Excerpts from Wikipedia.org
Birgitta Birgersdotter (1303 – 23 July 1373; also Birgitta of Vadstena, Saint Birgitta, Saint Bridget (or Brigid) of Sweden, or in Swedish den heliga Birgitta) was a mystic and saint, and founder of the Bridgettine Order after the death of her husband of twenty years. She was also the mother of a saint—Saint Catherine of Vadstena (click to read more).
* Analysis of the Putative Remains of a European Patron Saint–St. Birgitta by Martina Nilsson, et al.
Abstract: Saint Birgitta (Saint Bridget of Sweden) lived between 1303 and 1373 and was designated one of Europe's six patron saints by the Pope in 1999. According to legend, the skulls of St. Birgitta and her daughter Katarina are maintained in a relic shrine in Vadstena abbey, mid Sweden. The origin of the two skulls was assessed first by analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to confirm a maternal relationship. The results of this analysis displayed several differences between the two individuals, thus supporting an interpretation of the two skulls not being individuals that are maternally related. Because the efficiency of PCR amplification and quantity of DNA suggested a different amount of degradation and possibly a very different age for each of the skulls, an orthogonal procedure, radiocarbon dating, was performed. The radiocarbon dating results suggest an age difference of at least 200 years and neither of the dating results coincides with the period St. Birgitta or her daughter Katarina lived. The relic, thought to originate from St. Birgitta, has an age corresponding to the 13th century (1215–1270 cal AD, 2σ confidence), which is older than expected. Thus, the two different analyses are consistent in questioning the authenticity of either of the human skulls maintained in the Vadstena relic shrine being that of St. Birgitta. Of course there are limitations when interpreting the data of any ancient biological materials and these must be considered for a final decision on the authenticity of the remains.
The Talpiot Tomb (or Talpiyot Tomb) is a tomb discovered in 1980 in the East Talpiot neighbourhood five kilometers south of the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel. It contained ten ossuaries, six of them with epigraphs, including one with the inscription that has been interpreted as "Jesus, son of Joseph", though this text is disputed. The tomb also yielded various human remains and several carvings.
A controversial 2007 documentary film produced by Canadian film director James Cameron and investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici titled The Lost Tomb of Jesus and a book written by Jacobovici, together with Charles Pellegrino, The Jesus Family Tomb promote the idea that the Talpiot Tomb was the burial place of Jesus of Nazareth, as well as several other figures from the New Testament. This claim is disputed by many archaeologists and theologians, as well as language and biblical scholars.
Analysis of mitochondrial DNA (a tool for tracking matrilineage) performed by Lakehead University on the remains found in the ossuary marked "Jesus son of Joseph" and the one marked "Mariamne," or "Mary" found that the two occupants were not blood relations on their mothers' side. Based on these tests, the makers of the documentary suggest that "Jesus" and "Mariamne" were probably married "because otherwise they would not have been buried together in a family tomb," but the remains were not dated using radiocarbon to further sustain this supposition, neither was any announced DNA testing done on the others ossuaries to see if any familial relation existed there. Additionally, scholars argue the DNA tests only prove that they didn't have the same mother and they could easily have been father/daughter, cousins, half brother/sister, or any number of possibilities that do not include a matrilineage line.
* Molecular Exploration of the First-Century Tomb of the Shroud in Akeldama, Jerusalem by Carney D. Matheson, et al.
* James Ossuary by Wikipedia.org
The Shroud of Turin (or Turin Shroud) is a linen cloth bearing the image of a man who appears to have been physically traumatized in a manner consistent with crucifixion. It is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. It is believed by many to be a cloth worn by Jesus Christ at the time of his burial, two days prior to his alleged resurrection.
There are several reddish stains on the shroud suggesting blood. McCrone identified these as containing iron oxide, theorizing that its presence was likely due to simple pigment materials used in medieval times. Other researchers, including Alan Adler, a chemist specializing in analysis of porphyrins, identified the reddish stains as type AB blood and interpreted the iron oxide as a natural residue of that chemical always found in red blood cells.
Drs. Heller and Adler further studied the dark red stains. Applying pleochroism, birefringence, and chemical analysis, they determined that, unlike the medieval artist’s pigment which contains iron oxide contaminated with manganese, nickel, and cobalt, the iron oxide on the shroud was relatively pure but later proven to be iron oxide resulting from blood stains (Heller, J.H., Adler, A.D. 1980). Dr. Adler then applied microspectrophotometric analysis of a "blood particle" from one of the fibrils of the shroud and identified hemoglobin (in the acid methemoglobin, which formed due to great age and denaturation). Further tests by Heller and Adler established, within claimed scientific certainty, the presence of porphyrin, bilirubin, albumin, and protein. Interestingly, when proteases (enzymes which break up protein within cells) were applied to the fibril containing the "blood," the blood dissolved from the fibril leaving an imageless fibril (Heller, J.H., and Adler, A.D. 1981). It is uncertain whether the blood stains were produced at the same time as the image, which Adler and Heller attributed to premature aging of the linen. Working independently with a larger sample of blood-containing fibrils, pathologist Pier Baima Bollone, after using immunochemistry, concurred with Heller and Adler's findings and identifies the blood as being from the AB blood group (Baima Bollone, P., La Sindone-Scienza e Fide 1981).
Joe Nickell notes that, unlike McCrone, Heller and Adler are neither forensic serologists nor pigment experts, nor are they experienced in detecting art forgeries. Nickell makes reference to the 1983 conference of the International Association for Identification where forensic analyst John E. Fischer demonstrated how results similar to Heller and Adler's could be obtained from tempera paint. Skeptics also cite other forensic blood tests whose results dispute the authenticity of the Shroud. "Forensic tests on the red stuff have identified it as red ocher and vermilion tempera paint." Even if blood is found, "it could be the blood of some 14th century person. It could be the blood of someone wrapped in the shroud, or the blood of the creator of the shroud, or of anyone who has ever handled the shroud, or of anyone who handled the sticky tape. But even if there were blood on the shroud, that would have no bearing on the age of the shroud or on its authenticity." Skeptics also note that the apparent blood flows on the shroud are unrealistically neat. Leading forensic pathologist Michael Baden observes that real blood never oozes in nice neat rivulets, it gets clotted in the hair. He concludes that "[h]uman beings don't produce this kind of pattern."
* Official site of the custodians of the Shroud in Turin
* Shroud of Turin Not Jesus', Tomb Discovery Suggests by Mati Milstein
Luke the Evangelist was an early Christian who is said by tradition to be the author of both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, the third and fifth books of the New Testament.
Saint Luke was born of Greek origin in the city of Antioch. In Catholicism, he is the patron saint of physicians and surgeons, and his feast day is October 18.
His earliest notice is in Paul's Epistle to Philemon, verse 24. He is also mentioned in Colossians 4:14 and 2 Timothy 4:11, two works commonly ascribed to Paul.
If we accept that Luke was in fact the author of the Gospel bearing his name and also the Acts of the Apostles, certain details of his personal life can be reasonably assumed. While he does exclude himself from those who were eyewitnesses to Jesus' ministry, he repeatedly uses the word "we" in describing the Pauline missions in Acts of the Apostles, indicating that he was personally there at those times. There is similar evidence that Luke resided in Troas, the province which included the ruins of ancient Troy, in that he writes in Acts in the third person about Paul and his travels until they get to Troas, where he switches to the first person plural. The "we" section of Acts continues until the group returns to Troas, where his writing goes back to the third person. This change happens again the second time the group gets to Troas. There are three "we sections" in Acts, all following this rule. Luke never stated, however, that he lived in Troas, and this is the only evidence that he did.
The composition of the writings, as well as the range of vocabulary used, indicate that the author was an educated man. The quote in the Letter of Paul to the Colossians differentiating between Luke and other colleagues "of the circumcision" has caused many to speculate that this indicates Luke was a Gentile. If this were true, it would make Luke the only writer of the New Testament who can clearly be identified as not being Jewish. However, that is not the only possibility. The phrase could just as easily be used to differentiate between those Christians who strictly observed the rituals of Judaism and those who didn't.
A body attributed to Luke the Evangelist that resides in Padua, Italy, underwent a mtDNA test.
* Genetic Tests Shed Light on Biblical Body by Helen Briggs
* Genetic Characterization of the Body Attributed
to the Evangelist Luke by
Cristiano Vernesi, et al.
Aaron (אַהֲרֹן), or Aaron the Levite flourished about 1200 BC (traditionaly 1597 BC) was, according to biblical accounts, one of two brothers who play a unique part in the history of the Hebrew people. He was the elder son of Amram and Jochebed of the tribe of Levi. Moses, the other son, being three years younger, Exodus 7:7 and Miriam, their sister, several years older Exodus 2:4; Exodus 6:16 ; Numbers 33:39. Aaron was the great-grandson of Levi Exodus 6:16-20 and represented the priestly functions of his tribe, becoming the first High priest of the Hebrews.
Recently, the tradition that Kohanim are actually descended from a single patriarch Aaron was found to be apparently consistent with genetic testing. Since all direct male lineage shares a common Y chromosome, testing was done across sectors of the Jewish population to see if there was any commonality between their Y chromosomes. Many of the results were found to cluster rather closely around a particular DNA signature, which the researchers named the Cohen modal haplotype, implying that many of the Kohanim do share a distinctive common ancestry.
The status of Kohen in Judaism has no necessary relationship to a person's surname. Though it is true that descendants of kohanim often bear surnames that reflect their genealogy, there are many families with the surname Kohen (or any number of variations) who are not kohenim nor even Jewish. Conversely, there are many kohenim who do not have Kohen as a surname.
