Are Today's Jews Descended from Ancient Israel?

Behar, Doron M. et al.  “The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people.”  Nature 466:238–242.  Jun 9, 2010.  A genome-wide comparison of 14 Jewish diaspora communities with 69 non-Jewish populations of the Old World, using SNP arrays, principal components and clustering.  It is the widest single survey of Jewish communities, and the source of the finding that most cluster with Levantines while Ethiopian and Indian Jews cluster with their neighbours.

1. 1a.

   Page 238, section Abstract:  “Most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight subcluster that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples but not samples from other Levantine populations or paired Diaspora host populations. In contrast, Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) and Indian Jews (Bene Israel and Cochini) cluster with neighbouring autochthonous populations in Ethiopia and western India, respectively, despite a clear paternal link between the Bene Israel and the Levant. These results cast light on the variegated genetic architecture of the Middle East, and trace the origins of most Jewish Diaspora communities to the Levant.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 1b.

   Section Supplementary Information, Note 2, p. 7:  “The Old World based PCA identified a major Jewish cluster, comprised of Ashkenazi Azerbaijani-Georgian-Iranian-Iraqi-Moroccan-Sephardi-Uzbekistani Jewish communities and a second Yemenite Jewish cluster, both of which localized to within the boundaries of other contemporary Levantine populations”.  The supplement says its Bukharan sample is too small for firm conclusions. ↩ ↩

3. 1c.

   Section Supplementary Information, Note 2, p. 9:  “The third cluster comprised solely of Yemenite Jews is also evident in the Old World based PC plot and is clearly separated from Yemenites but overlaps with Bedouins and Saudis.”  Section Supplementary Information, Note 2, pp. 9–10:  “Thus, the tight and well-separated Yemenite Jewish samples, suggest a Levantine origin of this community, an early split from other Jewish communities, with strict isolation from non-Jewish Yemenites. The proximity of the Yemenite Jews to Palestinians and Saudis on the PC plot might reflect a genetic contribution from the Arabian Peninsula, rather than recent shared ancestry. This might not be surprising in view of the historical records suggesting the conversion of Himyarite nobles and others to Judaism and the establishment of a Jewish kingdom in Yemen during the 6th century CE.” ↩

4. 1d.

   Section Supplementary Information, Note 6, p. 23:  “The PCA plot clearly places Ethiopian and Indian Jewish mtDNA diversity within the non-Jewish African and Indian pools, respectively. On the other hand, the Moroccan and Yemenite Jewish communities show almost no sub-Saharan mtDNA lineages, which are quite frequent among their host populations.” ↩ ↩

Carter, Robert W.  “The genetic history of the Israelite nation.”  Journal of Creation 32(1):114–120.  Mar 2018.  A review of the Jewish genetics literature by a creationist geneticist, written for Creation Ministries International's journal and reviewed by Jonathan Sarfati.  It covers Y-chromosome diversity, the Cohen modal haplotype, the Lemba and the Samaritans, Ashkenazi mitochondrial lineages and the Khazar hypothesis.  It is Carter's fullest written statement of the position this article tests.

1. 2a.

   Section Conclusions:  “There is no ‘Jewish gene’, although there are certainly genes common to Jews. And because of the possibility of genetic drift, we cannot be 100% certain that things like the CMH are actually the Y chromosome of Aaron.”  “However, as a Middle Eastern tribal community, they should have Middle Eastern genetic roots, and the evidence tells us they certainly do.” ↩ ↩

2. 2b.

   Section Aaron's Y Chromosome?:  “Their genealogy is restricted to four main families, but the Cohen family that claims the Samaritan priesthood carries haplotype E. In contrast, the other main Samaritan Y chromosomes belonged to haplogroup J.” ↩

3. 2c.

   Section The Khazar hypothesis:  “Specifically, it seems that his team’s use of the Georgian Jews as a proxy for the assumed genotype of someone from the now-vanished kingdom of Khazar was a mistake, for the Georgians are not only south of the Caucasus, but they cluster tightly with the Middle Eastern Jews in genetic analyses.” ↩

4. 2d.

   Section Aaron's Y Chromosome?:  “The CMH is rare in non-Levitical Jews, is found in 50% of Levites, and occurs in a much higher proportion of the Cohanim.” ↩

5. 2e.

   Section Mitochondrial DNA:  “This would seem to indicate a significant number of the founding women among the Ashkenazi were converts.” ↩

6. 2f.

   Section The Khazar hypothesis:  “Ashkenazi and Sephardic populations have less than 40% European ancestry, and are more similar to each other than they are to Europeans in general.” ↩

7. 2g.

   Section The Khazar hypothesis:  “We may not be able to positively identify a Jew by their genes, but when one does find genes common to Jews found throughout their current distribution, this is a strong case for the antiquity of Judaism.” ↩ ↩

Rohde, Douglas L. T. et al.  “Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans.”  Nature 431:562–566.  Sep 30, 2004.  A computer model of human mating and migration that estimates when the most recent common ancestor of everyone alive lived, and when the "identical ancestors" point falls, after which every person who left descendants is an ancestor of everyone now living.  Its central runs put that point a few thousand years ago.  It is cited here for the difference between family-tree ancestry and the DNA a person actually inherits.

1. 3a.

   Page 565:  “Furthermore, because DNA is inherited in relatively large segments from ancestors, an individual will receive little or no actual genetic inheritance from the vast majority of the ancestors living at the IA point.”  IA is the authors' term for the identical-ancestors point. ↩

2. 3b.

   Page 564:  “a mean MRCA date of 1,415 BC and a mean IA date of 5,353 BC”.  “the mean MRCA date is as recent as AD 55 and the mean IA date is 2,158”.  The first pair is from the authors' conservative model, the second from a model with freer migration.  MRCA is the most recent common ancestor of everyone alive;  IA is the identical-ancestors point, after which everyone who left descendants is an ancestor of everyone.  The second sentence reads "2,158 BC" on the page, where the "BC" falls after a column break. ↩

Agranat-Tamir, Lily et al.  “The Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant.”  Cell 181(5):1146–1157.  May 28, 2020.  An ancient-DNA study of 73 Bronze and Iron Age individuals from five sites in Israel and Jordan, analysed with 20 earlier published genomes.  It finds the Bronze Age "Canaanites" genetically alike across sites, models them as a mix of Neolithic Levantine and Zagros-related ancestry, and models 14 present-day Jewish and Arabic-speaking groups as mixtures of that ancestry with East African and European components.  It is the main ancient reference for Levantine ancestry in this article.

1. 4a.

   Section Introduction:  “Combined with previously published data on the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Southern Levant, we assembled a dataset of 93 individuals from nine sites across present-day Israel, Jordan and Lebanon, all demonstrating Canaanite material culture.” ↩

2. 4b.

   Section Discussion:  “This suggests that the archaeological and historical category of “Canaanites” correlates with shared ancestry”. ↩

3. 4c.

   Section Discussion:  “We found that both Arabic-speaking and Jewish populations are compatible with having more than 50% Middle Eastern-related ancestry. This does not mean that any these present-day groups bear direct ancestry from people who lived in the Middle to Late Bronze Age Levant or in Chalcolithic Zagros; rather, it indicates that they have ancestries from populations whose ancient proxy can be related to the Middle East.”  "any these" is as printed. ↩

4. 4d.

