"Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard."
Ecclesiastes 9:16KJV
Ecclesiastes 9:16KJV
Tuesday, 25 August 2015
On the Challenge of protecting our children.
The pedophile next door
CNN Staff
Updated 2232 GMT (0532 HKT) August 21, 2015
(CNN)As a child of divorce, Katie Griffin seemed to be adjusting well to weekdays with her mom and weekends with her dad.
When Katie stopped wanting to visit her dad a few years later, her parents attributed it to early adolescence, and to Katie wanting to do her own thing.
Then, one evening, Katie's mother, Janet Griffin, received an upsetting phone call from her daughter.
Bruce Sawhill, 63
Wanted for sodomy
Last seen in 2001 in Missouri
Previously served three years in prison in 1988 for statutory sodomy
May have found work in Oregon or Washington in 2004 or 2005
"I don't know why, but I just knew," Janet told CNN's "The Hunt with John Walsh." "...And she said it was Bruce. She said, 'He's been touching me and making me touch him and I just can't go there anymore.'"
"Bruce" was Bruce Sawhill. Sawhill had been close friends with Katie's father, Ken Griffin, since high school. When Sawhill got married to his wife, Keni Jo, the new couple decided to move in a mile down the road from Ken. On occasion, Ken had allowed Bruce and Keni Jo to babysit Katie. Now, Ken raced over to his "friend's" home in a blind fury.
"I just decked him," Ken Griffin said.
How could Sawhill do the unthinkable to his good friend's daughter?
'It's always the most charming guy'
The Griffins contacted the sheriff's office and filed a report. When investigators ran a record check on Sawhill, they made a shocking discovery: Sawhill was a registered sex offender.
"It's hard to describe that kind of betrayal," Ken Griffin said.
The Griffins had always known that Sawhill had a record, but he had claimed he was busted for growing marijuana. Now they discovered that was a cover story; he had actually been convicted in St. Louis County for the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old. The official charge was sodomy.
"It's always the most charming guy," Walsh said of Sawhill, who was released on parole in 1992. "...It's always the guy that everybody loves that hides that one big dangerous, dark secret."
Sawhill was arrested again on September 25, 2001, for the abuse of Katie Griffin, and charged with two counts of sodomy in the first degree. He was released one month later on a $50,000 bond. A trial date was eventually set for October 29, 2002.
Katie overcame her fears, and decided she wanted to testify against Sawhill in court. She wanted to let everyone know what Sawhill had done to her.
"She was so worried that he may do it to another child," Janet Griffin said.
But when trial day arrived, there was no sign of Sawhill -- or his wife. They've been on the run ever since.
Numbing the pain of trauma
Katie was so distraught when Sawhill fled that her parents decided a change in scenery might help.
She agreed to go to stay with her older half-sister, Pam Hansen, who lived in Colorado. There she began seemingly adjusting to a new life, going to school and making friends right away, according to her family.
But, a year later, she was dead. Her sister found her in the basement; she had apparently suffocated while inhaling spraypaint fumes -- a cheap high known as "huffing." She was just 12 years old.
"I think [Sawhill] set into motion [the] events that led up to Katie's death. I have no doubt in my mind about that," Ken Griffin said.
"I blame Bruce for taking her innocence away, for making her grow up faster than she had to -- just not letting her be a little girl," Hansen said.
Have you seen Bruce Sawhill?
Bruce Sawhill wears a set of upper dentures. He has a distinctive loud laugh, and likes to laugh at his own jokes. He enjoys casual drinking and is known to be very sociable in bars. He has grown marijuana in the past and could be working on a marijuana farm. He's also a skilled drywall installer, plasterer and painter. It is believed he's still with Keni Jo.
If you've seen Bruce Sawhill or have any information as to his whereabouts please make the call. 1-866-THE-HUNT or go online to CNN.com/TheHunt. We'll pass your tip on to the proper authorities and if requested will not reveal your name.
CNN Staff
Updated 2232 GMT (0532 HKT) August 21, 2015
(CNN)As a child of divorce, Katie Griffin seemed to be adjusting well to weekdays with her mom and weekends with her dad.
When Katie stopped wanting to visit her dad a few years later, her parents attributed it to early adolescence, and to Katie wanting to do her own thing.
Then, one evening, Katie's mother, Janet Griffin, received an upsetting phone call from her daughter.
Bruce Sawhill, 63
Wanted for sodomy
Last seen in 2001 in Missouri
Previously served three years in prison in 1988 for statutory sodomy
May have found work in Oregon or Washington in 2004 or 2005
"I don't know why, but I just knew," Janet told CNN's "The Hunt with John Walsh." "...And she said it was Bruce. She said, 'He's been touching me and making me touch him and I just can't go there anymore.'"
"Bruce" was Bruce Sawhill. Sawhill had been close friends with Katie's father, Ken Griffin, since high school. When Sawhill got married to his wife, Keni Jo, the new couple decided to move in a mile down the road from Ken. On occasion, Ken had allowed Bruce and Keni Jo to babysit Katie. Now, Ken raced over to his "friend's" home in a blind fury.
"I just decked him," Ken Griffin said.
How could Sawhill do the unthinkable to his good friend's daughter?
'It's always the most charming guy'
The Griffins contacted the sheriff's office and filed a report. When investigators ran a record check on Sawhill, they made a shocking discovery: Sawhill was a registered sex offender.
"It's hard to describe that kind of betrayal," Ken Griffin said.
The Griffins had always known that Sawhill had a record, but he had claimed he was busted for growing marijuana. Now they discovered that was a cover story; he had actually been convicted in St. Louis County for the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old. The official charge was sodomy.
"It's always the most charming guy," Walsh said of Sawhill, who was released on parole in 1992. "...It's always the guy that everybody loves that hides that one big dangerous, dark secret."
Sawhill was arrested again on September 25, 2001, for the abuse of Katie Griffin, and charged with two counts of sodomy in the first degree. He was released one month later on a $50,000 bond. A trial date was eventually set for October 29, 2002.
Katie overcame her fears, and decided she wanted to testify against Sawhill in court. She wanted to let everyone know what Sawhill had done to her.
"She was so worried that he may do it to another child," Janet Griffin said.
But when trial day arrived, there was no sign of Sawhill -- or his wife. They've been on the run ever since.
Numbing the pain of trauma
Katie was so distraught when Sawhill fled that her parents decided a change in scenery might help.
She agreed to go to stay with her older half-sister, Pam Hansen, who lived in Colorado. There she began seemingly adjusting to a new life, going to school and making friends right away, according to her family.
But, a year later, she was dead. Her sister found her in the basement; she had apparently suffocated while inhaling spraypaint fumes -- a cheap high known as "huffing." She was just 12 years old.
"I think [Sawhill] set into motion [the] events that led up to Katie's death. I have no doubt in my mind about that," Ken Griffin said.
"I blame Bruce for taking her innocence away, for making her grow up faster than she had to -- just not letting her be a little girl," Hansen said.
Have you seen Bruce Sawhill?
Bruce Sawhill wears a set of upper dentures. He has a distinctive loud laugh, and likes to laugh at his own jokes. He enjoys casual drinking and is known to be very sociable in bars. He has grown marijuana in the past and could be working on a marijuana farm. He's also a skilled drywall installer, plasterer and painter. It is believed he's still with Keni Jo.
If you've seen Bruce Sawhill or have any information as to his whereabouts please make the call. 1-866-THE-HUNT or go online to CNN.com/TheHunt. We'll pass your tip on to the proper authorities and if requested will not reveal your name.
A hostile takeover? II:Lamarck's revenge.
Epigenetic Change: Lamarck, Wake Up, You're Wanted in the Conference Room!
Denyse O'Leary August 25, 2015 3:58 AM
If we wish to hear what the fossils are telling us, we must find out how they came to be what they were (and how their descendants came to be what they are today). For generations, scientists have looked to Darwinian evolution (natural selection acting on random mutations) almost exclusively to account for all that. Questions were considered settled if a Darwinian account could be provided.
Talk to the Fossils.jpgThat was not because any law of nature shows that Darwinism must be the correct explanation. Rather because, as Richard Dawkins put it, "Darwinism is the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life" (p. 287, Blind Watchmaker, 1986).
But when we looked at horizontal gene transfer (HGT), we found that Dawkins' claim is incorrect.
To recap, Darwinism entails vertical transfer of genes from a common ancestor to descendants. Horizontal gene transfer means transfer of genes from one organism to another on contact, irrespective of the ancestry of either life form. HGT is a form of evolution, yes. But it drastically weakens the status of Darwinism as the "only known theory." Any Darwinian claim about evolution must first rule out HGT as a possible explanation. And, as we shall shortly see, it must rule out epigenetics as well.
Why does this historic shift in the burden of proof receive comparatively little attention? Probably it's due to the overwhelming acceptance of Darwinism as a cultural metaphor and philosophy of life. One thinks, for example, of Amazon citing "purposeful Darwinism" and taking Darwinian Theory to the max as a defense against a recent exposé of the firm's labor conditions. The concepts Amazon advances are scientifically meaningless but culturally meaningful. And culture drowns out science.
Thus, when talking to fossils (or current living forms), our challenge is to listen to what they have to say, not what the Darwinian interpreters of the fossils (and of almost everything else) have to say.
Which brings us to epigenetics. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was an early evolutionist who proposed that life forms could acquire information from their environment and pass it on in their genes. He was dismissed, when not ridiculed, by Darwinists for many decades (though not, as it happens, by Darwin). But the basic thrust of his idea has recently resurfaced in epigenetics.
There is an irony in the way the resurgence came about. A key science achievement of the 1990s was the mapping of the human genome. Those were the days when Nobelist Walter Gilbert, extolling the Human Genome Project, would hold up a data CD and inform his audience, "Here is a human being; it's me!"
But what if it isn't? What if it is just a CD containing important information about Gilbert but by no means the whole story? What if the rest of the story is created in the continuous stream of life? Scientists are just now beginning to learn about the hitherto unrecognized "second genetic code," the epigenome, which greatly increases both the complexity and the uniqueness of the information in living systems.
Epigenetics is the study of the systems and processes by which genes' expression can be altered, not randomly as in Darwinism, but by specific, predictable, repeatable, and researchable events -- and then inherited in the altered state. Research has shown methylation to be a key mechanism. It is described thus:
Not all genes are active at all times. DNA methylation is one of several epigenetic mechanisms that cells use to control gene expression.... a common epigenetic signaling tool that cells use to lock genes in the "off" position. In recent decades, researchers have learned a great deal about DNA methylation, including how it occurs and where it occurs, and they have also discovered that methylation is an important component in numerous cellular processes, including embryonic development, genomic imprinting, X-chromosome inactivation, and preservation of chromosome stability.
Epigenetic changes like methylation do not change a cell's DNA, but they do change how the DNA functions. In rodent studies, for example, stress can trigger a series of chemical reactions that dictate how active some genes will be in passing on the effects of parental stress.
Such inheritance of acquired traits is gradually gaining acceptance in academic science, but we are still in an early stage of understanding the mechanisms. Or, as one researcher put it, "... we're all having a hell of a time figuring out how they work." And another: "Although many are scratching their heads over the holes in the proposed mechanism, few are suggesting that the underlying phenomenon is a fairy tale."
Most genes, it turns out, are not so much selfish as willing to hang out with the wrong crowd and learn bad habits. You'd think so, to read this in a special issue of Science:
The molecular legacy extends beyond gene transfer to include mitochondria and epigenetics (Lane et al., p. 756). Finally, the gestation and birthing processes also shape offspring, and preterm birth is now a focus of research (Romero et al., p. 760).
Here are some other findings that give some sense of the scope of the changes epigenetics brings to our understanding of the history of life:
-- Bacteria rewrite their DNA epigenetically. Carl Zimmer notes in Quanta:
For students of the history of biology, this kind of heredity echoes a largely discredited theory promoted by the naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in the early 19th century. Lamarck argued for the inheritance of acquired traits. ... The advent of genetics seemed to crush this idea. There didn't appear to be any way for experiences to alter the genes that organisms passed down to their offspring. But CRISPR revealed that microbes rewrite their DNA with information about their enemies -- information that Barrangou showed could make the difference between life and death for their descendants.
New analysis techniques will help define the role that bacterial epigenetics plays in creating antibiotic resistance.
-- Lab research show how it works in animals. It's not just the womb environment because the male parent's contribution, via alterations in sperm, is substantial. From Nature:
Male rats fed a high-fat diet, for example, beget daughters with abnormal DNA methylation in the pancreas. Male mice fed a low-protein diet have offspring with altered liver expression of cholesterol genes. And male mice with pre-diabetes have abnormal sperm methylation, and pass on an increased risk of diabetes to the next two generations.
Epigenetic stress effects found in rats can last for generations. Similarly, in a recent mouse study, reported in Nature, sperm RNA showed heritable signs of trauma for two more generations. And starved mice produced pups whose offspring risked diabetes. In another mouse study, it was found that "Without any change to DNA at all, methyl groups could be added or subtracted, and the changes were inherited much like a mutation in a gene."
-- Epigenetics can influence animal behavior in later generations as well. "Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance is not a solved field -- it's very much in flux," one researcher admits, but it seems that epigenetic memory of experienced stress can cross generations and travel from cell to cell during early development: "It does not change the sequence of genes but rather how the DNA is packaged and how genes are expressed." Recent rodent studies suggest that "an animal parent's exposure to drugs, alcohol, and stress can alter brain development and behavior in their offspring."
For example, from one study on how mice can inherit fear of a smell from their male parent, we learn:
Somehow, the information about the frightening smell gets into a mouse's testes and results in lower methylation of the Olfr151 gene in sperm DNA. The researchers even ran experiments using in vitro fertilization to make sure that the father was not in some way passing on a fear of acetophenone through interactions with the mother. The epigenetic tweak in the sperm is perpetuated in the offspring's DNA, leading to increased expression of the receptor in the animals' noses and, ultimately, enhanced sensitivity to the smell.
Much more work remains, of course, and this finding was questioned, as "too good to be true." But the authors pointed out that they had not cherry picked the data; they had included in the supplemental materials experiments that did not yield statistically significant results.
If The Scientist isn't hanging the epigenetics study authors out to dry, it's most likely because the editors think there is something to be said for their model. It may help resolve longstanding questions, for example, about how animals appear to "know" things they did not learn by experience. To say that their knowledge is an "instinct" just means we don't know how they know. Epigenetic studies, by contrast, may identify a specific mechanism by which the information is transmitted.
-- Epigenetics may influence human health too. It's fine to inherit "good genes" (we heard plenty about that from the eugenicists for over a century!). But what if a package of "good genes" gets damaged in transit and arrives that way? Genes can be inherited in an awakened state, and may influence metabolism, behavior, and proneness to disease, including heart disease and diabetes. From one researcher:
According to Ishii, the take-home message is this: "I hope that people understand that various stresses can change gene expression without DNA sequence change." He says the youngest among us -- developing embryos and infants -- may be especially sensitive to that kind of stress-induced epigenetic change and "we should be more careful about stresses on them."
In another study, traumatized pregnant women who had been near 9-11 not only had significantly lower cortisol levels in their saliva but so did their children, measured after birth. Researchers noted that the effect was most obvious when the exposed children were in the third trimester. Subsequent studies on stressed rats identified differences in DNA methylation, the way that DNA is chemically modified.
Similarly, Project Ice Storm found "a distinctive 'signature' in the DNA of children born in the aftermath of the massive Quebec ice storm" (1998):
Thirteen years later, the researchers found that DNA within the T cells -- a type of immune system cell -- of 36 children showed distinctive patterns in DNA methylation. The researchers concluded for the first time that maternal hardship, predicted the degree of methylation of DNA in the T cells. The "epigenetic" signature plays a role in the way the genes express themselves. This study is also the first to show that it is the objective stress exposure (such as days without electricity) and not the degree of emotional distress in pregnant women that causes long lasting changes in the epigenome of their babies.
It's early days yet, but there is also some evidence that parents' poverty can promote children's obesity. Privation may reprogram DNA in the womb to turn certain genes involving appetite up or down. "Whenever you find food, eat all you can," perhaps? This may continue into adulthood, when no shortage actually exists. As one researcher explains, "If genetics is the alphabet, epigenetics is the spelling that guides the activity of our cells."
So the role epigenetics may play in obesity generally, some immunities, chronic diseases, and even cancer is now actively studied. With respect to cancer, some researchers have found that epigenetic regulation is required to ensure the correct number of chromosomes in daughter cells after division, and "tumor cells frequently have either too few or too many chromosomes, leading to the incorrect expression of a number of genes."
Many of these findings may need modification or replacement, but we can no longer rule out the possibility that modifications in great-grandparents' diet or environment affect later generations' health or life span. These changes are not Darwinian genetic inheritance; the parent did not have a randomly mutated "gene" for, say, obesity, but rather an experience (chronic hunger, perhaps) that altered the way genes controlling appetite are expressed. The alterations are passed on, at least for a generation or so. Thus, epigenetics is not to be confused with genetic or any other kind of determinism; it is not a prophecy, merely a tool for assessing sources of risk.
-- Can epigenetics influence human behavior as well as human health? Possibly; for example, early abuse can change gene expression in children:
The researchers found an association between the kind of parenting children had and a particular gene (called the glucocorticoid receptor gene) that's responsible for crucial aspects of social functioning and health.
If such findings hold up, they may shed light on "broken adoptions," where rescued children continue to behave as if they were living in a low trust/high threat environment. In any event, "born bad" just doesn't cut it any more, by way of explanation. If epigenetics provides valid insights, we can at least hope for more realistic rehabilitation strategies.
As epigenetics slowly achieves acceptance in science culture, medical genomicist Stephan Beck thinks that epigenomic epidemiology is "at the same stage genomic epidemiology was at eight years ago, when most studies were small and rarely identified the same genetic variants for any one disease." The workshop material for a conference in Sweden in March 2015, "Epigenetics as the Meeting Point Between Nature and Nurture," offers a challenge, "There are obstacles in terms of a suspicion of biological explanations among some scholars and simplifications of social and philosophical problems among some scientists. The two cultures must be bridged and the bridge, we suggest, is epigenetics."