Some Levites have adopted a related last name to signify their status. Because of diverse geographical locations, the names have several variations. Having a last name of Levi or a related term does not necessarily mean a person is a Levite, and many Levites do not have such last names. Levitical status is passed down in families from parent to child, as part of a family's genealogical tradition. In traditional Judaism, tribal status is determined by patrilineal descent, so a child whose biological father is a Levite is a Levite (in cases of adoption or artificial insemination, status is determined by the genetic father). Because Jewish status is traditionally determined by matrilineal descent, conferring levitical status on children requires both biological parents to be Jews and the biological father to be a Levite.
* Y-chromosomal Aaron by Wikipedia.org
* Kohen by Wikipedia.org
* YSTR27 Test by EthnoAncestry
The Israelites were the dominant cultural and ethnic group living in the southern Levant in Biblical times, composing the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Modern Jews claim descent from the Tribes of Israel.
Patrilineal descent can be documented by analysis of the Y-chromosome, passed from father to son. Of the many variants, or haplogroups, of the Y-chromosome, haplogroups J1 and J2, both originating from the Middle East, are the most common among current Jewish males.
- J2 is found in 23% of Ashkenazi Jews and 29% of Sephardi Jews. It is equally common among Muslim Kurds, Central Turks, Georgians, Iraqis and Lebanese. A variant, called the Cohen Modal Haplotype, is present in about 80% of Cohanim, both Sephardi and Ashkenazi.
- J1 is found in 19.0% of Ashkenazim and 11.9% of Sephardim. It is more common among Arab populations, especially Arab Bedouins.
This genetic evidence supports a common patrilineal descent for about a quarter of current Jews, regardless of their geographic origin, and confirms the historical and Biblical concept of the People of Israel.
* Jewish Diaspora
* Jewish Ethnic Divisions
Canaan is an ancient term for a region encompassing present-day Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon and Jordan, plus adjoining coastal lands and parts of Egypt and Syria. Canaanites are mentioned in the Bible, Mesopotamian and Ancient Egyptian texts.
The Canaanites are said to have been one of seven regional ethnic divisions or "nations" driven out before the Israelites following the Exodus. Specifically, the other nations include the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites (Deuteronomy 7:1).
The Bible describes God cautioning the Israelites against the sexual idolatry of the Canaanites and their fertility cult (Leviticus 18:27). Thus the Land of the Canaanites, defined as including these seven groups, was deemed suitable for conquest by the Israelites partly on moral grounds (Deuteronomy 20:16–17). One of the 613 mitzvot (precisely n. 596) prescribes that no inhabitants of the cities of six Canaanite nations, the same as mentioned in 7:1, minus the Girgashites, were to be left alive.
By the time of the Second Temple, "Canaanite" in Hebrew had come to be not an ethnic designation, so much as a general synonym for "merchant", as it is interpreted in, for example, Zechariah 14:21.
One of Canaan's most famous exports was a much sought-after purple dye, derived from two species of Murex sea snails found along the east Mediterranean coast and worn proudly by figures from ancient kings to modern popes.
Between ca. 1200–1100 BC, most of southern Canaan was settled, and according to the Bible conquered, by the Israelites, while the northern areas were taken over by Arameans. The remaining area still under clear Canaanite control, is referred to by its Greek name, "Phoenicia" (meaning "purple", in reference to the land's famous dye).
St. Augustine also mentions that one of the terms the seafaring Phoenicians called their homeland was "Canaan." This is further confirmed by coins of the city of Laodicea by the Lebanon, that bear the legend, "Of Laodicea, a metropolis in Canaan"; these coins are dated to the reign of Antiochus IV (175–164 BC) and his successors.
The first of many Canaanites who emigrated seaward finally settled in Carthage, and St. Augustine adds that the country people near Hippo, presumably Punic in origin, still called themselves Chanani in his day.
It has been argued that the Israelites were themselves Canaanites, and that "historical Israel", as distinct from "literary" or "Biblical Israel" was a subset of Canaanite culture. "Canaan" when used in this sense refers to the entire Ancient Near Eastern Levant down to about 100 AD, including the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. For example, Mark Smith in "The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel" states "Despite the long regnant model that the 'Canaanites' and Israelites were people of fundamentally different culture, archaeological data now casts doubt on this view. The material culture of the region exhibits numerous common points between Israelites and 'Canaanites' in the Iron I period (ca. 1200-1000 BC). The record would suggest that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from 'Canaanite' culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature. Given the information available, one cannot maintain a radical cultural separation between Canaanites and Israelites for the Iron I period."
The Philistines were a people who inhabited the southern coast of Canaan, their territory being named Philistia in later contexts. Their origin has been debated among scholars, but modern archaeology has suggested early cultural links with the Mycenean world in mainland Greece. Though the Philistines adopted local Canaanite culture and language before leaving any written texts, an Indo-European origin has been suggested for a handful of known Philistine words.
If the Philistines are to be identified as one of the "Sea Peoples" (see Origins below), then their occupation of Canaan would have to have taken place during the reign of Ramesses III of the Twentieth Dynasty, ca. 1180 to 1150 BC. Their maritime knowledge presumably would have made them important to the Phoenicians.
The Philistines occupied the five cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath, along the coastal strip of southwestern Canaan, that belonged to Egypt up to the closing days of the Nineteenth Dynasty (ended 1185 BC). The biblical stories of Samson, Samuel, Saul and David include accounts of Philistine-Israelite conflicts. The Philistines long held a monopoly on iron smithing (a skill they possibly acquired during conquests in Anatolia), and the biblical description of Goliath's armor is consistent with this iron-smithing technology.
This powerful association of tribes made frequent incursions against the Hebrews. There was almost perpetual war between the two peoples. The Philistine cities were ruled by seranim (סְרָנִים, "lords"), who acted together for the common good, though to what extent they had a sense of a "nation" is not clear without literary sources. After their defeat by the Hebrew king David, who originally for a time worked as a mercenary for Achish of Gath, kings replaced the seranim, governing from various cities. Some of these kings were called Abimelech, which was initially a name and later a dynastic title.
The Philistines lost their independence to Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria by 732 BC, and revolts in following years were all crushed. Later, Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon eventually conquered all of Syria and the Kingdom of Judah, and the former Philistine cities became part of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. There are few references to the Philistines after this time period. However, Ezekiel 25:16, Zechariah 9:6, and I Macabees 3 make mention of the Philistines, indicating that they still existed as a people in some capacity after the Babylonian invasion. Eventually all traces of the Philistines as a people or ethnic group disappear. Subsequently the cities were under the control of Persians, Jews (Hasmonean Kingdom), Greeks (Seleucid Empire), Romans, and subsequent empires.
Most authorities agree that the Philistines are not autochthonous to the regions of Israel/Palestine which the Bible describes them inhabiting. The Bible contains roughly 250 references to the Philistines or Philistia, and repeatedly refers to them as "uncircumcised", unlike the Semitic peoples, such as Canaanites, which the Bible relates encountered the Israelites following the Exodus. (See, e.g., 1 Samuel 17:26, 17:36; 2 Samuel 1:20; Judges 14:3).
It has been suggested that the Philistines formed part of the great naval confederacy, the "Sea Peoples," who had wandered, at the beginning of the 12th century BC, from their homeland in Crete and the Aegean islands to the shores of the Mediterranean and repeatedly attacked Egypt during the later Nineteenth Dynasty. Though they were eventually repulsed by Ramesses III, he finally resettled them, according to the theory, to rebuild the coastal towns in Canaan.
The name "Palestine" comes, via Greek and Latin, from the Philistines; see History of Palestine.
British writers of the 19th century and very early 20th century sometimes referred to the Arabs of Palestine as "Philistines". This was apparently not due to a belief in a strong connection with the ancient Philistines, but merely reflects the former convention that "Philistine" simply denotes "native of Palestine."
Palestinian people or Palestinian Arabs are terms used to refer to an Arabic-speaking people with family origins in Palestine.
Results of a DNA study by geneticist Ariella Oppenheim matched historical accounts that "some Muslim Arabs are descended from Christians and Jews who lived in the southern Levant, a region that includes Israel and the Sinai. They were descendants of a core population that lived in the area since prehistoric times."
In genetic genealogy studies, Palestinians and Negev Bedouins have the highest rates of Haplogroup J1 (Y-DNA) among all populations tested (62.5%). Arab and other Semitic populations usually possess an excess of J1 Y chromosomes compared to other populations harboring Y-haplogroup J. The haplogroup J1, associated with marker M267, originates south of the Levant and was first disseminated from there into Ethiopia and Europe in Neolithic times; a second diffusion of the marker took place in the seventh century CE when Arabs brought it from the Arabia to North Africa. J1 is most common in the southern Levant, as well as Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and Arabia, and drops sharply at the border of non-Arab areas like Turkey and Iran. While it is also found in Jewish populations (<15%), haplogroup J2 (M172) (of eight sub-Haplogroups), is almost twice as common as J1 among Jews (<29%).
