Genetics of infertility and “assisted fertilization” in the Bible: The case of Abraham and his family

Couple infertility is a very ancient medical condition. One of the first descriptions of familial infertility/subfertility is contained in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, written in the 10th century BC and reporting tales from the oral tradition even occurred about 800 years earlier. Genesis reports the peculiar case of Abraham and his descendants, Isaac and Jacob, the three patriarchs of Israel. The (favorite) wife of the three of them suffered from primary infertility and, according to Genesis, could reach pregnancy only in late age and for divine intervention. In this paper, we reconstruct the pedigree of Abraham's family on the basis of the biblical narration, which is rich enough of medical details to allow to reconstruct a plausible medical/genetic reason for the cases of infertility reported therein.