Yes indeed. Consider the controversial revisit of Darwinian race theory in science writer Nicholas Wade's recent book, Troublesome Inheritance. Epigenetics makes such theories irrelevant as well as divisive. The question isn't whether certain characteristics show up more often in one group than another, but what is the mechanism? As Michael Behe would say, how exactly?
Epigenetics should lead to revisions in textbooks, some European researchers say, perhaps unaware of the Darwin followers camped outside the offices of education authorities, protecting their tax-funded domain. That said, epigenetics coverage did increase in the most recent edition of Darwinian evolutionist Ken Miller's popular university text. The book now features a definition of epigenetics, cross-referenced to a paragraph on the subject.
Some, nonetheless, stand athwart epigenetics and yell STOP!! It is, after all, very new and is not settling in with ease. A "key concept" quote from The Scientist reads: "The concept of cellular memory passed onto offspring may not be as crazy as it appears." There is nothing crazy about epigenetics, unless one is committed to genetic fatalism, featuring the "fat gene," the "gay gene," the "infidelity gene," the "violence gene," etc., that supposedly "make" people do things.
"End the Hype over Epigenetics & Lamarckian Evolution," Real Clear Science demands, noting that "mammals are completely different beasts" from worms and plants, where epigenetic inheritance has been demonstrated:
Therefore, be very skeptical of studies which claim to have detected health effects due to epigenetic inheritance. The hype may soon fade, and the concept of Lamarckian evolution may once again return to the grave.
A philosophy may underlie this outburst, if we go by the article in Cell referenced at RCS: "Since the human genome was sequenced, the term 'epigenetics' is increasingly being associated with the hope that we are more than just the sum of our genes."
It's not a "hope," it's a fact. And the accusation of "hype" sounds odd, considering the widespread Darwinian hype about all things gene, attributing to "genes" every phenomenon from bad driving to wonder at the universe.
Real Clear Science goes on to worry that the epigenome oppresses women:
Epigenetics is the next big field that the media, fearmongers, and political hacks will attempt to exploit. ... The authors worry, perhaps rightly so, that the media hype surrounding epigenetics will once again turn its focus on mothers. Will the government once again regulate what pregnant women can eat, drink, and do? And if so, why not regulate the behavior of men, as well? Epigenetics, after all, can affect sperm quality.
The authors referred to had published an op-ed in Nature which advises, "Society: Don't blame the mothers - Careless discussion of epigenetic research on how early life affects health across generations could harm women." That's an odd concern, as most mothers would gladly avoid passing on a chronic disorder, if they had the correct information. And epigenetics is principally about establishing the correct information.
Meanwhile, the onetime chief lobbyist for Darwin in American schools has been heard to say:
It was almost a relief when an antievolutionist contended that the books should be rejected because they don't include epigenetics. At least the epigenetics argument is relatively recent (perhaps only 5-8 years old). In creation-think, including epigenetics in biology textbooks will weaken evolution because epigenetics is evidence against evolution.
Note the curious term "the epigenetics argument," as if everyone agrees that epigenetics' only potential is as a political strategy.
But life goes on... Some quibble over whether epigenetics is truly "Lamarckian." Quibbles aside, ours is not the world of the "This Is You" CD.1 Some acknowledged experts even say, "Epigenetics can drive genetics" and that it "appears to be one of the main drivers of intergenerational changes, not simply a passive component." Meanwhile, epigenomics is making its debut, courtesy a decade's worth of data analysis program development.
So, far from heading to the grave, epigenetics has invested in bigger equipment.
Many epigenetics findings, like many findings in horizontal gene transfer may be revised or replaced, but the direction is not likely to change. So how does epigenetics feature in evolution? There are two opinions about that. The epigenome is said to evolve faster than the genome, but most of its changes don't last for more than a few generations. Perhaps that is because they are overridden by further changes due to new conditions: In a pioneer study, researchers concluded that "epigenetic changes are many orders of magnitude more frequent than conventional DNA mutations, but also often short lived."
Yet epigenomic diversity, according to other research, allows plants to adapt to adapt to a variety of environments worldwide. Changes in plant habitats may massively impact animal evolution. So it may come down to a question of what kind of change we are looking for. What counts as a change?
To the extent that epigenetics casts doubt on simplistic Darwinian or other schemes of evolution, its main role may be that of "spoiler." For example, recently, Swedish researchers found that epigenetics, not Darwinian evolution, is the cause of wide variation in domestic chicken types. They say their findings explicitly disagree with "[t]he traditional Darwinian explanation," which is interesting in view of the fact that Darwin's own pigeon breeding is often used as a way of introducing his theory to the public.
So what can we now say about evolution, the history of life?: Provided we are not looking for miraculous transformations, we have indeed seen some evolution. We have seen that life forms can progress toward the same target without common ancestry (convergent evolution). Sharing genes (horizontal gene transfer) can result in new features in a life form. Epigenetics can result in offspring inheriting features from their parents that were created in their parents' own lifetime, rather than inherited from a previous common ancestor.
But another possibility arises as well: Can a life form evolve by losing instead of gaining features (devolution)? We shall see.
Notes:
(1) Quoted in Dorothy Nelkin, "Less Selfish than Sacred? Genes and the Religious Impulse in Evolutionary Psychology," in Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, eds., Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology (London: Random House, Vintage, 2001), p. 18.
See the rest of the series to date at "Talk to the Fossils: Let's See What They Say Back."
Denyse O'Leary August 25, 2015 3:58 AM
If we wish to hear what the fossils are telling us, we must find out how they came to be what they were (and how their descendants came to be what they are today). For generations, scientists have looked to Darwinian evolution (natural selection acting on random mutations) almost exclusively to account for all that. Questions were considered settled if a Darwinian account could be provided.
Talk to the Fossils.jpgThat was not because any law of nature shows that Darwinism must be the correct explanation. Rather because, as Richard Dawkins put it, "Darwinism is the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life" (p. 287, Blind Watchmaker, 1986).
But when we looked at horizontal gene transfer (HGT), we found that Dawkins' claim is incorrect.
To recap, Darwinism entails vertical transfer of genes from a common ancestor to descendants. Horizontal gene transfer means transfer of genes from one organism to another on contact, irrespective of the ancestry of either life form. HGT is a form of evolution, yes. But it drastically weakens the status of Darwinism as the "only known theory." Any Darwinian claim about evolution must first rule out HGT as a possible explanation. And, as we shall shortly see, it must rule out epigenetics as well.
Why does this historic shift in the burden of proof receive comparatively little attention? Probably it's due to the overwhelming acceptance of Darwinism as a cultural metaphor and philosophy of life. One thinks, for example, of Amazon citing "purposeful Darwinism" and taking Darwinian Theory to the max as a defense against a recent exposé of the firm's labor conditions. The concepts Amazon advances are scientifically meaningless but culturally meaningful. And culture drowns out science.
Thus, when talking to fossils (or current living forms), our challenge is to listen to what they have to say, not what the Darwinian interpreters of the fossils (and of almost everything else) have to say.
Which brings us to epigenetics. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was an early evolutionist who proposed that life forms could acquire information from their environment and pass it on in their genes. He was dismissed, when not ridiculed, by Darwinists for many decades (though not, as it happens, by Darwin). But the basic thrust of his idea has recently resurfaced in epigenetics.
There is an irony in the way the resurgence came about. A key science achievement of the 1990s was the mapping of the human genome. Those were the days when Nobelist Walter Gilbert, extolling the Human Genome Project, would hold up a data CD and inform his audience, "Here is a human being; it's me!"
But what if it isn't? What if it is just a CD containing important information about Gilbert but by no means the whole story? What if the rest of the story is created in the continuous stream of life? Scientists are just now beginning to learn about the hitherto unrecognized "second genetic code," the epigenome, which greatly increases both the complexity and the uniqueness of the information in living systems.
Epigenetics is the study of the systems and processes by which genes' expression can be altered, not randomly as in Darwinism, but by specific, predictable, repeatable, and researchable events -- and then inherited in the altered state. Research has shown methylation to be a key mechanism. It is described thus:
Not all genes are active at all times. DNA methylation is one of several epigenetic mechanisms that cells use to control gene expression.... a common epigenetic signaling tool that cells use to lock genes in the "off" position. In recent decades, researchers have learned a great deal about DNA methylation, including how it occurs and where it occurs, and they have also discovered that methylation is an important component in numerous cellular processes, including embryonic development, genomic imprinting, X-chromosome inactivation, and preservation of chromosome stability.
Epigenetic changes like methylation do not change a cell's DNA, but they do change how the DNA functions. In rodent studies, for example, stress can trigger a series of chemical reactions that dictate how active some genes will be in passing on the effects of parental stress.
Such inheritance of acquired traits is gradually gaining acceptance in academic science, but we are still in an early stage of understanding the mechanisms. Or, as one researcher put it, "... we're all having a hell of a time figuring out how they work." And another: "Although many are scratching their heads over the holes in the proposed mechanism, few are suggesting that the underlying phenomenon is a fairy tale."
Most genes, it turns out, are not so much selfish as willing to hang out with the wrong crowd and learn bad habits. You'd think so, to read this in a special issue of Science:
The molecular legacy extends beyond gene transfer to include mitochondria and epigenetics (Lane et al., p. 756). Finally, the gestation and birthing processes also shape offspring, and preterm birth is now a focus of research (Romero et al., p. 760).
Here are some other findings that give some sense of the scope of the changes epigenetics brings to our understanding of the history of life:
-- Bacteria rewrite their DNA epigenetically. Carl Zimmer notes in Quanta:
For students of the history of biology, this kind of heredity echoes a largely discredited theory promoted by the naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in the early 19th century. Lamarck argued for the inheritance of acquired traits. ... The advent of genetics seemed to crush this idea. There didn't appear to be any way for experiences to alter the genes that organisms passed down to their offspring. But CRISPR revealed that microbes rewrite their DNA with information about their enemies -- information that Barrangou showed could make the difference between life and death for their descendants.
New analysis techniques will help define the role that bacterial epigenetics plays in creating antibiotic resistance.
-- Lab research show how it works in animals. It's not just the womb environment because the male parent's contribution, via alterations in sperm, is substantial. From Nature:
Male rats fed a high-fat diet, for example, beget daughters with abnormal DNA methylation in the pancreas. Male mice fed a low-protein diet have offspring with altered liver expression of cholesterol genes. And male mice with pre-diabetes have abnormal sperm methylation, and pass on an increased risk of diabetes to the next two generations.
Epigenetic stress effects found in rats can last for generations. Similarly, in a recent mouse study, reported in Nature, sperm RNA showed heritable signs of trauma for two more generations. And starved mice produced pups whose offspring risked diabetes. In another mouse study, it was found that "Without any change to DNA at all, methyl groups could be added or subtracted, and the changes were inherited much like a mutation in a gene."
-- Epigenetics can influence animal behavior in later generations as well. "Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance is not a solved field -- it's very much in flux," one researcher admits, but it seems that epigenetic memory of experienced stress can cross generations and travel from cell to cell during early development: "It does not change the sequence of genes but rather how the DNA is packaged and how genes are expressed." Recent rodent studies suggest that "an animal parent's exposure to drugs, alcohol, and stress can alter brain development and behavior in their offspring."
For example, from one study on how mice can inherit fear of a smell from their male parent, we learn:
Somehow, the information about the frightening smell gets into a mouse's testes and results in lower methylation of the Olfr151 gene in sperm DNA. The researchers even ran experiments using in vitro fertilization to make sure that the father was not in some way passing on a fear of acetophenone through interactions with the mother. The epigenetic tweak in the sperm is perpetuated in the offspring's DNA, leading to increased expression of the receptor in the animals' noses and, ultimately, enhanced sensitivity to the smell.
Much more work remains, of course, and this finding was questioned, as "too good to be true." But the authors pointed out that they had not cherry picked the data; they had included in the supplemental materials experiments that did not yield statistically significant results.
If The Scientist isn't hanging the epigenetics study authors out to dry, it's most likely because the editors think there is something to be said for their model. It may help resolve longstanding questions, for example, about how animals appear to "know" things they did not learn by experience. To say that their knowledge is an "instinct" just means we don't know how they know. Epigenetic studies, by contrast, may identify a specific mechanism by which the information is transmitted.
-- Epigenetics may influence human health too. It's fine to inherit "good genes" (we heard plenty about that from the eugenicists for over a century!). But what if a package of "good genes" gets damaged in transit and arrives that way? Genes can be inherited in an awakened state, and may influence metabolism, behavior, and proneness to disease, including heart disease and diabetes. From one researcher:
According to Ishii, the take-home message is this: "I hope that people understand that various stresses can change gene expression without DNA sequence change." He says the youngest among us -- developing embryos and infants -- may be especially sensitive to that kind of stress-induced epigenetic change and "we should be more careful about stresses on them."
In another study, traumatized pregnant women who had been near 9-11 not only had significantly lower cortisol levels in their saliva but so did their children, measured after birth. Researchers noted that the effect was most obvious when the exposed children were in the third trimester. Subsequent studies on stressed rats identified differences in DNA methylation, the way that DNA is chemically modified.
Similarly, Project Ice Storm found "a distinctive 'signature' in the DNA of children born in the aftermath of the massive Quebec ice storm" (1998):
Thirteen years later, the researchers found that DNA within the T cells -- a type of immune system cell -- of 36 children showed distinctive patterns in DNA methylation. The researchers concluded for the first time that maternal hardship, predicted the degree of methylation of DNA in the T cells. The "epigenetic" signature plays a role in the way the genes express themselves. This study is also the first to show that it is the objective stress exposure (such as days without electricity) and not the degree of emotional distress in pregnant women that causes long lasting changes in the epigenome of their babies.
It's early days yet, but there is also some evidence that parents' poverty can promote children's obesity. Privation may reprogram DNA in the womb to turn certain genes involving appetite up or down. "Whenever you find food, eat all you can," perhaps? This may continue into adulthood, when no shortage actually exists. As one researcher explains, "If genetics is the alphabet, epigenetics is the spelling that guides the activity of our cells."
So the role epigenetics may play in obesity generally, some immunities, chronic diseases, and even cancer is now actively studied. With respect to cancer, some researchers have found that epigenetic regulation is required to ensure the correct number of chromosomes in daughter cells after division, and "tumor cells frequently have either too few or too many chromosomes, leading to the incorrect expression of a number of genes."
Many of these findings may need modification or replacement, but we can no longer rule out the possibility that modifications in great-grandparents' diet or environment affect later generations' health or life span. These changes are not Darwinian genetic inheritance; the parent did not have a randomly mutated "gene" for, say, obesity, but rather an experience (chronic hunger, perhaps) that altered the way genes controlling appetite are expressed. The alterations are passed on, at least for a generation or so. Thus, epigenetics is not to be confused with genetic or any other kind of determinism; it is not a prophecy, merely a tool for assessing sources of risk.
-- Can epigenetics influence human behavior as well as human health? Possibly; for example, early abuse can change gene expression in children:
The researchers found an association between the kind of parenting children had and a particular gene (called the glucocorticoid receptor gene) that's responsible for crucial aspects of social functioning and health.
If such findings hold up, they may shed light on "broken adoptions," where rescued children continue to behave as if they were living in a low trust/high threat environment. In any event, "born bad" just doesn't cut it any more, by way of explanation. If epigenetics provides valid insights, we can at least hope for more realistic rehabilitation strategies.
As epigenetics slowly achieves acceptance in science culture, medical genomicist Stephan Beck thinks that epigenomic epidemiology is "at the same stage genomic epidemiology was at eight years ago, when most studies were small and rarely identified the same genetic variants for any one disease." The workshop material for a conference in Sweden in March 2015, "Epigenetics as the Meeting Point Between Nature and Nurture," offers a challenge, "There are obstacles in terms of a suspicion of biological explanations among some scholars and simplifications of social and philosophical problems among some scientists. The two cultures must be bridged and the bridge, we suggest, is epigenetics."
Yes indeed. Consider the controversial revisit of Darwinian race theory in science writer Nicholas Wade's recent book, Troublesome Inheritance. Epigenetics makes such theories irrelevant as well as divisive. The question isn't whether certain characteristics show up more often in one group than another, but what is the mechanism? As Michael Behe would say, how exactly?
Epigenetics should lead to revisions in textbooks, some European researchers say, perhaps unaware of the Darwin followers camped outside the offices of education authorities, protecting their tax-funded domain. That said, epigenetics coverage did increase in the most recent edition of Darwinian evolutionist Ken Miller's popular university text. The book now features a definition of epigenetics, cross-referenced to a paragraph on the subject.
Some, nonetheless, stand athwart epigenetics and yell STOP!! It is, after all, very new and is not settling in with ease. A "key concept" quote from The Scientist reads: "The concept of cellular memory passed onto offspring may not be as crazy as it appears." There is nothing crazy about epigenetics, unless one is committed to genetic fatalism, featuring the "fat gene," the "gay gene," the "infidelity gene," the "violence gene," etc., that supposedly "make" people do things.
"End the Hype over Epigenetics & Lamarckian Evolution," Real Clear Science demands, noting that "mammals are completely different beasts" from worms and plants, where epigenetic inheritance has been demonstrated:
Therefore, be very skeptical of studies which claim to have detected health effects due to epigenetic inheritance. The hype may soon fade, and the concept of Lamarckian evolution may once again return to the grave.
A philosophy may underlie this outburst, if we go by the article in Cell referenced at RCS: "Since the human genome was sequenced, the term 'epigenetics' is increasingly being associated with the hope that we are more than just the sum of our genes."
It's not a "hope," it's a fact. And the accusation of "hype" sounds odd, considering the widespread Darwinian hype about all things gene, attributing to "genes" every phenomenon from bad driving to wonder at the universe.
Real Clear Science goes on to worry that the epigenome oppresses women:
Epigenetics is the next big field that the media, fearmongers, and political hacks will attempt to exploit. ... The authors worry, perhaps rightly so, that the media hype surrounding epigenetics will once again turn its focus on mothers. Will the government once again regulate what pregnant women can eat, drink, and do? And if so, why not regulate the behavior of men, as well? Epigenetics, after all, can affect sperm quality.
