Is this a suitable line of family history in FS-FT?

LegacyUser

Stewart Millar said: I noted some new connections to the family history of my wife's ancestry . . . picking up from the early 1700s back to a direct ancestor . . .

Jesus Christ
6 April 0001 – 4 April 0034 • L1B1-135 ​

I have always (?) been under the impression that there was some bar or check on pre 1500 entries . . . seemingly not the case.

Should I be impressed by this link . . . or prone to ridicule?

LegacyUser

MaryAnne Ashton said: Someone really overstepped their bounds here! You are correct on the pre-1500 check.

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A van Helsdingen said: Aside from the descendants of Confucius, my understanding is that no proven line of descent from antiquity to the modern day exists.

Furthermore, no reliable source ascribes children or descendants to Jesus Christ.

LegacyUser

Paul said: A shame that FamilySearch continues to encourage ridicule by allowing material such as this to remain in the Family Tree program:



(See also https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...)

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: The pre-1500 block you are remembering has only to do with submitting names for temple ordinances. There is no block for just working in Family Tree.

LegacyUser

Paul said: It's not just this page I'm referring to but Adam's "tree". Without any named wife, it shows he had a son Abel who, in turn, had a son Adam - who married a woman called Eve!

Doesn't FamilySearch have a strange attitude towards read-only records? I understand the records / ids of LDS Church leaders are locked, so why not lock (or preferably delete) these - so nobody can extend a very poor joke in what is supposed to be a serious enterprise?

If FS management is not willing to commit any resources to locking or removing records of mythical kings & queens and cartoon characters, I really fear for the future of Family Tree. At the moment, I'm having doubts about making further, carefully researched contributions to FT, when so much of the tree seems to be pure fantasy.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: And guess what!? The original record was created from a GEDCOM file!



There is just SO MUCH quality information that we continue to inherit through the illustrious GEDCOM import mechanism!

(there are also many merges involved so it's not like it was a unique idea)

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: You mean "when so much of the tree is a playground for children..."

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Don M Thomas said: Paul Wrightson has worked a lot in this "Feedback" forum. He is not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints but has only stated good about the FamilySearch "Family Tree." I have never read where he stated anything bad about the "Family Tree."

If he, Paul Wrightson, is to the point that he is having future doubts about his contributions to the "Family Tree," then the Elders of FamilySearch and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints need to start looking into his REASON for his doubts.

The FamilySearch "Family Tree" has, and allows, LOCKED records. Why not extended this locking of the database in certain areas of the "Family Tree," and establish a panel of commissioners to review "pure fantasy" and any ancestry before the 1500's without sources.

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: Paul Wrightson has worked a lot in this "Feedback" forum. He is not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints but has only stated good about the FamilySearch "Family Tree." I have never read where he stated anything bad about the "Family Tree."

If he, Paul Wrightson, is to the point that he is having future doubts about his contributions to the "Family Tree," then the Elders of FamilySearch and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints need to start looking into his REASON for his doubts.

The FamilySearch "Family Tree" has, and allows, LOCKED records. Why not extended this locking of the database in certain areas of the "Family Tree," and establish a panel of commissioners to review "pure fantasy" and any ancestry before the 1500's without sources.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: I think FS needs to consider whether Biblical figures should be in the FSFT at all. Regardless of our views on religion and Biblical historicity, we can all agree that no modern individual has a proven line of descent from a Biblical figure. The Biblical genealogies would therefore be detached from the rest of the tree. Furthermore, for the pre-David genealogies the large date difference between event and writing of the Bible means that according to the standard rules of analyzing sources we would have to consider that the Bible as a sole source is insufficient to make confident genealogical conclusions. I therefore feel that any Biblical genealogies on the FSFT from Adam to David should be removed straight away, and there needs to be consideration given to removing the genealogies of the Kings of Israel and Judah and the Genealogy of Jesus given that no modern individual is going to have a line of descent from those people.

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Tom Huber said: I fully agree.

By the way, there were some missionaries dedicated to looking for bad entries in the system about a decade or so ago. These appear to have come into the system about the time that the old newFamilySearch tree and FamilySearch Family Tree were being disconnected.

