The current brouhaha arises over a recent study by Eran Elhaik and is accompanied by his personal attacks on more mainstream scientists who have eviscerated his work. In the face of overwhelming evidence from dozens of studies over twenty years from geneticists and historians around the world, Elhaik is aggressively stumping on behalf of his belief that most Jews trace their seminal ancestry not to the Middle East but to the Caucuses and Eastern Europe. Elhaik, who is now a post-doctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins, is recirculating the debunked “Khazarian hypothesis” promoted by journalist Arthur Koestler in his 1976 book, The Thirteenth Tribe, written before scientists had the tools to compare genomes and challenge his conclusion. Khazarian myth The Khazarian theory–which historians and scientists now believe should more accurately be called a myth—was more recently recycled (to great applause by anti-Israeli activists and some pro-Palestinian groups) in no less convincing form by Israeli French historian Shlomo Sand in The Invention of the Jewish People, published in 2008—a book panned by both historians and geneticists. Elhaik reengaged the controversy late last year when the Oxford journal Genome Biology and Evolution published his study, “The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses.” The young Jewish researcher challenged the so-called “Rhineland hypothesis”—the broadly accepted genetic and historic evidence that about 80 percent of Jewish Ashkenazi males trace their ancestry to a core population of approximately 20,000 Eastern European Jews who originated in the Middle East. Elhaik wrote that the Khazars converted to Judaism in the eighth century, although historians believe and genetic evidence confirms that only a fraction of the population converted, including almost certainly royalty and some members of the aristocracy.forbes/sites/jonentine/2013/05/16/israeli-researcher-challenges-jewish-dna-links-to-israel-calls-those-who-disagree-nazi-sympathizers/
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 06:18:57 +0000
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