   Section Further change in Levantine populations since the Bronze Age:  “The results show that since the Bronze Age an additional East African-related component was added to the region (on average ~10.6%, excluding Ethiopian Jews that harbor ~80% East African component), as well as a European-related component (on average ~8.7%, excluding Ashkenazi Jews who harbor a ~41% European-related component).” ↩ ↩ ↩

“Ruth 1:16.”  The JPS Tanakh: Gender-Sensitive Edition, via Sefaria.  n.d.  The Jewish Publication Society's English translation of the Hebrew Bible. ↩

Carter, Robert W.  “Extensive mixing among Israelites and non-Israelites in biblical history.”  Journal of Creation 31(3):112–118.  Nov 2017.  A survey by a creationist geneticist of every biblical case of Israelites marrying or absorbing outsiders, from Abraham's household to the Idumeans.  It argues that Israel began as a mixed people and stayed one, and is the biblical half of Carter's case on Jewish genetics.

1. 6a.

   Section Conclusions:  “It is clear from biblical history that Jewish people were a mélange of themselves and their neighbours.” ↩

“Mishnah Kiddushin 3:12.”  The William Davidson Edition, English, via Sefaria.  n.d.  The Mishnah, the code of Jewish law edited about AD 200, in the Koren William Davidson English edition with Adin Steinsaltz's commentary, where bold type marks the Mishnah's own words and plain type the translator's explanation.  This passage sets out when a child takes the father's lineage and when the mother's.

1. 7a.

   “And in any case where a woman cannot join in betrothal with him or with others, the offspring is like her. … This is the offspring of a Canaanite maidservant or a gentile woman”.  The quotation follows the edition's running text, in which bold type marks the Mishnah's words and plain type the translator's connecting words;  the translator's added sentence of explanation is left out. ↩

State of Israel, Knesset.  “Law of Return (Amendment No. 2), 5730-1970.”  Sefer Ha-Chukkim 586.  Mar 19, 1970.  The amendment to Israel's 1950 Law of Return that added a legal definition of who is a Jew and extended the right of return to the children, grandchildren and spouses of Jews.  English translation.

1. 8a.

   Section 4B:  “For the purposes of this Law, "Jew" means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion.” ↩

Koestler, Arthur.  The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage.  Random House.  1976.  A popular history by the novelist and essayist that argued Eastern European Jews descend mainly from the Khazars, a Turkic people whose rulers adopted Judaism.  Written before any genetic test existed, it rests on medieval documents, a demographic argument and physical anthropology.  It is the book that made the Khazar theory widely known.

1. 9a.

   Page 17:  “the large majority of surviving Jews in the world is of Eastern European — and thus perhaps mainly of Khazar — origin. If so, this would mean that their ancestors came not from the Jordan but from the Volga, not from Canaan but from the Caucasus, once believed to be the cradle of the Aryan race; and that genetically they are more closely related to the Hun, Uigur and Magyar tribes than to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Should this turn out to be the case, then the term ‘anti-Semitism’ would become void of meaning”. ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 9b.

   Page 151:  “According to the article ‘Statistics’ in the Jewish Encyclopaedia, in the sixteenth century the total Jewish population of the world amounted to about one million. This seems to indicate, as Poliak, Kutschera and others have pointed out, that during the Middle Ages the majority of those who professed the Judaic faith were Khazars.”  “its predominantly Khazar-Turkish derivation appears to be supported by strong evidence, and should at least be regarded as a theory worth serious discussion.”  A footnote mark after "Kutschera" is omitted. ↩

Sand, Shlomo.  The Invention of the Jewish People.  Verso.  Translated by Yael Lotan.  2009.  A history by a Tel Aviv University historian arguing that the Jews are not a people of common descent but a religious community enlarged by mass conversion, in Khazaria among other places.  It was a bestseller in Hebrew and English, and it is the main recent statement of the Khazar theory by a professional historian.

1. 10a.

   Page 189:  “Had the memory of the mass conversion to Judaism been preserved, it might have eroded the metanarrative about the biological unity of the Jewish people”. ↩ ↩

2. 10b.

   Page 245:  “The number of Jewish believers in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries in the territory between Mainz and Worms, Cologne and Strasbourg, was very small. There are no precise data, but estimates range from a few hundred to a few thousand, never more.”  Page 246:  “Khazaria collapsed some time before the first indications of the presence of Jews in Eastern Europe, and it is difficult not to connect the two.” ↩

3. 10c.

   Page 224:  “How big was the community of proselytized Khazars? The research has not come up with any figures.”  Page 225:  “The Khazar kingdom remained Jewish for too long — estimates range from two hundred to four hundred years — not to warrant the assumption that the practice and the faith trickled down to broader strata.” ↩

Stampfer, Shaul.  “Are We All Khazars Now?”  Jewish Review of Books.  2014.  An essay by a Hebrew University historian of East European Jewry examining Elhaik's 2013 Khazar paper:  its sample sizes, its stand-ins for Khazars, its historical claims, and the demographic puzzle it set out to solve.

1. 11a.

   Paragraph 5:  “Elhaik’s article has become rather popular in some anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist circles, but this proves nothing about its truth.” ↩

2. 11b.

   Paragraph 15:  “The last Khazar capital was destroyed by Sviatoslav of Rus before 970, and the empire never recovered.” ↩

3. 11c.

   Paragraph 16:  “The settlement patterns of the Jews in Eastern Europe suggest that large-scale settlement began in western Poland and not the parts closest to Khazaria. Moreover, there is no evidence of influence of Byzantine Jewish liturgy and customs on Eastern European Jewry and none of Central Asian languages on Yiddish.” ↩

4. 11d.

   Paragraph 18:  “Populations do not grow arithmetically, they grow—not unlike credit card debts—exponentially. The Afrikaners in South Africa started from a group of about 2,000 settlers who came in the late 17th century. Today, roughly 13 generations later, they number about three million.” ↩

Atzmon, Gil et al.  “Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry.”  American Journal of Human Genetics 86:850–859.  Jun 11, 2010.  A genome-wide study of 237 people from seven Jewish communities (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek and Ashkenazi), compared with European and Middle Eastern reference panels by clustering, principal components and shared-segment analysis.  It found each community a distinct cluster with a common Middle Eastern base and varying European admixture, and dated the split between Middle Eastern and European Jews to about 2,500 years ago.

1. 12a.

   Page 850, section Abstract:  “Here, genome-wide analysis of seven Jewish groups (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek, and Ashkenazi) and comparison with non-Jewish groups demonstrated distinctive Jewish population clusters, each with shared Middle Eastern ancestry, proximity to contemporary Middle Eastern populations, and variable degrees of European and North African admixture.” ↩

2. 12b.

   Page 854:  “Along this axis, Europeans were closest to Ashkenazi Jews, followed by Sephardic, Italian, Syrian, and Middle Eastern Jews.” ↩ ↩

3. 12c.

   Page 857:  “is 100–150 generations, compatible with a historical divide that is reported to have occurred more than 2500 years ago”.  The estimate is for the split between the Iraqi and Iranian Jews and the European and Syrian Jews, at about 20 years a generation. ↩ ↩

4. 12d.

   Page 857:  “Two major differences among the populations in this study were the high degree of European admixture (30%–60%) among the Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Italian, and Syrian Jews”. ↩

5. 12e.

   Page 850, section Abstract:  “The IBD segment sharing and the proximity of European Jews to each other and to southern European populations suggested similar origins for European Jewry and refuted large-scale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry.” ↩ ↩

6. 12f.

   Page 857:  “The 7.5% prevalence of the R1a1 haplogroup among Ashkenazi Jews has been interpreted as a possible marker for Slavic or Khazar admixture”. ↩

7. 12g.

