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Notes -
The archaeological evidence for the Kingdom of Israel is very sparse indeed suggesting, even if it existed in the first place, it was more illustrious as depicted in literary fiction than it was in reality. There's a dearth of material evidence and of course no genetic evidence to speak of connecting the biblical Hebrews to modern-day Jews.
Herod the Great for example was a convert. The question of conversion to Judaism under the Roman Empire is an open one and sure it's controversial and speculative. Run Unz has an interesting article on this, suggesting there many have been a Phoenician diaspora in the Roman Empire that had converted to Judaism to some extent.
In the end it doesn't even matter, it's still a very real and coherent identity simply by nature of the underlying mythology that has memed it into existence and into the deep-rooted consciousness of people who identify with it. It's more trivia but doesn't matter for any of the arguments I'm making.
That also applies to the taxonomical arguments. hydroacetylene is wrong that Jews are more monophyletic than Europeans when the exact opposite is true, but I don't think the taxonomy is relevant compared to the cultural signals embedded in religion, myth, and propaganda.
Except there is genetic evidence linking Jews to the Middle East. You just ignored what I just said. They clearly share a huge percentage of their ancestry with people from the Levant. Obvious there’s not a lot of evidence for what happened in the Bible/Old Testament because it’s not real. Most people who have studied the historical accuracy of the Bible know this. But the at doesn’t mean they didn’t originate in the ME and Jews who lived there. There’s not a lot of evidence for Thor or Zeus either. Greeks still existed in Greece. We have accounts from contemporaries writing about Jews in the ME. The same place that modern Jews share DNA from. I think we know what is more likely to have happened and it’s not what Ron Unz speculated about.
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