Genetic characterization of the body attributed to the evangelist Luke

doi:10.1073/pnas.211540498

Genetic characterization of the body attributed to the evangelist Luke

^*Department of Biology, University of Ferrara, Via Borsari 46, 44100 Ferrara, Italy; ^†Institute of Anthropology, University of Florence, 50125 Florence, Italy; ^‡Genetics and Biometry Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, University of Geneva, 1227 Geneva, Switzerland; ^§Department of Biology, University of Rome 2, Tor Vergata, 00133 Rome, Italy; ^¶Department of Biology, University of Calabria, 87030 Arcavacata di Rende, Italy; and ^‖Institute of Pathological Anatomy, University of Padua, 35121 Padua, Italy

Edited by Robert R. Sokal, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY, and approved July 24, 2001 (received for review November 13, 2000)

Abstract

Historical sources indicate that the evangelist Luke was born in Syria, died in Greece, and then his body was transferred to Constantinople, and from there to Padua, Italy. To understand whether there is any biological evidence supporting a Syrian origin of the Padua body traditionally attributed to Luke, or a replacement in Greece or Turkey, the mtDNA was extracted from two teeth and its control region was cloned and typed. The sequence determined in multiple clones is an uncommon variant of a set of alleles that are common in the Mediterranean region. We also collected and typed modern samples from Syria and Greece. By comparison with these population samples, and with samples from Anatolia that were already available in the literature, we could reject the hypothesis that the body belonged to a Greek, rather than a Syrian, individual. However, the probability of an origin in the area of modern Turkey was only insignificantly lower than the probability of a Syrian origin. The genetic evidence is therefore compatible with the possibility that the body comes from Syria, but also with its replacement in Constantinople.

Footnotes

↵ ** To whom reprint requests should be addressed. E-mail: bjg{at}unife.it.
This paper was submitted directly (Track II) to the PNAS office.
Data deposition: The sequences reported in this paper have been deposited in the GenBank database (accession nos. AY055244–AY055341).
Abbreviations:

PB,

Padua body;

A.D.,

anno Domini