Haplogroup J1 (Y-DNA) includes the modal haplotype of the Galilee Arabs (Nebel et al. 2000) and of Moroccan Arabs (Bosch et al. 2001) and the sister Modal Haplotype of the Cohanim, the "Cohan Modale Haplotype", representing the descendents of the priestly caste Aaron. J2 is known to be related to the ancient Greek movements and is found mainly in Europe and the central Mediterranean ( Italy, the Balkans, Greece). According to a 2002 study by Nebel et al., on Genetic evidence for the expansion of Arabian tribes, the highest frequency of Eu10 (i.e. J1) (30%–62.5%) has been observed so far in various Muslim Arab populations in the Middle East. (Semino et al. 2000; Nebel et al. 2001). The most frequent Eu10 microsatellite haplotype in Northwest Africans is identical to a modal haplotype of Muslim Arabs who live in a small area in the north of Israel, the Galilee. (Nebel et al. 2000) termed the modal haplotype of the Galilee (MH Galilee). The term “Arab,” as well as the presence of Arabs in the Syrian desert and the Fertile Crescent, is first seen in the Assyrian sources from the 9th century B.C.E. (Eph'al 1984).
In recent years, many genetic surveys have suggested that, at least paternally, most of the various Jewish ethnic divisions and the Palestinians — and in some cases other Levantines — are genetically closer to each other than the Palestinians or European Jews to non-Jewish Europeans (a Europpean sample from the Welsh. However, Nebel et al. (2001) report that Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors.
Ishmael is a figure in the Torah, Bible, and Qur'an. Jewish, Christian and Muslim believers regard Ishmael as Abraham's older son, born by his wife's handmaiden Hagar.
Both Jewish and Islamic traditions consider Ishmael as the ancestor of Arab people. According to the Muslim tradition, Muhammad was a descendant of Ishmael through his son Kedar.
The Qur'an states that Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son. The son is not named in the Qur'an (see Qur'an 37:99-113) and in early Islam, there was a controversy over the son's identity. However the belief that the son was Ishmael prevailed, and this view is continued to be endorsed by Muslim scholars.
Abraham conceives a son with Hagar when Sarah is unable to bear children. Then, after many years, Sarah miraculously gives birth to Isaac. After some time upon God's command, Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael to the desert with God's promise of protection. The Quran takes a special interest in Hagar and her son, through whom Arabs trace their connection to Abraham. Each year during the Hajj (the ritual pilgrimage) in Mecca, pilgrims re-enact Hagar’s desperate search for water for her infant son, running seven times between two hills and drawing water from the well of Zam Zam, said to have sprung miraculously from the dry earth at the baby Ishmael’s feet. The full story is mentioned in Sahih Bukhari.
Muhammad is considered to be one of the many descendants of Ishmael.
* Islamic View of Ishmael
Edom is a name given to Esau in the Hebrew Bible, as well as to the nation descending from him.
The Edomite people were a Semitic-speaking tribal group inhabiting the Negev Desert and the Arabah valley of what is now southern Dead sea and adjacent Jordan. The region has much reddish sandstone, which may have given rise to the name "Edom". The nation of Edom is known to have existed back to the 8th or 9th century BC, and the Bible dates it back several centuries further. Recent archaeological evidence may indicate an Edomite nation as long ago as the 11th century BC, but the topic is controversial. The nation ceased to exist with the Jewish-Roman Wars.
The Edomites may have been connected with the Shasu and Shutu, nomadic raiders mentioned in Egyptian sources. Indeed, a letter from an Egyptian scribe at a border fortress in the Wadi Tumilat during the reign of Merneptah reports movement of nomadic "shasu-tribes of Edom" to watering holes in Egyptian territory.
Samaritans, once comparatively large, but now a very small ethnic and religious group (not more than about 700 persons) living in the State of Israel and the West Bank, regard themselves as descendants of the tribes of Ephraim (named by them as Aphrime) and Manasseh (named by them as Manatch). Samaritans adhere to a version of the Torah, known as the Samaritan Pentateuch, which occasionally differs from the Masoretic text, and less so from the Septuagint, sometimes in important ways. Samaritans do not regard the Tanakh as an accurate or truthful history, regard only Moses as a prophet, have their own unique version of Hebrew, and do not regard themselves as part of Judaism. Since 539 BCE, many Jews have rejected outright the claims of the Samaritans to have descent from Ephraim and Manasseh, though some regard them as another sect of Judaism.
Genetic and demographic investigations of the Samaritan community were carried out in the 1960s. Detailed pedigrees of the last 13 generations show that the Samaritans comprise four lineages:
- The Tsedakah lineage, claiming descent from the tribe of Manasseh
- The Joshua-Marhiv lineage, claiming descent from the tribe of Ephraim
- The Danfi lineage, claiming descent from the tribe of Ephraim
- The priestly Cohen lineage from the tribe of Levi.
Of the 12 Samaritan males used in the analysis, 10 (83%) belong to haplogroup J, which includes three of the four Samaritan families. The Joshua-Marhiv family belongs to subhaplogroup J1, while the Danfi and Tsedakah families belong to subhaplogroup J2, and can be further distinguished by M67, the derived allele of which has been found in the Danfi family.
Genetic differences between the Samaritans and neighboring Jewish and non-Jewish populations are corroborated in the present study of 7,280 bp of nonrecombining Y-chromosome and 5,622 bp of coding and hypervariable segment (HVS-I) mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences. Comparative sequence analysis was carried out on 12 Samaritan Y-chromosome, and mtDNA samples from 9 male and 7 female Samaritans separated by at least two generations. In addition, 18–20 male individuals were analyzed, each representing Ethiopian, Ashkenazi, Iraqi, Libyan, Moroccan, and Yemenite Jews, as well as Druze and Palestinians, all currently living in Israel. The four Samaritan families clustered to four distinct Y-chromosome haplogroups according to their patrilineal identity. Of the 16 Samaritan mtDNA samples, 14 carry either of two mitochondrial haplotypes that are rare or absent among other worldwide ethnic groups.
Principal components analysis suggests a common ancestry of Samaritan and Jewish patrilineages. Most of the former may be traced back to a common ancestor in the paternally-inherited Israelite high priesthood (Cohanim) at the time of the Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel.
* Parable of the Good Samaritan by Wikipedia.org
The term Semite means a member of any of various ancient and modern peoples originating in southwestern Asia, including Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arabs, and Ethiopian Semites. It was proposed at first to refer to the languages related to Hebrew by Ludwig Schlözer
The word "Semitic" is an adjective derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible (Genesis 5.32, 6.10, 10.21), or more precisely from the Greek derivative of that name, namely Σημ (Sēm); the noun form referring to a person is Semite.
The concept of "Semitic" peoples is derived from Biblical accounts of the origins of the cultures known to the ancient Hebrews. Those closest to them in culture and language were generally deemed to be descended from their forefather Shem. Enemies were often said to be descendants of his cursed nephew, Canaan. In Genesis 10:21-31, Shem is described as the father of Aram, Asshur, and Arpachshad: the Biblical ancestors of the Arabs, Aramaeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Sabaeans, and Hebrews, etc., all of whose languages are closely related; the language family containing them was therefore named Semitic by linguists. However, the Canaanites and Amorites also spoke a language belonging to this family, and are therefore also termed Semitic in linguistics, despite being described in Genesis as sons of Ham. Shem is also described in Genesis as the father of Elam and Lud, although the Elamites and Lydians usually thought to descend from these spoke languages that were not Semitic.
The hypothetical Proto-Semitic language, ancestral to historical Semitic languages in the Middle East, is thought to have been originally from either the Arabian Peninsula (particularly around Yemen) or the adjacent Ethiopian highlands, but its region of origin is still much debated and uncertain. The Semitic language family is also considered a component of the larger Afro-Asiatic macro-family of languages.
Modern science identifies a population's common physical descent through genetic research, and analysis of the Semitic-speaking peoples suggests that they have some common ancestry. Though no significant common mitochondrial results have been yielded, Y-chromosomal links between Semitic-speaking Near-Eastern peoples like Arabs, Assyrians and Jews have proved fruitful, despite differences contributed from other groups (see Y-chromosomal Aaron). Although population genetics is still a young science, it seems to indicate that a significant proportion of these peoples' ancestry comes from a common Near Eastern population to which (despite the differences with the Biblical genealogy) the term "Semitic" has been applied. However, this correlation should rather be attributed to said common Near Eastern origin, as for example Semitic-speaking Near Easterners from the Fertile Crescent are generally more closely related to non-Semitic speaking Near Easterners, such as Iranians, Anatolians, and Caucasians, than to other Semitic-speakers, such as Gulf Arabs, Eritrean Semites, Ethiopian Semites, and North African Arabs.
The phrase Ten Lost Tribes of Israel refers to the ancient Tribes of Israel that disappeared from the Biblical account after the Kingdom of Israel was totally destroyed, enslaved and exiled by ancient Assyria.
According to the Hebrew Bible, Jacob (who was renamed Israel) had one daughter and twelve sons by four different women. The twelve sons fathered the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The Tribe of Judah, the Tribe of Simeon, and the Tribe of Benjamin joined together to form the Kingdom of Judah and are traditionally considered the ancestors of most of today's Jews. The Tribe of Levi, was assigned hereditary religious duties and did not receive any tribal land. The remaining tribes (Reuben, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Ephraim, East Manasseh, and West Manasseh) are considered lost.
Bukharan Jews, also Bukharian Jews or Bukhari Jews are Jews from Central Asia who speak Bukhori, a dialect of the Persian language. Their name comes from the former Central Asian Emirate of Bukhara, which once had a sizeable Jewish community. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the vast majority were evacuated to Israel or the United States, while others have emigrated to Europe or Australia.
