judaism, religion or race?

[Zankou]

Your evidence is backed by some data, but alternative sources claim opposing views:

http://www.ftdna.com/pdf/43026_Doron.pdf is the source for the below:

A 2006 study by Behar et al.,[55] based on high-resolution analysis of Haplogroup K(mtDNA), suggested that about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population is descended matrilineally from just four women, or "founder lineages", that were "likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool" originating in the Middle East in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. Moreover, a maternal line "sister" was found among the Jews of Portugal, North Africa, France, and Italy. They wrote:


Both the extent and location of the maternal ancestral deme from which the Ashkenazi Jewry arose remain obscure. Here, using complete sequences of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), we show that close to one-half of Ashkenazi Jews, estimated at 8,000,000 people, can be traced back to only four 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...[13][55]

http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v15/n4/full/5201764a.html is for the below:

A 2007 study by J. Feder et al.[56] confirms the hypothesis of the founding of non-local origin among the maternal lines. Their study did not address the geographical origin of Ashkenazim and therefore does not explicitly confirm the origin "Levantine" of these founders. This study revealed a significant divergence in total haplogroup distribution between the Ashkenazi Jewish populations and their European host populations, namely Russians, Poles and Germans. They concluded that, regarding mtDNAs, the differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities. The study also found that "the differences between the Jewish communities can be overlooked when non-Jews are included in the comparisons." It supported previous interpretations that, in the direct maternal line, there was "little or no gene flow from the local non-Jewish communities in Poland and Russia to the Jewish communities in these countries."[57]

See also, from http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004401 :

A 2014 study by Fernandez et al have found that Ashkenazi Jews display a frequency of haplogroup K which suggests an ancient Near Eastern origin, stating that this observation clearly contradicts the results of the study led by Richards which suggested a predominantly European origin for the Ashkenazi communities.[62]

The text/sources above were drawn from the wikipedia article on this subject, with direct links to the source material.

What are we to draw from these contradictory conclusions?

A few potential things:

1. Ashkenazi interbred with European (potentially Italian) women about 2000 years ago, and have since kept to themselves.

2. The European identity of these haplogroups is misconstrued, as the same haplogroups are found also in the ME.

3. The Jews have widely interbred with European peoples in the period between 100-2000 AD.

I think the third is ruled out by history, and 1 and 2 are reasonable hypotheses.

Conversely, the paternal ancestry is definitive: These Jews are Jews. They are semitic, Middle Eastern in origin, and often carry the same y-chromosome across important priestly distinctions.

So, are Jews a "race"? No, though they are likely to be considered a sub-race of the family/sub-race of the Caucasoid race that are the Semitic peoples.

I would say 'population,' as 'sub-race' is largely meaningless. Race is basically a popular term synonymous with a human population that is phenotypically quite distinct from a visual perspective alone (white, black), and Jews are certainly not that.

As for the maternal genetic basis of Ashkenazim, Wiki gives a good summary of the issues. IMO, the 2013 study by the Richards team is remarkably compelling, and is of a far higher quality and scope than the older, smaller, and more partisan studies done by others ... it would seem many other scientists feel the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jewish_origins#Mt-DNA_of_Ashkenazi_Jews

Key supporting point, quoted from the Wiki article, which ties into my other post, and which I will address separately:

"In addition, this data was consistent with historians who have suggested that "many women converted to Judaism across Mediterranean Europe during the so-called Hellenistic period between about 300 B.C.E. and 30 B.C.E."[60] Diaspora communities were established in Rome and the Italian peninsula centuries before the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE."

 

[Zankou]

Where are you getting this information from? "Rabidly prostyltizing"? What period saw the Jews rabidly take in converts?

The historical records of the Jews shows that their only type of "conversion" was by conquest (of the Philistines/Caananites) and by marriage (as with the Ethiopian Jews that descend from the Queen of Sheba). Judaism was a markedly small religion of a small kingdom in ancient Palestine even at the time of the Roman conquest, and the only peoples who weren't Jews who practiced Judaism, were the Samaritans, which from the New Testament, we know were not counted as "full Jews". The Samaritans almost certaily were a related, semitic people, as well. The genetic difference was very likely low.

