Up to the time when when rational human beings who have mastered their languages and were in a better position to probe deeper into their languages and the contents left behind by their ancestors, mythologies command the attention of most if not all men. Searching for the meaning of life and very unsure and uncomfortable with life and death in their existential challenges, human beings found a great deal of support and satisfaction in their mythologies.

With the discovery of metaphysical means of address sing the ontological, teleological and other aspects of the body of knowledge known to the Greeks as Philosophy, human beings found in religion the supreme power of explanation. Breaking firmly away from mythologies and metaphysics as known to the Greeks, the ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians and other centers of civilizations, the Hebrew people who came out of Egyptian hegemony put forth the most radical and transforming legacy to humankind.

This Hebrew formulation of the human condition made it categorically clear that we humans are not marooned here below the sublunary world and that there is a destiny beyond the grave and our ancestors came to this world from a higher place where the real Creator of all things lived. This radical departure from the gods of the ancient world has been identified and celebrated by many historians.

An alien graduate student visiting this planet from another galaxy would be struck by the similarities of views about human origins and the destiny of Man in the universe.
Central to these peoples now known to American and other Western media as the Abraham's is the belief by Jews, Christians and Muslims that Adam and Eve were the common progeny of all of us.

Their unanimity is certainly not embraced by Buddhists, Hindus and peoples of the ancient world. Even the traditional Africans and Native peoples of the world did not share this myth of origins. Of course the Abraham's do not see this position as a mythical notion. Rather, to them this is a Divine fact revealed to the grand patriarchs and prophets of old immortalized in their respective scriptures. The centrality of sin and its consequences in both the death of the human being and his or her resurrection are critical in these belief systems.

Due to this effective chain of beliefs that define who we are and where we are going after this life, Christians found in Jesus the most critical being that ever walked this earth. Revolving around the nature of Christ and his role in the salvation of humankind, it is dangerous and unwise for any Christian or non-Christians to confuse and counter pose the mythological and the metaphysical knowledge of Christians with the scientific demands of their daily life.

Suggesting such a question raises a number of issues that are critical to the meaning in life of a Christian. By affirming the scientific claims of a Jesus DNA, a non-Christian examiner is most likely conflating science and metaphysics. If Jesus according to Christian claim was God himself in human flesh through incarnation, then his DNA cannot be registered scientifically. What is reported as his human remains are inconclusive based on insufficient evidence. Such is a likely response from a devoted Christians.

Writing from an Islamic perspective, one is limited by the Quranic text. Though Muslims believe in the miraculous birth of Jesus, and though Muslims also share with Christians the belief that Jesus was lifted from this earth at the time of the crucifixion as readers of the Hebrew Bible learned about Elijah's heavenly flight, the Muslims do part company with their Christian neighbors when it comes to the question of his resurrection from Crucifixion.

As far of the Quran is concerned, someone who resembled Jesus was put to the cross. This radical departure from the dominant Christian position as immortalized by the Council of Nicea and the Council of Chalcidon has separated Muslims from Christians from the very beginning of Islam in Arabia. It is indeed on this account that John of Damascus in his treatise against Islam that he saw this religion as the 101st heresy of Christianity.

Anyone who suggests to modern-day Christian believers that DNA has positively identified the remains of Jesus would be engaged in what most if not all Christians would call the greatest subversion of all heresies in the name of science. By affirming this, one goes to the warning of Paul. Without crucifixion, there is no Christianity.

Muslim writers and leaders in our age must be very careful in dealing with these announcements from the scientific community. Although many Muslims, including Muamar Qaddafi of Libya and his recent statement about the Muslim view of Jesus death and resurrection, have argued that even when science affirms Jesus' DNA categorically, their faith in his miraculous birth and upliftment to heaven is protected since the Quran verse says that someone else, not him, suffered the humiliation of Crucifixion.

Real or imagined, this Muslim view is the one-trillion-light-years historical and metaphysical position serving as the equator between the two Abrahamic faiths. The gap is even wider with Judaism and the rest of the World religions.

The DNA claim is part of the larger question of evolution versus creationism or intelligent design. The debate has not been resolved in the West.The evolutionist are banking heavily on the achievements of science in the province of DNA research. The effectiveness of DNA in the world of criminality has given hope to many in the scientific community that the mysteries of the past could be resolved through science.

So long as humans lived in this world with mythological, metaphysical and scientific compartments, this state of affairs will remain unchanged. Relics of these competing paradigms are in our daily languages. Muslims, Jews and others in the Anglo-Saxon world still consciously or unconsciously use the term, "keep your fingers crossed." Ali A.
Mazrui, a distinguished African Muslim writing about the Sociology of the English Language many years ago, reminded English-speaking Africans about this fact.

Similarly, remnants of the pre-Christian European thought still reverberate in the firmaments of all of us when we say, "knock on word." Here we appeal to our ancestors in pre-Christian times whom we thought lived on trees. Christianity did not totally remove this view from our mental states.