The authors referred to had published an op-ed in Nature which advises, "Society: Don't blame the mothers - Careless discussion of epigenetic research on how early life affects health across generations could harm women." That's an odd concern, as most mothers would gladly avoid passing on a chronic disorder, if they had the correct information. And epigenetics is principally about establishing the correct information.
Meanwhile, the onetime chief lobbyist for Darwin in American schools has been heard to say:
It was almost a relief when an antievolutionist contended that the books should be rejected because they don't include epigenetics. At least the epigenetics argument is relatively recent (perhaps only 5-8 years old). In creation-think, including epigenetics in biology textbooks will weaken evolution because epigenetics is evidence against evolution.
Note the curious term "the epigenetics argument," as if everyone agrees that epigenetics' only potential is as a political strategy.
But life goes on... Some quibble over whether epigenetics is truly "Lamarckian." Quibbles aside, ours is not the world of the "This Is You" CD.1 Some acknowledged experts even say, "Epigenetics can drive genetics" and that it "appears to be one of the main drivers of intergenerational changes, not simply a passive component." Meanwhile, epigenomics is making its debut, courtesy a decade's worth of data analysis program development.
So, far from heading to the grave, epigenetics has invested in bigger equipment.
Many epigenetics findings, like many findings in horizontal gene transfer may be revised or replaced, but the direction is not likely to change. So how does epigenetics feature in evolution? There are two opinions about that. The epigenome is said to evolve faster than the genome, but most of its changes don't last for more than a few generations. Perhaps that is because they are overridden by further changes due to new conditions: In a pioneer study, researchers concluded that "epigenetic changes are many orders of magnitude more frequent than conventional DNA mutations, but also often short lived."
Yet epigenomic diversity, according to other research, allows plants to adapt to adapt to a variety of environments worldwide. Changes in plant habitats may massively impact animal evolution. So it may come down to a question of what kind of change we are looking for. What counts as a change?
To the extent that epigenetics casts doubt on simplistic Darwinian or other schemes of evolution, its main role may be that of "spoiler." For example, recently, Swedish researchers found that epigenetics, not Darwinian evolution, is the cause of wide variation in domestic chicken types. They say their findings explicitly disagree with "[t]he traditional Darwinian explanation," which is interesting in view of the fact that Darwin's own pigeon breeding is often used as a way of introducing his theory to the public.
So what can we now say about evolution, the history of life?: Provided we are not looking for miraculous transformations, we have indeed seen some evolution. We have seen that life forms can progress toward the same target without common ancestry (convergent evolution). Sharing genes (horizontal gene transfer) can result in new features in a life form. Epigenetics can result in offspring inheriting features from their parents that were created in their parents' own lifetime, rather than inherited from a previous common ancestor.
But another possibility arises as well: Can a life form evolve by losing instead of gaining features (devolution)? We shall see.
Notes:
(1) Quoted in Dorothy Nelkin, "Less Selfish than Sacred? Genes and the Religious Impulse in Evolutionary Psychology," in Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, eds., Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology (London: Random House, Vintage, 2001), p. 18.
See the rest of the series to date at "Talk to the Fossils: Let's See What They Say Back."
The book of Haggai Young's Literal Translation
Haggai 1Young's Literal Translation (YLT)
In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, hath a word of Jehovah been by the hand of Haggai the prophet, unto Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and unto Joshua son of Josedech, the high priest, saying:
2 Thus spake Jehovah of Hosts, saying: This people! -- they have said, `The time hath not come, The time the house of Jehovah [is] to be built.'
3 And there is a word of Jehovah by the hand of Haggai the prophet, saying:
4 Is it time for you -- you! To dwell in your covered houses, And this house to lie waste?
5 And now, thus said Jehovah of Hosts, Set your heart to your ways.
6 Ye have sown much, and brought in little, To eat, and not to satiety, To drink, and not to drunkenness, To clothe, and none hath heat, And he who is hiring himself out, Is hiring himself for a bag pierced through.
7 Thus said Jehovah of Hosts: Set your heart to your ways.
8 Go up the mountain, and ye have brought in wood, And build the house, and I am pleased with it. And I am honoured, said Jehovah.
9 Looking for much, and lo, little, And ye brought [it] home, and I blew on it, Wherefore? -- an affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts, Because of My house that is waste, And ye are running -- each to his house,
10 Therefore, over you refrained have the heavens from dew, And the land hath refrained its increase.
11 And I proclaim draught on the land, And on the mountains, and on the corn, And on the new wine, and on the oil, And on what the ground doth bring forth, And on man, and on beast, And on all labour of the hands.'
12 And Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, and Joshua son of Josedech, the high priest, and all the remnant of the people, do hearken to the voice of Jehovah their God, and unto the words of Haggai the prophet, as Jehovah their God had sent him, and the people are afraid of the face of Jehovah.
13 And Haggai, messenger of Jehovah, in messages of Jehovah, speaketh to the people, saying: `I [am] with you, an affirmation of Jehovah.'
14 And Jehovah doth stir up the spirit of Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua son of Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people, and they come in, and do work in the house of Jehovah of Hosts their God,
15 in the twenty and fourth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.
Young's Literal Translation (YLT)
Haggai 2Young's Literal Translation (YLT)
In the seventh [month], in the twenty and first of the month, hath a word of Jehovah been by the hand of Haggai the prophet, saying:
2 `Speak, I pray thee, unto Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and unto Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest, and unto the remnant of the people, saying:
3 Who among you hath been left that saw this house in its former honour? And what are ye seeing it now? Is it not, compared with it, as nothing in your eyes?
4 And now, be strong, O Zerubbabel, An affirmation of Jehovah, And be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest, And be strong, all ye people of the land, An affirmation of Jehovah, And do ye -- (for I [am] with you, An affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts) --
5 The thing that I covenanted with you, In your coming forth from Egypt, And My Spirit is remaining in your midst, fear not.
6 For thus said Jehovah of Hosts: Yet once more -- it [is] a little, And I am shaking the heavens and the earth, And the sea, and the dry land,
7 And I have shaken all the nations, And they have come [to] the desire of all the nations, And I have filled this house [with] honour, Said Jehovah of Hosts.
8 Mine [is] the silver, and Mine the gold, An affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts.
9 Greater is the honour of this latter house, Than of the former, said Jehovah of Hosts, And in this place do I give peace, An affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts.'
10 On the twenty and fourth of the ninth [month], in the second year of Darius, hath a word of Jehovah been by the hand of Haggai the prophet, saying:
11 Thus said Jehovah of Hosts: `Ask, I pray thee, the priests [of] the law, saying:
12 Lo, one doth carry holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and he hath come with his skirt against the bread, or against the pottage, or against the wine, or against the oil, or against any food -- is it holy?' And the priests answer and say, `No.'
13 And Haggai saith, `If the unclean of body doth come against any of these, is it unclean?' And the priests answer and say, `It is unclean.'
14 And Haggai answereth and saith, `So [is] this people, and so [is] this nation before Me -- an affirmation of Jehovah -- and so [is] every work of their hands, and that which they bring near there -- it is unclean.
15 And now, lay [it], I pray you, to your heart, From this day, and onwards, Before the laying of stone to stone in the temple of Jehovah.
16 From that time [one] hath come to a heap of twenty, And it hath been ten, He hath come unto the wine-fat to draw out fifty purahs, And it hath been twenty.
17 I have smitten you with blasting, And with mildew, and with hail -- All the work of your hands, And there is none of you with Me, An affirmation of Jehovah.
18 Set [it], I pray you, to your heart, from this day and onwards, from the twenty and fourth day of the ninth [month], even from the day that the temple of Jehovah hath been founded, set [it] to your heart.
19 Is the seed yet in the barn? And hitherto the vine and the fig, And the pomegranate, and the olive-tree, Have not borne -- from this day I bless.'
20 And there is a word of Jehovah a second time unto Haggai, on the twenty and fourth of the month, saying:
21 `Speak unto Zerubbabel governor of Judah, saying: I am shaking the heavens and the earth,
22 And have overturned the throne of kingdoms, And I have destroyed the strength of kingdoms of the nations, And overturned chariot and its charioteers, And come down have horses and their riders, Each by the sword of his brother.
23 In that day -- an affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts, I take thee, Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, My servant -- an affirmation of Jehovah, And have set thee as a signet, for on thee I have fixed, An affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts!
Young's Literal Translation (YLT)
In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, hath a word of Jehovah been by the hand of Haggai the prophet, unto Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and unto Joshua son of Josedech, the high priest, saying:
2 Thus spake Jehovah of Hosts, saying: This people! -- they have said, `The time hath not come, The time the house of Jehovah [is] to be built.'
3 And there is a word of Jehovah by the hand of Haggai the prophet, saying:
4 Is it time for you -- you! To dwell in your covered houses, And this house to lie waste?
5 And now, thus said Jehovah of Hosts, Set your heart to your ways.
6 Ye have sown much, and brought in little, To eat, and not to satiety, To drink, and not to drunkenness, To clothe, and none hath heat, And he who is hiring himself out, Is hiring himself for a bag pierced through.
7 Thus said Jehovah of Hosts: Set your heart to your ways.
8 Go up the mountain, and ye have brought in wood, And build the house, and I am pleased with it. And I am honoured, said Jehovah.
9 Looking for much, and lo, little, And ye brought [it] home, and I blew on it, Wherefore? -- an affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts, Because of My house that is waste, And ye are running -- each to his house,
10 Therefore, over you refrained have the heavens from dew, And the land hath refrained its increase.
11 And I proclaim draught on the land, And on the mountains, and on the corn, And on the new wine, and on the oil, And on what the ground doth bring forth, And on man, and on beast, And on all labour of the hands.'
12 And Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, and Joshua son of Josedech, the high priest, and all the remnant of the people, do hearken to the voice of Jehovah their God, and unto the words of Haggai the prophet, as Jehovah their God had sent him, and the people are afraid of the face of Jehovah.
13 And Haggai, messenger of Jehovah, in messages of Jehovah, speaketh to the people, saying: `I [am] with you, an affirmation of Jehovah.'
14 And Jehovah doth stir up the spirit of Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua son of Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people, and they come in, and do work in the house of Jehovah of Hosts their God,
15 in the twenty and fourth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.
Young's Literal Translation (YLT)
Haggai 2Young's Literal Translation (YLT)
In the seventh [month], in the twenty and first of the month, hath a word of Jehovah been by the hand of Haggai the prophet, saying:
2 `Speak, I pray thee, unto Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and unto Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest, and unto the remnant of the people, saying:
3 Who among you hath been left that saw this house in its former honour? And what are ye seeing it now? Is it not, compared with it, as nothing in your eyes?
4 And now, be strong, O Zerubbabel, An affirmation of Jehovah, And be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest, And be strong, all ye people of the land, An affirmation of Jehovah, And do ye -- (for I [am] with you, An affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts) --
5 The thing that I covenanted with you, In your coming forth from Egypt, And My Spirit is remaining in your midst, fear not.
6 For thus said Jehovah of Hosts: Yet once more -- it [is] a little, And I am shaking the heavens and the earth, And the sea, and the dry land,
7 And I have shaken all the nations, And they have come [to] the desire of all the nations, And I have filled this house [with] honour, Said Jehovah of Hosts.
8 Mine [is] the silver, and Mine the gold, An affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts.
9 Greater is the honour of this latter house, Than of the former, said Jehovah of Hosts, And in this place do I give peace, An affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts.'
10 On the twenty and fourth of the ninth [month], in the second year of Darius, hath a word of Jehovah been by the hand of Haggai the prophet, saying:
11 Thus said Jehovah of Hosts: `Ask, I pray thee, the priests [of] the law, saying:
12 Lo, one doth carry holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and he hath come with his skirt against the bread, or against the pottage, or against the wine, or against the oil, or against any food -- is it holy?' And the priests answer and say, `No.'
13 And Haggai saith, `If the unclean of body doth come against any of these, is it unclean?' And the priests answer and say, `It is unclean.'
14 And Haggai answereth and saith, `So [is] this people, and so [is] this nation before Me -- an affirmation of Jehovah -- and so [is] every work of their hands, and that which they bring near there -- it is unclean.
15 And now, lay [it], I pray you, to your heart, From this day, and onwards, Before the laying of stone to stone in the temple of Jehovah.
16 From that time [one] hath come to a heap of twenty, And it hath been ten, He hath come unto the wine-fat to draw out fifty purahs, And it hath been twenty.
17 I have smitten you with blasting, And with mildew, and with hail -- All the work of your hands, And there is none of you with Me, An affirmation of Jehovah.
18 Set [it], I pray you, to your heart, from this day and onwards, from the twenty and fourth day of the ninth [month], even from the day that the temple of Jehovah hath been founded, set [it] to your heart.
19 Is the seed yet in the barn? And hitherto the vine and the fig, And the pomegranate, and the olive-tree, Have not borne -- from this day I bless.'
20 And there is a word of Jehovah a second time unto Haggai, on the twenty and fourth of the month, saying:
21 `Speak unto Zerubbabel governor of Judah, saying: I am shaking the heavens and the earth,
22 And have overturned the throne of kingdoms, And I have destroyed the strength of kingdoms of the nations, And overturned chariot and its charioteers, And come down have horses and their riders, Each by the sword of his brother.
23 In that day -- an affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts, I take thee, Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, My servant -- an affirmation of Jehovah, And have set thee as a signet, for on thee I have fixed, An affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts!
Young's Literal Translation (YLT)
Monday, 24 August 2015
Darwinism vs the real world VII
Understanding Cardiovascular Function: Real Numbers and Valvular Heart Disease
Howard Glicksman August 23, 2015 5:54 AM
Editor's note: Physicians have a special place among the thinkers who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar with the challenges of maintaining a functioning complex system, the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News & Views is delighted to present this series, "The Designed Body." Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine for a hospice organization.
Unlike the brain, the liver, and the kidneys, the heart has only one job to do. But oh, what a job! It is responsible for pumping the blood, which contains everything the cells need to live, to organs like the brain, the liver, and the kidneys.
the-designed-body4.jpgBut as with any job, there are certain parameters that define how well it is being done. A car's job is to overcome the laws of nature to transport its driver from point A to point B in a certain amount of time. If it can't do its job properly, it is likely due to problems like inadequate gas flow into the engine or poor cylinder compression. So too, there are certain parameters that must be met for the heart to do its job -- otherwise, due to the laws of nature, the body won't be able to function properly or may even die.
My last article in this series showed that since the heart is a muscle, it needs its own blood supply, which is provided by the coronary arteries. However, the laws of nature demand that the coronary arteries be wide enough to accommodate enough blood flow. A person with coronary artery disease has narrowing of the blood vessels and reduced blood flow to one or more regions of the myocardium.
Clinical experience tells us that people with this condition are not able to be as active as our earliest ancestors would have to have been to survive. When evolutionary biologists expound on how human life came into being, they must not only talk about how the heart looks, but also how it must work within the laws of nature to do its job properly. For, as important as having adequate and properly controlled coronary blood flow is for survival, so too is having proper valve function.
The heart is a muscular pump that is divided into a right and left side by a wall called the septum. The right side pumps blood to the lungs and the left side pumps blood to the rest of the body. Each side of the heart consists of a thin-walled upper chamber, called the atrium, and a more muscular lower chamber, called the ventricle.
There are "V" shaped, one-way valves that point in the direction of blood flow between the atria and the ventricles, and the ventricles and their outflow tracts. When the valves open, they direct blood forward to where it is supposed to go and when they close, they prevent blood from going backward to where it is not supposed to go. The triscuspid valve is located between the right atrium and ventricle and the pulmonary valve is located between the right ventricle and the main pulmonary artery. The mitral valve is located between the left atrium and ventricle and the aortic valve is located between the left ventricle and the aorta.
But how do the valves know when to open and close? Just as blood, because it is matter and has mass, must follow the laws of nature by being pumped throughout the body by the heart, so too, whether the heart valves stay open or closed is also a function of those same laws.
Imagine you are trying to get into a saloon through its swinging door. A heavily muscled bouncer is blocking you from the other side. What must you do to get inside? Pressure is defined as "the force per unit area applied in a direction perpendicular to the surface of an object". To get into the saloon, you must apply more pressure to your side of the swinging door than the bouncer can apply to his.
When it comes to the heart and how its valves work within the laws of nature, it is important to remember that those laws state that the pressure inside a chamber with a given amount of fluid is inversely related to the size of the chamber. This means that with a given amount of blood inside an atrium or a ventricle, if its volume decreases, the pressure within it increases, and if its volume increases, the pressure within it decreases. Also, just like in meteorology, where air always moves from an area of higher to lower pressure, so too, when a pathway is available, blood always moves from an area of higher to lower pressure.
In the left side of the heart, at the beginning of systole, when the ventricle begins to contract, the pressure within it quickly rises above that of the left atrium, causing the mitral valve to close. This prevents blood from flowing back into the atrium. As systole continues, and contraction of the left ventricle peaks, the pressure within it rises above that of the aorta and forces the aortic valve to open. This allows blood from the left ventricle to flow out of the heart into the systemic circulation.
Then, as blood leaves the left ventricle and it begins to relax, the pressure within it quickly drops below that of the aorta, making the aortic valve snap shut to prevent blood from going back into the heart. Early in diastole, as the left ventricle relaxes further and venous blood from the lungs returns to the left atrium, the mitral valve opens because the pressure within the left atrium rises above that of the left ventricle.
Throughout diastole, the blood returning to the left side of the heart through the pulmonary veins enters the left ventricle through the left atrium by way of the open mitral valve. The same process takes place in the right side of the heart for the tricuspid and pulmonary valves as well. With diastole ending and systole beginning, the cardiac cycle starts over again and the heart valves open and close as dictated by the laws of nature.
Just as a clogged fuel line can reduce the flow of gas and compromise engine function, resulting in loss of power to a car, so too, diminished blood flow through any of the heart valves can compromise cardiac output resulting in loss of power to the body. In addition, just as leaky valves in one or more cylinders of a car engine can cause poor compression and loss of power, so too, leaky heart valves that allow blood to go back in the wrong direction, can reduce the efficiency of cardiac function and result in loss of power to the body.
If our earliest ancestors had any of these heart valve defects they never could have survived to reproduce. How do we know this? Valvular Heart Disease.