This is an issue that needs resolution and Biblical characters (all of them) removed from the tree.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Yet another reason to stop the madness with the GEDCOM uploads. Stop at the upload and do not provide a compare/add/change path as this points out.

I've added a link to this discussion in the https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea... discussion asking for someone from FamilySearch to justify allowing GEDCOM data to feed Family Tree.

LegacyUser

Stephanie Spencer Booth said: My neighbor ran across one of these entries for Jesus in his pedigree and brought it to my attention. I used the "report abuse" feature and got a response from a support missionary that they don't delete these records BUT the record disappeared a few days later. I would give it a try on this one.
By the way, someone who saw that entry said all of the info that was there was from a Dan Brown book, PURE FICTION.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Good points, Stephanie. No profile is ever fully deleted, but it is placed in a "hidden" state, which means that it can't be found with any search routines. If you knew the PID for the record, you could call it up as a "deleted" record, and even restore it.

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Lord Bruce said: What so I found my tree to King David tagged every mom and dad along the way and doing my research and it looks good, you say the bible we can't believe it it is not real? So Jesus Christ is not real, what about the Brethren s also the Freemasonic rule of America, my Grandfather, you want to remove our history and not know, this is sad, knowledge is true, was in here found my links and looked up the kids of kids everything works out sup, and you can't delete history

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: There are no previously proven lineages back to David. Therefore Biblical characters should not be included in the FSFT because they have no known descendants. Whether the Bible is a good genealogical source is an entirely different matter.

If you believe you have found a lineage to David, then we'd be VERY interested in seeing it- could you quote the ID numbers of the people involved? You are the first person to trace your ancestry to any Biblical character.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The problem is that in comparing the two genealogies that are found in the New Testament, they are not consistent.

The Bible that we have today is the result of copies of copies of copies of... you get the idea. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls were copies and the current KJV Old Testament is the Hebrew Masoretic text translated into English. It was an attempt to put together an authoritative O.T. text somewhere toward the end of the first millenia of the common era (A.D.). Of course, the moment a copy was made, another error crept into the text.

Until the printing press was used to produce the religious text, there were no consistent editions available; virtually everything was copied by hand, which introduced errors.

It isn't a matter of belief, but of acceptable text. The bigger problem is just getting back to the period of Rome's occupation of the middle east, which is where we pick up Biblical text. Virtually everything was copied by hand and the ravages of time destroyed any complete original text long ago.

So, while some lines do track back with pretty good consistency to the time of Charlemagne, If you can determine that you are a descendant of Charlemagne, there is some son of's back to about the 6th century, but the dates are uncertain.

Pretty much all European lines get lost in mythology and unsourced traditions. Archeological research hasn't been able to give us much of anything, even going back that far.

Now, if you tie into Eastern Asia, they have records that go back a number of centuries before the common era. As long as the records are intact, they tend to be pretty trustworthy. There was a lot more care in recording the ancestors in Eastern Asia than in Europe and there isn't the problem of the old records crumbling into dust.

The bottom line is that there isn't a lot of supporting documentation that is trustworthy and accepted by scholars to trace ancestry back to the beginning of the common era. Now if we still had the library at Alexandria, there might be some hope, but unfortunately, it was destroyed . . . several times.

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Tom Huber said: By the way, it isn't unusual for people to claim their ancestral line goes back to Adam. I have at least one of them in the massive tree, but I simply do not trust it. There are plenty of problems with reliable records just getting back to medieval times, much less getting through them.

It doesn't help matters that a lot of people wanted to prove their ancestry and so got inventive and published books. A good example of a fraudulent genealogist is Gustave Anjou who bilked a lot of people (Americans) out of their money during the early part of the 20th century. The popularity of medieval tournaments led to the fabrication of genealogies and the requirement of the RC Church that no marriages could take place between people who had common ancestors some 9 generations back caused even more problems.

