What could Abraham’s haplogroup have been?

The author of this concordist channel https://www.youtube.com/@thehebrewofisrael believes that Abraham belonged to haplogroup E1b, which he generally considers to be the haplogroup of Shem.

Without going into a rehash of his arguments (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eElACF3foQ), I’ll note that I’m not convinced. He believes that Shem = Semitic languages. But in fact, “Semitic languages” is a late academic term, coined in the late 18th century by the historian Schlözer, and even then it was criticized because the Canaanites also spoke languages ​​of this group.

The author somehow fails to note that all other speakers of Afro-Asiatic languages ​​are clearly attributed by the Bible to the descendants of Ham—the Cushites (Kush), the Berbers (Puth), and the Egyptians (Mitzraim). That Shem’s other descendants—Elam, Lud—didn’t speak Semitic at all. That Hebrew is called Canaanite in the Bible.

And the author’s attempts to Indo-Europeanize haplogroup J are, to put it mildly, far from scientific, as far as I understand Indo-European studies. Although J certainly influenced IE (my humble opinion on this is below).

Therefore, I would rather associate E1b with Canaan (even the affinity with Africa is confirmed), and Shem with J1 (more broadly, IJ). Let us remember that haplogroup E is used as a marker of Phoenician migrations. This, incidentally, would explain why the god El isn’t reconstructed for Afro-Asiatic religion and is almost never reconstructed for Proto-Semitic religion. (However, a figure similar to El— Dyeus phater—is present on the other side of the Caucasus, among Indo-Europeans born at the junction of Eastern European hunter-gatherers with P1 and Caucasian hunter-gatherers with J1 and J2.) Moreover, afaik, E1b are mostly farmers, and J1 are rather nomads (if not, correct me!), and the Old Testament ethos is precisely nomadic, pastoral, and distrustful of farmers.

The limitations of my model:

  • an ancient legend that Adam’s language was Semitic (Hebrew? Aramaic?). Of course, this could be pure apocryphal.
  • Igor Dyakonov believed that the myth of Adam is reconstructed for the Afro-Asiatic era.
  • it seems that analogs of the creator god, although not named El, are found in Afro-Asiatic religions.

By the way, let’s look at the Table of Nations.

The descendants of Shem are Elam, Assur, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram. Elam is in the extreme east, Assur is in the northeast, Lud is in the northwest, and Aram is obviously north of Canaan. Arphaxad isn’t precisely identified, but it’s unlikely to be the Chaldeans (their land belongs to Nimrod), and if we assume (a risky assumption, I agree) that Arphaxad lives between Assur and Lud, then he too is located in the north.
The south is Canaan and Nimrod, the descendants of Ham.
Furthermore, Elam and Lud aren’t Semitic-speaking at all. Assur adopted the Semitic language from Akkad, and, as far as I know, there’s simply no satisfactory Semitic etymology for the name Assur itself. The question is, wasn’t Assur originally Subarcian or some other Pre-Semitic language (Assyriologists, is there a Pre-Semitic substratum in Assyrian Akkadian?).
Well, yes, Elam, as far as a quick Google search reveals, is a J and L haplogroup. Lud is also a J, and so is I.

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