Patriarchial Blessing Question For You

[nosmelone]

I was speaking with a friend and he was stating that there is a difference between the wording commonly found most patriarchal blessings when naming the lineage that we come through.  Is there a difference in the meaning of the phrase "from the loins of" and "from the lineage of"?  Is one a more direct relation, such as a direct descendant as compared to through adoption?

[bluebell]

I've never heard that before. What was his source for that idea?

[ksfisher]

As they are used they are synonyms.  No difference. 

[nosmelone]

He was quoting this January of 1991 Ensign article titled, "Of The House of Israel" by Daniel Ludlow

 

"The basic meaning of lineage is “descent in a line from a common progenitor.” Thus, in a patriarchal blessing, lineage is being declared (from Abraham, or Israel, or Ephraim, etc.) when terms indicating direct descent are used, such as “son of,” “daughter of,” “seed of,” “blood of,” “descendant of,” or “from the loins of.”

 

This quote seems very vague to me and seems to just be saying that they are synonyms. 

[bluebell]

That quote seems to be using both terms synonymously.

[KevinG]

I wondered about this so I asked my patriarch prior to the blessing.  I was "adopted" according to mine.  Your mileage may vary.

[nosmelone]

I wondered about this so I asked my patriarch prior to the blessing.  I was "adopted" according to mine.  Your mileage may vary.

That is very interesting,  I was reading the same article I quoted above and in it is the following quote about the vast majority seem to have "almost without exception"  mixed blood with Gentile and with the blood of Abraham.  You must be one of the reasons they put the "almost" in there.

 

President Joseph Fielding Smith made it clear that a majority of the members of the Church today are descendants of Israel and thus of Abraham:

 

“The Lord said he would scatter Israel among the Gentile nations, and by doing so he would bless the Gentile nations with the blood of Abraham. Today we are preaching the gospel in the world and we are gathering out, according to the revelations given to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets, the scattered sheep of the House of Israel. These scattered sheep are coming forth mixed with Gentile blood from their Gentile forefathers. Under all the circumstances it is very possible that the majority, almost without exception, of those who come into the Church in this dispensation have the blood of two or more of the tribes of Israel as well as the blood of the Gentiles.” (Answers to Gospel Questions, 5 vols., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1957–66, 3:63.)

[mfbukowski]

He was quoting this January of 1991 Ensign article titled, "Of The House of Israel" by Daniel Ludlow

 

"The basic meaning of lineage is “descent in a line from a common progenitor.” Thus, in a patriarchal blessing, lineage is being declared (from Abraham, or Israel, or Ephraim, etc.) when terms indicating direct descent are used, such as “son of,” “daughter of,” “seed of,” “blood of,” “descendant of,” or “from the loins of.”

 

This quote seems very vague to me and seems to just be saying that they are synonyms. 

Since this was your question, and since this is your feeling on it, I would go with what the spirit is telling you, personally, because I think no one here knows any more about this.

 

We are all entitled to personal revelation when interpreting our own patriarchal blessings, and I would put that ahead of what anyone else tells you.  The blessing is between you and God and in my opinion is like an answer to prayer.  No one else can tell you what God wants you to know, that is for you alone.

[mfbukowski]

That is very interesting,  I was reading the same article I quoted above and in it is the following quote about the vast majority seem to have "almost without exception"  mixed blood with Gentile and with the blood of Abraham.  You must be one of the reasons they put the "almost" in there.

 

President Joseph Fielding Smith made it clear that a majority of the members of the Church today are descendants of Israel and thus of Abraham:

 

“The Lord said he would scatter Israel among the Gentile nations, and by doing so he would bless the Gentile nations with the blood of Abraham. Today we are preaching the gospel in the world and we are gathering out, according to the revelations given to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets, the scattered sheep of the House of Israel. These scattered sheep are coming forth mixed with Gentile blood from their Gentile forefathers. Under all the circumstances it is very possible that the majority, almost without exception, of those who come into the Church in this dispensation have the blood of two or more of the tribes of Israel as well as the blood of the Gentiles.” (Answers to Gospel Questions, 5 vols., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1957–66, 3:63.)