   Page 857:  “Notably, up to 50% of Ashkenazi Jewish Y chromosomal haplogroups (E3b, G, J1, and Q) are of Middle Eastern origin, whereas the other prevalent haplogroups (J2, R1a1, R1b) may be representative of the early European admixture.” ↩

Need, Anna C. et al.  “A genome-wide genetic signature of Jewish ancestry perfectly separates individuals with and without full Jewish ancestry in a large random sample of European Americans.”  Genome Biology 10:R7.  2009.  A test of whether genome-wide data alone can identify Jewish ancestry.  It genotyped 611 European Americans recruited for other studies, 55 of whom reported four Jewish grandparents, and ranked them on the first principal component of about 120,000 markers.  The full-Jewish group separated completely from the 507 with no Jewish grandparent;  the authors limit the result to Ashkenazim and to this sample.

1. 13a.

   Section Abstract, Results:  “Using the position on the first principal component axis, every single individual with self-reported full Jewish ancestry had a higher score than any individual with no Jewish ancestry.” ↩ ↩

2. 13b.

   Section Results:  “we conclude that this axis is specific to Ashkenazi Jews”.  “were not distinguishable based on PC1 position”.  Section Discussion:  “it should be noted that the exact dividing line between a Jewish and non-Jewish cluster will vary across sample sets, which, in practice, would reduce the accuracy of the prediction”. ↩

Moorjani, Priya et al.  “The History of African Gene Flow into Southern Europeans, Levantines, and Jews.”  PLoS Genetics 7(4):e1001373.  2011.  A study of 6,529 people from 107 populations that measured sub-Saharan African ancestry with f-statistics and dated its arrival from the decay of linked markers.  It found a small African share in every Jewish group tested, mixed in earlier than in neighbouring Levantine groups.

1. 14a.

   Section Abstract:  “We also detect 3%–5% sub-Saharan African ancestry in all eight of the diverse Jewish populations that we analyzed.”  Section Author Summary:  “The dates in the Jewish groups are older, consistent with events in classical or biblical times that may have occurred in the shared history of Jewish populations.” ↩

Bray, Steven M. et al.  “Signatures of founder effects, admixture, and selection in the Ashkenazi Jewish population.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(37):16222.  2010.  A genome-wide study of 471 Ashkenazim compared with about 3,000 Europeans and with Middle Eastern samples.  It estimated European admixture locus by locus, with Palestinians and Druze standing in for the Middle Eastern ancestor, and found more European ancestry than earlier Y-chromosome studies had.

1. 15a.

   Section Results and Discussion:  “Our higher estimate is in part a result of the use of different proxies for the Jewish ancestral population.” ↩

2. 15b.

   Section Results and Discussion:  “we calculated the amount of European admixture in the AJ population to be 35 to 55%.” ↩

Waldman, Shamam et al.  “Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century.”  Cell 185(25):4703.  2022.  An ancient-DNA study of 33 Jews buried in the medieval cemetery of Erfurt, Germany, radiocarbon-dated to about 1270–1400.  It compared them with modern Ashkenazim, modelled their ancestry with modern stand-in populations, and tested for the Ashkenazi founder event and founder diseases.  It is the first direct look at Ashkenazi genomes from before the move east.

1. 16a.

   Section Quantitative ancestry modeling:  “We caution that the specific identity of the source populations that we inferred, as well as the admixture proportions, should not be considered precise.”  “The levels of Middle Eastern ancestry in Italy were historically variable”. ↩

2. 16b.

   Section Quantitative ancestry modeling:  “Under the extensive set of models we studied, the ME ancestry in EAJ is estimated in the range 19%–43% and the Mediterranean European ancestry in the range 37%–65%.”  EAJ is the authors' label for the Erfurt Ashkenazi Jews. ↩

3. 16c.

   Section Summary:  “the AJ founder event and the acquisition of the main sources of ancestry pre-dated the 14th century”. ↩ ↩

4. 16d.

   Section Evidence for a founder event in the history of Erfurt Jews:  “Remarkably, among 31 unrelated EAJ, 11 (35%) carried the K1a1b1a lineage, which is nearly absent in individuals of non-Jewish ancestry (Behar et al., 2006). This is greater than the 20% frequency in MAJ”.  MAJ is modern Ashkenazi Jews. ↩ ↩

5. 16e.

   Section Quantitative ancestry modeling:  “The majority of AJ today likely formed as a nearly even mixture of populations represented by the two Erfurt groups.” ↩

6. 16f.

   Section Quantitative ancestry modeling:  “Eastern European (Russians). We used modern populations as sources, as modeling with ancient sources was unsuccessful”. ↩ ↩

Carmi, Shai et al.  “Sequencing an Ashkenazi reference panel supports population-targeted personal genomics and illuminates Jewish and European origins.”  Nature Communications 5:4835.  2014.  A whole-genome study of 128 Ashkenazim compared with 26 Flemish genomes.  It reconstructed recent Ashkenazi history from long shared DNA segments and older history from the joint frequencies of variants, finding a medieval bottleneck and an even mix of European and Middle Eastern ancestry.  Its deep dates depend on an assumed mutation rate.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 17a.

   Section Abstract:  “Modelling of ancient histories for AJ and European populations using their joint allele frequency spectrum determines AJ to be an even admixture of European and likely Middle Eastern origins.”  Section Results:  “One ancestral population, consistent with being the ancestors of the FL samples, contributed 46–50% of the AJ gene pool.”  FL is the Flemish sample. ↩

2. 17b.

   Section Abstract:  “Reconstruction of recent AJ history from such segments confirms a recent bottleneck of merely ≈350 individuals.”  Section Results:  “to infer the parameters of a recent AJ bottleneck (effective size 250–420; 25–32 generations ago) followed by rapid exponential expansion (rate per generation 16–53%; Fig. 4, bottom)”.  The ≈ is in the printed abstract;  it does not survive text extraction. ↩

3. 17c.

   Section Results:  “all inferred times and population sizes depend inversely on the mutation rate, m, and are thus highly sensitive to its precise value”. ↩

Xue, James et al.  “The time and place of European admixture in Ashkenazi Jewish history.”  PLoS Genetics 13(4):e1006644.  Apr 4, 2017.  A study of 2,540 Ashkenazim that labelled each stretch of their genomes as European or Middle Eastern and then asked which European region and which Middle Eastern region fit best, and when the mixing happened.  It is the most detailed estimate of the size, source and timing of the Ashkenazi European share.

1. 18a.

   Page 13, section Discussion:  “The estimates for the total European ancestry in AJ range from ≈49% using our previous whole-genome sequencing analysis [9], to ≈53% using the LAI analysis here, and ≈67% using the calibrated Globetrotter analysis.”  The ≈ signs are in the printed paper;  they do not survive text extraction from the PDF. ↩ ↩

2. 18b.

   Page 4:  “the genome-wide ancestry was ≈53% EU and ≈47% ME”.  Page 5:  “we identified Levant as the most likely ME source”. ↩

3. 18c.

   Page 1, section Abstract:  “The major source of EU ancestry in AJ was found to be Southern Europe (≈60–80% of EU ancestry), with the rest being likely Eastern European.”  The ≈ signs are in the printed paper;  they do not survive text extraction from the PDF. ↩

4. 18d.

   Page 2, section Author summary:  “Our results suggest a model of at least two events of European admixture. One event slightly pre-dated a late medieval founder event and was likely from a Southern European source. Another event post-dated the founder event and likely occurred in Eastern Europe.” ↩ ↩

Scale only;  no study claims a constant rate.  If a fraction m of each generation's parents came from outside, the inside share after n generations is (1 − m)^n.  For a 50% outside share after 70 generations, m = 1 − 0.5^(1/70) ≈ 0.99% per generation.  For the published range of European shares, 35% to 67%, m runs from 0.6% to 1.6% per generation over 70 generations, or 1.2% to 3.1% over 35.  Seventy generations at about 28 years is roughly the time since the Roman period.  Xue and colleagues model the mixing as at least two pulses rather than a steady rate.¹⁸ ↩

Brace, Selina et al.  “Genomes from a medieval mass burial show Ashkenazi-associated hereditary diseases pre-date the 12th century.”  Current Biology 32(20).  2022.  An ancient-DNA study of six people from a well at Chapelfield, Norwich, radiocarbon-dated to 1161–1216 and probably killed in the attacks on Norwich's Jews in 1190.  It compared their genomes with modern Ashkenazim and searched them for Ashkenazi disease variants.  The sample is small and partly one family.