A majority of Bukharian Jews trace their ancestry to the Lost Tribes of Israel. These Jews claim to be descendants of the Issachar, Nephtali, and Ephraim Israelite tribes who never came back from the Babylonian captivity after exile in the 7th century BCE. They maintain that some of the Israelites migrated eastwards in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, in the time between the fall of Nineveh to Nabopolassar in 612 BCE and the fall of Jerusalem to his successor Nebuchadrezzar II in 597 BCE, during the transition from Neo-Assyrian to Neo-Babylonian (Chaldean) rule. The community was essentially cut off from the rest of the Jewish world for more than 2,000 years and somehow managed to survive and preserve their Jewish identity and heritage in the face of countless odds. They are considered one of the oldest ethno-religious groups of Central Asia and over the years they have developed their own distinct culture. Throughout the years, Jews from other Eastern countries such as Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Morocco migrated into Central Asia (usually by taking the Silk Road), as did Jews who were exiled from Spain during the Inquisition; all these joined the Central Asian Jewish community that was later on called the Bukharian Jews. In Central Asia, they survived for centuries, subject to many conquering influences.
Most Bukharian Jews lived in Emirate of Bukhara (currently Uzbekistan and Tajikistan), while a small number lived in Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and some other parts of the former Soviet Union. In Emirate of Bukhara, the largest concentrations were in Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khokand. In Tajikistan, they similarly were mainly concentrated in the capital, Dushanbe.
The Bnei Menashe ("Children of Menasseh") are a group of more than 8,000 people from India's North-Eastern border states of Manipur and Mizoram who claim descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Linguistically, they are Tibeto-Burmans and belong to the Mizo, Kuki and Chin peoples (the terms are virtually interchangeable). They are called Chin in Burma.
The breakaway Judaic group was named Bnei Menashe by Eliyahu Avichail because they believe that the legendary Kuki-Mizo ancestor Manmasi is one and the same with Menasseh, son of Joseph.
2003: Hillel Halkin initiates a collection of 350 genetic samples from Mizo-Kuki which are tested at Haifa's Technion - Israel Institute of Technology under the auspices of Prof. Karl Skorecki. According to the late Mizo research scholar Isaac Hmar Intoate who helped collect the samples, no evidence was found which would indicate a Middle-Eastern origin for Mizo-Chin-Kuki.
2004: DNA test at Kolkota's Central Forensic Science Laboratory then claimed to have discovered evidence of Middle Eastern genes among a sample of Mizo-Kuki-Chin in an internet paper titled Tracking the genetic imprints of lost Jewish tribes among the gene pool of Kuki-Chin-Mizo population of India. The paper remains unreviewed as of February 2007.
1 April 2005: In a Haaretz article In Search of Jewish Chromosomes in India, Professor Skorecki is quoted as saying the Kolkota geneticists "did not do a complete `genetic sequencing' of all the DNA and therefore it is hard to rely on the conclusions derived from a `partial sequencing, and they themselves admit this". He added that "the absence of a genetic match still does not say that the Kuki do not have origins in the Jewish people, as it is possible that after thousands of years it is difficult to identify the traces of the common genetic origin. However, a positive answer can give a significant indication"[www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2005/04/in_search_of_je.php].
A BBC News article on the same day, entitled Rabbi backs India's lost Jews reports that "the Central Forensic Institute in Calcutta suggests that while the masculine side of the tribes bears no links to Israel, the feminine side suggests a genetic profile with Middle Eastern people that may have arisen through inter-marriage". The same article states that Israeli social scientist Lev Grinberg told the BBC that "right wing Jewish groups wanted such conversions of distant people to boost the population in areas disputed by the Palestinians."
Hillel Halkin: "I contacted two of its authors, V.K. Kashyap and Bhaswar Maity, with a request for additional information that would enable us to evaluate their findings more scientifically. Unfortunately, this information was never given us, nor have Kashyap and Maity taken the next step of publishing their paper in a scientific journal, which would have required it to pass peer review and to display a higher level of scientific argumentation than that of the Internet paper. Why they have behaved this way is a mystery".
July 2006: Hillel Halkin says "laboratory analysis has shown that, with one or two possible exceptions, they fail to demonstrate any link between Kuki-Mizo haplotypes, or DNA profiles, and haplotypes typical of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East such as are common among Jews. In plain language, the study has so far come up with no clear evidence that the Kuki-Mizos, or any part of them, have a biblical “lost tribe” past". He says that in any case, Jewish DNA testing has never been and can never be a requirement in applications for Israeli citizenship. "My conclusions from my research, expounded at length in my book Across The Sabbath River, are that, although the overwhelming majority of Kuki-Mizos are not descended from the “lost tribe” of Manasseh, small numbers of them probably are. It is this small group that has transmitted certain biblical memories, traditions, and customs to the Kuki-Mizo people as a whole.
November 2006: In a Jerusalem Post article about an Indian historian's claims of finding a genetic link between his Northern Indian Pathan clan and the Lost Tribe of Ephraim, Hillel Halkin says that "there's no such thing as Jewish DNA. There is a [genetic] pattern which is very common in the Middle East, and 40% of Jews worldwide have it. But many non-Jews and people in the Middle East have it also"
The Bete Israel are the Jews of Ethiopia. The now dominant Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church claims it originated from the visit by the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon in the Tenth Century BCE. This visit is mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures (I Kings 10:1). The Bible does not provide details of the queen's visit.
Such details developed as part of Christian Ethiopian tradition in the Middle Ages. Elements included the alleged theft of the Holy Ark, as well as Solomon's getting the Queen of Sheba pregnant. According to Christian Ethiopian tradition, her child established the "Solomonic" lineage in Ethiopia. These elements were first written down in full in the 13th century Kebra Nagast, inspired partly to legitimize the Solomonic dynasty.
Israel's Law of Return (1950) allows Jews and those with Jewish parents or grandparents, and spouses of the aforementioned, to settle in Israel and gain citizenship. Under its provisions, more than 90,000 people, over 85% of the Ethiopian Jewish community, have emigrated to Israel, most notably during Operation Moses (1984) and Operation Solomon (1991). The Israeli government mounted rescue operations for migration when civil war and famine threatened populations within Ethiopia. A trickle of immigration has continued.
Gerard Lucotte and Pierre Smets in Human Biology (vol 71, December 1999, pp. 989 – 993) studied the DNA of 38 unrelated Bete Israel males living in Israel and 104 Ethiopians living in regions located north of Addis Ababa and concluded that "the distinctiveness of the Y-chromosome haplotype distribution of Bete Israel Jews from conventional Jewish populations and their relatively greater similarity in haplotype profile to non-Jewish Ethiopians are consistent with the view that the Bete Israel people descended from ancient inhabitants of Ethiopia who converted to Judaism." This study confirms the findings of an earlier study by Avshalom Zoossmann-Disken, A. Ticher, I. Hakim, Z. Goldwitch, A. Rubinstein, and Batsheva Bonné-Tamir titled "Genetic affinities of Ethiopian Jews," published in Israel Journal of Medical Sciences 27:245 (1991). A study of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes of Jewish and non-Jewish groups titled Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in June, 2000 suggested that "paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population," with the exception of the Bete Israel, who were "affiliated more closely with non-Jewish Ethiopians and other North Africans.". These Y-chromosome studies refer to only a partial section of the paternal lineage. Some ethnic groups are a product of one maternal lineage and a different paternal lineage, see Métis people (Canada).
A study of Mitochondrial DNA (which is passed through only maternal lineage to both men and women) showed that the most common mtDNA type found among the Ethiopian Jewish sample was present only in Somalia. This furthered some researchers' idea that most Ethiopian Jews were of local or Ethiopian origin. Both the MtDNA and Y-chromosome analyses, although reliable in tracing two lines of ancestry, could reflect only two partial sections of total genetic inheritance. Studies did not include DNA analysis on Autosomal or X-chromosome variation.
A study by the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University found a possible genetic similarity between 11 Ethiopian Jews and 4 Yemenite Jews who took part in the testing. The differentiation statistic and genetic distances for the 11 Ethiopian Jews and 4 Yemenite Jews tested were quite low, among the smallest of comparisons involving either of these populations. Ethiopian Jewish Y-Chromosomal haplotype are often present in Yemenite and other Jewish populations. Analysis of Y-Chromosomal haplotype frequencies does not indicate a close relationship between Ethiopian Jewish groups.
The 4 Yemenite Jews from this study may be descendants of reverse migrants of African origin who crossed Ethiopia to Yemen. The study result suggests gene flow between Ethiopia and Yemen as a possible explanation for the closeness. The study also suggests that the gene flow between Ethiopian and Yemenite Jewish populations may not have been direct, but instead could have been between Jewish and non-Jewish populations of both regions.
The Lemba or Lembaa are an ethnic group numbering 70,000 in southern Africa who claim a common descent and belonging to the Jewish people.
Although they are speakers of Bantu languages related to those spoken by their geographic neighbors - which in itself does not discount their claim (see Jewish languages) - they have specific religious practices and beliefs similar to those in Judaism, which have been remembered and transmitted orally through the generations.
According to recent genetic research, the presence among the Lemba of a disproportionate number of men carrying a particular polymorphism on the Y chromosome known as the Cohen modal haplotype, which is strongly correlated to Jewish populations and rare among non-Jews, suggests an ancestral link to the Jewish people. Just under 10% of all Lemba have that particular Y chromosomal type which is associated as a signature of Jewish ancestry, proportions found among general Jewish populations.
One particular sub-clan within the Lemba, the Buba clan, is considered by the Lemba to be their priestly clan, while among Jews, the Kohanim are the priestly clan. From a small sample of the Buba, fifty-two percent of males were found to carry the Cohen modal haplotype, which is generally indicative of Y-DNA haplogroup J. Among Jews the marker is also most prevalent among Jewish Kohanim, or priests. As recounted in Lemba oral tradition, the Buba clan "had a leadership role in bringing the Lemba out of Israel" and into Southern Africa.