When you consider the number of ancestors any of us have between our generation and those of the patriarchs, I think it is very likely that all of us have some ancestor from every possible tribe of Israel. 

 

 

A new study has confirmed that not only are all people of European ancestry related to Charlemagne, but we are all related to each other, with only going back 1000 years.

“A genetic survey concludes that all Europeans living today are related to the same set of ancestors who lived 1,000 years ago. And you wouldn’t have to go back much further to find that everyone in the world is related to each other.

“We find it remarkable because it’s counterintuitive to us,” Graham Coop, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Davis, told NBC News. “But it’s not totally unexpected, based on genetic analysis.”

 

http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/were-all-descended-from-charlemagne-and-related-to-each-other/

 

It's a question of which lines from which ancestors have continued to today.  Family lines die out over several thousand years, typically, so only a few lines continue for hundreds or thousands of years.

 

The bottom line for me is that I would not worry about it.

 

Patriarchal blessings are for spiritual contemplation and understanding, and not about genealogy.

Edited February 17, 2015 by mfbukowski

[cinepro]

I was speaking with a friend and he was stating that there is a difference between the wording commonly found most patriarchal blessings when naming the lineage that we come through.  Is there a difference in the meaning of the phrase "from the loins of" and "from the lineage of"?  Is one a more direct relation, such as a direct descendant as compared to through adoption?

I suspect different Patriarchs have a preference for one phrase over the other, and that is the biggest factor in the usage.  I don't think Patriarchs are getting specific revelation that certain people have a spiritually meaningless and genetically insignificant (and probably impossible) "direct" lineage to an original house of Israel. 

 

In other words, if any of us are "directly" related to a House of Israel, then we're most likely all "directly" related to all twelve of them.

 

From the link above:

 

This constant churning of people makes it possible to apply [statistician Joseph] Chang's analysis to the world as a whole. For example, almost everyone in the New World must be descended from English royalty --even people of predominantly African or Native American ancestry, because of the long history of intermarriage in the Americas. Similarly, everyone of European ancestry must descend from Muhammad. The line of descent for which records exist is through the daughter of the emir of Seville, who is reported to have converted from Islam to Catholicism in about 1200. But many other, unrecorded descents must also exist.

Chang's model has even more dramatic implications. Because people are always migrating from continent to continent, networks of descent quickly interconnect. This means that the most recent common ancestor of all 6 billion people on Earth today probably lived just a couple of thousand years ago. And not long before that, the majority of the people on the planet were the direct ancestors of everyone alive today. Confucius, Nefertiti, and just about any other ancient historical figure who was even moderately prolific must today be counted among everyone's ancestors.

Toward the end of our conversation, Humphrys pointed out something I hadn't considered. The same process works going forward in time; in essence, everyone of us who has children and whose line does not go extinct is suspended at the center of an immense genetic hourglass. Just as we are descended from most of the people alive on the planet a few thousand years ago, several thousand years hence, each of us will be an ancestor of the entire human race -- or of no one at all.

The dense interconnectedness of the human family might seem to take some of the thrill out of genealogical research. Sure, I was able to show in the Genealogical Office that my Siggins ancestors are descended from the fourteenth-century Syggens of County Wexford; but I'm also descended from most of the other people who lived in Ireland in the fourteenth century. Humphrys took issue with my disillusionment. It's true that everyone's roots go back to the same family tree, he said. But each path to our common past is different, and reconstructing that path, using whatever records are available, is its own reward. "You can ask whether everyone in the Western world is descended from Charlemagne, and the answer is yes, we're all descended from Charlemagne. But can you prove it? That's the game of genealogy."

Edited February 17, 2015 by cinepro