Just like the guy-wires used to stabilize a tent, or the mast of a ship, the mitral valve is attached to muscles anchored in the ventricle to strengthen it. However, degeneration of the valve or ischemic injury to its supporting muscles can weaken it and when the left ventricle contracts, instead of all of the blood going through the aortic valve into the aorta, some of it goes through the mitral valve back into the left atrium. This is called mitral regurgitation, and it reduces cardiac efficiency and output, particularly during exercise, because only some of the blood goes where it is supposed to go. Most people with this condition have fatigue, lack of energy and shortness of breath with limited exertion.
Anyone who has tried to blow up a balloon can appreciate the effect of obstruction to flow and the kind of force needed to overcome it. The aortic valve area is normally 3-4 cm2. When degeneration, thickening, and hardening of the valve occurs, this causes its opening to narrow resulting in aortic stenosis.
The smaller the opening, the harder the left ventricle has to work to pump blood into the systemic circulation. An area of 1-1.5 cm2 is considered moderate, and less than 1 cm2, severe, aortic stenosis. Since blood flow to the systemic circulation is compromised, people who have this condition are prone to angina, dizziness and syncope (passing out), weakness, and shortness of breath, often with very limited activity.
It is important to keep in mind that in addition to mitral regurgitation and aortic stenosis, other less common valve problems, like mitral stenosis and aortic and tricuspid regurgitation, can occur. In fact, it is not unusual for one or more of these valve disorders to be present together.
In my last two articles we looked at how, when it comes to coronary blood flow and heart valve function, real numbers can lead to debility. But there are two more components of cardiac function that still need to be considered when trying to explain how our ancient ancestors had the ability to survive within the laws of nature: heart muscle contractility and the heart's electrical system.
Keep in mind that in real life, it is not unusual for the heart to suffer from a defect involving all four of these factors, which together would have made survival impossible for our earliest ancestors.
Howard Glicksman August 23, 2015 5:54 AM
Editor's note: Physicians have a special place among the thinkers who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar with the challenges of maintaining a functioning complex system, the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News & Views is delighted to present this series, "The Designed Body." Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine for a hospice organization.
Unlike the brain, the liver, and the kidneys, the heart has only one job to do. But oh, what a job! It is responsible for pumping the blood, which contains everything the cells need to live, to organs like the brain, the liver, and the kidneys.
the-designed-body4.jpgBut as with any job, there are certain parameters that define how well it is being done. A car's job is to overcome the laws of nature to transport its driver from point A to point B in a certain amount of time. If it can't do its job properly, it is likely due to problems like inadequate gas flow into the engine or poor cylinder compression. So too, there are certain parameters that must be met for the heart to do its job -- otherwise, due to the laws of nature, the body won't be able to function properly or may even die.
My last article in this series showed that since the heart is a muscle, it needs its own blood supply, which is provided by the coronary arteries. However, the laws of nature demand that the coronary arteries be wide enough to accommodate enough blood flow. A person with coronary artery disease has narrowing of the blood vessels and reduced blood flow to one or more regions of the myocardium.
Clinical experience tells us that people with this condition are not able to be as active as our earliest ancestors would have to have been to survive. When evolutionary biologists expound on how human life came into being, they must not only talk about how the heart looks, but also how it must work within the laws of nature to do its job properly. For, as important as having adequate and properly controlled coronary blood flow is for survival, so too is having proper valve function.
The heart is a muscular pump that is divided into a right and left side by a wall called the septum. The right side pumps blood to the lungs and the left side pumps blood to the rest of the body. Each side of the heart consists of a thin-walled upper chamber, called the atrium, and a more muscular lower chamber, called the ventricle.
There are "V" shaped, one-way valves that point in the direction of blood flow between the atria and the ventricles, and the ventricles and their outflow tracts. When the valves open, they direct blood forward to where it is supposed to go and when they close, they prevent blood from going backward to where it is not supposed to go. The triscuspid valve is located between the right atrium and ventricle and the pulmonary valve is located between the right ventricle and the main pulmonary artery. The mitral valve is located between the left atrium and ventricle and the aortic valve is located between the left ventricle and the aorta.
But how do the valves know when to open and close? Just as blood, because it is matter and has mass, must follow the laws of nature by being pumped throughout the body by the heart, so too, whether the heart valves stay open or closed is also a function of those same laws.
Imagine you are trying to get into a saloon through its swinging door. A heavily muscled bouncer is blocking you from the other side. What must you do to get inside? Pressure is defined as "the force per unit area applied in a direction perpendicular to the surface of an object". To get into the saloon, you must apply more pressure to your side of the swinging door than the bouncer can apply to his.
When it comes to the heart and how its valves work within the laws of nature, it is important to remember that those laws state that the pressure inside a chamber with a given amount of fluid is inversely related to the size of the chamber. This means that with a given amount of blood inside an atrium or a ventricle, if its volume decreases, the pressure within it increases, and if its volume increases, the pressure within it decreases. Also, just like in meteorology, where air always moves from an area of higher to lower pressure, so too, when a pathway is available, blood always moves from an area of higher to lower pressure.
In the left side of the heart, at the beginning of systole, when the ventricle begins to contract, the pressure within it quickly rises above that of the left atrium, causing the mitral valve to close. This prevents blood from flowing back into the atrium. As systole continues, and contraction of the left ventricle peaks, the pressure within it rises above that of the aorta and forces the aortic valve to open. This allows blood from the left ventricle to flow out of the heart into the systemic circulation.
Then, as blood leaves the left ventricle and it begins to relax, the pressure within it quickly drops below that of the aorta, making the aortic valve snap shut to prevent blood from going back into the heart. Early in diastole, as the left ventricle relaxes further and venous blood from the lungs returns to the left atrium, the mitral valve opens because the pressure within the left atrium rises above that of the left ventricle.
Throughout diastole, the blood returning to the left side of the heart through the pulmonary veins enters the left ventricle through the left atrium by way of the open mitral valve. The same process takes place in the right side of the heart for the tricuspid and pulmonary valves as well. With diastole ending and systole beginning, the cardiac cycle starts over again and the heart valves open and close as dictated by the laws of nature.
Just as a clogged fuel line can reduce the flow of gas and compromise engine function, resulting in loss of power to a car, so too, diminished blood flow through any of the heart valves can compromise cardiac output resulting in loss of power to the body. In addition, just as leaky valves in one or more cylinders of a car engine can cause poor compression and loss of power, so too, leaky heart valves that allow blood to go back in the wrong direction, can reduce the efficiency of cardiac function and result in loss of power to the body.
If our earliest ancestors had any of these heart valve defects they never could have survived to reproduce. How do we know this? Valvular Heart Disease.
Just like the guy-wires used to stabilize a tent, or the mast of a ship, the mitral valve is attached to muscles anchored in the ventricle to strengthen it. However, degeneration of the valve or ischemic injury to its supporting muscles can weaken it and when the left ventricle contracts, instead of all of the blood going through the aortic valve into the aorta, some of it goes through the mitral valve back into the left atrium. This is called mitral regurgitation, and it reduces cardiac efficiency and output, particularly during exercise, because only some of the blood goes where it is supposed to go. Most people with this condition have fatigue, lack of energy and shortness of breath with limited exertion.
Anyone who has tried to blow up a balloon can appreciate the effect of obstruction to flow and the kind of force needed to overcome it. The aortic valve area is normally 3-4 cm2. When degeneration, thickening, and hardening of the valve occurs, this causes its opening to narrow resulting in aortic stenosis.
The smaller the opening, the harder the left ventricle has to work to pump blood into the systemic circulation. An area of 1-1.5 cm2 is considered moderate, and less than 1 cm2, severe, aortic stenosis. Since blood flow to the systemic circulation is compromised, people who have this condition are prone to angina, dizziness and syncope (passing out), weakness, and shortness of breath, often with very limited activity.
It is important to keep in mind that in addition to mitral regurgitation and aortic stenosis, other less common valve problems, like mitral stenosis and aortic and tricuspid regurgitation, can occur. In fact, it is not unusual for one or more of these valve disorders to be present together.
In my last two articles we looked at how, when it comes to coronary blood flow and heart valve function, real numbers can lead to debility. But there are two more components of cardiac function that still need to be considered when trying to explain how our ancient ancestors had the ability to survive within the laws of nature: heart muscle contractility and the heart's electrical system.
Keep in mind that in real life, it is not unusual for the heart to suffer from a defect involving all four of these factors, which together would have made survival impossible for our earliest ancestors.
Yet more on life's antidarwinian bias I
The Octopus Genome: Not "Alien" but Still a Big Problem for Darwinism
Casey Luskin August 24, 2015 3:39 AM
These days, new genomes of different types of organisms are being sequenced and published on a regular basis. When some new genome is sequenced, evolutionary biologists expect that it will be highly similar to the genomes of other organisms that are assumed to be closely related.
As ENV already noted, the latest organism to have its genome sequenced has confounded that expectation: the octopus, whose genome was recently reported in Nature. It turns out to be so unlike other mollusks and other invertebrates that it's being called "alien" by the scientists who worked on that project.
One article on the subject was titled "Don't freak out, but scientists think octopuses 'might be aliens' after DNA study":
Not to send you into a meltdown or anything but octopuses are basically 'aliens' -- according to scientists.
Researchers have found a new map of the octopus genetic code that is so strange that it could be actually be an "alien".
[...]
"The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other molluscs, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain and its clever problem-solving abilities," said US researcher Dr Clifton Ragsdale, from the University of Chicago.
[...]
Analysis of 12 different tissues revealed hundreds of octopus-specific genes found in no other animal, many of them highly active in structures such as the brain, skin and suckers.
Obviously no one thinks the octopus is an "alien" from another planet. (Nature News quotes one co-author of the paper on the genome noting that the alien quip is a "joke.") But it certainly is alien to standard evolutionary expectations that genomes of related species ought to be highly similar. Thus, Nature points out the large number of unique genes found in the octopus genome:
Surprisingly, the octopus genome turned out to be almost as large as a human's and to contain a greater number of protein-coding genes -- some 33,000, compared with fewer than 25,000 in Homo sapiens.
This excess results mostly from the expansion of a few specific gene families, Ragsdale says. One of the most remarkable gene groups is the protocadherins, which regulate the development of neurons and the short-range interactions between them. The octopus has 168 of these genes -- more than twice as many as mammals. This resonates with the creature's unusually large brain and the organ's even-stranger anatomy. ...
A gene family that is involved in development, the zinc-finger transcription factors, is also highly expanded in octopuses. At around 1,800 genes, it is the second-largest gene family to be discovered in an animal, after the elephant's 2,000 olfactory-receptor genes.
The analysis also turned up hundreds of other genes that are specific to the octopus and highly expressed in particular tissues. The suckers, for example, express a curious set of genes that are similar to those that encode receptors for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. The genes seem to enable the octopus's remarkable ability to taste with its suckers.
Scientists identified six genes for proteins called reflectins, which are expressed in an octopus's skin. These alter the way light reflects from the octopus, giving the appearance of a different colour -- one of several ways that an octopus can disguise itself, along with changing its texture, pattern or brightness.
The technical paper explains that the octopus genome reveals "massive expansions in two gene families previously thought to be uniquely enlarged in vertebrates: the protocadherins, which regulate neuronal development, and the C2H2 superfamily of zinc-finger transcription factors." Moreover:
We identified hundreds of cephalopod-specific genes, many of which showed elevated expression levels in such specialized structures as the skin, the suckers and the nervous system.
They conclude: "Our analysis suggests that substantial expansion of a handful of gene families, along with extensive remodelling of genome linkage and repetitive content, played a critical role in the evolution of cephalopod morphological innovations, including their large and complex nervous systems." In other words, the cephalopod genome is unusual in many major respects, unlike other organisms we've sequenced.
Actually, that's not completely correct. There are some peculiar similarities between the cephalopod genome and something else they've seen -- but they aren't the kind of similarities that were predicted by common descent. The technical papers notes that the cephalopod genome bears unexpected resemblance in certain respects to vertebrate genomes -- and since these similarities aren't predicted by common descent, they predictably attribute it to convergent evolution:
the independent expansions and nervous system enrichment of protocadherins in coleoid cephalopods and vertebrates offers a striking example of convergent evolution between these clades at the molecular level.
Indeed, even within cephalopods they found evidence of convergent evolution (i.e., genetic similarity that didn't fit the expectations of common descent): "Surprisingly, our phylogenetic analyses suggest that the squid and octopus protocadherin arrays arose independently. Unlinked octopus protocadherins appear to have expanded ~135 Mya, after octopuses diverged from squid."
But the big story here is the large number of unique genes found in the octopus genome. The technical paper elaborates on one of these major gene groups:
The octopus genome encodes 168 multi-exonic protocadherin genes, nearly three-quarters of which are found in tandem clusters on the genome (Fig. 2b), a striking expansion relative to the 17-25 genes found in Lottia [a limpet], Crassostrea gigas (oyster) and Capitella [polychaete worm, and annelid] genomes.
The paper doesn't even try to speculate about how these unique cephalopod genes might have arisen. The standard view -- that new genes originate via gene duplication -- is hardly mentioned. But invoking gene duplication requires one to find another gene elsewhere that's similar. Given that cephalopods apparently have many unique genes not similar to genes found in other organisms, gene duplication might not be a candidate explanation in many of these cases. One wonders if future investigators will resort to "de novo" gene origin.
What's that? Stephen Meyer explains in Darwin's Doubt:
Remember: ORFans, by definition, have no homologs. These genes are unique -- one of a kind -- a fact tacitly acknowledged by the increasing number of evolutionary biologists who attempt to "explain" the origin of such genes through de novo ("out of nowhere") origination.
[...]
Many other papers invoke de novo origination of genes. Long mentions, for example, a study seeking to explain the origin of an antifreeze protein in an Antarctic fish that cites "de novo amplification of a short DNA sequence to spawn a novel protein with a new function." Likewise, Long cites an article in Science to explain the origin of two human genes involved in neurodevelopment that appealed to "de novo generation of building blocks -- single genes or gene segments coding for protein domains," where an exon spontaneously "originated from a unique noncoding sequence." Other papers make similar appeals. A paper in 2009 reported "the de novo origin of at least three human protein- coding genes since the divergence with chimp[s]," where each of them "has no proteincoding homologs in any other genome." An even more recent paper in PLoS Genetics reported "60 new protein- coding genes that originated de novo on the human lineage since divergence from the chimpanzee," a finding that was called "a lot higher than a previous, admittedly conservative, estimate."
Another 2009 paper in the journal Genome Research was appropriately titled "Darwinian Alchemy: Human Genes from Noncoding RNA." It investigated the de novo origin of genes and acknowledged, "The emergence of complete, functional genes -- with promoters, open reading frames (ORFs), and functional proteins -- from 'junk' DNA would seem highly improbable, almost like the elusive transmutation of lead into gold that was sought by medieval alchemists." Nonetheless, the article asserted without saying how that: "evolution by natural selection can forge completely new functional elements from apparently nonfunctional DNA -- the process by which molecular evolution turns lead into gold."
The presence of unique gene sequences forces researchers to invoke de novo origin of genes more often than they would like. After one study of fruit flies reported that "as many as ~12% of newly emerged genes in the Drosophila melanogaster subgroup may have arisen de novo from noncoding DNA," the author went on to acknowledge that invoking this "mechanism" poses a severe problem for evolutionary theory, since it doesn't really explain the origin of any of its "nontrivial requirements for functionality." The author proposes that "preadaptation" might have played some role. But that adds nothing by way of explanation, since it only specifies when (before selection played a role) and where (in noncoding DNA), not how the genes in question first arose. Details about how the gene became "preadapted" for some future function is never explained. Indeed, evolutionary biologists typically use the term "de novo origination" to describe unexplained increases in genetic information; it does not refer to any known mutational process. (Darwin's Doubt, pp. 216, 220-221.)
In other words, de novo isn't an explanation at all. It's more like a magic wand to be invoked when evolutionary biologists encounter some unique gene and they have no way to explain its origin via duplication from a similar pre-existing gene. (As an evolutionary mechanism, gene duplication has its own issues.)
Nonetheless, a recent article in Quanta Magazine points out just how many recent scientific studies have resorted to calling upon de novo origin of genes:
For most of the last 40 years, scientists thought that this was the primary way new genes were born -- they simply arose from copies of existing genes. The old version went on doing its job, and the new copy became free to evolve novel functions.
Certain genes, however, seem to defy that origin story. They have no known relatives, and they bear no resemblance to any other gene. They're the molecular equivalent of a mysterious beast discovered in the depths of a remote rainforest, a biological enigma seemingly unrelated to anything else on earth.
The mystery of where these orphan genes came from has puzzled scientists for decades. But in the past few years, a once-heretical explanation has quickly gained momentum -- that many of these orphans arose out of so-called junk DNA, or non-coding DNA, the mysterious stretches of DNA between genes. "Genetic function somehow springs into existence," said David Begun, a biologist at the University of California, Davis.
If the idea that "Genetic function somehow springs into existence" doesn't sound compelling to you, join the club. But that's about as much detail as you're likely to get from proponents of de novo gene origination. One proponent of this idea in the article is even quoted saying: "It's hard to see how to get a new protein out of random sequence when you expect random sequences to cause so much trouble." Unfortunately for evolutionists, this problem seems to be common among animals, as the Quanta article continues:
This metamorphosis was once considered to be impossible, but a growing number of examples in organisms ranging from yeast and flies to mice and humans has convinced most of the field that these de novo genes exist. Some scientists say they may even be common. Just last month, research presented at the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution in Vienna identified 600 potentially new human genes. "The existence of de novo genes was supposed to be a rare thing," said Mar Albà , an evolutionary biologist at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute in Barcelona, who presented the research. "But people have started seeing it more and more."
Whenever you see "de novo" origin of a gene invoked, you know that evolutionary biologists lack any explanation for how that gene arose. Scientists haven't had much time yet to analyze the cephalopod genome, but given early reports of many unique genes, it will be interesting to learn to what extent they are forced to invoke these mysterious processes -- what amounts to evolution ex nihilo -- to explain how this "alien" genome arose.
