The Thirteenth Tribe

The Thirteenth Tribe (1976) is a book by Arthur Koestler. It advances the controversial thesis that the modern Jewish population originating from North / East Europe and Russia including their descendants, or Ashkenazim, are not descended from the historical Israelites of antiquity, but from Khazars, a people originating and populating the Caucasus region (historical Khazaria) who converted to Judaism in the 8th century and later voluntarily migrating or were forced to move westwards into current Eastern Europe (Russia, Hungary, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Germany and other places outside the Caucasus region) before and during the 12th and 13th century when the Khazar Empire was collapsing.

Intent of the book

Koestler stated that part of his intent in writing the book was to defuse anti-Semitism by undermining the identification of European Jews with the Jews of the Bible, rendering anti-Semitic epithets such as "Christ killer" inapplicable. Arthur Koestler himself was a Hungarian Ashkenazi Jew by ancestry.

Influence of the book

Koestler did not see alleged Khazar ancestry as diminishing the claim of Jews to Israel, which he felt was based on the United Nations mandate and not on Biblical covenants or genetic inheritance. In his view, "The problem of the Khazar infusion a thousand years ago…is irrelevant to modern Israel." In addition, he was apparently "either unaware of or oblivious to the use anti-Semites had made to the Khazar theory since its introduction at the turn of the century." Nevertheless, in the Arab world the Khazar theory has been adopted by anti-Zionists and anti-Semites; such proponents argue that if Ashkenazi Jews are primarily Khazar and not Semitic in origin, they would have no historical claim to Israel, nor would they be the subject of God's Biblical promise of Canaan to the Israelites, thus undermining the theological basis of both Jewish religious Zionists and Christian Zionists. In the West, Koestler's thesis has also been embraced by some adherents of British Israelism and its offshoots such as the Christian Identity movement.

Controversy

Koestler's thesis relies on works of earlier historians, e.g., Ernest Renan (in Le Judaïsme comme race et religion, 1883, to which Koestler explicitly refers in his book). But Koestler's historiography was also attacked by many historians, particularly his discussion of theories about Ashkenazi descent. His analysis has been described as a mixture of flawed etymologies and misinterpreted primary sources by Abramsky and Maccoby. Commentators have also noted that Koestler mischaracterized the sources he cited, particularly D.M. Dunlop's History of the Jewish Khazars (1954). In 1986, Bernard Lewis wrote: "This theory… is supported by no evidence whatsoever. It has long since been abandoned by all serious scholars in the field, including those in Arab countries, where the Khazar theory is little used except in occasional political polemics" Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, while critiquing another work based on Koestler, described The Thirteenth Tribe as "a combination of discredited and forgotten." Evan Goldstein writes that "…Koestler and the Khazar theory he advanced lives on in the fever swamps of the white nationalist movement."

Shlomo Sand, in The Invention of the Jewish People, supports Koestler's thesis.

Genetic research

A 2005 study by Nebel et al., based on Y chromosome polymorphic markers, showed that Ashkenazi Jews are more closely related to other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than to their host populations in Europe. However, 11.5% of male Ashkenazim were found to belong to R-M17, the dominant Y chromosome haplogroup in Eastern Europeans, suggesting possible gene flow. The authors hypothesized that "R-M17 chromosomes in Ashkenazim may represent vestiges of the mysterious Khazars". They concluded "However, if the R-M17 chromosomes in Ashkenazi Jews do indeed represent the vestiges of the mysterious Khazars then, according to our data, this contribution was limited to either a single founder or a few closely related men, and does not exceed ~ 12% of the present-day Ashkenazim.

The study's details are not clear, the methods are never outlined, and a mere reference to it seems to satisfy the authors of this piece - whose main interest lie in proving that the mythical allocation of 'Canaan' by God acting as an Estate Broker, is not violated.

Indeed, the entire reference to the DNA study, in which the experimental design itself suffer from selectivity and subjectivity, bears no relation to Mr. Koestler's claim.

External links

• 'The Thirteenth Tribe' by Arthur Koestler A review of 'The Thirteenth Tribe' a controversial book on Ashkenazi origins and history.

References

• Koestler, Arthur (1976). The thirteenth tribe: the Khazar empire and its heritage (1st American ed.). New York: Random House. ISBN 9780394402840. OCLC 2121683. LCCN 76-0 – 0. Retrieved February 9, 2010.