Was "Jew" the name of an ethnic or a group of people who followed a same religion?

>The biggest example being the Khazars.

except we barely have mentions about it besides from the forged letter by some spanish jew. the biggest example is actually the yemenite jews and other arabian tribes that converted to Judaism, because although it happened hundreds of years before the Khazars we actually have writing from them and confirmation it was more than a couple people converting

I'm going to assume you're trolling. They are indian and you can tell as soon as you look at them

>I'm going to assume you're trolling.

I'm not. Look at

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groups_claiming_affiliation_with_Israelites

>The Samaritans, once a comparatively large, but now a very small ethnic and religious group, consist of about 700 people[13] currently living in Israel and Samaria. They regard themselves as the descendants of the tribes of Ephraim (named by them as Aphrime) and Manasseh (named by them as Manatch), the sons of Joseph. DNA tests have resulted in evidence which proves that the Samaritans are of Israelite origin.

from the article you posted. And obviously ancient jews from the mediterranean didnt look identical to people from the subcontinent

Was it all a lie then, a jewish Empire existing in the Caucasus?

Do you often imagine that ancient jews from the mediterranean look anything like modern ashkenazis?

The looks of the Samaritans can't always be trusted since a many of them fled from Ottoman persecutions in Syria in the 17th century, the same Syria that had once been under Roman rule. The cultural dissemination in the area might have affected the Samaritan community as well like Jews elsewhere were affected by the people who they lived alongside with. Still probably one of closest to the original Levantine Canaanite populations though.

The construct "Jew" is complex. Religion is an important part of ethnicity and often can be conterminous with it, especially in the past.

Have you seen non-cherrypicked Ashkenazi Jews? They look very Levantine on average.

Jews was the name of the people of the Tribe of Judah now it is a catch-all word for anyone practicing Judaism(literally the religion of the Tribe of Judah)

The latter, 11 of the Jewish Tribes were Canaanites before they became Jews, the Levites were also Canaanites but from a tribe that had lived in Egypt for centuries.

No, it existed and ashkenazis come partially from them.

I wonder if someone here can answer this
At what point did the people living in and around modern Israel switch to Judaism from traditional Phoenician gods like Melqart?
Was Judaism as uniformly accepted in the area as Jewish sources would leave us to believe (ie was it the majority religion?)
Thanks

what kind of fan fiction are you reading?

not true, dna tests show that askenazi jews have primarily blood from the levant and southern europe

>At what point did the people living in and around modern Israel switch to Judaism from traditional Phoenician gods like Melqart?

Hard to say, as it seems to be a gradual process. By the end of the Babylonian exile it was clear that the "Jews" were monotheistic. But Yahweh worship was gradually growing in prominence and displacing the worship of other deities, especially in the south. It's hard to even say at what point you'd consider them a separate religion, let alone when they reached it.

>Was Judaism as uniformly accepted in the area as Jewish sources would leave us to believe (ie was it the majority religion?)

It doesn't really say that in Jewish sources you know. Go skim through the various prophetic/historical writings some time, Judges and Samuel and the like. There are lots and lots of idolaters within a stone's throw of any given "Jewish"/"Israelite" stronghold, and they're often blamed whenever the Jews backslide into idolatry. Even in those, it certainly isn't uniform, and hard to say whether or not it was the majority.

Traditional practises probably lingered well into the Roman era. The Bible gives an account of how Israel and Judah switched religions by the total genocide of pagan men and the enslavement of their womenfolk, not so much via conversion. Areas outside Jewish control would ofc have remained pagan, but the odd tribe within their territory were probably assimilated and adopted into one of the 12 Tribes during the course of the ~1,000 year period of Jew Rule.

The descendants of the Khazars are the Crimean Karaites, the Ashkenazis are the descendants of Poles and Germans.

they strictly dont marry outsiders or accept converts, and since there's only about 700 of them their gene pool has been thoroughly tested, they only have israelite and jewish ancestry

yes, they would have looked like the semitic looking ashkenazis. Most mizrahi are too arab looking (arabs are foreign to the levant)

yeh because stereotypical looking ashkenazi jews like barbra streisand sure look fucking german or polish

jewish sources dont claim that

Neither, it is a particular behavior.

Ashekanzis are Levantine/Italian mixes. They look as such.