1. 20a.

   Section Summary:  “all six have strong genetic affinities with modern Ashkenazi Jews”.  “Simulations indicate that Ashkenazi-associated genetic disease alleles were already at appreciable frequencies, centuries earlier than previously hypothesized.” ↩ ↩

Soodyall, Himla.  “Lemba origins revisited: Tracing the ancestry of Y chromosomes in South African and Zimbabwean Lemba.”  South African Medical Journal 103(12, supplement 1):1009–1013.  2013.  A Y-chromosome study by a South African geneticist of Lemba men from South Africa, Remba men from Zimbabwe and South African Jews, using more markers than the first Lemba studies.  It confirmed a large non-African share of Lemba father lines but found the extended Cohen haplotype in none of them, and so did not confirm Jewish descent.

1. 21a.

   Page 1010:  “The CMH had previously been reported at frequencies of 44.9% in Ashkenazi and 56.1% in Sephardic Cohanim”.  “and among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Israelites at 13.2% and 9.8%, respectively.”  The figures are those of Thomas and colleagues, 1998, as reported here. ↩

2. 21b.

   Page 1009, section Abstract:  “Although 24 individuals (10 Lemba and 14 SA Jews) were identified as having the original CMH (six STRs), only one SA Jew harboured the extended CMH.”  “While it was not possible to trace unequivocally the origins of the non-African Y chromosomes in the Lemba and Remba, this study does not support the earlier claims of their Jewish genetic heritage.” ↩ ↩

Hammer, Michael F. et al.  “Extended Y chromosome haplotypes resolve multiple and unique lineages of the Jewish priesthood.”  Human Genetics 126:707–717.  2009.  A Y-chromosome study of 215 Jewish priests, 1,575 other Jewish men and 2,099 non-Jewish men from the Near East, Europe, Central Asia and India, typed for 75 lineage markers and 12 repeat markers.  Its last author, Karl Skorecki, led the first study of priests' Y chromosomes in 1997.  It refined that haplotype into an extended version on lineage J-P58 and dated it.

1. 22a.

   Page 707, section Abstract:  “While Cohanim from diverse backgrounds carry a total of 21 Y chromosome haplogroups, 5 haplogroups account for 79.5% of Cohanim Y chromosomes. The most frequent Cohanim lineage (46.1%) is marked by the recently reported P58 T->C mutation, which is prevalent in the Near East. Based on genotypes at 12 Y-STRs, we identify an extended CMH on the J-P58 background that predominates in both Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Cohanim and is remarkably absent in non-Jews. The estimated divergence time of this lineage based on 17 STRs is 3,190 ± 1,090 years. Notably, the second most frequent Cohanim lineage (J-M410, 14.4%) contains an extended modal haplotype that is also limited to Ashkenazi and nonAshkenazi Cohanim and is estimated to be 4.2 ± 1.3 ky old.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 22b.

   Page 713:  “The original CMH is present at moderate frequencies (5–8%) in the other Jewish castes (i.e., Levites and Israelites), among non-Jewish Yemenites (13%) and Jordanians (~7%), and as singletons in a number of other non-Jewish populations”.  “In contrast, the extended CMH and its two related haplotypes are observed only among Cohanim (29.8%) and Israelites (1.5%) (i.e., it is completely absent from the Levites and non-Jews surveyed here).” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 22c.

   Page 715:  “Support for a Near Eastern origin of this lineage comes from its high frequency in our sample of Bedouins, Yemenis (67%), and Jordanians (55%)”. ↩

4. 22d.

   Page 713:  “This effect is exaggerated when assuming the pedigree mutation rate of 0.0021/generation, which was implemented in the Thomas et al. (1998) calculation (i.e., we obtain a J-P58* lineage divergence time estimate of 0.4 ± 0.2 kyears).”  The same paragraph reports 4,415 years (95% interval 1,130–21,530) from a Bayesian coalescent method. ↩ ↩

Tofanelli, Sergio et al.  “Mitochondrial and Y chromosome haplotype motifs as diagnostic markers of Jewish ancestry: a reconsideration.”  Frontiers in Genetics 5:384.  2014.  A re-examination of the father-line and mother-line haplotypes proposed as Jewish founder markers, including the Cohen modal haplotype, against large public databases of Jews and non-Jews.  It found the motifs on several unrelated branches and regularly among non-Jews.

1. 23a.

   Section Discussion, final paragraph:  “the overall substantial polyphyletism as well as their systematic occurrence in non-Jewish groups highlights the lack of support for using them either as markers of Jewish ancestry or Biblical tales.” ↩ ↩

Larmuseau, Maarten H. D. et al.  “Cuckolded Fathers Rare in Human Populations.”  Trends in Ecology & Evolution 31(5):327–329.  May 2016.  A short review of studies that measured historical false paternity by comparing the Y chromosomes of men whose family trees say they share a father line.  It finds rates near 1% per generation in several European and European-descended populations over the last few centuries.

1. 24a.

   Page 327:  “This study arrived at a similarly low EPP estimate of 0.9% per generation over the past 500 years”.  Page 328:  “human EPP rates have stayed near-constant at around 1% across several human societies over the past several hundred years”.  EPP is extra-pair paternity.  The Flanders study is the one cited. ↩

Scale only.  If a hereditary caste began with one man and each generation a fraction p of its members' sons were not his descendants (adoption, false claims, infidelity), the share still on the founder's line after n generations is (1 − p)^n.  For n = 100, about 3,000 years at 30 years a generation:  p = 0.6% gives 55%, p = 0.9% gives 41%.  The observed 46.1% of priests on J-P58 (95% interval 39–53%) corresponds to p = 0.6% to 0.9%.  This ignores drift, which can make any one line grow or shrink by chance. ↩

Thomas, Mark G. et al.  “Y Chromosomes Traveling South: The Cohen Modal Haplotype and the Origins of the Lemba — the "Black Jews of Southern Africa".”  American Journal of Human Genetics 66:674–686.  2000.  A Y-chromosome study of the Lemba, a Bantu-speaking people of South Africa and Zimbabwe with a tradition of Jewish descent, compared with Bantu, Yemeni, Jewish and other populations.  It found Lemba father lines split between Bantu and Semitic groups and the Cohen haplotype concentrated in one clan.

1. 26a.

   Page 674, section Abstract:  “Lemba Y chromosomes are clearly divided into Semitic and Bantu clades”.  Pages 683–684:  “Seven of the 11 clan-designated Lemba CMH Y chromosomes came from members of this clan, whereas 7 (Northern Province, 4/4; and Sekhukuneland, 3/9) of the 13 Buba have the CMH.”  The clan is the Buba, recognised as the senior Lemba clan. ↩ ↩

2. 26b.

   Page 685:  “However, it is possible that the Lemba CMH Y chromosomes are a consequence of a relatively recent event that, in Lemba oral tradition, has acquired a patina of antiquity.” ↩

Behar, Doron M. et al.  “Multiple Origins of Ashkenazi Levites: Y Chromosome Evidence for Both Near Eastern and European Ancestries.”  American Journal of Human Genetics 73:768–779.  2003.  A Y-chromosome study of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Levites, priests and other Jews, with Sorbian, Belarusian and other comparison groups.  It found one lineage, R1a1, in about half of Ashkenazi Levites and almost nowhere else among Jews, and dated its common ancestor to within the last 2,000 years.