Casey Luskin August 24, 2015 3:39 AM
These days, new genomes of different types of organisms are being sequenced and published on a regular basis. When some new genome is sequenced, evolutionary biologists expect that it will be highly similar to the genomes of other organisms that are assumed to be closely related.
As ENV already noted, the latest organism to have its genome sequenced has confounded that expectation: the octopus, whose genome was recently reported in Nature. It turns out to be so unlike other mollusks and other invertebrates that it's being called "alien" by the scientists who worked on that project.
One article on the subject was titled "Don't freak out, but scientists think octopuses 'might be aliens' after DNA study":
Not to send you into a meltdown or anything but octopuses are basically 'aliens' -- according to scientists.
Researchers have found a new map of the octopus genetic code that is so strange that it could be actually be an "alien".
[...]
"The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other molluscs, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain and its clever problem-solving abilities," said US researcher Dr Clifton Ragsdale, from the University of Chicago.
[...]
Analysis of 12 different tissues revealed hundreds of octopus-specific genes found in no other animal, many of them highly active in structures such as the brain, skin and suckers.
Obviously no one thinks the octopus is an "alien" from another planet. (Nature News quotes one co-author of the paper on the genome noting that the alien quip is a "joke.") But it certainly is alien to standard evolutionary expectations that genomes of related species ought to be highly similar. Thus, Nature points out the large number of unique genes found in the octopus genome:
Surprisingly, the octopus genome turned out to be almost as large as a human's and to contain a greater number of protein-coding genes -- some 33,000, compared with fewer than 25,000 in Homo sapiens.
This excess results mostly from the expansion of a few specific gene families, Ragsdale says. One of the most remarkable gene groups is the protocadherins, which regulate the development of neurons and the short-range interactions between them. The octopus has 168 of these genes -- more than twice as many as mammals. This resonates with the creature's unusually large brain and the organ's even-stranger anatomy. ...
A gene family that is involved in development, the zinc-finger transcription factors, is also highly expanded in octopuses. At around 1,800 genes, it is the second-largest gene family to be discovered in an animal, after the elephant's 2,000 olfactory-receptor genes.
The analysis also turned up hundreds of other genes that are specific to the octopus and highly expressed in particular tissues. The suckers, for example, express a curious set of genes that are similar to those that encode receptors for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. The genes seem to enable the octopus's remarkable ability to taste with its suckers.
Scientists identified six genes for proteins called reflectins, which are expressed in an octopus's skin. These alter the way light reflects from the octopus, giving the appearance of a different colour -- one of several ways that an octopus can disguise itself, along with changing its texture, pattern or brightness.
The technical paper explains that the octopus genome reveals "massive expansions in two gene families previously thought to be uniquely enlarged in vertebrates: the protocadherins, which regulate neuronal development, and the C2H2 superfamily of zinc-finger transcription factors." Moreover:
We identified hundreds of cephalopod-specific genes, many of which showed elevated expression levels in such specialized structures as the skin, the suckers and the nervous system.
They conclude: "Our analysis suggests that substantial expansion of a handful of gene families, along with extensive remodelling of genome linkage and repetitive content, played a critical role in the evolution of cephalopod morphological innovations, including their large and complex nervous systems." In other words, the cephalopod genome is unusual in many major respects, unlike other organisms we've sequenced.
Actually, that's not completely correct. There are some peculiar similarities between the cephalopod genome and something else they've seen -- but they aren't the kind of similarities that were predicted by common descent. The technical papers notes that the cephalopod genome bears unexpected resemblance in certain respects to vertebrate genomes -- and since these similarities aren't predicted by common descent, they predictably attribute it to convergent evolution:
the independent expansions and nervous system enrichment of protocadherins in coleoid cephalopods and vertebrates offers a striking example of convergent evolution between these clades at the molecular level.
Indeed, even within cephalopods they found evidence of convergent evolution (i.e., genetic similarity that didn't fit the expectations of common descent): "Surprisingly, our phylogenetic analyses suggest that the squid and octopus protocadherin arrays arose independently. Unlinked octopus protocadherins appear to have expanded ~135 Mya, after octopuses diverged from squid."
But the big story here is the large number of unique genes found in the octopus genome. The technical paper elaborates on one of these major gene groups:
The octopus genome encodes 168 multi-exonic protocadherin genes, nearly three-quarters of which are found in tandem clusters on the genome (Fig. 2b), a striking expansion relative to the 17-25 genes found in Lottia [a limpet], Crassostrea gigas (oyster) and Capitella [polychaete worm, and annelid] genomes.
The paper doesn't even try to speculate about how these unique cephalopod genes might have arisen. The standard view -- that new genes originate via gene duplication -- is hardly mentioned. But invoking gene duplication requires one to find another gene elsewhere that's similar. Given that cephalopods apparently have many unique genes not similar to genes found in other organisms, gene duplication might not be a candidate explanation in many of these cases. One wonders if future investigators will resort to "de novo" gene origin.
What's that? Stephen Meyer explains in Darwin's Doubt:
Remember: ORFans, by definition, have no homologs. These genes are unique -- one of a kind -- a fact tacitly acknowledged by the increasing number of evolutionary biologists who attempt to "explain" the origin of such genes through de novo ("out of nowhere") origination.
[...]
Many other papers invoke de novo origination of genes. Long mentions, for example, a study seeking to explain the origin of an antifreeze protein in an Antarctic fish that cites "de novo amplification of a short DNA sequence to spawn a novel protein with a new function." Likewise, Long cites an article in Science to explain the origin of two human genes involved in neurodevelopment that appealed to "de novo generation of building blocks -- single genes or gene segments coding for protein domains," where an exon spontaneously "originated from a unique noncoding sequence." Other papers make similar appeals. A paper in 2009 reported "the de novo origin of at least three human protein- coding genes since the divergence with chimp[s]," where each of them "has no proteincoding homologs in any other genome." An even more recent paper in PLoS Genetics reported "60 new protein- coding genes that originated de novo on the human lineage since divergence from the chimpanzee," a finding that was called "a lot higher than a previous, admittedly conservative, estimate."
Another 2009 paper in the journal Genome Research was appropriately titled "Darwinian Alchemy: Human Genes from Noncoding RNA." It investigated the de novo origin of genes and acknowledged, "The emergence of complete, functional genes -- with promoters, open reading frames (ORFs), and functional proteins -- from 'junk' DNA would seem highly improbable, almost like the elusive transmutation of lead into gold that was sought by medieval alchemists." Nonetheless, the article asserted without saying how that: "evolution by natural selection can forge completely new functional elements from apparently nonfunctional DNA -- the process by which molecular evolution turns lead into gold."
The presence of unique gene sequences forces researchers to invoke de novo origin of genes more often than they would like. After one study of fruit flies reported that "as many as ~12% of newly emerged genes in the Drosophila melanogaster subgroup may have arisen de novo from noncoding DNA," the author went on to acknowledge that invoking this "mechanism" poses a severe problem for evolutionary theory, since it doesn't really explain the origin of any of its "nontrivial requirements for functionality." The author proposes that "preadaptation" might have played some role. But that adds nothing by way of explanation, since it only specifies when (before selection played a role) and where (in noncoding DNA), not how the genes in question first arose. Details about how the gene became "preadapted" for some future function is never explained. Indeed, evolutionary biologists typically use the term "de novo origination" to describe unexplained increases in genetic information; it does not refer to any known mutational process. (Darwin's Doubt, pp. 216, 220-221.)
In other words, de novo isn't an explanation at all. It's more like a magic wand to be invoked when evolutionary biologists encounter some unique gene and they have no way to explain its origin via duplication from a similar pre-existing gene. (As an evolutionary mechanism, gene duplication has its own issues.)
Nonetheless, a recent article in Quanta Magazine points out just how many recent scientific studies have resorted to calling upon de novo origin of genes:
For most of the last 40 years, scientists thought that this was the primary way new genes were born -- they simply arose from copies of existing genes. The old version went on doing its job, and the new copy became free to evolve novel functions.
Certain genes, however, seem to defy that origin story. They have no known relatives, and they bear no resemblance to any other gene. They're the molecular equivalent of a mysterious beast discovered in the depths of a remote rainforest, a biological enigma seemingly unrelated to anything else on earth.
The mystery of where these orphan genes came from has puzzled scientists for decades. But in the past few years, a once-heretical explanation has quickly gained momentum -- that many of these orphans arose out of so-called junk DNA, or non-coding DNA, the mysterious stretches of DNA between genes. "Genetic function somehow springs into existence," said David Begun, a biologist at the University of California, Davis.
If the idea that "Genetic function somehow springs into existence" doesn't sound compelling to you, join the club. But that's about as much detail as you're likely to get from proponents of de novo gene origination. One proponent of this idea in the article is even quoted saying: "It's hard to see how to get a new protein out of random sequence when you expect random sequences to cause so much trouble." Unfortunately for evolutionists, this problem seems to be common among animals, as the Quanta article continues:
This metamorphosis was once considered to be impossible, but a growing number of examples in organisms ranging from yeast and flies to mice and humans has convinced most of the field that these de novo genes exist. Some scientists say they may even be common. Just last month, research presented at the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution in Vienna identified 600 potentially new human genes. "The existence of de novo genes was supposed to be a rare thing," said Mar Albà , an evolutionary biologist at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute in Barcelona, who presented the research. "But people have started seeing it more and more."
Whenever you see "de novo" origin of a gene invoked, you know that evolutionary biologists lack any explanation for how that gene arose. Scientists haven't had much time yet to analyze the cephalopod genome, but given early reports of many unique genes, it will be interesting to learn to what extent they are forced to invoke these mysterious processes -- what amounts to evolution ex nihilo -- to explain how this "alien" genome arose.
The Book of Ezra New World Translation(2013 Edition)
1.In the first year of King Cyrus+ of Persia, in order that Jehovah’s word spoken by Jeremiah+ would be fulfilled, Jehovah stirred the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his kingdom, which he also put in writing,+ saying:
2 “This is what King Cyrus of Persia says, ‘Jehovah the God of the heavens has given me all the kingdoms of the earth,+ and he has commissioned me to build him a house in Jerusalem,+ which is in Judah. 3 Whoever there is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of Jehovah the God of Israel—he is the true God—whose house was in Jerusalem.* 4 Anyone who is residing as a foreigner,+ wherever he may be, let him be helped by his neighbors* by their giving him silver and gold, goods and livestock, along with the voluntary offering for the house of the true God,+ which was in Jerusalem.’”
5 Then the heads of the paternal houses of Judah and of Benjamin and the priests and the Levites—everyone whose spirit the true God had stirred—prepared to go up and rebuild the house of Jehovah, which was in Jerusalem. 6 All those around them supported them by giving them* utensils of silver and of gold, goods, livestock, and valuable things, besides all the voluntary offerings.
7 King Cyrus also brought out the utensils of the house of Jehovah that Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar had taken from Jerusalem and had put in the house of his god.+ 8 King Cyrus of Persia brought them out under the supervision of Mithʹre·dath the treasurer, who made an inventory of them for Shesh·bazʹzar*+ the chieftain of Judah.
9 Now this was the inventory: 30 basket-shaped vessels of gold, 1,000 basket-shaped vessels of silver, 29 replacement vessels, 10 30 small gold bowls, 410 small silver bowls, 1,000 other utensils. 11 All the utensils of gold and of silver were 5,400. Shesh·bazʹzar brought all of these up when the exiles+ were brought out of Babylon to Jerusalem.
2 .And these were the people of the province* who came up from the captives of the exile,+ those whom King Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar of Babylon had exiled to Babylon+ and who later returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own city,+ 2 those who came with Ze·rubʹba·bel,+ Jeshʹu·a,+ Ne·he·miʹah, Se·raiʹah, Re·el·aiʹah, Morʹde·cai, Bilʹshan, Misʹpar, Bigʹvai, Reʹhum, and Baʹa·nah.
The number of the Israelite men included:+ 3 the sons of Paʹrosh, 2,172; 4 the sons of Sheph·a·tiʹah, 372; 5 the sons of Aʹrah,+ 775; 6 the sons of Paʹhath-moʹab,+ of the sons of Jeshʹu·a and Joʹab, 2,812; 7 the sons of Eʹlam,+ 1,254; 8 the sons of Zatʹtu,+ 945; 9 the sons of Zacʹcai, 760; 10 the sons of Baʹni, 642; 11 the sons of Beʹbai, 623; 12 the sons of Azʹgad, 1,222; 13 the sons of Ad·o·niʹkam, 666; 14 the sons of Bigʹvai, 2,056; 15 the sons of Aʹdin, 454; 16 the sons of Aʹter, of Hez·e·kiʹah, 98; 17 the sons of Beʹzai, 323; 18 the sons of Joʹrah, 112; 19 the sons of Haʹshum,+ 223; 20 the sons of Gibʹbar, 95; 21 the sons of Bethʹle·hem, 123; 22 the men of Ne·toʹphah, 56; 23 the men of Anʹa·thoth,+ 128; 24 the sons of Azʹma·veth, 42; 25 the sons of Kirʹi·ath-jeʹa·rim, Che·phiʹrah, and Be·erʹoth, 743; 26 the sons of Raʹmah+ and Geʹba,+ 621; 27 the men of Michʹmas, 122; 28 the men of Bethʹel and Aʹi,+ 223; 29 the sons of Neʹbo,+ 52; 30 the sons of Magʹbish, 156; 31 the sons of the other Eʹlam, 1,254; 32 the sons of Haʹrim, 320; 33 the sons of Lod, Haʹdid, and Oʹno, 725; 34 the sons of Jerʹi·cho, 345; 35 the sons of Se·naʹah, 3,630.
36 The priests:+ the sons of Je·daʹiah+ of the house of Jeshʹu·a,+ 973; 37 the sons of Imʹmer,+ 1,052; 38 the sons of Pashʹhur,+ 1,247; 39 the sons of Haʹrim,+ 1,017.
40 The Levites:+ the sons of Jeshʹu·a and Kadʹmi·el,+ of the sons of Hod·a·viʹah, 74. 41 The singers:+ the sons of Aʹsaph,+ 128. 42 The sons of the gatekeepers:+ the sons of Shalʹlum, the sons of Aʹter, the sons of Talʹmon,+ the sons of Akʹkub,+ the sons of Ha·tiʹta, the sons of Shoʹbai, altogether 139.
43 The temple servants:*+ the sons of Ziʹha, the sons of Ha·suʹpha, the sons of Tab·baʹoth, 44 the sons of Keʹros, the sons of Siʹa·ha, the sons of Paʹdon, 45 the sons of Le·baʹnah, the sons of Hagʹa·bah, the sons of Akʹkub, 46 the sons of Haʹgab, the sons of Salʹmai, the sons of Haʹnan, 47 the sons of Gidʹdel, the sons of Gaʹhar, the sons of Re·aʹiah, 48 the sons of Reʹzin, the sons of Ne·koʹda, the sons of Gazʹzam, 49 the sons of Uzʹza, the sons of Pa·seʹah, the sons of Beʹsai, 50 the sons of Asʹnah, the sons of Me·uʹnim, the sons of Ne·phuʹsim, 51 the sons of Bakʹbuk, the sons of Ha·kuʹpha, the sons of Harʹhur, 52 the sons of Bazʹluth, the sons of Me·hiʹda, the sons of Harʹsha, 53 the sons of Barʹkos, the sons of Sisʹe·ra, the sons of Teʹmah, 54 the sons of Ne·ziʹah, the sons of Ha·tiʹpha.
55 The sons of the servants of Solʹo·mon: the sons of Soʹtai, the sons of So·pheʹreth, the sons of Pe·ruʹda,+ 56 the sons of Jaʹa·lah, the sons of Darʹkon, the sons of Gidʹdel, 57 the sons of Sheph·a·tiʹah, the sons of Hatʹtil, the sons of Poʹche·reth-haz·ze·baʹim, the sons of Aʹmi.
58 All the temple servants* and the sons of the servants of Solʹo·mon were 392.
59 And these went up from Tel-meʹlah, Tel-harʹsha, Cheʹrub, Adʹdon, and Imʹmer, but they were unable to verify their paternal house and their origin, as to whether they were Israelites:+ 60 the sons of De·laʹiah, the sons of To·biʹah, the sons of Ne·koʹda, 652. 61 And of the sons of the priests: the sons of Ha·baiʹah, the sons of Hakʹkoz,+ the sons of Bar·zilʹlai, who took a wife from the daughters of Bar·zilʹlai+ the Gilʹe·ad·ite and was called by their name. 62 These looked for their records to establish their genealogy, but they did not find them, so they were disqualified from the priesthood.*+ 63 The governor* told them that they could not eat from the most holy things+ until there was a priest who could consult the Uʹrim and Thumʹmim.+
64 The total number of the entire congregation was 42,360,+ 65 apart from their male and female slaves, who were 7,337; they also had 200 male and female singers. 66 Their horses were 736, their mules 245, 67 their camels 435, their donkeys 6,720.
68 When they arrived at the house of Jehovah in Jerusalem, some of the heads of the paternal houses made voluntary offerings+ for the house of the true God, to rebuild it* on its own site.+ 69 According to their means, they gave to the project treasury 61,000 gold drachmas,* 5,000 silver miʹnas,*+ and 100 robes for the priests. 70 And the priests, the Levites, some of the people, the singers, the gatekeepers, and the temple servants* settled in their cities, and all the rest of Israel* settled in their cities.+
3 .When the seventh month+ arrived and the Israelites* were in their cities, they gathered together with one accord in Jerusalem. 2 Jeshʹu·a+ the son of Je·hozʹa·dak and his fellow priests and Ze·rubʹba·bel+ the son of She·alʹti·el+ and his brothers rose up and built the altar of the God of Israel, so that they could offer up burnt sacrifices on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses+ the man of the true God.
3 So they set the altar up on its former site, despite their fear of the peoples of the surrounding lands,+ and they began offering up burnt sacrifices to Jehovah on it, the morning and the evening burnt sacrifices.+ 4 Then they held the Festival of Booths* according to what is written,+ and day by day they offered up the specified number of burnt sacrifices that were required each day.+ 5 Afterward they offered up the regular burnt offering+ and the offerings for the new moons+ and those for all the sanctified festival seasons+ of Jehovah, as well as those from everyone who willingly offered a voluntary offering+ to Jehovah. 6 From the first day of the seventh month+ they started to offer up burnt sacrifices to Jehovah, though the foundation of Jehovah’s temple had not yet been laid.