More microsatellite markers would need to be tested in order to verify the reality (or not) of any such link. The Lemba also have a large percentage of alleles often found in non-Arabs from the near east.
Pashtuns also called Pathans, ethnic Afghans, or synonymously Afghans, are an Eastern Iranian ethno-linguistic group with populations primarily in eastern and southern Afghanistan and in the North-West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan provinces of western Pakistan. The Pashtuns are typically characterized by their usage of the Pashto language and practice of Pashtunwali, which is a traditional code of conduct and honor.
The theory that the Pashtun people originate from the exiled Lost Tribes of Israel was widely held as recently as the 19th century. They are the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan, virtually all Muslims.
It is based on a variety of ancient historical texts and oral traditions of the Pashtun people. No scientific studies by any accredited organisations, or scholars, have upheld the claim. It continues to be believed by many Pashtuns, and has found advocates among some contemporary Muslim and (to a lesser extent) Jewish scholars.
Research into human DNA is as a new way to explore historical movements of populations by studying their genetic make-up. Some recent genetic genealogy studies show Pashto-speaking Pashtuns are mainly related to Iranian peoples and to the Burusho who speak a language isolate. There is evidence of a small Greek contribution to the Pashtun gene pool that will likely require further testing in order to ascertain its pervasiveness.
The Kurds are an ethnic group indigenous to a region often referred to as Kurdistan, an area that includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Kurdish communities can also be found in Lebanon, Armenia, Azerbaijan (Kalbajar and Lachin, to the west of Nagorno Karabakh) and, in recent decades, some European countries and the United States (see Kurdish diaspora). They speak Kurdish, an Indo-European language of the Iranian branch. The origins of the group and relationships with historical entities and names are complex and disputed.
There also appear to be little links to northern Semitic peoples such as the Assyrians and possibly ancient Hebrews, but less links to southern Semites in the Arabian peninsula in spite of the region having been conquered very early by Muslim Arabs. The recent genetic research suggests a possible ancient bond between Jews and Kurds as well. In 2001, a team of scientists discovered that three Jewish communities of Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Kurdish Jews surprisingly shared more haplotypes and chromosomes with Muslim Kurds than with either Palestinians or Bedouins.
In 2001, Nebel et al compared three Jewish and three non-Jewish groups from the Middle East: Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Kurdish Jews from Israel; Muslim Arabs from Israel and the Palestinian Authority Area; Bedouin from the Negev; and Muslim Kurds. They concluded that Sephardim and Kurdish Jews were genetically indistinguishable, but that both were slightly significantly different from Ashkenazim (who were most closely related to the Muslim Kurds). Nebel et al had earlier (2000) found a large genetic relationship between Jews and Palestinians, but in this study found an even higher relationship of Jews with Iraqi Kurds. They conclude that the common genetic background shared by Jews and other Middle Eastern groups predates the division of Middle Easterners into different ethnic groups.
Interestingly, Nebel et al (2001) also found that the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH), considered the most definitive Jewish haplotype, was found among 10.1% of Kurdish Jews, 7.6% of Ashkenazim, 6.4% of Sephardim, 2.1% of Palestianian Arabs, and 1.1% of Muslim Kurds. The CMH and the most frequent Muslim Kurdish haplotype (MKH) were the same on five markers (out of six) and very close on the other marker. The MKH was shared by 9.5% of Muslim Kurds, 2.6% of Sephardim, 2.0% of Kurdish Jews, 1.4% of Palestinian Arabs, and 1.3% of Ashkenazim. The general conclusion is that these similarities result mostly from the sharing of ancient genetic patterns, and not from more recent admixture between the groups (p. 1099). Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman has suggested that the CMH is “likely the marker of the Jews’ and Arabs’ shared Patriarch, Abraham” (2004: 20), but much more analysis is needed on the CMH in populations throughout the world. In this study, Kurdish Jews were found to be close to Muslim Kurds, but so were Ashkenazim and Sephardim, suggesting that much if not most of the genetic similarity between Jewish and Muslim Kurds is from ancient times.
* Origins of the Kurds by Wikipedia.org
The Kaifeng Jews comprise the best documented Jewish community in China. They resided in the city of Kaifeng in Henan province. Although their profile was relatively low among the surrounding mainstream Chinese populace, they have attracted interest from European visitors, who were curious about this most remote outpost of Jewish culture. Although Jews in modern China have traditionally called themselves Youtai (犹太) in Mandarin Chinese — also the predominant contemporary Chinese language term for Jews in general — the community was long known by their Han Chinese neighbors as adherents of tiao jin jiao (挑筋教), meaning, loosely, the religion which removes the sinew.
According to historical records, a Jewish community with a synagogue, built in 1163, existed at Kaifeng from at least the Southern Song Dynasty until the late nineteenth century. A stone monument in the city suggests that they were there since at least 231 BC (during the Warring States Period).
It is surmised that the ancestors of the Kaifeng Jews came from Central Asia. The uninterrupted existence of this religious and ethnic group, lasting for more than 700 years in totally different socio-cultural surroundings strongly dominated by Confucian moral and ethical principles, is a unique phenomenon, not only in Chinese history, but also in the thousands of years of Jewish civilisation.
One scholar, Dr Xun Zhou, doubts the authenticity of the Kaifeng community, believing it to have been largely a Western cultural construct. Xun Zhou, a research fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, has written an article putting the status of the Kaifeng Jews into question. He maintains that the community had no Torah scrolls until 1851, when they suddenly appeared to be sold to eager Western collectors. He also states that, for example, drawings of the synagogue were doctored in the West because the original did not look like one, and that the Kaifeng community claimed to have kept some Jewish practices since before they are known to have begun. Xun Zhou's conclusion is that the Kaifeng community was not Jewish in any meaningful sense.
The current situation of Kaifeng Jewish descendants is complex. Within the framework of contemporary rabbinical Judaism, only matrilineal transmission of Jewishness is recognized (a Jew is a convert or someone whose mother is a Jew), while Chinese Jews recognized only patrilineal descent. They are not, therefore, recognized as Jews by other Jewish communities and are also ineligible for automatic Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. Most descendants of Kaifeng's Jewish community are vaguely aware of their ancestry, but few have direct sources indicating their descent; the vast majority are unfamiliar with a Jewish identity in common with Jews elsewhere. This situation may be changing as Jewish groups from outside China continue their efforts to educate the descendants of the Kaifeng community about their religious and ethnic heritage.
* Who is a Jew? by Wikipedia.org
The Hata clan (秦氏) was a group active in Japan during the Yamato period, according to the epic history Nihonshoki and Kojiki. The Nihonshoki indicates that the Hata were not originally native to Japan, and came from the Korean kingdom of Baekje, many believe the Hata only passed through Baekje and were originally from somewhere further away. According to the theory which most scholars follow, the clan was descended from Prince Yuzuki no Kimi, who in turn was a descendant of the first Emperor of Qin of the Qin Dynasty. Prince Yuzuki had become a Korean prince, and emigrated to Japan in 283 CE with a great number of his countrymen. Though the majority of scholars do not draw any connections between these Korean immigrants and the Jewish people, there exists a minority opinion that the Hata clan were among the Lost Tribes of Israel. It is more likely, however, that if the Hata were Jewish at all, that they were Chinese Jews.
The Hata are said to have been adept at financial matters, and to have introduced silk raising and weaving to Japan. For this reason, they may have been associated with the kagome crest, a lattice shape found in basket-weaving. During the reign of Emperor Nintoku (313-399), the members of the clan were sent to diverse parts of the country to spread the knowledge and practice of sericulture.
Members of this clan also served as financial advisors to the Yamato Court for several centuries. Originally landing and settling in Izumo and the San'yō region, the Hata eventually settled in the areas of what are now Japan's most major cities. They are said to have aided in the establishment of Heian-kyō (modern-day Kyoto), and of many Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, including Fushimi Inari Taisha, Matsunoo Taisha, and Kōryū-ji.
A number of samurai clans, including the Chōsokabe clan of Shikoku and the Jinbō clan of Echigo province, claimed descent from the Hata.
The notion that the Hata clan were among the Lost Tribes of Israel, though far from widely accepted or even seriously considered in formal scholarship, is central to the beliefs of several Japanese New Religions and to the writings of various contemporary Japanese antiquarians. While there are tantalising indications that the Hata were Semitic or Central Asian in origin, most serious scholars have not jumped to the conclusion that they were definitely Jewish, or among the Lost Tribes. Dr. Yoshiro Saeki (1872-1965), an expert on Eastern Christianity, is one of the primary scholars who has proposed the theory that the Hata were Semitic in origin practicing a form of early Judaism, and that they had a profound impact on Japanese culture. Ikurō Teshima, founder of the New Religion Makuya, and author of several books on the Hata, is another proponent of the theory.
Dr. Saeki discovered an ancient tomb and shrine on an island in the Seto Inland Sea in 1907, which he interpreted as a Hata inhumatin. The tomb, he claims, was that of Hata no Kawakatsu, a great Hata chieftain. The shrine, called "Osake Jinja," he interpreted to be a shrine to King David.
The first confirmed contacts between the Japanese and people of Jewish ancestry began during the Age of Discovery (16th century) with the arrival of European travelers and merchants (primarily the Portuguese and Dutch).
