There are good reasons to believe that the Khazars were not "converted to Judaism in the 7th century AD(sic) or thereabouts," although Koestler (in "The Thirteenth Tribe," an otherwise excellent book) accepts the legend that a Khazar king, receiving emissaries from Constantinople and Baghdad, asked each to rank the three monotheistic religions in order of which one they thought closest to the truth; when the Greek said "Christianity, then Judaism, then, and by far, Islam" and the Arab answered "Islam, then Judaism, then, and by far, Christianity" the king, as a good practitioner of game theory, chose Judaism. However, Immanuel Velikovsky ("Beyond the Mountains of Darkness") points out that when the Assyrian King Sargon II deported the population of the Northern Kingdom in about 721BCE he is known to have resettled them in the northenmost parts of his empire, which then included the transcaucasion regions. One of the strongest pieces of evidence for this view is that Herodotos noted that the Colchians (inhabitants of what is now Georgia) were the only people visited by him, except for the Jews and the Egyptians, who practiced circumcision. When he asked them where they learned this practice they replied "in Egypt," which of course is where the Jews picked it up. A recent bit of evidence that the Khazars (assuming their Ashkenazi identity) had always been Jews is the presence of distinctive genetic markers in Jewish priestly (cohanim) families of European, Middle Eastern, and African descent.
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
>I suppose you have answers to the following nonsense, but here are a
>few comments:
>
>>
>>The below was posted on another listserve and I am wondering if it is
>>a valid claim. My knowledge of history is limited in this department.
>>
>>****************************
>>
>>BTW in over 4000 years there has never been an Arab ruled state in the
>>Area of Isreali
>
>Tell it to Saladin! Yeah, the Crusaders who tried to take the Holy
>Land from the Muslims over a period of 400 or so years would have
>been surprised to hear that. AFter 1450 or so, Palestione was ruled
>by the Turks, who are not Arabs, but who are of course Muslims (and
>had excellent relations with the Jews, as did their Arab
>predecessors--far better than way the Jews were treated in Christian
>countries).
>
>while there has been atleast 4 Jewish ruled states in that
>>time period
>
>Yah, from about 300 BC to 70 AD,a nd them after 1948; in between,
>the area was ruled by Arabs and Turks, with some brief colonial
>episodes--the Brits after 1918.
>
>and the word Palestine comes from Philistine who are no
>>relations to any existing people in the area
>
>Yeah, the ancient Hebrews exterminated them, along with the
>Amalakites and the Midianites. However, this is intended to invoke
>Joan Peter's utterly discredited suggestion that Palestinians did
>not historically live in Palestine, a notion that may still have
>some half life in certain subterranean quarters, but which no
>responsible person repeats anymore/
>
>while Jews have had a
>>3000 or
>>more history of living in the area without interuption
>>--
>
>Well, modern Jews have no relation to the Semitic peoples who
>settled ancient Palestrine. Ashkenazi Jews like myself are not
>Semites, but descendents of a tribe of Caucasian mountaineers who
>converted to Judaism in the 7th century AD or thereabouts. Sephardic
>and North African Jews are essentially Arabs. ANd the number of Jews
>in Palestine from 70 AD, when the Romans destroyed the Second Temple
>and scattered the Jews, to 1948, was insignificant.
>
>The long and short of it is that the comment is utterly ignorant and
>reactionary.
>
>jks
>
>>**************************
>>Marta
>
>
>_________________________________________________________________
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