There are a couple of questions that this topic has gotten me thinking
about.
1. What are the chances that I am a physical descendant of Abraham? Many
of Abraham's contemporaries have a number of descendants which might
satisfy the sand-of-the-sea description (although not literally). The
figure for Abraham would depend heavily on how much intermarriage there
has been between his descendants and those not descended from him. This
intermarriage may have been fairly common, especially when you consider
the ten lost tribes of Israel and any others who lost their consciousness
of their relation to Abraham.
2. There may be many Christians who will jump to a conclusion similar to
Vernon's. This could lead to the rise of another urban legend to hurt the
credibility of Christians. Is there any way to nip an urban legend in the
bud?
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
Received on Sun Oct 3 20:21:23 2004
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