1. 27a.

   Page 771:  “The table confirms the presence of R1a1 as the modal haplogroup in the Ashkenazi Levite Jews (52% of chromosomes). This haplogroup is found at similarly high frequencies in the two Slavonic-speaking populations (Sorbians and Belarusians), but at a maximum frequency of only 5.8% among the other five Jewish data sets (mean frequency 3.2%).” ↩ ↩

2. 27b.

   Page 768, section Abstract:  “Comparisons with other Jewish and non-Jewish groups suggest that a founding event, probably involving one or very few European men occurring at a time close to the initial formation and settlement of the Ashkenazi community, is the most likely explanation for the presence of this distinctive haplogroup found today in >50% of Ashkenazi Levites.” ↩ ↩

3. 27c.

   Page 777:  “One attractive source would be the Khazarian Kingdom, whose ruling class is thought to have converted to Judaism in the 8th or 9th century”.  “Although neither the NRY haplogroup composition of the majority of Ashkenazi Jews nor the microsatellite haplotype composition of the R1a1 haplogroup within Ashkenazi Levites is consistent with a major Khazar or other European origin”.  NRY is the non-recombining part of the Y chromosome. ↩ ↩

Rootsi, Siiri et al.  “Phylogenetic applications of whole Y-chromosome sequences and the Near Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Levites.”  Nature Communications 4:2928.  Dec 17, 2013.  A study that sequenced 16 whole R1 Y chromosomes to find the markers that define the Ashkenazi Levite lineage, then typed one of them, M582, in 2,834 R1a men from Europe, the Near East, the Caucasus and Asia.  It moved the Levite lineage's origin from Eastern Europe to the Near East.

1. 28a.

   Page 1, section Abstract:  “While our survey of one of these, M582, in 2,834 R1a samples reveals its absence in 922 Eastern Europeans, we show it is present in all sampled R1a Ashkenazi Levites, as well as in 33.8% of other R1a Ashkenazi Jewish males and 5.9% of 303 R1a Near Eastern males, where it shows considerably higher diversity.”  “In contrast to the previously suggested Eastern European origin for Ashkenazi Levites, the current data are indicative of a geographic source of the Levite founder lineage in the Near East and its likely presence among pre-Diaspora Hebrews.” ↩ ↩

2. 28b.

   Page 7:  “We have shown it to be a minor haplogroup that is primarily shared among Iranian Kerman, Iranian Azeri, Kurds, Ashkenazi Jews and non-Ashkenazi Jews, and that it is virtually absent in the Caucasus region, Europe, South Asia, and southern Siberia.” ↩ ↩

Behar, Doron M. et al.  “The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event.”  American Journal of Human Genetics 78(3):487–497.  2006.  A mitochondrial study of 11,452 people from 67 populations, with complete sequences of the main Ashkenazi lineages.  It found four founding maternal lineages carried by about 40% of Ashkenazim and argued that they came from the Near East.

1. 29a.

   Page 487, section Abstract:  “we show that close to one-half of Ashkenazi Jews, estimated at 8,000,000 people, can be traced back to only 4 women carrying distinct mtDNAs that are virtually absent in other populations, with the important exception of low frequencies among non-Ashkenazi Jews. We conclude that four founding mtDNAs, likely of Near Eastern ancestry, underwent major expansion(s) in Europe within the past millennium.”  The body of the paper gives "fully 40%" for the four lineages (p. 489). ↩ ↩

Costa, Marta D. et al.  “A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages.”  Nature Communications 4:2543.  Oct 8, 2013.  A mitochondrial study that placed the Ashkenazi founder lineages on a tree of about 2,500 complete mitochondrial genomes and surveyed some 470,000 shorter sequences from Europe, the Near East and the Caucasus.  It concluded that most Ashkenazi mother lines came from European women who converted.

1. 30a.

   Page 1, section Abstract:  “Here we show that all four major founders, ~40% of Ashkenazi mtDNA variation, have ancestry in prehistoric Europe, rather than the Near East or Caucasus.”  Page 2:  “Overall, we estimate that most (>80%) Ashkenazi mtDNAs were assimilated within Europe.” ↩ ↩

2. 30b.

   Page 8:  “Overall, it seems that at least 80% of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry is due to the assimilation of mtDNAs indigenous to Europe, most likely through conversion.” ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 30c.

   Page 3:  “likely due to gene flow from Ashkenazi communities into the wider population”. ↩

4. 30d.

   Page 2:  “Therefore, whereas on the male side there may have been a significant Near Eastern (and possibly east European/Caucasian) component in Ashkenazi ancestry, the maternal lineages mainly trace back to prehistoric Western Europe.” ↩

5. 30e.

   Page 2:  “Few derive from a Near Eastern source, and despite the recent revival of the ‘Khazar hypothesis’, virtually none are likely to have ancestry in the North Caucasus.”  A reference number after "hypothesis" is omitted. ↩

6. 30f.

   Page 2:  “Almost half of mtDNAs in west/central European Ashkenazi Jews belong to haplogroup K, declining to ~15% in east European Jews, with almost all falling into three subclades: K1a1b1a, K1a9 and K2a2a”. ↩

Fernández, Eva et al.  “Ancient DNA Analysis of 8000 B.C. Near Eastern Farmers Supports an Early Neolithic Pioneer Maritime Colonization of Mainland Europe through Cyprus and the Aegean Islands.”  PLoS Genetics 10(6):e1004401.  2014.  An ancient-DNA study of mitochondrial lineages from early Neolithic farming villages in Syria, about 8700 to 6600 BC, compared with modern populations.  It is cited here for its comparison with Ashkenazi haplogroup K and its warning that lineages have been lost from the Near East since then.

1. 31a.

   Page 10:  “Another interesting case are the Ashkenazi Jews, who display a frequency of haplogroup K similar to the PPNB sample together with low non-significant pairwise Fst values, which taken together suggests an ancient Near Eastern origin.”  “Moreover, in the light of the evidence presented here of a loss of lineages in the Near East since Neolithic times, the absence of Ashkenazi mtDNA founder clades in the Near East should not be taken as a definitive argument for its absence in the past.”  PPNB is the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. ↩

Campbell, Christopher L. et al.  “North African Jewish and non-Jewish populations form distinctive, orthogonal clusters.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(34):13865–13870.  2012.  A genome-wide study of 509 people from 15 Jewish communities, with emphasis on five North African ones, compared with North African, Middle Eastern and European non-Jews.  It found each North African Jewish community a distinct, inbred cluster closer to other Jews than to its Muslim neighbours, and included small samples of Ethiopian and Yemenite Jews.

1. 32a.

   Section Discussion:  “The observations for Georgian and Ethiopian Jews met historical expectations—Georgian Jews are an outgrowth from the Iranian and Iraqi Jewish communities”. ↩

2. 32b.

   Section Abstract:  “Here, genome-wide analysis of five North African Jewish groups (Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Djerban, and Libyan) and comparison with other Jewish and non-Jewish groups demonstrated distinctive North African Jewish population clusters with proximity to other Jewish populations and variable degrees of Middle Eastern, European, and North African admixture.” ↩

3. 32c.

   Section Results, on European and Middle Eastern ancestry:  “A stronger signal of European ancestry was found in the genomes of Jewish samples, with a decreased fraction of Maghrebi origins, whereas the Middle Eastern component was comparable across groups.” ↩ ↩

4. 32d.

