Again.

taf

[taf]

On Friday, February 23, 2018 at 12:40:40 PM UTC-8, deca...@aol.com wrote:

> There is a prophecy in Christian theology which states that a future absolute
> ruler (or Antichrist) of a one world government will rise and claim a descent
> from King David of Israel. This person will claim to be not only ruler of
> Israel, but of the entire world. According to this theology, the Antichrist
> (or one world leader) will convince many of his descent from King David of
> Israel. If this prophecy holds true, it will be interesting to see this
> person's alleged descent from King David of Israel.

No, it probably won't - it will likely either be so vague as to be impossible to refute, or else of the Holy Blood-Holy Grail conspiracy theory type. It is unlikely to merit any detailed attention from actual genealogists.

taf

[deca...@aol.com]

On the other hand, yes - it probably will. This thread has certainly received enough attention from "actual genealogists," despite it being a topic for conspiracy theorists.

[Paulo Canedo]

Thing is, among the jews, the ones with the surname Cohen are the ones that most have that Y DNA which is quite intriguing.

[taf]

On Friday, February 23, 2018 at 2:36:44 PM UTC-8, Paulo Canedo wrote:

> Thing is, among the jews, the ones with the surname Cohen are the ones
> that most have that Y DNA which is quite intriguing.

If only you ignore all the parts that are inconveniently inconsistent with your desired narrative, the rest is interesting? Well, perhaps, but it is not meaningful.

taf

[wjhonson]

On Friday, February 23, 2018 at 12:18:26 PM UTC-8, Seumas MacThomais wrote:

Many people state their family has a record of this or that.
The issue however is, they do not.
All such known documents have been published long ago, there are no new documents appearing on that front.
None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

So his claim, is most likely based on this same source document, already mentioned, which has problems.

[Paulo Canedo]

Uh, no, because the "Seder Olam Zutta" says nothing at all about the genealogies of the Levites.

[wjhonson]

Well then this person who claims to have a documented record of their descent is simply a liar.

No such documentation exists.
That a family might have a "legend" that they descend from Levi is an entirely different thing and not genealogy

Most U.S. families whose family ever sojourned in the Oklahoma area, have a "legend" that they are partly Native American. Ninety nine percent of those legends are baseless and provably wrong.