7 They gave money to the stonecutters+ and the craftsmen,+ and food and drink and oil to the Si·doʹni·ans and the Tyrʹi·ans for bringing cedar timbers by sea from Lebʹa·non to Jopʹpa,+ according to the authorization granted them by King Cyrus of Persia.+
8 In the second year after they came to the house of the true God at Jerusalem, in the second month, Ze·rubʹba·bel the son of She·alʹti·el, Jeshʹu·a the son of Je·hozʹa·dak and the rest of their brothers, the priests and the Levites, and all those who had come to Jerusalem out of the captivity+ started the work; they appointed the Levites from 20 years old and up to serve as supervisors over the work of the house of Jehovah. 9 So Jeshʹu·a, his sons and his brothers, and Kadʹmi·el and his sons, the sons of Judah, joined together to supervise those doing the work in the house of the true God, along with the sons of Henʹa·dad,+ their sons and their brothers, the Levites.
10 When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of Jehovah,+ then the priests in official clothing, with the trumpets,+ and the Levites, the sons of Aʹsaph, with the cymbals, stood up to praise Jehovah according to the direction of King David of Israel.+ 11 And they began to sing in response+ by praising and giving thanks to Jehovah, “for he is good; his loyal love toward Israel endures forever.”+ Then all the people shouted with a loud shout of praise to Jehovah because the foundation of the house of Jehovah had been laid. 12 Many of the priests, the Levites, and the heads of the paternal houses—the old men who had seen the former house+—wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, while many others shouted joyfully at the top of their voice.+ 13 So the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shouts from the sound of the weeping, for the people were shouting so loudly that the sound was heard from a great distance.
4.When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin+ heard that the returned exiles+ were building a temple to Jehovah the God of Israel, 2 they immediately approached Ze·rubʹba·bel and the heads of the paternal houses and said to them: “Let us build along with you; for like you, we worship* your God+ and we have been sacrificing to him since the days of King Eʹsar-hadʹdon+ of As·syrʹi·a, who brought us here.”+ 3 However, Ze·rubʹba·bel and Jeshʹu·a and the rest of the heads of the paternal houses of Israel said to them: “You have no share with us in building a house to our God,+ for we alone will build it to Jehovah the God of Israel, just as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.”+
4 Then the people of the land were continually discouraging* the people of Judah and disheartening them from building.+ 5 They hired advisers against them to frustrate their plans+ all the days of King Cyrus of Persia until the reign of King Da·riʹus+ of Persia. 6 At the beginning of the reign of A·has·u·eʹrus, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. 7 And in the days of King Ar·ta·xerxʹes of Persia, Bishʹlam, Mithʹre·dath, Tabʹe·el, and the rest of his colleagues wrote to Ar·ta·xerxʹes the king; they translated the letter into Ar·a·maʹic,+ writing it with Ar·a·maʹic characters.*
8 * Reʹhum the chief government official and Shimʹshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to King Ar·ta·xerxʹes, as follows: 9 (It was from Reʹhum the chief government official and Shimʹshai the scribe and the rest of their colleagues, the judges and the lesser governors, the secretaries, the people of Eʹrech,+ the Babylonians, the inhabitants of Suʹsa,+ that is, the Eʹlam·ites,+ 10 and the rest of the nations that the great and honorable Asʹe·nap·par took into exile and settled in the cities of Sa·marʹi·a,+ and the rest in the region Beyond the River,* and now 11 this is a copy of the letter that they sent him.)
“To King Ar·ta·xerxʹes from your servants, the men of the region Beyond the River: And now 12 let it be known to the king that the Jews who came up here from you to us have arrived at Jerusalem. They are rebuilding the rebellious and wicked city, and they are finishing the walls+ and repairing the foundations. 13 Now let it be known to the king that if this city should be rebuilt and its walls finished, they will not give tax, tribute,+ or toll, and it will result in a loss to the treasuries of the kings. 14 Since we eat the salt of the palace* and it is not proper for us to see the king’s interests harmed, we have therefore sent to make this known to the king, 15 so that there may be an investigation of the book of records of your ancestors.+ You will find in the book of records and learn that this city is a rebellious city, injurious to kings and provinces,* and within it have been those stirring up sedition from ancient times. That is why this city was destroyed.+ 16 We are making known to the king that if this city is rebuilt and its walls are finished, you will have no control* of the region Beyond the River.”+
17 The king sent word to Reʹhum the chief government official and Shimʹshai the scribe and the rest of their colleagues who were dwelling in Sa·marʹi·a and the rest of the region Beyond the River:
“Greetings! And now 18 the official document that you sent us has been clearly read* before me. 19 By my order an investigation was made, and it was found that from long ago the city has had uprisings against kings, and rebellions and revolts have taken place there.+ 20 There were powerful kings over Jerusalem who ruled the whole region Beyond the River, and tax, tribute, and toll were paid to them. 21 Now issue an order for these men to stop work, so that the city may not be rebuilt until I issue an order. 22 Be careful not to neglect acting in this regard, so that the king’s interests are not harmed any further.”+
23 Now after the copy of the official document of King Ar·ta·xerxʹes had been read before Reʹhum and Shimʹshai the scribe and their colleagues, they quickly went to Jerusalem to the Jews and used force to stop them. 24 It was then that the work on the house of God, which was in Jerusalem, came to a halt; and it remained at a standstill until the second year of the reign of King Da·riʹus of Persia.+
5 .Then the prophets Hagʹgai+ and Zech·a·riʹah+ the grandson of Idʹdo+ prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and in Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel who was over them. 2 It was then that Ze·rubʹba·bel+ the son of She·alʹti·el and Jeshʹu·a+ the son of Je·hozʹa·dak started to rebuild the house of God,+ which was in Jerusalem; and the prophets of God were with them and supported them.+ 3 At that time Tatʹte·nai the governor of the region Beyond the River* and Sheʹthar-bozʹe·nai and their colleagues came to them and asked them: “Who issued an order to you to build this house and to finish this structure?”* 4 Then they asked them: “What are the names of the men who are working on this building?” 5 But God was watching over* the elders of the Jews,+ and they did not stop them until the report could be sent to Da·riʹus and an official document could be sent back concerning this.
6 Here is a copy of the letter that Tatʹte·nai the governor of the region Beyond the River and Sheʹthar-bozʹe·nai and his colleagues, the lesser governors of the region Beyond the River, sent to King Da·riʹus; 7 they sent the report to him, and this is what they wrote:
“To King Da·riʹus:
“All peace! 8 Let it be known to the king that we went to the province* of Judah to the house of the great God, and it is being built with large stones rolled into place, and timbers are being laid in the walls. The work is being eagerly done by the people and is making progress through their efforts. 9 Then we questioned their elders, asking them: ‘Who issued an order to you to build this house and to finish this structure?’*+ 10 We also asked them their names to inform you, so that we could write the names of the men who are taking the lead.
11 “This is the response they gave us: ‘We are the servants of the God of the heavens and the earth, and we are rebuilding the house that was built many years ago, which a great king of Israel built and finished.+ 12 However, because our fathers angered the God of the heavens,+ he gave them into the hand of King Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar+ of Babylon, the Chal·deʹan, who demolished this house+ and took the people into exile to Babylon.+ 13 Nevertheless, in the first year of King Cyrus of Babylon, King Cyrus issued an order to rebuild this house of God.+ 14 Moreover, King Cyrus took out of the temple of Babylon the gold and silver vessels of the house of God that Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem and had brought to the temple of Babylon.+ They were given to a man named Shesh·bazʹzar,*+ whom Cyrus made governor.+ 15 Cyrus said to him: “Take these vessels. Go, deposit them in the temple that is in Jerusalem, and let the house of God be rebuilt in its former place.”+ 16 Then this Shesh·bazʹzar came, and he laid the foundations of the house of God,+ which is in Jerusalem; and it has been under construction from then until now, but it has not been completed.’+
17 “Now if it seems good to the king, let an investigation be made in the royal treasury there in Babylon, to determine whether King Cyrus issued an order to rebuild that house of God in Jerusalem;+ and let the decision of the king concerning this be sent to us.”
6.It was then that King Da·riʹus issued an order, and they made an investigation in the archives* where the treasures were deposited in Babylon. 2 And a scroll was found in the citadel at Ec·batʹa·na, in the province* of Meʹdi·a, and the following memorandum was written on it:
3 “In the first year of King Cyrus, King Cyrus issued an order concerning the house of God in Jerusalem:+ ‘Let the house be rebuilt as the place where they are to offer sacrifices, and its foundations are to be set in place; its height is to be 60 cubits,* its width 60 cubits,+ 4 with three layers of large stones rolled into place and one layer of timbers;+ and let the expense be paid from the king’s house.+ 5 Also, let the gold and silver vessels of the house of God that Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar took out of the temple that was in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon+ be returned, so that they may be put in their place in the temple in Jerusalem and be deposited in the house of God.’+
6 “So now Tatʹte·nai the governor of the region Beyond the River,* Sheʹthar-bozʹe·nai, and your colleagues, the lesser governors of the region Beyond the River+—stay away from there. 7 Do not interfere with the work on that house of God. The governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews will rebuild that house of God in its former place. 8 Furthermore, I am issuing an order as to what you are to do for these elders of the Jews for rebuilding that house of God: From the royal treasury,+ from the tax collected in the region Beyond the River, the expenses are to be promptly given to these men to continue without interruption.+ 9 And whatever is needed—young bulls+ as well as rams+ and lambs+ for the burnt offerings to the God of heaven, wheat,+ salt,+ wine,+ and oil,+ just as the priests who are in Jerusalem say—is to be given them continually day by day without fail, 10 so that they may continually present offerings that please the God of the heavens and pray for the life of the king and his sons.+ 11 I have also issued an order that if anyone violates this decree, a timber will be pulled out of his house and he will be lifted up and fastened to it,* and his house will be turned into a public latrine* for this offense. 12 And may the God who has caused his name to reside there+ overthrow any king and people who lift a hand to violate this order and destroy that house of God, which is in Jerusalem. I, Da·riʹus, issue this order. Let it be done promptly.”
13 Then Tatʹte·nai the governor of the region Beyond the River, Sheʹthar-bozʹe·nai,+ and their colleagues promptly carried out everything that King Da·riʹus had ordered. 14 And the elders of the Jews continued building and making progress,+ urged on by the prophesying of Hagʹgai+ the prophet and Zech·a·riʹah+ the grandson of Idʹdo; they finished building it by the order of the God of Israel+ and by the order of Cyrus+ and Da·riʹus+ and King Ar·ta·xerxʹes+ of Persia. 15 They completed the house by the third day of the month of Aʹdar,* in the sixth year of the reign of King Da·riʹus.
16 Then the Israelites, the priests, the Levites,+ and the rest of the former exiles held the inauguration* of this house of God with joy. 17 And they presented for the inauguration of this house of God 100 bulls, 200 rams, 400 lambs, and as a sin offering for all Israel 12 male goats, corresponding to the number of the tribes of Israel.+ 18 And they appointed the priests in their groups and the Levites in their divisions for the service of God in Jerusalem,+ according to what is written in the book of Moses.+
19 And the former exiles held the Passover on the 14th day of the first month.+ 20 The priests and the Levites, without exception, had cleansed themselves,+ so they were all clean; they slaughtered the Passover sacrifice for all the former exiles, for their fellow priests, and for themselves. 21 Then the Israelites who had returned from the exile ate of it, along with everyone who had joined them and had separated himself from the uncleanness of the nations of the land to worship* Jehovah the God of Israel.+ 22 They also joyfully held the Festival of Unleavened Bread+ for seven days, for Jehovah caused them to rejoice and he had made the heart of the king of As·syrʹi·a favorable toward them,+ so that he supported them* in the work of the house of the true God, the God of Israel.
7.After these things, during the reign of King Ar·ta·xerxʹes+ of Persia, Ezʹra*+ returned. He was the son of Se·raiʹah,+ son of Az·a·riʹah, son of Hil·kiʹah,+ 2 son of Shalʹlum, son of Zaʹdok, son of A·hiʹtub, 3 son of Am·a·riʹah, son of Az·a·riʹah,+ son of Me·raʹioth, 4 son of Zer·a·hiʹah, son of Uzʹzi, son of Bukʹki, 5 son of Ab·i·shuʹa, son of Phinʹe·has,+ son of El·e·aʹzar,+ son of Aaron+ the chief priest. 6 This Ezʹra came up from Babylon. He was a copyist* who was well-versed in* the Law of Moses,+ which Jehovah the God of Israel had given. The king granted everything he requested, for the hand of Jehovah his God was upon him.
7 Some of the Israelites, the priests, the Levites,+ the singers,+ the gatekeepers,+ and the temple servants,*+ went up to Jerusalem in the seventh year of King Ar·ta·xerxʹes. 8 And Ezʹra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, in the seventh year of the king. 9 On the first day of the first month, he began the journey from Babylon, and he arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month, for the good hand of his God was upon him.+ 10 Ezʹra had prepared his heart* to consult the Law of Jehovah and to practice it,+ and to teach its regulations and judgments in Israel.+
11 This is a copy of the letter that King Ar·ta·xerxʹes gave to Ezʹra the priest and copyist,* an expert in the study* of the commandments of Jehovah and of his regulations to Israel:
12 * “Ar·ta·xerxʹes,+ the king of kings, to Ezʹra the priest, the copyist* of the Law of the God of the heavens: May you have perfect peace. And now 13 I have issued an order that everyone in my realm of the people of Israel and their priests and Levites who is willing to go with you to Jerusalem should go.+ 14 For you are sent by the king and his seven advisers to investigate whether the Law of your God, which is with you,* is being applied in Judah and Jerusalem, 15 and to take the silver and the gold that the king and his advisers have voluntarily given to the God of Israel, whose residence is in Jerusalem, 16 with all the silver and the gold that you receive* in all the province* of Babylon, along with the gift that the people and the priests voluntarily give to the house of their God, which is in Jerusalem.+ 17 And you are to buy promptly with this money bulls,+ rams,+ lambs,+ along with their grain offerings+ and their drink offerings,+ and you are to present them on the altar of the house of your God in Jerusalem.
18 “And whatever seems good to you and to your brothers to do, you may do with the rest of the silver and the gold, according to the will of your God. 19 And all the vessels that are given to you for the service of the house of your God, you are to deliver before God at Jerusalem.+ 20 And the rest of the necessities of the house of your God that you are required to give, you will give out of the royal treasury.+
21 “I, King Ar·ta·xerxʹes, have issued an order to all the treasurers in the region Beyond the River,* that everything that Ezʹra+ the priest, the copyist* of the Law of the God of the heavens, requests of you is to be done promptly, 22 up to 100 talents* of silver, 100 cor measures* of wheat, 100 bath measures* of wine,+ 100 bath measures of oil,+ and salt+ without limit. 23 Let everything that is ordered by the God of the heavens be done with zeal for the house of the God of the heavens,+ so that there may be no wrath against the king’s realm and his sons.+ 24 And you are further advised that it is not permitted to impose any tax, tribute,+ or toll on any of the priests and Levites, musicians,+ doorkeepers, temple servants,*+ and workers of this house of God.
25 “And you, Ezʹra, according to the wisdom that you possess from your God,* appoint magistrates and judges to judge all the people in the region Beyond the River, all those who know the laws of your God; and you should instruct anyone who does not know them.+ 26 And everyone who does not observe the Law of your God and the law of the king should have judgment executed on him promptly, whether it is death, banishment, a fine, or imprisonment.”
27 May Jehovah the God of our forefathers be praised, who put it into the heart of the king to beautify the house of Jehovah in Jerusalem!+ 28 And he has shown me loyal love before the king+ and his advisers+ and all the mighty princes of the king. So I took courage* because the hand of Jehovah my God was upon me, and I gathered out of Israel leading men* to go up with me.
2 “This is what King Cyrus of Persia says, ‘Jehovah the God of the heavens has given me all the kingdoms of the earth,+ and he has commissioned me to build him a house in Jerusalem,+ which is in Judah. 3 Whoever there is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of Jehovah the God of Israel—he is the true God—whose house was in Jerusalem.* 4 Anyone who is residing as a foreigner,+ wherever he may be, let him be helped by his neighbors* by their giving him silver and gold, goods and livestock, along with the voluntary offering for the house of the true God,+ which was in Jerusalem.’”
5 Then the heads of the paternal houses of Judah and of Benjamin and the priests and the Levites—everyone whose spirit the true God had stirred—prepared to go up and rebuild the house of Jehovah, which was in Jerusalem. 6 All those around them supported them by giving them* utensils of silver and of gold, goods, livestock, and valuable things, besides all the voluntary offerings.
7 King Cyrus also brought out the utensils of the house of Jehovah that Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar had taken from Jerusalem and had put in the house of his god.+ 8 King Cyrus of Persia brought them out under the supervision of Mithʹre·dath the treasurer, who made an inventory of them for Shesh·bazʹzar*+ the chieftain of Judah.
9 Now this was the inventory: 30 basket-shaped vessels of gold, 1,000 basket-shaped vessels of silver, 29 replacement vessels, 10 30 small gold bowls, 410 small silver bowls, 1,000 other utensils. 11 All the utensils of gold and of silver were 5,400. Shesh·bazʹzar brought all of these up when the exiles+ were brought out of Babylon to Jerusalem.
2 .And these were the people of the province* who came up from the captives of the exile,+ those whom King Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar of Babylon had exiled to Babylon+ and who later returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own city,+ 2 those who came with Ze·rubʹba·bel,+ Jeshʹu·a,+ Ne·he·miʹah, Se·raiʹah, Re·el·aiʹah, Morʹde·cai, Bilʹshan, Misʹpar, Bigʹvai, Reʹhum, and Baʹa·nah.