   Section Discussion:  “Like the Ethiopian Jews, this population was founded >2,000 y ago and was thought to be comprised mostly of local proselytes, which is reflected in the distinctive clustering of the population away from other Jewish groups and the mostly Middle Eastern ancestry present in this group. However, the observation of comparable FST and IBD sharing with other Jewish communities implies significant common Jewish founders in the absence of more recent genetic flow into the community.” ↩

5. 32e.

   Section Discussion:  “and Ethiopian Jews are an ancient community that had relatively few, if any, Jewish founders from elsewhere and existed in isolation for >2,000 years.” ↩

Adams, Susan M. et al.  “The Genetic Legacy of Religious Diversity and Intolerance: Paternal Lineages of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula.”  American Journal of Human Genetics 83(6):725–736.  2008.  A Y-chromosome survey of 1,140 men from across Spain, Portugal and the Balearic Islands, modelled as mixtures of Basque, North African and Sephardi Jewish reference groups.  It found large Sephardi-like and North African-like shares, which the authors attribute to conversions after the expulsions, while warning that the Sephardi share may be overstated.

1. 33a.

   Section Discussion:  “We find a mean of 10.6% North African ancestry, somewhat higher than previous ad hoc estimates, and a mean of 19.8% Sephardic Jewish ancestry, a figure that cannot be readily compared with any other study. These findings attest to a high level of religious conversion (whether voluntary or enforced) driven by historical episodes of religious intolerance, which ultimately led to the integration of descendants.” ↩

2. 33b.

   Section Discussion:  “It is important to consider factors that might act to elevate the apparent proportions of Sephardic Jewish ancestry that we estimate, because these values are surprisingly high.” ↩

Kaplan, Steven.  The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia: From Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century.  New York University Press.  1992.  A history of the Beta Israel by a Hebrew University historian of Ethiopia, written from Ethiopian chronicles, church texts and the community's own traditions.  It argues that the community's identity took shape inside Ethiopia between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries rather than descending from an ancient Israelite colony.

1. 34a.

   Page 24:  “In 1973 when the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Ovadiah Yosef, publicly declared the Beta Israel to be Jews according to halacha, he stated that they were descendants of the lost tribe of Dan.” ↩ ↩

2. 34b.

   Page 3:  “Reliable mentions of the Beta Israel or their ancestors only appear in these sources from the fourteenth century onward.”  Page 7:  “my own work argues for the gradual coalescence of a relatively centralized political group only toward the end of this period and in one region”.  "This period" is the period before the sixteenth century. ↩

Lucotte, G., and P. Smets.  “Origins of Falasha Jews studied by haplotypes of the Y chromosome.”  Human Biology 71(6):989–993.  1999.  A short Y-chromosome study comparing the father lines of Ethiopian Jews with those of other Ethiopians and of other Jewish groups.

1. 35a.

   Section Abstract:  “Two haplotypes (V and XI) are the most widespread in Falashas and Ethiopians, representing about 70% of the total number of haplotypes in Ethiopia. Because the Jewish haplotypes VII and VIII are not represented in the Falasha population, we conclude that the Falasha people descended from ancient inhabitants of Ethiopia who converted to Judaism.” ↩

Pagani, Luca et al.  “Ethiopian Genetic Diversity Reveals Linguistic Stratification and Complex Influences on the Ethiopian Gene Pool.”  American Journal of Human Genetics 91(1):83–96.  2012.  A genome-wide study of Ethiopian peoples of several language families.  It is cited here only for its finding that Ethiopians of Semitic and Cushitic speech carry a large non-African share from an ancient Levantine source, which matters when judging any non-African ancestry in Ethiopian Jews.  It did not sample Ethiopian Jews.

1. 36a.

   Section Discussion:  “ADMIXTURE analyses revealed a major (40%–50%) contribution to the Ethiopian Semitic-Cushitic genomes that is similar to that of non-African populations. Our estimates of genetic similarity between this component and extant non-African populations suggest that the source was more likely the Levant than the Arabian Peninsula. We estimate that this admixture event took place approximately 3 kya.” ↩

Carter, Robert W.  “The Genetics of Modern Jews.”  Biblical Genetics (YouTube).  Oct 26, 2021.  A 15-minute video talk by a creationist geneticist on Jewish Y-chromosome and mitochondrial diversity, the Cohen haplotype, the Lemba, the Ethiopian Jews and the Khazar hypothesis, ending with the conclusion that Jews are a Middle Eastern people.  Quotations follow the video's automatic captions, which have no punctuation.

1. 37a.

   At 10:52:  “the genetics really doesn't reflect middle east so much but it might be because after so many generations they you know they um the middle eastern genes got diluted in the population and possibly lost or it might be that they're a bunch of converts”. ↩ ↩

2. 37b.

   At 11:37–12:58:  “the test population they chose was from the republic of georgia south of the caucasus mountains the khazar they lived north of the caucasus mountains and the caucuses are gigantic geographic barrier”.  “if you look at the georgian population today they're more similar to the middle eastern peoples than they are to asian peoples therefore in that test they chose the wrong population”.  “there's no way you can actually genetically pin it to that group because those people aren't there anymore”.  “there's no evidence that jewish people the ashkenazis at least came from the kazaars there's none”. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 37c.

   At 13:19:  “historically biblically and genetically they are a middle eastern people group as expected they have a lot of genes from the middle east as expected they're not one single group because we know that they interbred with others we also know that as they spread out they did intermingle with the people amongst whom they lived but not to the point where they lost their middle eastern roots”. ↩ ↩

4. 37d.

   At 10:32:  “when you look at the different jewish groups they're more similar to each other spread across the entire range of where they live than those groups are to the people amongst whom they live”. ↩

5. 37e.

   At 4:34:  “we're talking about group j group e1b1a e1b1b one of those is a 95 percent of african men belong to that group r1a in fact 30 percent of ashkenazi men belong to group r1a which is associated with southern asia mainly r1b”.  At 4:55:  “r1b is 80 of western european men belong to that group and a lot of uh jewish men also”. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

6. 37f.

   At 6:21:  “it's a y chromosome that's found very commonly in men who belong to families with last names of like cohen and khan”.  At 6:41:  “outside of israel rarely amongst other is jewish men rarely but it's very common amongst this particular group of men who claim to be priests”. ↩

7. 37g.

   At 8:47:  “many of the y chromosomes of this family of this tribe belong to the middle east and some of them specifically the ones with the priestly duties have the cohen modal haplotype”. ↩

8. 37h.

   At 9:10:  “about half of the mitochondria of ashkenazi woman those are jews from eastern europe belong to three different females that come from group k”.  At 10:12:  “the ones found in europe are newer than the ones typically found amongst the jewish people so it doesn't look like they are european it looks like they're middle eastern”. ↩ ↩

Waldman, Yedael Y. et al.  “The Genetics of Bene Israel from India Reveals Both Substantial Jewish and Indian Ancestry.”  PLoS ONE 11(3):e0152056.  2016.  A genome-wide study of 18 Bene Israel from Mumbai compared with Jewish, Middle Eastern and Indian populations, with mixture modelling and dating.  It found substantial Jewish ancestry from nearby Middle Eastern Jewish communities, carried mostly by men, mixed with a larger Indian share.

1. 38a.

   Page 2:  “Oral history among Bene Israel holds that they are descendants of Jews whose ship wrecked on the Konkan shore, with only seven men and seven women surviving”. ↩

2. 38b.

   Page 1, section Abstract:  “The admixture took place in the last millennium, about 19-33 generations ago. It involved Middle-Eastern Jews and was sex-biased, with more male Jewish and local female contribution.”  Page 11:  “Admixture proportion estimation was 55% Indian and 45% Jewish.”  “GLOBETROTTER proportions estimation for the Jewish side (45%) is an overestimation of the true proportion as it also contains some of the ANI component from the Indian side.” ↩

3. 38c.