The Thirteenth Tribe (1976) is a book by Arthur Koestler. It advances the controversial thesis that North/East European Jews and their descendants, or Ashkenazim, are not descended from the Israelites of antiquity, but from a group of Khazars, a people originating in the Caucasus region (historical Khazaria) who converted to Judaism in the 8th century and were later forced to move westwards into current Eastern Europe (Russia, Hungary, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, and other places). Koestler stated that part of his intent in writing the book was to defuse anti-Semitism by undermining the identification of European Jews with the Jews of the Bible, rendering anti-Semitic epithets such as "Christ killer" inapplicable. Arthur Koestler himself was a Hungarian Ashkenazi Jew by ancestry.
Koestler himself was emphatically pro-Zionist based on secular considerations, and did not see alleged Khazar ancestry as diminishing the claim of Jews to Israel, which he felt was based on the United Nations mandate, and not on Biblical covenants or genetic inheritance. In his view, "The problem of the Khazar infusion a thousand years ago ... is irrelevant to modern Israel". In addition, he was apparently "either unaware of or oblivious to the use anti-Semites had made to the Khazar theory since its introduction at the turn of the century." Nevertheless, in the Arab world the Khazar theory has been adopted by anti-Zionists and anti-Semites; such proponents argue that if Ashkenazi Jews are primarily Khazar and not Semitic in origin, they would have no historical claim to Israel, nor would they be the subject of the God's Biblical promise of Canaan to the Israelites, thus undermining the theological basis of both Jewish religious Zionists and Christian Zionists.
Recent genetic research studies have contradicted the main thesis of The Thirteenth Tribe. For example, a 2000 study of haplotypes by Hammer et al indicates that the Y chromosomes of most Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews are of Middle Eastern origin, containing mutations that are also common among Palestinians and other Middle Eastern peoples, yet are uncommon in the general European population. These results strongly suggest that most male ancestors of the Ashkenazi Jews can be traced primarily to the Middle East.
A second study (2006) by Behar et al, based on haplotype analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), also indicates that about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population is descended matrilineally from just four women. These four "founder lineages" were "likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool" originating in the Near East in the first and second centuries CE.
The Radhanites (also Radanites) were medieval Jewish merchants. Whether the term, which is used by only a limited number of primary sources, refers to a specific guild, or a clan, or is a generic term for Jewish merchants in the trans-Eurasian trade network is unclear. Jewish merchants dominated trade between the Christian and Islamic worlds during the early Middle Ages (approx. 600–1000 CE). Many trade routes previously established under the Roman Empire continued to function during that period largely through their efforts. Their trade network covered much of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of India and China.
Text of Ibn Khordadbeh's (author of the earliest surviving Arabic book of administrative geography) account:
- These merchants speak Arabic, Persian, Roman, the Frank, Spanish, and Slav languages. They journey from West to East, from East to West, partly on land, partly by sea. They transport from the West eunuchs, female slaves, boys, brocade, castor, marten and other furs, and swords. They take ship from Firanja (France), on the Western Sea (Mediterranean Sea), and make for Farama (Pelusium). There they load their goods on camel-back and go by land to al-Kolzum (Suez), a distance of twenty-five farsakhs (parasangs). They embark in the East Sea (Red Sea) and sail from al-Kolzum to al-Jar (port of Medina) and al-Jeddah, then they go to Sind, India, and China. On their return from China they carry back musk, aloes, camphor, cinnamon, and other products of the Eastern countries to al-Kolzum and bring them back to Farama, where they again embark on the Western Sea. Some make sail for Constantinople to sell their goods to the Romans; others go to the palace of the King of the Franks to place their goods. Sometimes these Jew merchants, when embarking from the land of the Franks, on the Western Sea, make for Antioch (at the head of the Orontes River); thence by land to al-Jabia (al-Hanaya on the bank of the Euphrates), where they arrive after three days’ march. There they embark on the Euphrates and reach Baghdad, whence they sail down the Tigris, to al-Obolla. From al-Obolla they sail for Oman, Sind, Hind, and China…
- These different journeys can also be made by land. The merchants that start from Spain or France go to Sus al-Aksa (in Morocco) and then to Tangier, whence they walk to Kairouan and the capital of Egypt. Thence they go to ar-Ramla, visit Damascus, al-Kufa, Baghdad, and al-Basra, cross Ahwaz, Fars, Kirman, Sind, Hind, and arrive in China.
- Sometimes, also, they take the route behind Rome and, passing through the country of the Slavs, arrive at Khamlidj, the capital of the Khazars. They embark on the Jorjan Sea (Caspian Sea), arrive at Balkh, betake themselves from there across the Oxus, and continue their journey toward Yurt, Toghuzghuzn (Uyghur people), and from there to China.
During the Early Middle Ages the Islamic policies of the Middle East and North Africa and the Christian kingdoms of Europe often banned each others' merchants from entering their ports. Corsairs of both sides raided the shipping of their adversaries at will. The Radhanites functioned as neutral go-betweens, keeping open the lines of communication and trade between the lands of the old Roman Empire and the Far East. As a result of the revenue they brought, Jewish merchants enjoyed significant privileges under the early Carolingians in France and throughout the Muslim world, a fact that greatly vexed the local Church authorities.
Some scholars believe that the Radhanites may have played a role in the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. In addition, they may have helped establish Jewish communities at various points along their trade routes, and were probably involved in the early Jewish settlement of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, China and India.
The fall of the Tang Dynasty of China in 908 and the destruction of the Khazar Khaganate some sixty years later led to widespread chaos in Inner Eurasia, the Caucasus and China. Trade routes became unstable and unsafe, a situation exacerbated by Turkic invasions of Persia and the Middle East, and the Silk Road largely collapsed for centuries. Moreover, the fragmentation of the Islamic world (and to a lesser extent, Christendom) into small states provided more opportunities for non-Jews to enter the market. This period saw the rise of the mercantile Italian city-states, especially Genoa, Venice, Pisa, and Amalfi, who viewed the Radhanites as unwanted competitors.
Jews and Judaism in China have had a long history. Jewish settlers are documented in China as early as the 7th or 8th century CE, but may have arrived during the mid Han Dynasty, or even as early as 231 BCE. Relatively isolated communities developed through the Tang and Song Dynasties (7-12th cent. CE) all the way through the Qing Dynasty (19th cent.), most notably in the Kaifeng Jews (the term "Chinese Jews" is often used in a restricted sense to refer to these communities). By the time of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, few if any native Chinese Jews were known to have maintained the practice of their religion and culture.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish immigrants from around the world arrived with Western commercial and quasi-colonialist influences, particularly in the commercial centers of Shanghai and Hong Kong, which was for a time a British colony. Tens of thousands of Jewish refugees escaping from the 1917 Russian Revolution and the Holocaust in Europe were to find sanctuary in China in successive decades.
Shanghai's first wave of Jews came in the second half of the 19th century, many being Sephardic Jews from Iraq. The first Jew who arrived there was Elias David Sassoon, who, about the year 1850, opened a branch in connection with his father's Bombay house. Since that period Jews have gradually migrated from India to Shanghai, most of them being engaged from Bombay as clerks by the firm of David Sassoon & Co. The community was composed mainly of "Asian," German, and Russian Jews, though there are a few of Austrian, French, and Italian origin among them. Jews took a considerable part in developing trade in China, and several served on the municipal councils, among them being S. A. Hardoon, partner in the firm of E. D. Sassoon & Co., who had served on the French and English councils at the same time. During the early days of Jewish settlement in Shanghai the trade in opium and Bombay cotton yarn was mainly in Jewish hands.
Contemporaneous sources estimated the Jewish population in China in 1940 — including Manchukuo — at 36,000.
Jewish life in Shanghai had really taken off with the arrival of the British. Sephardic Jews from the Middle East came as traders via India and Hong Kong and established some of the leading trading companies. Later came Jewish refugees from Russia (and later the Soviet Union).
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, several thousand Russian Jews (many of them anti-communists) moved to Harbin in northern China (former Manchuria), alongside Christian Russians. These included the parents of future Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Another wave of 18,000 Jews, from Germany, Austria, and Poland immigrated to Shanghai in the 1930s. Shanghai at the time was an open city and did not have restrictions on immigration, and some Chinese diplomats such as Ho Feng Shan issued "protective" passports. In 1943, the occupying Japanese army required these 18,000 Jews, formally known as "stateless refugees," to relocate to a 3/4 square mile area of Shanghai's Honkew district (today known as Hongkou) where many lived in group homes called "heime." The total number of Jews entering Shanghai during this period equaled the number of Jews fleeing to Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa combined. Many of the Jews in China later returned to found modern Israel.
The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people who dominated the Pontic steppe and the North Caucasus from the 7th to the 10th century CE. The name 'Khazar' seems to be tied to a Turkic verb form meaning "wandering".
In the 7th century CE, the Khazars founded an independent Khaganate in the Northern Caucasus along the Caspian Sea. Although the Khazars were initially Tengri shamanists, many of them converted to Christianity, Islam, and other religions. During the eighth or ninth century the state religion became Judaism. At their height, the Khazar khaganate and its tributaries controlled much of what is today southern Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, large portions of the Caucasus (including Circassia, Dagestan, Chechnya, and parts of Georgia), and the Crimea.
The origins of the Khazars are unclear. Following their conversion to Judaism, the Khazars themselves traced their origins to Kozar, a son of Togarmah. Togarmah is mentioned in Genesis in the Bible as a grandson of Japheth (one of the sons of Noah in the Bible.
Scholars in the former USSR considered the Khazars to be an indigenous people of the North Caucasus. Some scholars, such as D.M. Dunlop, considered the Khazars to be connected with a Uyghur or Tiele confederation tribe called He'san in Chinese sources from the 7th-century (Suishu, 84). However, the Khazar language appears to have been an Oghuric tongue, similar to that spoken by the early Bulgars and corresponding to the modern day Chuvash dialects. Therefore, a Hunnish origin has also been postulated.
