- I am an avid, amateur genetic genealogist. I’ve been doing genealogical research on multiple ancestral lines for about 30 years, and became a novice genetic genealogist around 13 years ago, when genealogical DNA testing began to be popular. I have researched related and unrelated lines, and have had the pleasure of applying my experience in tracking down biological connections of just short of 10 “orphans”.
- DNA is neat stuff.
- There are four kinds of DNA. Briefly:
- Mitochondial DNA (mtDNA) - inherited by sons and daughters from their mothers. mtDNA is found only in mitochondria in cells, but outside of a cell’s nucleus. A mother’s mtDNA is passed to her children in her eggs. A father’s mtDNA leaves his body in the base of the tails of his sperm; however, the tails drop off during egg fertilization and never get passed on to children.
- Autosomal DNA (atDNA) - inherited by sons and daughters from their fathers and their mothers. atDNA of previous generations diminishes from generation to generation, and typically ceases to get passed on in any genealogically-useful quantity by the 7th generation. atDNA is located in cellular nuclei. (atDNA testing is the most popular and common kind of DNA test.)
- X-DNA is inherited by sons and daughters from their mothers, and–in daughters–from their fathers. Fathers do not normally contribute any X-DNA to their sons. X-DNA is located in cellular nuclei.
- Y-DNA is inherited by sons only, and is only inherited from their fathers. Y-DNA is located in cellular nuclei.
- There are four kinds of DNA. Briefly:
My understanding is that there are some cases in which a human embryo has mtDNA, atDNA, and X-DNA contributed by their mother, atDNA contributed by their father, and both X-DNA and Y-DNA contributed by their father. These cases fall into the “intersex category”: technically, the embryo is neither male nor female, but an intersex human. I have encountered one intersex person, within the last few years, who had sufficient male anatomy to conceive a son and a daughter, divorced, and chose to undergo surgical transition to “be a female”, sometime in middle age. For more information, explore: https://isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex/.
So far as I know, there is no documented case in which a human inherited mtDNA, atDNA, and X-DNA from their mother and nothing from any purported father.
These bits of “scientific” information evoke a good number of questions about the biology of Jesus, chief among which is: where’d he get the Y-DNA needed to be “fully human”?
I have my own thoughts on the matter, but I’ll keep them to myself for the time being.