So we move from historical records like those we find in FamilySearch to records that credible scholars support and have validated to be accurate.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: "the requirement of the RC Church that no marriages could take place between people who had common ancestors some 9 generations back caused even more problems"

It was never 9 generations, at most it was 7 during Medieval times. I doubt it was well enforced given most people were illiterate, no baptisms/marriages/burials were recorded and most people in a village would have been related. I don't see how it would have led to fabricated genealogies. The modern Catholic Canon Law is that 1st cousin marriages and closer are banned, but 1st cousins can receive a dispensation to marry

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: There are no confirmed lineages going back to antiquity.

While large parts of the family trees you have presented are accurate, there will be at least one error that "breaks the chain".

For example, I don't believe there is evidence to link Isaiah to Jehoash King of Judah.

LegacyUser

Brett said: Lord Bruce Ross Myers

Just enjoy your lineage.

I had once had one such lineage ...
I originally found it in the days of "New.FamilySearch".
It successfully 'ported' from there to "Family Tree".
But, it was then decimated and destroyed by various Users/Patrons.
Many of then inexperienced.
It was so badly 'mangled' it could not even be 'resurrected' by "FamilySearch".

Best to ignore; and, not engage.

Brett

.

LegacyUser

David Newton said: Both those "lineages" are pure fantasy at some point. The fact that you won't accept that truth says a great deal. In that first set of "relationships" for example the first thing I would be suspicious about is the line purportedly back to the English royal family. Those lines certainly exist but there are a great many people who say they have such lines but they are not properly researched.

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Carolyn Wheeler said: As so many of you have said above, the discussion here is not about lines. It’s about sources - valid, credible, certified sources. It all boils down to no source = no line.

LegacyUser

Stewart Millar said: To Lord Bruce Ross Myers . . .

I did have a look at the first line you listed (on FSFT) - going back to King David . . . . . .

At several points in the line . . . the line branches to a second wife of a direct line or a husband/wife of a sibling of the direct line (or line of a second wife) . . . which, in effect means, that you personaly are not releated to King David . . . irrespective of the plausability of any sources used or not used.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: FYI: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Community_Trees_Project

There are limitations going back that far, like lack of records and having to rely on secondary sources, plus not a great user interface.

From a personal perspective, everyone has their own feeling of what matters to them and how far back that goes. If my aging parents want believe what they were told by their parents, possibly ignoring new evidence I want them to believe, that should be ok with me. I do try to keep the family tree as factual as possible, but hey maybe they knew something I don't.

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David Newton said: Say it isn't so! I'm so shocked that is the case.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Allowing everyone to have their own beliefs and/or mythology about their family history (or anything else for that matter) has been declared to us as a right that every person has, and we all try to support it (least in the country where I live). Everyone can record their believes about their ancestry in their own personal records as well (Ancestry, MyHeritage, and PC programs are all examples of places where this is supported).

Qué será será. That is all just fine.

However, when it comes to facts and fiction in a shared resource such as the FS FamilyTree, for any given place there is no room for BOTH! One displaces the other. This mutual exclusion is just a fact of life based on laws of nature. Just like light and darkness. You can have a mild mix, but as one increases, the other dissipates.

Because of that, this fact is one of the reasons why a shared tree has the greatest potential of being so useful for the goals of the Church leadership (and hence FS's direction). Over time, missing data as well as data based on fantasy, legend, and mythology can be displaced with facts based on sources and sound logic with the tree continuing to grow and become more accurate.

However, when the ability to replace well documented facts with unsourced mythology becomes far easier to execute than its reverse, and it is actually enforced as a priority over the entry and maintenance of facts (e.g., the insistence on allowing uncontrolled contamination via GEDCOM files), then the advantages of the shared resources collapse.

The "live and let live" approach is just fine and good for many things, but in a shared resource, it results in a lack of policing and the resulting anarchy that follows. Policing based on the intended rules that always attend a shared resource is essential.

If the goal is to build a skyscraper, every brick-layer on the job cannot be working to his own set of rules and goals with respect to that building. If they do then it is guaranteed to eventually collapse.

LegacyUser

m said: Exactly!

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I also never realized that Isaiah The Prophet was a woman!

You learn something new every day...

LegacyUser

m said: LOL!

Isaiah the prophet really is listed as a woman.

Surprised no one noticed before.