Since the late 19th century, the so-called “Khazarian theory” has promoted the idea that a bulk of Ashkenazic Jews living in Eastern Europe descended from medieval Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic people who founded a powerful polyethnic state in the Caucasus and north to the Caspian, Azov and Black seas.
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[T]he theory is absolutely without evidence. As any historian will tell you, generations of Jews, like generations of any people, leave historical traces behind them. … Predictably, archaeologic evidence about the widespread existence of Jews in Khazaria is almost nonexistent.…
[Another] discipline can help us put to rest the Khazarian hypothesis: onomastics, or the study of proper names. Looking at names, both first names and surnames, gives us a sense of how a community saw itself, its language and its origins. And in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe over the past six centuries, not a single Turkic name can be found in documents listing Jewish names.…
Finally, we come to genetics. One does not have to be a professional geneticist to see the inadequacy of the methodologies used by Eran Elhaik, the champion of the “Khazarian theory” in that domain. In his paper of 2013, he pretends to show that modern Ashkenazic Jews are genetically closer to Khazars than to biblical Hebrews.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Ashkenazi Jews Are Not Khazars. Here’s The Proof
