Does the DNA of Lemba men match Jewish, Middle Eastern, or Bantu groups?

"The Lemba of South Africa , a Bantu speaking people whose culture forbids the consumption of pork and requires male circumcision, has a high frequency of the Middle Eastern Y-chromosome HgJ-12f2a (25%), a potentially SEA Y, Hg-K(xPQR) (32%) and a Bantu Y, E-PN1 (30%) (similar to E-M2)."

"The study by Thomas et al. (2000) revealed that a substantial number of Lemba men carry a particular haplotype of the Y-chromosome which is known as the Cohen modal haplotype (CMH), as well as a haplogroup of Y-DNA Haplogroup J which is found in some Jews, as well as in other populations which live across the Middle East and Arabia."

"Most genetic studies of Ashkenazi Jews conclude that the male lines were from the Middle East."

"There are indications of genetic connections with the Hadramaut, i.e., the Lemba Y-chromosomes and Hadramaut Y-chromosomes showed overlap."

"The genetic study found that 50% of the males in the Buba clan had the Cohen marker, a proportion which is higher than that which is found in the general Jewish population."

"as the two groups share ancestors in the Middle East about 2500 years ago."

"It has been suggested by Tudor Parfitt and Yulia Egorova that their Jewish ancestors probably came along with general Semitic incursions into East Africa from South Arabia, and then moved slowly south through the area of Great Zimbabwe."

"the Lemba are paternally most closely related to Semitic -speaking populations in Western Asia (Haplogroup J = 51.7%); as well as Central Asians and South Asians ( LT , K , R , F = 24.5%); with minor contributions from Bantu speaking males."

"admixture is considerably higher than previous estimates by studies that used the Y chromosome"

"Among Jews, the CMH marker is most prevalent in Kohanim , or hereditary priests."

"In 2000 Thomas, Parfitt and colleagues went further, typing 399 Y chromosomes across Lemba, Bantu, Yemeni Hadramaut, Yemeni Sena, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish samples."

"In 1996 Spurdle and Jenkins found that a little over half of Lemba Y chromosomes fell into types shared with Semitic-speaking populations rather than with their Bantu-speaking neighbours."

"The Buba clan within the Lemba carries a high frequency of the Cohen Modal Haplotype. This marker appears more often in their group than in the general Jewish population."

"Most of the Cohen modal haplotypes that we observe are carried by individuals of the Buba clan which, in Lemba oral tradition, had a leadership role in bringing the Lemba out of Israel."

"Early studies found that more than half of the paternal lineages in Lemba men belonged to types seen in Semitic-speaking populations rather than in nearby Bantu-speaking neighbors."

"The Lemba, a Bantu-speaking group in southern Africa, claim Jewish ancestry through oral tradition."

"A later study of South African and Zimbabwean Lemba men still found a strong non-African paternal signal, yet it could not confirm a Jewish origin for that signal."

"its diversity dates to roughly 3,200 years ago with wide error bars."

"which analysed 399 Y chromosomes for 6 microsatellites and 6 biallelic markers in 6 populations including the Lemba, Bantu, Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews"

"The study discovered that Lemba Y chromosomes were divided into Semitic and Bantu clades"

"The non-African component in the Lemba and Remba was estimated to be 73.7% and 79.6%, respectively."

"the allegedly most senior and allegedly most important for ritual purposes Lemba clan, the Buba, carried the Cohen Modal Haplotype at a high frequency"

"one step away from the paraphyletic modal haplotype of"

"and not at all in the Lemba"

"Such markers were found and indicated that there was a general Semitic contribution to the Lemba gene pool; however it was not possible to say whether this contribution could be Jewish"