The number of the Israelite men included:+ 3 the sons of Paʹrosh, 2,172; 4 the sons of Sheph·a·tiʹah, 372; 5 the sons of Aʹrah,+ 775; 6 the sons of Paʹhath-moʹab,+ of the sons of Jeshʹu·a and Joʹab, 2,812; 7 the sons of Eʹlam,+ 1,254; 8 the sons of Zatʹtu,+ 945; 9 the sons of Zacʹcai, 760; 10 the sons of Baʹni, 642; 11 the sons of Beʹbai, 623; 12 the sons of Azʹgad, 1,222; 13 the sons of Ad·o·niʹkam, 666; 14 the sons of Bigʹvai, 2,056; 15 the sons of Aʹdin, 454; 16 the sons of Aʹter, of Hez·e·kiʹah, 98; 17 the sons of Beʹzai, 323; 18 the sons of Joʹrah, 112; 19 the sons of Haʹshum,+ 223; 20 the sons of Gibʹbar, 95; 21 the sons of Bethʹle·hem, 123; 22 the men of Ne·toʹphah, 56; 23 the men of Anʹa·thoth,+ 128; 24 the sons of Azʹma·veth, 42; 25 the sons of Kirʹi·ath-jeʹa·rim, Che·phiʹrah, and Be·erʹoth, 743; 26 the sons of Raʹmah+ and Geʹba,+ 621; 27 the men of Michʹmas, 122; 28 the men of Bethʹel and Aʹi,+ 223; 29 the sons of Neʹbo,+ 52; 30 the sons of Magʹbish, 156; 31 the sons of the other Eʹlam, 1,254; 32 the sons of Haʹrim, 320; 33 the sons of Lod, Haʹdid, and Oʹno, 725; 34 the sons of Jerʹi·cho, 345; 35 the sons of Se·naʹah, 3,630.
36 The priests:+ the sons of Je·daʹiah+ of the house of Jeshʹu·a,+ 973; 37 the sons of Imʹmer,+ 1,052; 38 the sons of Pashʹhur,+ 1,247; 39 the sons of Haʹrim,+ 1,017.
40 The Levites:+ the sons of Jeshʹu·a and Kadʹmi·el,+ of the sons of Hod·a·viʹah, 74. 41 The singers:+ the sons of Aʹsaph,+ 128. 42 The sons of the gatekeepers:+ the sons of Shalʹlum, the sons of Aʹter, the sons of Talʹmon,+ the sons of Akʹkub,+ the sons of Ha·tiʹta, the sons of Shoʹbai, altogether 139.
43 The temple servants:*+ the sons of Ziʹha, the sons of Ha·suʹpha, the sons of Tab·baʹoth, 44 the sons of Keʹros, the sons of Siʹa·ha, the sons of Paʹdon, 45 the sons of Le·baʹnah, the sons of Hagʹa·bah, the sons of Akʹkub, 46 the sons of Haʹgab, the sons of Salʹmai, the sons of Haʹnan, 47 the sons of Gidʹdel, the sons of Gaʹhar, the sons of Re·aʹiah, 48 the sons of Reʹzin, the sons of Ne·koʹda, the sons of Gazʹzam, 49 the sons of Uzʹza, the sons of Pa·seʹah, the sons of Beʹsai, 50 the sons of Asʹnah, the sons of Me·uʹnim, the sons of Ne·phuʹsim, 51 the sons of Bakʹbuk, the sons of Ha·kuʹpha, the sons of Harʹhur, 52 the sons of Bazʹluth, the sons of Me·hiʹda, the sons of Harʹsha, 53 the sons of Barʹkos, the sons of Sisʹe·ra, the sons of Teʹmah, 54 the sons of Ne·ziʹah, the sons of Ha·tiʹpha.
55 The sons of the servants of Solʹo·mon: the sons of Soʹtai, the sons of So·pheʹreth, the sons of Pe·ruʹda,+ 56 the sons of Jaʹa·lah, the sons of Darʹkon, the sons of Gidʹdel, 57 the sons of Sheph·a·tiʹah, the sons of Hatʹtil, the sons of Poʹche·reth-haz·ze·baʹim, the sons of Aʹmi.
58 All the temple servants* and the sons of the servants of Solʹo·mon were 392.
59 And these went up from Tel-meʹlah, Tel-harʹsha, Cheʹrub, Adʹdon, and Imʹmer, but they were unable to verify their paternal house and their origin, as to whether they were Israelites:+ 60 the sons of De·laʹiah, the sons of To·biʹah, the sons of Ne·koʹda, 652. 61 And of the sons of the priests: the sons of Ha·baiʹah, the sons of Hakʹkoz,+ the sons of Bar·zilʹlai, who took a wife from the daughters of Bar·zilʹlai+ the Gilʹe·ad·ite and was called by their name. 62 These looked for their records to establish their genealogy, but they did not find them, so they were disqualified from the priesthood.*+ 63 The governor* told them that they could not eat from the most holy things+ until there was a priest who could consult the Uʹrim and Thumʹmim.+
64 The total number of the entire congregation was 42,360,+ 65 apart from their male and female slaves, who were 7,337; they also had 200 male and female singers. 66 Their horses were 736, their mules 245, 67 their camels 435, their donkeys 6,720.
68 When they arrived at the house of Jehovah in Jerusalem, some of the heads of the paternal houses made voluntary offerings+ for the house of the true God, to rebuild it* on its own site.+ 69 According to their means, they gave to the project treasury 61,000 gold drachmas,* 5,000 silver miʹnas,*+ and 100 robes for the priests. 70 And the priests, the Levites, some of the people, the singers, the gatekeepers, and the temple servants* settled in their cities, and all the rest of Israel* settled in their cities.+
3 .When the seventh month+ arrived and the Israelites* were in their cities, they gathered together with one accord in Jerusalem. 2 Jeshʹu·a+ the son of Je·hozʹa·dak and his fellow priests and Ze·rubʹba·bel+ the son of She·alʹti·el+ and his brothers rose up and built the altar of the God of Israel, so that they could offer up burnt sacrifices on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses+ the man of the true God.
3 So they set the altar up on its former site, despite their fear of the peoples of the surrounding lands,+ and they began offering up burnt sacrifices to Jehovah on it, the morning and the evening burnt sacrifices.+ 4 Then they held the Festival of Booths* according to what is written,+ and day by day they offered up the specified number of burnt sacrifices that were required each day.+ 5 Afterward they offered up the regular burnt offering+ and the offerings for the new moons+ and those for all the sanctified festival seasons+ of Jehovah, as well as those from everyone who willingly offered a voluntary offering+ to Jehovah. 6 From the first day of the seventh month+ they started to offer up burnt sacrifices to Jehovah, though the foundation of Jehovah’s temple had not yet been laid.
7 They gave money to the stonecutters+ and the craftsmen,+ and food and drink and oil to the Si·doʹni·ans and the Tyrʹi·ans for bringing cedar timbers by sea from Lebʹa·non to Jopʹpa,+ according to the authorization granted them by King Cyrus of Persia.+
8 In the second year after they came to the house of the true God at Jerusalem, in the second month, Ze·rubʹba·bel the son of She·alʹti·el, Jeshʹu·a the son of Je·hozʹa·dak and the rest of their brothers, the priests and the Levites, and all those who had come to Jerusalem out of the captivity+ started the work; they appointed the Levites from 20 years old and up to serve as supervisors over the work of the house of Jehovah. 9 So Jeshʹu·a, his sons and his brothers, and Kadʹmi·el and his sons, the sons of Judah, joined together to supervise those doing the work in the house of the true God, along with the sons of Henʹa·dad,+ their sons and their brothers, the Levites.
10 When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of Jehovah,+ then the priests in official clothing, with the trumpets,+ and the Levites, the sons of Aʹsaph, with the cymbals, stood up to praise Jehovah according to the direction of King David of Israel.+ 11 And they began to sing in response+ by praising and giving thanks to Jehovah, “for he is good; his loyal love toward Israel endures forever.”+ Then all the people shouted with a loud shout of praise to Jehovah because the foundation of the house of Jehovah had been laid. 12 Many of the priests, the Levites, and the heads of the paternal houses—the old men who had seen the former house+—wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, while many others shouted joyfully at the top of their voice.+ 13 So the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shouts from the sound of the weeping, for the people were shouting so loudly that the sound was heard from a great distance.
4.When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin+ heard that the returned exiles+ were building a temple to Jehovah the God of Israel, 2 they immediately approached Ze·rubʹba·bel and the heads of the paternal houses and said to them: “Let us build along with you; for like you, we worship* your God+ and we have been sacrificing to him since the days of King Eʹsar-hadʹdon+ of As·syrʹi·a, who brought us here.”+ 3 However, Ze·rubʹba·bel and Jeshʹu·a and the rest of the heads of the paternal houses of Israel said to them: “You have no share with us in building a house to our God,+ for we alone will build it to Jehovah the God of Israel, just as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.”+
4 Then the people of the land were continually discouraging* the people of Judah and disheartening them from building.+ 5 They hired advisers against them to frustrate their plans+ all the days of King Cyrus of Persia until the reign of King Da·riʹus+ of Persia. 6 At the beginning of the reign of A·has·u·eʹrus, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. 7 And in the days of King Ar·ta·xerxʹes of Persia, Bishʹlam, Mithʹre·dath, Tabʹe·el, and the rest of his colleagues wrote to Ar·ta·xerxʹes the king; they translated the letter into Ar·a·maʹic,+ writing it with Ar·a·maʹic characters.*
8 * Reʹhum the chief government official and Shimʹshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to King Ar·ta·xerxʹes, as follows: 9 (It was from Reʹhum the chief government official and Shimʹshai the scribe and the rest of their colleagues, the judges and the lesser governors, the secretaries, the people of Eʹrech,+ the Babylonians, the inhabitants of Suʹsa,+ that is, the Eʹlam·ites,+ 10 and the rest of the nations that the great and honorable Asʹe·nap·par took into exile and settled in the cities of Sa·marʹi·a,+ and the rest in the region Beyond the River,* and now 11 this is a copy of the letter that they sent him.)
“To King Ar·ta·xerxʹes from your servants, the men of the region Beyond the River: And now 12 let it be known to the king that the Jews who came up here from you to us have arrived at Jerusalem. They are rebuilding the rebellious and wicked city, and they are finishing the walls+ and repairing the foundations. 13 Now let it be known to the king that if this city should be rebuilt and its walls finished, they will not give tax, tribute,+ or toll, and it will result in a loss to the treasuries of the kings. 14 Since we eat the salt of the palace* and it is not proper for us to see the king’s interests harmed, we have therefore sent to make this known to the king, 15 so that there may be an investigation of the book of records of your ancestors.+ You will find in the book of records and learn that this city is a rebellious city, injurious to kings and provinces,* and within it have been those stirring up sedition from ancient times. That is why this city was destroyed.+ 16 We are making known to the king that if this city is rebuilt and its walls are finished, you will have no control* of the region Beyond the River.”+
17 The king sent word to Reʹhum the chief government official and Shimʹshai the scribe and the rest of their colleagues who were dwelling in Sa·marʹi·a and the rest of the region Beyond the River:
“Greetings! And now 18 the official document that you sent us has been clearly read* before me. 19 By my order an investigation was made, and it was found that from long ago the city has had uprisings against kings, and rebellions and revolts have taken place there.+ 20 There were powerful kings over Jerusalem who ruled the whole region Beyond the River, and tax, tribute, and toll were paid to them. 21 Now issue an order for these men to stop work, so that the city may not be rebuilt until I issue an order. 22 Be careful not to neglect acting in this regard, so that the king’s interests are not harmed any further.”+
23 Now after the copy of the official document of King Ar·ta·xerxʹes had been read before Reʹhum and Shimʹshai the scribe and their colleagues, they quickly went to Jerusalem to the Jews and used force to stop them. 24 It was then that the work on the house of God, which was in Jerusalem, came to a halt; and it remained at a standstill until the second year of the reign of King Da·riʹus of Persia.+
5 .Then the prophets Hagʹgai+ and Zech·a·riʹah+ the grandson of Idʹdo+ prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and in Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel who was over them. 2 It was then that Ze·rubʹba·bel+ the son of She·alʹti·el and Jeshʹu·a+ the son of Je·hozʹa·dak started to rebuild the house of God,+ which was in Jerusalem; and the prophets of God were with them and supported them.+ 3 At that time Tatʹte·nai the governor of the region Beyond the River* and Sheʹthar-bozʹe·nai and their colleagues came to them and asked them: “Who issued an order to you to build this house and to finish this structure?”* 4 Then they asked them: “What are the names of the men who are working on this building?” 5 But God was watching over* the elders of the Jews,+ and they did not stop them until the report could be sent to Da·riʹus and an official document could be sent back concerning this.
6 Here is a copy of the letter that Tatʹte·nai the governor of the region Beyond the River and Sheʹthar-bozʹe·nai and his colleagues, the lesser governors of the region Beyond the River, sent to King Da·riʹus; 7 they sent the report to him, and this is what they wrote:
“To King Da·riʹus:
“All peace! 8 Let it be known to the king that we went to the province* of Judah to the house of the great God, and it is being built with large stones rolled into place, and timbers are being laid in the walls. The work is being eagerly done by the people and is making progress through their efforts. 9 Then we questioned their elders, asking them: ‘Who issued an order to you to build this house and to finish this structure?’*+ 10 We also asked them their names to inform you, so that we could write the names of the men who are taking the lead.
11 “This is the response they gave us: ‘We are the servants of the God of the heavens and the earth, and we are rebuilding the house that was built many years ago, which a great king of Israel built and finished.+ 12 However, because our fathers angered the God of the heavens,+ he gave them into the hand of King Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar+ of Babylon, the Chal·deʹan, who demolished this house+ and took the people into exile to Babylon.+ 13 Nevertheless, in the first year of King Cyrus of Babylon, King Cyrus issued an order to rebuild this house of God.+ 14 Moreover, King Cyrus took out of the temple of Babylon the gold and silver vessels of the house of God that Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem and had brought to the temple of Babylon.+ They were given to a man named Shesh·bazʹzar,*+ whom Cyrus made governor.+ 15 Cyrus said to him: “Take these vessels. Go, deposit them in the temple that is in Jerusalem, and let the house of God be rebuilt in its former place.”+ 16 Then this Shesh·bazʹzar came, and he laid the foundations of the house of God,+ which is in Jerusalem; and it has been under construction from then until now, but it has not been completed.’+
17 “Now if it seems good to the king, let an investigation be made in the royal treasury there in Babylon, to determine whether King Cyrus issued an order to rebuild that house of God in Jerusalem;+ and let the decision of the king concerning this be sent to us.”
6.It was then that King Da·riʹus issued an order, and they made an investigation in the archives* where the treasures were deposited in Babylon. 2 And a scroll was found in the citadel at Ec·batʹa·na, in the province* of Meʹdi·a, and the following memorandum was written on it:
3 “In the first year of King Cyrus, King Cyrus issued an order concerning the house of God in Jerusalem:+ ‘Let the house be rebuilt as the place where they are to offer sacrifices, and its foundations are to be set in place; its height is to be 60 cubits,* its width 60 cubits,+ 4 with three layers of large stones rolled into place and one layer of timbers;+ and let the expense be paid from the king’s house.+ 5 Also, let the gold and silver vessels of the house of God that Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar took out of the temple that was in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon+ be returned, so that they may be put in their place in the temple in Jerusalem and be deposited in the house of God.’+
6 “So now Tatʹte·nai the governor of the region Beyond the River,* Sheʹthar-bozʹe·nai, and your colleagues, the lesser governors of the region Beyond the River+—stay away from there. 7 Do not interfere with the work on that house of God. The governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews will rebuild that house of God in its former place. 8 Furthermore, I am issuing an order as to what you are to do for these elders of the Jews for rebuilding that house of God: From the royal treasury,+ from the tax collected in the region Beyond the River, the expenses are to be promptly given to these men to continue without interruption.+ 9 And whatever is needed—young bulls+ as well as rams+ and lambs+ for the burnt offerings to the God of heaven, wheat,+ salt,+ wine,+ and oil,+ just as the priests who are in Jerusalem say—is to be given them continually day by day without fail, 10 so that they may continually present offerings that please the God of the heavens and pray for the life of the king and his sons.+ 11 I have also issued an order that if anyone violates this decree, a timber will be pulled out of his house and he will be lifted up and fastened to it,* and his house will be turned into a public latrine* for this offense. 12 And may the God who has caused his name to reside there+ overthrow any king and people who lift a hand to violate this order and destroy that house of God, which is in Jerusalem. I, Da·riʹus, issue this order. Let it be done promptly.”
13 Then Tatʹte·nai the governor of the region Beyond the River, Sheʹthar-bozʹe·nai,+ and their colleagues promptly carried out everything that King Da·riʹus had ordered. 14 And the elders of the Jews continued building and making progress,+ urged on by the prophesying of Hagʹgai+ the prophet and Zech·a·riʹah+ the grandson of Idʹdo; they finished building it by the order of the God of Israel+ and by the order of Cyrus+ and Da·riʹus+ and King Ar·ta·xerxʹes+ of Persia. 15 They completed the house by the third day of the month of Aʹdar,* in the sixth year of the reign of King Da·riʹus.
16 Then the Israelites, the priests, the Levites,+ and the rest of the former exiles held the inauguration* of this house of God with joy. 17 And they presented for the inauguration of this house of God 100 bulls, 200 rams, 400 lambs, and as a sin offering for all Israel 12 male goats, corresponding to the number of the tribes of Israel.+ 18 And they appointed the priests in their groups and the Levites in their divisions for the service of God in Jerusalem,+ according to what is written in the book of Moses.+
19 And the former exiles held the Passover on the 14th day of the first month.+ 20 The priests and the Levites, without exception, had cleansed themselves,+ so they were all clean; they slaughtered the Passover sacrifice for all the former exiles, for their fellow priests, and for themselves. 21 Then the Israelites who had returned from the exile ate of it, along with everyone who had joined them and had separated himself from the uncleanness of the nations of the land to worship* Jehovah the God of Israel.+ 22 They also joyfully held the Festival of Unleavened Bread+ for seven days, for Jehovah caused them to rejoice and he had made the heart of the king of As·syrʹi·a favorable toward them,+ so that he supported them* in the work of the house of the true God, the God of Israel.