   Page 2:  “A Y chromosome analysis hinted at paternal link between Bene Israel and the Levant, but the study was based on only four Bene Israel males”.  The study referred to is Behar and colleagues, 2010. ↩

Chaubey, Gyaneshwer et al.  “Genetic affinities of the Jewish populations of India.”  Scientific Reports 6:19166.  2016.  A genome-wide, Y-chromosome and mitochondrial study of Indian Jewish communities compared with their Indian neighbours and Middle Eastern populations.  It found a small Middle Eastern share in each Jewish community and almost none in the neighbours.  A later correction withdrew the figures for one of its South Indian samples.

1. 39a.

   Table 1:  “The Middle Eastern specific ancestry (%) among Indian populations inferred from ADMIXTURE.”  Bene Israel, the paper's "Jewish 1", 19.77 ± 1.14;  Indian Indo-European neighbours 0.68, Dravidian 0.90. ↩

2. 39b.

   Section Discussion:  “The molecular data supports the model of migration of the Indian Jewish from Middle East, followed by the religious conversion and admixture with the local South Asian populations.” ↩

Waldman, Yedael Y. et al.  “The genetic history of Cochin Jews from India.”  Human Genetics 135(10):1127–1143.  2016.  A genome-wide study of Cochin Jews from Kerala compared with Jewish and Indian populations.  It found mostly Indian ancestry with a Jewish share from Yemenite, Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jews, mixed in about 470 to 730 years ago.

1. 40a.

   Section Results:  “Indian populations contributed 79 %, while Jewish populations contributed 21 % for the admixture. The largest contribution for the Indian side was from Kamsali (23.6 %) and Mala (12.1 %), while the largest contribution from the Jewish side was from Yemenite (49 %) and Greek (24.7 %) Jews”. ↩

Behar, Doron M. et al.  “No Evidence from Genome-Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews.”  Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints.  Aug 30, 2013 (edition of 2013).  A genome-wide test of the Khazar hypothesis by 30 geneticists, using 1,774 people from 106 Jewish and non-Jewish populations, including 13 Caucasus populations and the Chuvash and Tatars of the Volga, the groups living where the Khazar state stood.  It found no special resemblance between Ashkenazim and those groups.  Published in Human Biology 85(6):859–900;  page numbers here are those of the authors' manuscript.

1. 41a.

   Page 7:  “a conglomerate of mostly Turkic tribes, who ruled in what is now southern Russia with the capital Atil in the Volga delta on the northwestern banks of the Caspian Sea approximately 1,400 to 1,000 years ago”. ↩

2. 41b.

   Page 9:  “Armenians and Georgians are geographically the closest to the Middle East, and are therefore expected a priori to show the greatest genetic similarity to Middle Eastern populations”. ↩

3. 41c.

   Page 31:  “if one accepts the premise that similarity to Armenians and Georgians represents Khazar ancestry for Ashkenazi Jews, then by extension one must also claim that Middle Eastern Jews and many Mediterranean European and Middle Eastern populations are also Khazar descendants. This claim is clearly not valid”. ↩

4. 41d.

   Page 5, section Abstract:  “No particular similarity of Ashkenazi Jews with populations from the Caucasus is evident, particularly with the populations that most closely represent the Khazar region.”  Page 12:  “the one considered to best overlap with the center of the Khazar Khaganate is the Volga region, followed by the North Caucasus region”. ↩ ↩ ↩

5. 41e.

   Page 20:  “Within the Khazar region, the farther south a population is, the closer it lies to Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations.” ↩

6. 41f.

   Page 30:  “we cannot rule out the possibility that a level of Khazar or other Caucasus admixture occurred below the level of detectability in our study”. ↩ ↩

Elhaik, Eran.  “The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses.”  Genome Biology and Evolution 5(1):61–74.  2013.  A reanalysis of the Behar 2010 genotype data, 1,287 people from 8 Jewish and 74 non-Jewish populations, by a geneticist then at Johns Hopkins.  With no Khazar remains available, it used living Caucasus peoples as stand-ins for Khazars and Palestinians as stand-ins for Judeans, and concluded in favour of a Khazar origin for Eastern European Jews.  It is the main genetic statement of the Khazar hypothesis.

1. 42a.

   Page 64:  “Palestinians were considered proto-Judeans”.  “Similarly, Caucasus Georgians and Armenians were considered proto-Khazars because they are believed to have emerged from the same genetic cohort as the Khazars”.  Page 67:  The admixture analysis used Armenians as its only Caucasus reference population. ↩ ↩

2. 42b.

   Page 61, section Abstract:  “Our findings support the Khazarian hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Near Eastern-Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries”.  Page 72:  “The most parsimonious explanation for our findings is that Eastern European Jews are of Judeo–Khazarian ancestry forged over many centuries in the Caucasus.” ↩

3. 42c.

   Page 67:  “The Near Eastern-Caucasus ancestries are dominant among Central (38%) and Eastern (32%) European Jews followed by Western European ancestry (30%)”.  “Central and Eastern European Jews differ mostly in their Middle Eastern (30% and 25%, respectively) and Eastern European ancestries (3% and 12%, respectively), probably due to late admixture”.  The reference populations for these components were Pygmies, Palestinians, Armenians, Turk-Iranians, French Basque, Chuvash and Han Chinese;  Armenians alone stand for the Caucasus.  The sentence giving 30% Western European does not name which group it belongs to. ↩

4. 42d.

   Page 66:  “over 70% of European Jews and almost all Eastern European Jews cluster with Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani Jews within the Caucasus rim”.  “Strong evidence for the Khazarian hypothesis is the clustering of European Jews with the populations that reside on opposite ends of ancient Khazaria: Armenians, Georgians, and Azerbaijani Jews”. ↩

5. 42e.

   Page 73:  “using few contemporary Caucasus populations as surrogates may capture only certain shades of the Khazarian genetic spectrum”. ↩ ↩

Flegontov, Pavel et al.  “Pitfalls of the Geographic Population Structure (GPS) Approach Applied to Human Genetic History: A Case Study of Ashkenazi Jews.”  Genome Biology and Evolution 8(7):2259–2265.  2016.  A reply by geneticists and linguists to Das, Wexler, Pirooznia and Elhaik's 2016 claim that a method called GPS places the origin of the Ashkenazim in northeastern Turkey.  It argues that the method cannot trace the history of mixed populations and that the linguistic case for a Slavic or Iranian origin of Yiddish is weak.

1. 43a.

   Page 2259, section Abstract:  “GPS is a provenancing tool suited to inferring the geographic region where a modern and recently unadmixed genome is most likely to arise, but is hardly suitable for admixed populations and for tracing ancestry up to 1,000 years before present, as its authors have previously claimed.”  Page 2264:  “the idea that the Khazars directly contributed to Ashkenazi ancestry is currently abandoned by practically all historians and linguists”. ↩

Yunusbayev, Bayazit et al.  “The Caucasus as an asymmetric semipermeable barrier to ancient human migrations.”  Molecular Biology and Evolution 29(1):359–365.  2012.  A survey of autosomal, Y-chromosome and mitochondrial variation in populations from every part of the Caucasus and its language families.  It found the region's peoples genetically uniform and mainly of Near Eastern origin, with a break between the North Caucasus and the East European plain.

1. 44a.