Biblical and archaeological records give no indications that the Jews at any point practiced a faith which actively saw converts by any other means by conquest of the region they called home. The Jews did not convert the Babylonians, they did not convert many of the people immediately in their vicinity (the Caananites of all stripes), and the Samaritans were widely scorned for not being pure of blood.

Hell, the Old Testament casts all sorts of invective against foreign wives because they will lead the Jews astray, and found that a huge failing of the ruling class in Judea (especially Solomon). Why not just convert the wives? Why not convert the people?

Continuing, as the Wiki article points out, historians have long been aware that Judaism had spread throughout much of civilized antiquity by the early CE, including conversion.

"In addition, this data was consistent with historians who have suggested that "many women converted to Judaism across Mediterranean Europe during the so-called Hellenistic period between about 300 B.C.E. and 30 B.C.E."[60] Diaspora communities were established in Rome and the Italian peninsula centuries before the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE."

Actually this is mentioned in the Gospels quite directly, as I stated before, when Jesus rails at the Pharisees for their hyperbolic efforts to convert people:

""Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are." - Matthew 23:15.

Further, the Hasmoneans notoriously forced their neighbors to convert to Judaism by the sword in their reign shortly before Christ. Among other things, all of Edom was forcibly converted to Judaism during the high point of the only independent Jewish kingdom, at the same time they were busily destroying Samaria and enslaving their neighbors. During this period, shortly before Jesus, Judaism was practically Islamic in character, and was spread by the sword.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hyrcanus

Finally if you want to read about the proselytizing character of pre-Diaspora Judaism, there are several books about it; the general consensus is that such proselytizing existed until after destruction of the second temple, though some scholars have challenged that consensus. Making this plausible, the number of self-identified 'Jews' in Judaea proper was far too small to have spread so explosively across the ancient world without such frequent conversion. And conversions still continued long after, including one of my favorite examples, Dhu Nuwas in Yemen. Actually the entire Arabian peninsula had many Jews, which is why Mohammed battles them so often in the traditional Islamic narratives (including the terrible massacre of the Banu Quraysh).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhu_Nuwas

As to the Old Testament, it goes back and forth. The entire central point of the book of Ruth, for example, was to exalt the virtue of the foreigner Ruth, who married into Judaism. Scholars think it was written to help *legitimize* such conversions, in fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Ruth

 

[Ruprecht]

Are we talking Jews or Gentile God-fearers?

 

[Amerikuracana]

Some Jews are obviously almost completely white, others are mch more semetic. The answer is a little of both.

 

[AlucardNatasrd]

I would say 'population,' as 'sub-race' is largely meaningless. Race is basically a popular term synonymous with a human population that is phenotypically quite distinct from a visual perspective alone (white, black), and Jews are certainly not that.

I am speaking of the anthropological version of race more than mere popular races. Skin colour is actually about the least important distinction between the races. Bone structure, diseases, intelligence, and various other things distinguish the races much more meaningfully from one another.

But okay: Let's say...isolate population. Because it is wrong, genetically and culturally, to lump the Jews in with all other Semites, and even more wrong with all Caucasoids. The Jews have entire lineages, especially on the Y-chromosome side, that they exclusively populate.

The term is irrelevant.

As for the maternal genetic basis of Ashkenazim, Wiki gives a good summary of the issues. IMO, the 2013 study by the Richards team is remarkably compelling, and is of a far higher quality and scope than the older, smaller, and more partisan studies done by others ... it would seem many other scientists feel the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jewish_origins#Mt-DNA_of_Ashkenazi_Jews

Key supporting point, quoted from the Wiki article, which ties into my other post, and which I will address separately:

"In addition, this data was consistent with historians who have suggested that "many women converted to Judaism across Mediterranean Europe during the so-called Hellenistic period between about 300 B.C.E. and 30 B.C.E."[60] Diaspora communities were established in Rome and the Italian peninsula centuries before the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE."