Look at your name

You're the sons of Ashkenaz aka Germany

They are too armenoid asiatic and nordic to be just that, there must be some khazar and then some germ/pole influences

Religion. The idea that Jews are an ethnic group is somewhat tenuous, since even the Jews of antiquity recognized conversion and there were instances of Jewish kingdoms, such as Judea under the Hasmonians, forcing conquered peoples to adopt their religion.

Why do Jews that have colored eyes, light hair, and live in central/eastern Europe consider it anti-Semitic to tell them that they must have been interbreeding with local populations or that they may be the descendants of the Kingdom/Khanate of Khazaria?

Did Zionist activists fear that this would weaken their case for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine?

What about Yiddish? A mixture language of Hebrew and central/eastern European languages gives credence to the theory that they might be descendants of the Khazars, whose noble/royal/merchant/literate class all adopted Judaism and corresponded in Hebrew, making them not true sons of Israel, but converts who followed a long tradition of European Judaism that spread across Europe and the USA.

I live in L.A. and have several Jewish friends, a few of which have blonde hair and blue eyes. Certainly they can't be genetically Semitic people from the Levant?

I've asked a lot my Jewish friends/acquaintances about this, but they usually shrug their shoulders claiming they don't really know, which is not surprising considering most young Americans know Jack all about history.

Only one Jewish acquaintance became upset and thought I was being insulting, when I was merely inquisitive.

The Wikipedia article on the theory of Khazaria and European Jewry says that most Jewish scholars and activist groups think it's a bunch of neo-nazi whoo haww.

Is there good genetic evidence of Ashkenazi Jews being genetically distinct from central/eastern Europeans, and/or having strong genetic ties to the Levant, regardless of their white skin, blue eyes, and light hair?

answer please and no bully. I'm not a poltard baiting, I want to know if there is factual scientific evidence and historical claims that can corroborate either side of the debate.

>arabs are foreign to the levant

Was it a realm of ancient white people? Before the dark ones came lol?

>Is there good genetic evidence of Ashkenazi Jews being genetically distinct from central/eastern Europeans, and/or having strong genetic ties to the Levant, regardless of their white skin, blue eyes, and light hair?

Yes, and you would know about it if you spent so much as 30 seconds on google. nature.com/articles/ncomms5835
nature.com/articles/ncomms3543

Berber nomads, semites, Phoenicians, and various other Med. type people could be said to be more native to the Levant than Arab tribesmen living on the Hajaz in the Arabian peninsula.

you are indeed correct in your assumptions that these people were not "white"

Both. That's also been the case historically, since Judaism has mostly been regarded as an ethnoreligion. Some confusion can arise from the fact that outsiders often didn't make the kinds of distinctions that Jews themselves did; for example, Romans used the same word to describe religious Jews, and pretty much everyone else living in the Levant. Plus, Jewish criteria for being considered a Jew haven't always been consistent (the matrilineal thing is actually pretty recent. So, the answer really varies according to where and when you're talking about, as well as who's asking the question. But in general, it's always been used both ways.

>you are indeed correct in your assumptions that these people were not "white"
do you mean the arabs or the pre-islam population

I'm not a geneticist so a lot of the results portion of that study looks like jibberish, but it does seem to conclude that Ashkenazi Jews have a very high amount of unique genetic markers when compared to the Flemish people of Belgium. I didn't read all of it, so I didn't see anything saying that the Ashkenazi are closer to Levantine semites than Europeans overall, but none the less, thank you for the link to the study.

I don't appreciate your attitude in regards to me doing my own research when I'd simply rather ask here, on a forum dedicated to the discussion of history and humanities.

Besides, nobody has yet to answer why Jewish groups find the theory of European looking Jews living in Europe and having a european origin offensive.

I give credence to your study, but I'm sorry to say I find it hard to believe that Jews with northern-central European appearances such as blonde hair and colored eyes that have lived in the region for over a millennia are genetically closer to near eastern semites than the people they live amongst and most closely resemble

ucl.ac.uk/tcga/tcgapdf/Nebel-HG-00-IPArabs.pdf

...

It's just /pol/fags like to claim jews are smart because they got mixed with blond europeans or something, but in fact ashkenazi jews have some southern italian admixture and aren't all that different from sephardic jews
it's a very common 'argument' - it's more of an excuse

i am sure you weren't aware of it at all and are just a naive poster with perfectly good intentions who just wants to understand

so that's what i am doing for you

>this is what the original jews looked like
There are roughly 700 Samaritans left and they suffer greatly from inbreeding.
They might have the ancient heritage, but I doubt they accurately resemble their ancestors.