The theory that all or most Ashkenazi ("European") Jews might be descended from Khazars (rather than Semitic groups in the Middle East) dates back to the late nineteenth century, and is frequently cited to assert that most modern Jews aren't descended from Israelites and/or to refute Israeli claims to territory also sought by Palestinians.
Most Jews, including Ashkenazi Jews, do not exhibit the oriental features of the Khazars, who were likely of Central Asian Turkish origin. Modern DNA studies on the Y chromosome of Jews worldwide have also discredited the Khazar origin theory for the vast majority of Jews, including the Ashkenazi.
A study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that "The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.". Researchers express surprise at the remarkable genetic uniformity they found among modern Jews, no matter where the diaspora has become dispersed around the world. Contradicting the "mongrel" theory, DNA demonstrated substantially less inter-marriage among Jews over the last 3000 years than found in other populations.
"The results accord with Jewish history and tradition and refute theories like those holding that Jewish communities consist mostly of converts from other faiths, or that they are descended from the Khazars, a medieval Turkish tribe that adopted Judaism."
Morever, "The analysis provides genetic witness that these communities have, to a remarkable extent, retained their biological identity separate from their host populations, evidence of relatively little intermarriage or conversion into Judaism over the centuries." Id. And another finding, paradoxical but unsurprising, is that by the yardstick of the Y chromosome, the world's Jewish communities are closely related to Syrians and Palestinians, suggesting that all are descended from a common ancestral population that inhabited the Middle East some four thousand years ago.
This study found that "The extremely close affinity of Jewish and non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations observed ... supports the hypothesis of a common Middle Eastern origin.", as does the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of at least 40% of the current Ashkenazi population. So although Khazars could possibly have been absorbed into the modern Jewish population as we know it today, it is unlikely that they formed a large percentage of the ancestors of modern Jews.
DNA analysis further determined that modern Jews of the priesthood tribe -- or "Cohanim" -- share a common ancestor in Israel dating back about 3000 years, 1700 years older than the Khazar conversion to Judaism. This result is consistent for all Jewish populations around the world.
"Using a combination of molecular genetics and mathematical analysis, the scientists arrived at an estimated date for the most recent common ancestor of contemporary Cohanim. According to this analysis, the common ancestor lived between the Exodus (approx. 1000 B.C.E) and the destruction of the first Temple (586 B.C.E.), consistent with the biblical account. Similar results were obtained based on analysis of either Sephardi or Ashkenzi communities, confirming the ancestral link of the two communities which had been separated for more than 500 years." "To date the original high priest, the research team used a formula based on a commonly accepted mutation rate. This formula yieded some 106 generations for both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, or between 2,650 and 3,180 years, depending on whether a generation is counted as 25 or 30 years."
The history of the Jews in the Americas dates back to Christopher Columbus and his first cross-Atlantic voyage on August 3, 1492, when he left Spain and eventually "discovered" the New World. His date of departure was also the day on which the Catholic Monarchs Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon decreed that the Jews of Spain either had to convert to Catholicism, depart from the country, or face death for defiance of the Monarch.
There were at least seven Jews (either crypto-Jews, Marranos, or sincere Jewish converts to Catholicism) who sailed with Columbus in his first voyage including Rodrigo de Triana, who was the first to sight land (Columbus later assumed credit for this), Maestre Bernal, who served as the expedition's physician, and Luis De Torres, the interpreter, who spoke Hebrew and Arabic, which it was believed would be useful in the Orient - their intended destination.
In the coming years, Jews settled in the new Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Caribbean, where they believed that they would be safe from the Inquisition. Some took part in the conquest of the "New World," and Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes a number of executions of soldiers in Hernán Cortés's forces during the conquest of Mexico because they were Jews.
By the mid-seventeenth century, the largest Jewish communities in the Western Hemisphere were located in Suriname and Brazil.
Nevertheless, several Jewish communities in the Caribbean, Central, and South America flourished, particularly in those areas under Dutch and English control. By the sixteenth century, fully functioning Jewish communities had organized in Brazil, Suriname, Curaçao, Jamaica, and Barbados. In addition, there were unorganized communities of Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese territories, where the Inquisition was active, including Cuba, Puerto Rico and Mexico, however, these Jews generally concealed their identity from the authorities.
Today, Latin American Jewry is composed of more than 500,000 people, most of whom live in Argentina and Brazil.
The history of the Jewish Community in Manila begins with the Spanish Inquisition of the 16th century, when many Jews of Spain, who were forcibly converted to Christianity, observed their Jewish life in secret and found themselves tried, convicted, and expelled for heretical behavior. Known as Marranos or "New Christians," these Crypto-Jews accompanied Spanish adventurers who settled in many Far Eastern ports, Manila included. Two "New Christian" brothers, Jorge and Domingo Rodríguez, arrived in the Spanish Philippines in the 1590s. By 1593 both were tried and convicted at an auto da fe in Mexico City because the Inquisition did not have an independent tribunal in the Philippines. The Inquisition imprisoned the Rodríguez brothers and subsequently tried and convicted at least eight other "New Christians" from the Philippines. Such was the precarious status of Jewish settlers in the Philippines. Jewish presence during the subsequent centuries of Spanish colonization remained small and unorganized. Spanish Christianized laws would not have permitted the presence of an organized Jewish community.
The first permanent settlement of Jews in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial years began with the arrival of three Levy brothers from Alsace-Lorraine, who were escaping the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. As entrepreneurs, their business ventures over the years included jewelry retail, a general merchandising business, and import trade in gems, pharmaceuticals, and eventually automobiles. The opening of the Suez Canal in March 1869 provided a more direct trading route between Europe and The Philippines, allowing businesses to grow and the number of Jews in The Philippines to increase. The Levy brothers were subsequently joined by Turkish, Syrian, and Egyptian Jews, creating a multi-ethnic Jewish population of about fifty individuals by the end of the Spanish period. It was not until the Spanish-American war at the end of the 19th century, when the United States took control of the islands from Spain in 1898, that the Jewish community was allowed to officially organize and openly practice Judaism.
Sephardi Jews are a subgroup of Jews originating in the Iberian Peninsula, usually defined in contrast to Ashkenazi Jews.
The precise origins of the Sephardim are unclear. There is fragmentary and inconclusive evidence of a Jewish presence on the Iberian Peninsula dating from pre-Roman times. More substantial references date from the period of Roman occupation.
It is thought that substantial Jewish immigration probably occurred during the period of Roman occupation of Hispania. The province came under Roman control with the fall of Carthage after the Second Punic War (218-202 BCE).
Although the spread of Jews into Europe is most commonly associated with the Diaspora which ensued from the Roman conquest of Judea, emigration from Judea into the greater Roman Mediterranean area antedated the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans under Titus. Any Jews already in Hispania at this time would have been joined by those who had been enslaved by the Romans under Vespasian and Titus, and dispersed to the extreme west during the period of the Jewish Wars, and especially after the defeat of Judea in 70 CE. One account placed the number carried off to Hispania at 80,000. Subsequent immigrations came into the area along both the northern African and southern European sides of the Mediterranean.
Prior to 1492, substantial Jewish populations existed in most Spanish provinces. Among the more prominent were in Toledo, Córdoba, and Granada. Smaller towns such as Ocaña, Guadalajara, Bentrago, and Almazan were founded or inhabited principally by Jews. Castile, Aranda, Ávila, Calahorra, Cuellar, Herrera, Medina, Segovia, Soria, and Villalon were home to large Jewish communities. Aragon and Catalonia had substantial Jewish communities in the famous Calls of Girona, Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia and Palma de Mallorca.
Following the 1492 expulsion from Spain, and the subsequent expulsions in Portugal (1497), these Jews, the nascent Sephardim, settled mainly in Morocco, the Ottoman Empire (modern-day Turkey, Greece, Southwest Asia, North Africa and Bosnia and Herzegovina), southern France, Italy, Spanish North America, (Southwest United States and Mexico), Spanish South America and the Philippines and Portuguese Brazil, as well as the Netherlands (whence a number of families continued on to the former Dutch possessions of Curaçao, Suriname and Aruba), England, Germany, Denmark, Austria and Hungary.
As a result of the Jewish exodus from Arab lands, many of the Sephardim from the Middle East relocated to either Israel or France, where they form a significant portion of the Jewish communities today. Other significant communities also exist in New York City and Montreal, Canada.
* Jewish Ethnic Divisions
Marranos or Secret Jews (literally "pigs" in the Spanish language, originally a derogatory term from the Arabic meaning "ritually forbidden," stemming from the prohibition against eating the flesh of the animal among both Jews and Muslims), were Sephardic Jews (Jews from the Iberian peninsula) who were forced to adopt the identity of Christians, either through coercion as a consequence of the persecution of nominally converted Jews by the Spanish Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition, or who, for form's sake, became Roman Catholic converts. Many Marranos maintained their ancestral traditions as crypto-Jews, by publicly professing Roman Catholicism but secretly adhering to Judaism.
These "conversos" (converts), as they were also called in Spain and Portugal, numbered over 100,000 in all of Iberia. They were also known by the name of "Cristianos nuevos" and "Cristãos novos" (New Christians) in Spain and Portugal, respectively, "Xuetes" in the Balearic Isles, and "Anusim" (constrained) by Hebrew-speakers. ("Anusim" is a general word for forced converts from Judaism, and is not specific to this period.)