Is there any historic record of such conversions, though? Because I don't recall hardly any mention in any history book on Roman history of mass amounts of Italic women converting to Judaism. In fact, Judaism wasn't even that popular in Italy. Jews were mostly to be found in Asia Minor (see: the New Testament).

Considering how many genetic tests are done on Ashkenazi to rule out their terrible genetic disorders, I think it's time to do broad testing on maternal DNA.

 

[AlucardNatasrd]

Continuing, as the Wiki article points out, historians have long been aware that Judaism had spread throughout much of civilized antiquity by the early CE, including conversion.

"In addition, this data was consistent with historians who have suggested that "many women converted to Judaism across Mediterranean Europe during the so-called Hellenistic period between about 300 B.C.E. and 30 B.C.E."[60] Diaspora communities were established in Rome and the Italian peninsula centuries before the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE."

Yeah, but...where is the evidence of this?

Actually this is mentioned in the Gospels quite directly, as I stated before, when Jesus rails at the Pharisees for their hyperbolic efforts to convert people:

""Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are." - Matthew 23:15.

I'll grant you that conversions weren't unknown, but this does not speak of necessarily converting necessarily amongst the gentiles, but amongst the Jews. The Pharisees were a group of Jews who were trying to turn Judaism into their interpretation of it. They succeeded in the first few centuries AD, as modern Judaism is the religion of the Pharisees (the Talmud is Pharisitical par excellence).

Now, are there are some converts to Judaism? I'm sure...but how many and how frequent?

Further, the Hasmoneans notoriously forced their neighbors to convert to Judaism by the sword in their reign shortly before Christ. Among other things, all of Edom was forcibly converted to Judaism during the high point of the only independent Jewish kingdom, at the same time they were busily destroying Samaria and enslaving their neighbors. During this period, shortly before Jesus, Judaism was practically Islamic in character, and was spread by the sword.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hyrcanus

That is precisely what I was speaking of: The Jews primarily converted via conquest. John Hercanus was an example of a much later Jewish conqueror (the words seem almost funny to say). Moreover, these were already related people, and had their kingdom immediately next to the Jews.

Finally if you want to read about the proselytizing character of pre-Diaspora Judaism, there are several books about it; the general consensus is that such proselytizing existed until after destruction of the second temple, though some scholars have challenged that consensus. Making this plausible, the number of self-identified 'Jews' in Judaea proper was far too small to have spread so explosively across the ancient world without such frequent conversion. And conversions still continued long after, including one of my favorite examples, Dhu Nuwas in Yemen. Actually the entire Arabian peninsula had many Jews, which is why Mohammed battles them so often in the traditional Islamic narratives (including the terrible massacre of the Banu Quraysh).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhu_Nuwas

I'll pursue this more in depth, then. Though considering the population of Jews has never reached above about 15 million, it would not at all be surprising that the number of Jews was small even then. It would not require a huge amount of Jews in order for the Jews to be found in enclaves the Roman world over. In fact, considering the enclaves have always been small, a smaller population widely dispersed makes far more sense than a large population.

As to the Old Testament, it goes back and forth. The entire central point of the book of Ruth, for example, was to exalt the virtue of the foreigner Ruth, who married into Judaism. Scholars think it was written to help *legitimize* such conversions, in fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Ruth

True: Ruth is a rare example of a woman not condemned for dragging her husband into idolatry. I don't think that says much more than to suggest. that such marriage conversions were possible at the time and practiced by some, especially men who were well to do (which Boaz was in the book).

The rest of the Old Testament is fairly intent on talking about how bad foreign wives were, and how it was much more preferrable to marry the proverbial nice Jewish girl. This would imply that the Jewish inclination towards endogamy was already pronounced at this time.