If you could explain your graphs in relation to Ashkenazi Jews being close in appearance to the peoples they lived by, such as the poles, Czechs, germans, Russians, that would be very helpful.
I can't stand people like you that assume any question related to Judaism is an attempt to bring up controversy and circular arguing.
At no point did I make the statement that Ashkenazi Jews have very high IQs because of years of interbreeding with Slavs and Teutons. I simply raised the question of why theories about such interbreeding or being convert descendants of the midevial kingdom of Khazaria are scoffed at by Jewish cultural and activist groups.

Maybe you're a European from a small country with not many jews, but the neighborhood I live in in Los Angeles is full of them. A few were my best buds in highschool and college, not to mention when we were young kids.
Ashkenazi Jews hold a great deal of influence in the American media and our political machine. That might not be the same where you come from so you might not understand the desire to ask such questions.

please, explain your charts. especially the sub-Saharan admixture one. I have light blue eyes with dirty blonde hair and I could have as much as 15% subsaharan genetic admixture due to my family's ownership of several post-slavery plantations in the Mississippi delta. I have no idea where you're going with that train of discussion.

I'm not saying there aren't Ashkenazi Jews with direct Semitic origins, that would be stupid. I'm simply confused as to why the majority of then look more European than Semitic. Your studies can show as many unique Ashkenazi genetic markers as you want, but that is likely to happen in an ethno-religious community where they prefer to only breed amongst themselves, regardless of their origin as a Semite or a European. I'll see my blonde haired, blue eyed, Ashkenazi neighbor tomorrow and remain stumped.

>A jew thread
>Not shit and overrun with /pol/beards

color me surprised

Both

Equally annoying as poltards are the people that think every thread about Judaism is the fault of poltards trying to stir up the pot. Many Veeky Forumstorians go to great lengths to quell discourse in order to show how they are so high "above" anything that can be remotely tied to /pol/

>I don't appreciate your attitude in regards to me doing my own research when I'd simply rather ask here,
Dude, learn how critical thinking works. If you're not willing to do research on your own and think about sources critically, you're part of the problem. And I don't mean any offense by this, but if you're not willing to think about this and do the work for yourself, what the fuck are you even doing here? Because you sound entitled and lazy as fuck. There's a whole world of academic research out there; it's there to look at if you're actually curious about it and don't want to to be spoofed information that conforms to what you want to hear.

colour*

Well I'm no ignoramus, I hold two degrees, yet neither of which are in history, genetics, or ethnography. I'm free to ask any questions I wish here, though I often hope the answer won't come from some holier-than-thou type that freely attempts to answer my question while being condescending for my lack of personal research about my own inquiry.

You can Google or do a wiki search on anything and come up with many results that contradict eachother or have disagreeing viewpoints. Therefore, I see absolutely nothing wrong with asking questions on a board about history, which many actually accredited or amateur history hobbyists would frequent.

Also, critical thinking has little to do with googling a potentially controversial subject and sorting through the endless conflicting view points.

Why are you here? To discuss history, or to try to make a tempest in a teapot and stifle discourse?

This is true, but it's mostly the Jews themselves who claim to be the sole descendants of Hebrew/Israelite polity. For example to this day Jews deny that Samaritans are Israelites despite them carrying the theological tradition of the Kingdom of Israel and being genetically Israelite.

Samaritans don't descend from "Jews". Jew and Israelite is not synonym.

>ancient people didn't inbreed just as much as modern Samaritans
if anything that inbreeding keeps them purer looking

this
their phenotype is ancient Levantine

>Have you seen non-cherrypicked Ashkenazi Jews? They look very Armenian-Tat (Kavkazi Khazari) on average.

Have you seen non-cherrypicked Chilean? They look very Levantine on average.

>Was Judaism as uniformly accepted in the area as Jewish sources would leave us to believe (ie was it the majority religion?)
Jewish sources claim the opposite, the mainstream religion is this series of idolatry after idolatry after idolatry, polytheism just doesn't fuck off, ever, which is why so much of the Bible is dedicated to whining about this.

I would say the Second Temple is the safest time to place the earliest moment where there is a place of worship in which monotheism is continued, a moment that is in objective history (i.e. Alexander) and not simply in Jewish myth.