7.After these things, during the reign of King Ar·ta·xerxʹes+ of Persia, Ezʹra*+ returned. He was the son of Se·raiʹah,+ son of Az·a·riʹah, son of Hil·kiʹah,+ 2 son of Shalʹlum, son of Zaʹdok, son of A·hiʹtub, 3 son of Am·a·riʹah, son of Az·a·riʹah,+ son of Me·raʹioth, 4 son of Zer·a·hiʹah, son of Uzʹzi, son of Bukʹki, 5 son of Ab·i·shuʹa, son of Phinʹe·has,+ son of El·e·aʹzar,+ son of Aaron+ the chief priest. 6 This Ezʹra came up from Babylon. He was a copyist* who was well-versed in* the Law of Moses,+ which Jehovah the God of Israel had given. The king granted everything he requested, for the hand of Jehovah his God was upon him.
7 Some of the Israelites, the priests, the Levites,+ the singers,+ the gatekeepers,+ and the temple servants,*+ went up to Jerusalem in the seventh year of King Ar·ta·xerxʹes. 8 And Ezʹra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, in the seventh year of the king. 9 On the first day of the first month, he began the journey from Babylon, and he arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month, for the good hand of his God was upon him.+ 10 Ezʹra had prepared his heart* to consult the Law of Jehovah and to practice it,+ and to teach its regulations and judgments in Israel.+
11 This is a copy of the letter that King Ar·ta·xerxʹes gave to Ezʹra the priest and copyist,* an expert in the study* of the commandments of Jehovah and of his regulations to Israel:
12 * “Ar·ta·xerxʹes,+ the king of kings, to Ezʹra the priest, the copyist* of the Law of the God of the heavens: May you have perfect peace. And now 13 I have issued an order that everyone in my realm of the people of Israel and their priests and Levites who is willing to go with you to Jerusalem should go.+ 14 For you are sent by the king and his seven advisers to investigate whether the Law of your God, which is with you,* is being applied in Judah and Jerusalem, 15 and to take the silver and the gold that the king and his advisers have voluntarily given to the God of Israel, whose residence is in Jerusalem, 16 with all the silver and the gold that you receive* in all the province* of Babylon, along with the gift that the people and the priests voluntarily give to the house of their God, which is in Jerusalem.+ 17 And you are to buy promptly with this money bulls,+ rams,+ lambs,+ along with their grain offerings+ and their drink offerings,+ and you are to present them on the altar of the house of your God in Jerusalem.
18 “And whatever seems good to you and to your brothers to do, you may do with the rest of the silver and the gold, according to the will of your God. 19 And all the vessels that are given to you for the service of the house of your God, you are to deliver before God at Jerusalem.+ 20 And the rest of the necessities of the house of your God that you are required to give, you will give out of the royal treasury.+
21 “I, King Ar·ta·xerxʹes, have issued an order to all the treasurers in the region Beyond the River,* that everything that Ezʹra+ the priest, the copyist* of the Law of the God of the heavens, requests of you is to be done promptly, 22 up to 100 talents* of silver, 100 cor measures* of wheat, 100 bath measures* of wine,+ 100 bath measures of oil,+ and salt+ without limit. 23 Let everything that is ordered by the God of the heavens be done with zeal for the house of the God of the heavens,+ so that there may be no wrath against the king’s realm and his sons.+ 24 And you are further advised that it is not permitted to impose any tax, tribute,+ or toll on any of the priests and Levites, musicians,+ doorkeepers, temple servants,*+ and workers of this house of God.
25 “And you, Ezʹra, according to the wisdom that you possess from your God,* appoint magistrates and judges to judge all the people in the region Beyond the River, all those who know the laws of your God; and you should instruct anyone who does not know them.+ 26 And everyone who does not observe the Law of your God and the law of the king should have judgment executed on him promptly, whether it is death, banishment, a fine, or imprisonment.”
27 May Jehovah the God of our forefathers be praised, who put it into the heart of the king to beautify the house of Jehovah in Jerusalem!+ 28 And he has shown me loyal love before the king+ and his advisers+ and all the mighty princes of the king. So I took courage* because the hand of Jehovah my God was upon me, and I gathered out of Israel leading men* to go up with me.
8.Now these were the heads of their paternal houses and the genealogical enrollment of those who went up with me out of Babylon during the reign of King Ar·ta·xerxʹes:+ 2 of the sons of Phinʹe·has,+ Gerʹshom; of the sons of Ithʹa·mar,+ Daniel; of the sons of David, Hatʹtush; 3 of the sons of Shec·a·niʹah, of the sons of Paʹrosh, Zech·a·riʹah, and with him there was an enrollment of 150 males; 4 of the sons of Paʹhath-moʹab,+ Elʹie·ho-eʹnai the son of Zer·a·hiʹah, and with him 200 males; 5 of the sons of Zatʹtu,+ Shec·a·niʹah the son of Ja·ha·ziʹel, and with him 300 males; 6 of the sons of Aʹdin,+ Eʹbed the son of Jonʹa·than, and with him 50 males; 7 of the sons of Eʹlam,+ Je·shaʹiah the son of Ath·a·liʹah, and with him 70 males; 8 of the sons of Sheph·a·tiʹah,+ Zeb·a·diʹah the son of Miʹcha·el, and with him 80 males; 9 of the sons of Joʹab, O·ba·diʹah the son of Je·hiʹel, and with him 218 males; 10 of the sons of Baʹni, She·loʹmith the son of Jo·si·phiʹah, and with him 160 males; 11 of the sons of Beʹbai,+ Zech·a·riʹah the son of Beʹbai, and with him 28 males; 12 of the sons of Azʹgad,+ Jo·haʹnan the son of Hakʹka·tan, and with him 110 males; 13 of the sons of Ad·o·niʹkam,+ those who were the last, and these were their names: E·liphʹe·let, Je·iʹel, and She·maiʹah, and with them 60 males; 14 and of the sons of Bigʹvai,+ Uʹthai and Zabʹbud, and with them 70 males.
15 I assembled them at the river that comes to A·haʹva,+ and we camped there for three days. But when I examined the people and the priests, I did not find any of the Levites there. 16 So I sent for E·li·eʹzer, Arʹi·el, She·maiʹah, El·naʹthan, Jaʹrib, El·naʹthan, Nathan, Zech·a·riʹah, and Me·shulʹlam, who were leading men, and for Joiʹa·rib and El·naʹthan, who were instructors. 17 Then I gave them a command concerning Idʹdo the leader in the place called Ca·si·phiʹa. I told them to tell Idʹdo and his brothers, the temple servants* who were in Ca·si·phiʹa, to bring to us ministers for the house of our God. 18 Since the good hand of our God was upon us, they brought a discreet man from the sons of Mahʹli+ the grandson of Leʹvi the son of Israel, namely, She·re·biʹah,+ and his sons and his brothers, 18 men; 19 and Hash·a·biʹah, and with him Je·shaʹiah from the Me·rarʹites,+ his brothers and their sons, 20 men. 20 And there were 220 of the temple servants,* whom David and the princes gave to the service of the Levites, all of whom had been designated by name.
21 Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river A·haʹva, to humble ourselves before our God, to seek guidance from him for our journey, for us and for our children and for all our goods. 22 I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemies along the way, because we had said to the king: “The good hand of our God is over all those seeking him,+ but his strength and his anger are against all those abandoning him.”+ 23 So we fasted and made request of our God concerning this, and he listened to our entreaty.+
24 I now set apart 12 of the chiefs of the priests, namely, She·re·biʹah and Hash·a·biʹah,+ along with ten of their brothers. 25 Then I weighed out to them the silver and the gold and the utensils, the contribution that the king and his advisers and his princes and all the Israelites who were present there had made to the house of our God.+ 26 Thus I weighed out into their hand 650 talents* of silver, 100 silver utensils worth 2 talents, 100 talents of gold, 27 20 small gold bowls worth 1,000 darics,* and 2 utensils of fine copper, gleaming red, as desirable as gold.
28 Then I said to them: “You are holy to Jehovah,+ and the utensils are holy, and the silver and the gold are a voluntary offering to Jehovah the God of your forefathers. 29 Guard them carefully until you weigh them out before the chiefs of the priests and the Levites and the princes of the paternal houses of Israel in Jerusalem,+ in the chambers* of the house of Jehovah.” 30 And the priests and the Levites took the silver and the gold and the utensils that had been weighed out to them, in order to bring them to Jerusalem to the house of our God.
31 Finally we pulled away from the river A·haʹva+ on the 12th day of the first month+ to go to Jerusalem, and the hand of our God was over us, and he rescued us from the hand of the enemy and from ambush along the way. 32 So we came to Jerusalem+ and stayed there for three days. 33 And on the fourth day, we weighed out the silver and the gold and the utensils in the house of our God+ and handed them over to Merʹe·moth+ son of U·riʹjah the priest, and with him was El·e·aʹzar son of Phinʹe·has, and with them were the Levites Joʹza·bad+ son of Jeshʹu·a and No·a·diʹah son of Binʹnu·i.+ 34 Everything was numbered and weighed, and all the weight was recorded. 35 Those coming out of the captivity, the former exiles, presented burnt sacrifices to the God of Israel, 12 bulls+ for all Israel, 96 rams,+ 77 male lambs, and 12 male goats+ as a sin offering; all of this was a burnt offering to Jehovah.+
36 Then we gave the decrees of the king+ to the satraps* of the king and the governors of the region Beyond the River,*+ and they supported the people and the house of the true God.+
9.And as soon as these things had been done, the princes approached me and said: “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands and their detestable practices,+ those of the Caʹnaan·ites, the Hitʹtites, the Perʹiz·zites, the Jebʹu·sites, the Amʹmon·ites, the Moʹab·ites, the Egyptians,+ and the Amʹor·ites.+ 2 They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons.+ Now they, the holy offspring,*+ have become mingled with the peoples of the lands.+ The princes and the deputy rulers have been the foremost offenders in this unfaithfulness.”
3 Now as soon as I heard of this, I ripped apart my garment and my sleeveless coat and pulled out some of the hair of my head and my beard, and I sat down in shock. 4 Then everyone who had reverence for* the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of the unfaithfulness of the exiled people, while I was sitting in shock until the evening grain offering.+
5 And at the time of the evening grain offering,+ I stood up from my humiliation, with my garment and my sleeveless coat torn apart, and I got down on my knees and spread out my hands to Jehovah my God. 6 And I said: “O my God, I feel ashamed and embarrassed to raise my face to you, O my God, for our errors have multiplied over our heads and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens.+ 7 From the days of our forefathers until this day our guilt has been great;+ and because of our errors, we, our kings, and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword,+ to captivity,+ to plunder,+ and to disgrace, as is the case today.+ 8 But now for a brief moment, favor has come from Jehovah our God by letting a remnant escape and by giving us a secure position* in his holy place,+ to make our eyes shine, O our God, and to revive us a little in our slavery. 9 For although we are slaves,+ our God has not abandoned us in our slavery; but he has extended his loyal love toward us before the kings of Persia,+ to revive us so as to raise up the house of our God+ and to restore its ruins and to give us a stone wall* in Judah and in Jerusalem.
10 “But now what can we say, O our God, after this? For we have left your commandments, 11 which you gave us through your servants the prophets, saying: ‘The land that you are going in to take possession of is an impure land because of the impurity of the peoples of the lands, because of their detestable practices with which they have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness.+ 12 Therefore, do not give your daughters to their sons, neither accept their daughters for your sons;+ and you must never seek their peace and their prosperity,+ so that you may grow strong and eat the good of the land and take possession of it for your sons forever.’ 13 And after all that has come upon us for our bad deeds and our great guilt—for you, O our God, have not dealt with us according to our error,+ and you have allowed those of us here to escape+— 14 are we to break your commandments again and form marriage alliances* with the peoples who practice these detestable things?+ Would you not become so angry with us that you would completely destroy us, leaving no remnant or survivor? 15 O Jehovah the God of Israel, you are righteous,+ for we have survived as a remnant to this day. Here we are before you in our guilt, for it is impossible to stand before you because of this.”+
10.While Ezʹra was praying+ and making confession, weeping and lying prostrate before the house of the true God, a large crowd of men, women, and children of Israel gathered around him, for the people were weeping profusely. 2 Then Shec·a·niʹah the son of Je·hiʹel+ of the sons of Eʹlam+ said to Ezʹra: “We have acted unfaithfully against our God by marrying* foreign women from the peoples of the land.+ Despite this, there is still hope for Israel. 3 Now let us make a covenant with our God+ to send away all the wives and those born from them, in harmony with the direction of Jehovah and of those who have reverence for* the commandment of our God.+ Let us act according to the Law. 4 Get up, for this matter is your responsibility, and we are with you. Be strong and take action.”
5 At that Ezʹra rose and had the chiefs of the priests, the Levites, and all Israel take an oath to do what had been said.+ So they took an oath. 6 Ezʹra now got up from before the house of the true God and went to the chamber* of Je·ho·haʹnan the son of E·liʹa·shib. Although he went there, he ate no food and drank no water, for he was in mourning because of the unfaithfulness of the exiled people.+
7 Then they made a proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem that all the former exiles gather together at Jerusalem; 8 and according to the decision of the princes and the elders, anyone who did not come within three days’ time would have all his goods confiscated,* and he would be banished from the congregation of the exiled people.+ 9 So all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered together at Jerusalem within three days, that is, in the ninth month, on the 20th day of the month. All the people were sitting in a courtyard of the house of the true God, shivering because of the matter at hand and because of the heavy rain.
10 Then Ezʹra the priest rose and said to them: “You have acted unfaithfully by marrying foreign women,+ and so you have added to the guilt of Israel. 11 Now make confession to Jehovah the God of your forefathers and do his will. Separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from these foreign wives.”+ 12 To this the whole congregation answered with a loud voice: “It is our duty to do exactly as you say. 13 However, there are many people, and it is the rainy season. It is not possible to stand outside, and the matter will not take just one or two days, for we have rebelled extensively in this matter. 14 So, please, let our princes represent the entire congregation;+ and let all those in our cities who have married foreign women come at an appointed time, along with the elders and judges of each city, until we turn back the burning anger of our God from us concerning this matter.”
15 However, Jonʹa·than the son of Asʹa·hel and Jah·zeiʹah the son of Tikʹvah objected to this, and the Levites Me·shulʹlam and Shabʹbe·thai+ supported them. 16 But the former exiles did what was agreed on; and Ezʹra the priest and the family heads of their paternal houses, all designated by name, convened separately on the first day of the tenth month to look into the matter; 17 and by the first day of the first month they finished dealing with all the men who had married foreign women. 18 And it was discovered that some of the sons of the priests had married foreign women:+ of the sons of Jeshʹu·a+ the son of Je·hozʹa·dak and his brothers, Ma·a·seiʹah, E·li·eʹzer, Jaʹrib, and Ged·a·liʹah. 19 But they promised* to send their wives away, and since they were guilty, they would offer a ram of the flock for their guilt.+
20 Of the sons of Imʹmer,+ there were Ha·naʹni and Zeb·a·diʹah; 21 and of the sons of Haʹrim,+ Ma·a·seiʹah, E·liʹjah, She·maiʹah, Je·hiʹel, and Uz·ziʹah; 22 and of the sons of Pashʹhur,+ Eli·o·eʹnai, Ma·a·seiʹah, Ishʹma·el, Ne·thanʹel, Joʹza·bad and El·e·aʹsah. 23 And of the Levites, there were Joʹza·bad, Shimʹe·i, Ke·laiʹah (that is, Ke·liʹta), Peth·a·hiʹah, Judah, and E·li·eʹzer; 24 and of the singers, E·liʹa·shib; and of the gatekeepers, Shalʹlum, Teʹlem, and Uʹri.
25 And of Israel, of the sons of Paʹrosh,+ there were Ra·miʹah, Iz·ziʹah, Mal·chiʹjah, Mijʹa·min, El·e·aʹzar, Mal·chiʹjah, and Be·naiʹah; 26 and of the sons of Eʹlam,+ Mat·ta·niʹah, Zech·a·riʹah, Je·hiʹel,+ Abʹdi, Jerʹe·moth, and E·liʹjah; 27 and of the sons of Zatʹtu,+ Eli·o·eʹnai, E·liʹa·shib, Mat·ta·niʹah, Jerʹe·moth, Zaʹbad, and A·ziʹza; 28 and of the sons of Beʹbai,+ Je·ho·haʹnan, Han·a·niʹah, Zabʹbai, and Athʹlai; 29 and of the sons of Baʹni, Me·shulʹlam, Malʹluch, A·daiʹah, Jaʹshub, Sheʹal, and Jerʹe·moth; 30 and of the sons of Paʹhath-moʹab,+ Adʹna, Cheʹlal, Be·naiʹah, Ma·a·seiʹah, Mat·ta·niʹah, Bezʹal·el, Binʹnu·i, and Ma·nasʹseh; 31 and of the sons of Haʹrim,+ E·li·eʹzer, Is·shiʹjah, Mal·chiʹjah,+ She·maiʹah, Shimʹe·on, 32 Benjamin, Malʹluch, and Shem·a·riʹah; 33 of the sons of Haʹshum,+ Mat·teʹnai, Matʹtat·tah, Zaʹbad, E·liphʹe·let, Jerʹe·mai, Ma·nasʹseh, and Shimʹe·i; 34 of the sons of Baʹni, Ma·a·daʹi, Amʹram, Uʹel, 35 Be·naiʹah, Be·deiʹah, Chelʹu·hi, 36 Va·niʹah, Merʹe·moth, E·liʹa·shib, 37 Mat·ta·niʹah, Mat·teʹnai, and Jaʹa·su; 38 and of the sons of Binʹnu·i, Shimʹe·i, 39 Shel·e·miʹah, Nathan, A·daiʹah, 40 Mach·nadʹe·bai, Shaʹshai, Shaʹrai, 41 Azʹar·el, Shel·e·miʹah, Shem·a·riʹah, 42 Shalʹlum, Am·a·riʹah, and Joseph; 43 and of the sons of Neʹbo, Je·iʹel, Mat·ti·thiʹah, Zaʹbad, Ze·biʹna, Jadʹdai, Joel, and Be·naiʹah. 44 All of these had taken foreign wives,+ and they sent their wives away, along with their sons.+
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