In regards to autosomal DNA:

Another study of L. Hao et al. (October 2009)[73] studied seven groups of Jewish populations with different geographic origin (Ashkenazi, Italians, Greeks, Turks, Iranians, Iraqis and Syrians) and showed that the individuals all shared a Middle Eastern background in common, although they were also genetically distinguishable from each other. In public comments, Harry Ostrer, the director of the Human Genetics Program at NYU Langone Medical Center, and one of the authors of this study, concluded, "We have shown that Jewishness can be identified through genetic analysis, so the notion of a Jewish people is plausible."[74]

A genome-wide genetic study carried out by Need et al. and published in 2009 showed that "individuals with full Jewish ancestry formed a clearly distinct cluster from those individuals with no Jewish ancestry." The study found that the Jewish cluster examined, fell between that of Middle Eastern and European populations. Reflecting on these findings, the authors concluded, "It is clear that the genomes of individuals with full Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry carry an unambiguous signature of their Jewish heritage, and this seems more likely to be due to their specific Middle Eastern ancestry than to inbreeding."[75]

 

[AlucardNatasrd]

Some Jews are obviously almost completely white, others are mch more semetic. The answer is a little of both.

Just because you look phenotypically white, does not mean your ancestry is even near 100% white.

Jessica Alba looks phenotypically Hispanic, but is almost 90% European, for instance.

Note: I don't mean Mayan (she clearly doesn't look Mayan). But I wouldn't take Jessica Alba for someone who is 9/10ths white.

 

[livingdeadmoose]

A surprisingly well informed and calm discussion on the issue in the WR, congrats to all involved.

Outside a couple of comments about inbreeding yea it's been pretty civil.

 

[Tsar]

"race" isn't the right word--it's better to think in terms of a related people. but why can't it be both a religion and a ethnic group?

 

[Rod1]

You are.

Ashkenazi Jews are primarily semitic, marginally European.

And actually, very few people from Jewish families "despise" being Jewish. Very few Jews renounce Jewish identity. They might renounce the Jewish religion, but even the most secular of Jews - say, a Woody Allen - ever denies his Jewish ethnic and cultural background. In fact, the more secular, the more Jewish they are, in many respects. They identify more keenly with being a Jew.

And interbreeding is relatively rare still and religious Jews have a huge birth rate. Very soon, the majority of Jews are going to be Hasids, as they have like 7 kids a woman!

Ashkenazis are mainly european, the reason why they all share similar Y chromosome is because there was a lot of interbreeding, im pretty sure that under those standards a lot of closed-up euro populations would be their own race too.

 

[Zankou]

A quick note, modern anthropology as a discipline largely rejects the idea of 'race' (on fairly spurious grounds incidentally), so appealing to the 'anthropological' definition of race is fairly odd since there is no other discipline which is so vehemently and bitterly opposed to the concept.

It's really a popular concept that reflects the clustering of visible phenotypes, *reflecting* the relative genetic isolation of the individual's ancestors. In this sense it is biologically meaningful, but that is not because of anthropology. And this popular conception is not based on hidden genetic correlations, such that people who look identical are 'different races.'

As for Ashkenazim specifically, almost all genetic analysis shows them in-between Europeans and Middle Easterners (as stated in your own quotes above), and this is perfectly consistent with all the data indicating that is because they originated as Euro/ME hybrids. The narrowness of their genetics, and its being so prone to weird diseases, is best explained by the spectacular *bottlenecks* that Ashkenazim genetics have undergone, particularly the one where almost all Ashkenazim genetics descend from a group of around 300 people who lived a mere 700 (!) years ago. Amazing ... if you want to look for the 'specialness' of Ashkenazim genetics, these intense medieval genetic bottlenecks are where you'd start. For whatever reason, a relatively tiny group of medieval Ashkenazim spawned almost all of the modern Ashkenazim. Why that is so is a very interesting question indeed ... if you want to exalt the 'special' nature of Ashkenazim genetics, this is a much more plausible and easily demonstrated source rather than extolling ancient distinctiveness.