The Xuetes (singular Xueta, also known as Xuetons), are a social group on the island of Mallorca, descendants of Mallorcan Jews who converted to Christianity (see converso), and who have conserved the memory by being the bearers of some of the surnames implicated in the final inquisitorial trials against Crypto-Jews in the 17th century, or by being closely related by marriage. The Xuetes have historically been stigmatized and until the first half of the 20th century practiced, and were seen as obligated to practice, strict endogamy. Today, an estimated 18,000 people in the island carry Xueta surnames.
The 15 Xueta lineages are: Aguiló, Bonnin, Cortès, Fortesa, Fuster, Martí, Miró, Picó, Pinya, Pomar, Segura, Tarongí, Valentí, Valleriola and Valls.
They derive from a broader converso community, of which the registers of the Inquisition at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century document more than 270 surnames among those condemned for judaizing in Mallorca. The persistence of the group is explained by it having conserved a particular community structure on certain streets and in professional and mercantile guilds, and, above all, a complex system of familial alliances, far more than the clandestine practice of Judaism did, which was by no means universal among them.
Mizrahi Jews or Mizrahim, also referred to as Edot HaMizrach (Communities of the East) are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus. With the exception of Yemenite Jews, who are sometimes included but more often considered a separate group, the Mizrahi category includes Jews from the Arab world and adjacent countries, primarily Muslim-majority, including Iraqi Jews, Syrian Jews, Lebanese Jews, Persian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Maghrebi Jews, Berber Jews and Kurdish Jews, as well as communities such as Mountain Jews and Georgian Jews, and among the Jews of India and Pakistan the Baghdadi Jews (descendants of relatively recent Iraqi Jews settled in the last few centuries, in contrast to Jewish communities of the Indian subcontinent established millenia earlier).
Despite their heterogeneous origins, Mizrahi Jews generally practise traditional Sephardic Judaism with some differences among the minhagim of the particular communities.
Many Mizrahim today reject this (or any) umbrella description and prefer to identify themselves by their particular country of origin, or that of their immediate ancestors, e.g. "Iranian/Persian Jew", "Iraqi Jew", "Tunisian Jew", etc. Another description sometimes heard is "Oriental Jews". This term is still frequently used by people in the western hemisphere.
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and subsequent establishment of the state of Israel, most Mizrahi Jews emigrated to the new state where they could become citizens.
Anti-Jewish actions by Arab governments in the 1950s and 1960s, including the expulsion of 25,000 Mizrahi Jews from Egypt after the 1956 Suez Crisis, led to the overwhelming majority of Mizrahim leaving Arab countries. They became refugees. Most went to Israel. Many Moroccan and Algerian Jews went to France. Thousands of Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian Jews emigrated to the United States.
Today, as many as 40,000 Mizrahim still remain in communities scattered throughout the non-Arab Muslim world, primarily in Iran, but also Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. There are few remaining in the Arab world. About 5,000 remain in Morocco and fewer than 2,000 in Tunisia. Other countries with remnants of ancient Jewish communities with official recognition, such as Lebanon, have 1,000 or fewer Jews. A trickle of emigration continues, mainly to Israel and the United States.
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities of the Rhineland. Ashkenazi Jews are literally "German Jews."
Many Ashkenazi Jews later migrated, largely eastward, forming communities in non German-speaking areas, including Hungary, Poland, Russia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere between the 10th and 19th centuries. With them, they took and diversified Yiddish, a Germanic Jewish language that had since medieval times been the lingua franca among Ashkenazi Jews. To a much lesser extent, the Judæo-French language Zarphatic and the Slavic-based Knaanic (Judæo-Czech) were also spoken.
Although in the 11th century they comprised only 3% of the world's Jewish population, Ashkenazi Jews accounted for (at their highest) 92% of the world's Jews in 1931 and today make up approximately 80% of Jews worldwide. Most Jewish communities with extended histories in Europe are Ashkenazim, with the exception of those associated with the Mediterranean region. The majority of the Jews who migrated from Europe to other continents in the past two centuries are Ashekenazim, Eastern Ashkenazim in particular.
Yemenite Jews are those Jews who live, or whose recent ancestors lived, in Yemen on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula. They have a unique religious tradition that marks them out as separate from both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews. It is debatable whether they should be described as "Mizrahi Jews", as all or most other Mizrahim follow the Sephardic rite.
Local Yemenite Jewish traditions have traced the earliest settlement of Jews in this region back to the time of King Solomon. One explanation is that King Solomon sent Jewish merchant marines to Yemen to prospect for gold and silver with which to adorn the Temple in Jerusalem. Another legend places Jewish craftsmen in the region as requested by Bilqis, the Queen of Saba (Sheba). The Beta Israel or Chabashim (Jews in neighboring Ethiopia) have a sister legend of their origins that places the Queen of Sheba as married to King Solomon. Parts of Yemen, Eritrea and Ethiopia at that time were jointly ruled by Sheba, with its capital in Yemen, adding some plausibility to the story.
The Sanaite Jews have a legend that their ancestors settled in Yemen forty-two years before the destruction of the First Temple. It is said that under the prophet Jeremiah some 75,000 Jews, including priests and Levites, traveled to Yemen. The Jews of Habban in southern Yemen have a legend that they are the descendants of Judeans who settled in the area before the destruction of the Second Temple. These Judeans supposedly belonged to a brigade dispatched by King Herod to assist the Roman legions fighting in the region.
DNA testing between Yemenite Jews and various other of the world's Jewish communities shows a common link, with most communities sharing similar genetic profiles. Furthermore, the Y-chromosome signatures of the Yemenite Jews are also similar to those of other Semitic populations.
- Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.
One point in which Yemenite Jews appear to differ from Ashkenazi Jews and most Near Eastern Jewish communities is in the proportion of sub-Saharan African gene types which have entered their gene pools. One study found that some Arabic-speaking populations — Jordanians, Syrians, Iraqis, and Bedouins — have what appears to be substantial gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa, amounting to 10-15% of lineages within the past three millennia. In the case of Yemenites, the average is actually higher at 35%. Yemenite Jews, as a traditionally Arabic-speaking community of local Yemenite and Israelite ancestries, are included within the findings for Yemenites, though they average a quarter of the frequency of the non-Jewish Yemenite sample. In other Arabic-speaking populations not mentioned, the African gene types are rarely shared. Other Middle Eastern populations, particularly non-Arabic speakers — Turks, Persians, Kurds, Armenians, Azeris, and Georgians — have few or no such lineages.
|
Bridget of Sweden
Jesus
jesusfamilytomb.com
Descent from the Cross with the Shroud of Turin. Painting by Giovanni Battista della Rovere, 16th century.
Luke the Evangelist
Temple in Jerusalem
Kingdoms of Israel
The name Canaan occurs in hieroglyphs as k3nˁnˁ on the Merneptah Stele in the 13th century BC
Goliath, a Philistine warrior. Lithograph by Osmar Schindler.
Palestinians
Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness, by Karel Dujardin
The birth of Esau and Jacob, as painted by Benjamin West
Samaritans
Harvard Semitic Museum
The Museum's artifacts include pottery, cylinder seals, sculpture, coins and cuneiform tablets. Many are from museum-sponsored excavations in Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Cyprus, and Tunisia. The Museum is dedicated to the use of these collections for the teaching, research, and publication of Near Eastern archaeology, history, and culture.
Ten Lost Tribes
Jewish students with their teacher in Samarkand, ca. 1910.
India's North-Eastern border states
Ethiopia
Southern Africa
Pashtun People
Kurdish People
Kaifeng Jews
Hata no Kawakatsu
The Hata were also claimed as ancestors by Zeami Motokiyo, the premiere Noh playwright in history, who attributed the origins of Noh to Hata no Kawakatsu. According to Zeami's writings, Kōkatsu, the ancestor of both the Kanze and Komparu Noh lineages, was the first to introduce kagura Shinto ritual dances to Japan in the sixth century; this form would later evolve into sarugaku and then into Noh.
Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur koestler
Much of the Radhanites' Indian Ocean trade would have been carried out through coastal cargo ships such as this dhow.
Shanghai Ghetto
Khazar warrior with captive
Spanish Inquisition
Temple Emil, Manila, c.1940.
As of 2005, Philippine Jews number at the very most 500 people. Other estimates range between 100 and 500 people (0.000001% and 0.000005% of the country's total population).
Today, Manila boasts the largest Jewish community in the Philippines, which consists of roughly 40 families. There are, of course, other Jews elsewhere in the country, but these are obviously fewer.
The Reconquista, 790-1300
The Reconquista (Reconquest) was a period of 750 years in which several Christian kingdoms expanded themselves over the Iberian Peninsula at the expense of the Muslim states of Al-Andalus
The war left the Iberian kingdoms with deep economic crises, leading to the expulsion of the Jews (who had lived in the Iberian Peninsula for over ten centuries) in order to confiscate their funds and property.
Majorca (Spanish and Catalan: Mallorca) is the largest island of Spain. It is located in the Mediterranean Sea and part of the Balearic Islands archipelago
Prominent Mizrahi figures:
* Jerry Seinfeld, American actor and comedian (mother is a Jew from Damascus, Syria)
* Paula Abdul, American singer, dancer, television personality, jewelry designer & actress (Jewish Syrian father)
* Isaac Mizrahi, fashion designer
* Charles Saatchi, advertising executive and art collector (born in Iraq)
In the United States, where 6 out of the 7 million strong American Jewish population — the largest Jewish population in the world when consistent statistical parameters are employed — is Ashkenazi, representing the world's single largest concentration of Ashkenazim.
An elderly Yemenite Jew
|