   Section Abstract:  “Autosomal genome variation in the Caucasus reveals significant genetic uniformity among its ethnically and linguistically diverse populations and is consistent with predominantly Near/Middle Eastern origin of the Caucasians, with minor external impacts.” ↩ ↩

Mikheyev, Alexander S. et al.  “Diverse genetic origins of medieval steppe nomad conquerors.”  bioRxiv.  Dec 16, 2019.  A preprint reporting whole genomes of nine people from Khazar-period elite burials in the Rostov region of southern Russia, compared with modern and ancient Eurasians.  It found a mainly Central Asian, Turkic-related elite with Caucasian and Middle Eastern admixture, and no Ashkenazi affinity.  It is not peer reviewed in this form, and Elhaik disputes that the burials are Khazar elites.

1. 45a.

   Page 8:  “We found that the Khazar elite drew from a variety of Central Asian tribes with a mostly Turkic genetic composition and with some Siberian and East Asian components, as well as notable Caucasian and Middle Eastern genetic contributions to at least some of their members. We found no significant trace of Ashkenazi genetic composition in either nuclear, mitochondrial or Y-chromosome data, strongly indicating that Khazars were generally not related to them.”  Page 16:  “Second, all of the studied Khazars, even those with significant Caucasian ancestry, had significant Asiatic nuclear genetic contributions, which are missing from present-day Jewish populations.” ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 45b.

   Page 2, section Abstract:  “Thus, the Khazar ruling class was likely relatively small and able to maintain a genetic identity distinct from their subjugated populations over the course of centuries.” ↩

Okovantsev, V. S. et al.  “Genomic profiles of the Khazar-Period inhabitants of Phanagoria.”  Vavilovskii Zhurnal Genetiki i Selektsii 30(5):761–774.  2026.  Whole genomes of three people from the Khazar-period layer at Phanagoria, a city on the Taman peninsula under Khazar control, compared with ancient and modern Eurasians.  They resemble Turkic-speaking Central Asians and early medieval steppe groups.  The sample is three people.

1. 46a.

   Page 767:  “It can be noted that all three studied samples do not intersect with the cluster of modern Jewish populations, which group with other populations of the Middle East and Levant.” ↩

2. 46b.

   Page 762:  “It is not possible to determine the proportion of the Jewish population in the Khazar Khaganate. Many researchers believe that only the elite close to the khan were Jewish, while the majority of the population remained pagan”. ↩

Elhaik, Eran.  “Diverse genetic origins of medieval steppe nomad conquerors – a response to Mikheyev et al. (2019).”  arXiv.  2020.  Elhaik's reply to the Mikheyev preprint, disputing whether its burials belonged to the Khazar elite, its choice of Ashkenazi reference samples, and its methods.  It reports no new genetic data.

1. 47a.

   Page 3:  “Sarkel was never a political polity and thereby, burial kurgans likely belong to successful traders or military leaders who came from a broad international background and can tell us very little of the Khazar royalty.” ↩

Kupovetsky, Mark.  “Population and Migration: Population and Migration before World War I.”  The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe 2:1425–1428.  Yale University Press.  Translated by I. Michael Aronson.  Edited by Gershon David Hundert.  2008.  The standard reference survey of East European Jewish demography before 1914, by a Russian historical demographer, with tables of best-guess population figures from 1495 to 1900 drawn from Weinryb, Stampfer and other specialists.  It covers the Khazar period, the eastward migration and the sources of growth.

1. 48a.

   “By this time, however, Ashkenazic Jews in the southern and eastern border regions of the Polish Commonwealth had integrated the oldest communities of Slavic- and Turkic-speaking Rabbinite Jews into their communities.”  Online edition;  "by this time" is the first half of the seventeenth century. ↩

2. 48b.

   “Jewish proselytism was very widespread in the Khazar Khanate, not only among the urban population and the Khazar elite, but also, according to some scholars, among rural dwellers and even seminomadic groups.”  Online edition;  the print page is not known. ↩

3. 48c.

   Page 1426, table 1:  “Estimate of the Number of East European Jews from the End of the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (in thousands)”.  Within the borders of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth:  10 in 1495, 55 in 1550, 185 in 1648, 163 in 1660, 285 in 1700, 750 in 1765. ↩

4. 48d.

   “Until the middle of the seventeenth century, immigration was the main cause of Jewish population growth.”  “In the absence of massive migration, the impressive population growth of Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from the sixteenth to eighteenth century must be attributed to a high rate of natural increase, somewhere between 15 to 20 per thousand annually.”  Online edition. ↩

Stampfer, Shaul.  “Did the Khazars Convert to Judaism?”  Jewish Social Studies 19(3):1–72.  2013.  A long source-critical study by a Hebrew University historian of East European Jewry, examining every text and object cited for a Khazar conversion.  It concludes that the conversion story is a legend, a minority view among Khazar historians.

1. 49a.

   Page 1, section Abstract:  “A careful examination of the sources, however, shows that some of them are pseudepigraphic, and the rest are of questionable reliability. Many of the most reliable contemporary texts that mention Khazars say nothing about their conversion, nor is there any archaeological evidence for it. This leads to the conclusion that such a conversion never took place.” ↩

Calculation from Kupovetsky's Table 1.  Average growth r = ln(N2/N1) / years.  From 10,000 in 1495 to 750,000 in 1765:  ln(75) / 270 ≈ 0.016, or 16 per thousand a year.  From 163,000 in 1660, after the wars of the mid-1600s, to 750,000 in 1765:  14.5 per thousand.  Growth at 15 per thousand for 270 years multiplies a population 57-fold, and at 20 per thousand 221-fold, so the observed 75-fold rise needs no converts, though it cannot rule out a few. ↩

Carter, Robert W.  “Early Israel was a Hotbed of Interracial Dating.”  Biblical Genetics (YouTube).  Oct 19, 2021.  An 11-minute video talk by a creationist geneticist summarising the biblical record of Israelites marrying foreigners, based on his 2017 Journal of Creation paper.  Quotations follow the video's automatic captions, which have no punctuation.

1. 51a.

   At 8:07:  “are you jewish if you're a practicing jew or a genetic jew well apparently not genetic jew from all the examples that we just gave so in the end the jewish people are a melange of themselves and their neighbors there's no specific jewish dna there's no specific bloodline that would mark someone as a jew or not a jew”. ↩ ↩

Myres, Natalie M. et al.  “A major Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b Holocene era founder effect in Central and Western Europe.”  European Journal of Human Genetics 19:95–101.  2011.  A survey of R1b Y chromosomes from Europe, the Near East and Asia that mapped the European R1b sub-lineages.  It is cited here only for R1b's share of western European men.

1. 52a.

   Page 98:  “R1b-M412 appears to be the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup in Western Europe (>70%), while being virtually absent in the Near East”. ↩

Trombetta, Beniamino et al.  “A New Topology of the Human Y Chromosome Haplogroup E1b1 (E-P2) Revealed through the Use of Newly Characterized Binary Polymorphisms.”  PLoS ONE 6(1):e16073.  2011.  A revision of the African and Mediterranean Y-chromosome haplogroup E1b1 using new markers.  It is cited here only for where the former E1b1a, now E-M2, is common.

1. 53a.

   Page 2:  “E-M2 is the most common haplogroup in sub-Saharan Africa, with frequency peaks in western (about 80%) and central Africa (about 60%).” ↩

Pallarès-Viña, Laura et al.  “Uncovering a Medieval Pogrom: Genetic History of a Jewish Community in Catalonia (Spain).”  Genes 17(3):358.  Mar 23, 2026.  An ancient-DNA study of 16 people from mass graves at the Jewish necropolis of Roquetes in Tàrrega, Catalonia, linked to the pogrom of 1348, with ancestry modelled on 12 of them.  It is the only study found that models a medieval Jewish community with Bronze Age Canaanites as a source population.

1. 54a.

   Section Abstract:  “the genetic composition of the Roquetes population can be explained by a mixture of Canaan individuals (0.69) and the Iberian non-Jewish non-Islamic medieval population (0.31)”. ↩