The OT was largely written prior to the conversion era. Judaism around 400 BC was a miniscule priestly cult, which presided over a set of mythical writings that exalted the priests and demanded absolute loyalty unto them and their temple. By 50 AD, however, there were Jews everywhere. What you see is a conflict between actual identification as "Jews," and popular conversions, and political use of forced conversion, and the priestly attempts to rail against foreigners. The Book of Ruth exemplifies this schizophrenia. In fact the OT would hardly have needed to rail against foreigner marriage *if it wasn't in fact such a widespread and prominent practice amongst the Jews*. These are priest bitching about the reality they face, and worried about losing control over their subjects.

It's kind of like how modern Americans have dealt with the question of "can Latinos be true Americans." If you read the books of white supremacist ideologues, no. But popular belief, and actual practice, has evolved very much to the contrary.

 

[Rod1]

But think of it this way:

Skeletal wise, you can only identify four basic races in this world:

The Caucasoid.
The Negroid.
The Mongoloid (including the entire native population of the Americas).
And the Australoid.

Does this mean that we can't draw a huge distinction between the Chinese and Mayans? The Irish and the Indians? The Pygmies and Zulu?

Of course not.

That classification was done in the XIX century and is as unscientific as it gets, the genetic relationship between caucasoids is far closer to a race than the genetic relationship among black people or about asians, native americans an south and southeast asians.

What it means is that the middle-east, north-africa and europe were never really disconnected from each other at all points of history genetic swapping among those populations have existed, not so true about native americans (whose east asian origin is put into question with the multiple migrations model), native americans and black people have a huge genetic variation to simply be qualified as race.

 

[Lovestorm]

Judaism is a religion.

 

[Rod1]

Just because you look phenotypically white, does not mean your ancestry is even near 100% white.

Jessica Alba looks phenotypically Hispanic, but is almost 90% European, for instance.

Note: I don't mean Mayan (she clearly doesn't look Mayan). But I wouldn't take Jessica Alba for someone who is 9/10ths white.

How do one even looks hispanic? also at 90% european you basically look 100% european, it takes around 30% of genetic ancestry to show particular traits.

 

[Erik Freydis]

Many Jews see themselves as a race, the mater race.

Have a laugh at this on twitter

https://twitter.com/hashtag/openbordersforisrael

[YT]watch?v=lKDeyuM0-Og&x-yt-cl=84411374&x-yt-ts=1421828030[/YT]

 

[panamaican]

Around the time of Jesus, Judaism used to be a rabidly proselytizing religion; you could be converted and essentially no attention was apparently paid to your genetic origin. It is an amazing historical fact that Judaism around 400 BC was a miniscule and obscure priestly cult in a tiny hill country region in the Levant, where Jerusalem had only a couple thousand people total. Then, 400 years later, this obscure cult had been spread everywhere across most of civilization, and there were now millions of Jews from Central Asia to Europe.

From the Gospels, you may remember Jesus ripping on the Pharisees about how they would go to such ludicrous lengths to try to convert people to Judaism.

In so many ways, pre-Rabbinic Judaism was remarkably similar to Christianity and to what later became Islam. It was only after the fall of the second temple and the rise of state Christianity that Judaism really became this insular, inward looking community, based on Rabbis, and Jewish proselytizing became looked down upon. From its beginnings as a Jewish sect, before the Second Temple's destruction and prior to the innovations of Rabbinical Judaism, early Christianity ironically retained many of the more archaic features of Judaism, such as proselytizing, even though both later Christians and Jews would aggressively seek to downplay that fact.

I also thought that part of the impetus for those developments was the harsh treatment under Roman emperors, although I can't remember if it was pre-/post- Trajan?

 

[Limbo Pete]

Ethnicity

 

[IIIIIIII]

http://www.geocities.ws/racial_reality/jews.html

 

[Lord_Impaler]

My fiances best friend is jewish, she has pale white skin, blue eyes and super golden blonde hair, surely she has no genetic relationship with Israelis or the original Jewish tribe, right?

She's very clearly a white European.

 

[peytonlucy]

It's a religion.