The Ashkenzaic Alibi

Scholarly sources state that 93% of the Jewish people today are of Ashkenazic descent. What connection do they have with the biblical Hebrews?

According to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (i:541-2), “The earliest reference to Ashkenaz in the Bible is in the ethnographical tables (Gen. 10:3; 1 Chron. 1:6), where he is recorded as the son of Gomer, the grandson of Noah. His brothers were Riphath and Togarmah…Krauss is of the opinion that in the early medieval ages the Khazars were sometimes referred to as Ashkenazim, and Mann has shown that Ashkenazim was a general term used to denote the Crusaders.”

Here is an example of the interplay between historical fact and metaphorical prejudice. The Jews were wont to apply falsified negative historical associations onto their adversaries; the Roman Italians were titled Edom, the Christian Crusaders termed Ashkenazim, and references to Germany as Ashkenaz may also have had a similar basis. The Khazar ancestry of the Ashkenazim, however, has a historical foundation which is also mentioned in The Jewish Encyclopedia (ii:193).

This connection creates a problem for those asserting a Semitic Hebrew origin of much of modern Jewry, because the biblical Ashkenaz was the son of Japheth (Gen. 10:3), not Shem. An alibi, an excuse, had to be found to counter the clear biblical statement that the Ashkenazic people are Japhetic. That alibi is known to modern scholars as the Rhineland Hypothesis.

This theory has been very briefly explained by the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia: “The primary meaning of Ashkenaz and Ashkenazim in Hebrew is Germany and Germans. This may be due to the fact that the home of the ancient ancestors of the Germans was Media, which is the Biblical Ashkenaz.” (ibid. p. 542). 

Ironically, the biblical ten-tribe House of Israel was exiled to Media (2 Ki. 17:6), but no suggestion is offered that the Germans or other Indo-Europeans are these lost Israel tribes! 

The Rhineland Hypothesis essentially says that the Ashkenazic Jews are in reality not Ashkenazic at all, but took on the name because they settled in Germany, who they claim are the true Ashkenaz of Scripture. This is asserted as a well-known, established fact in the Evangelical churches today, yet The Jewish Encyclopedia says, “Its origin in this particular is obscure.” (ii:192)

This supposition has been examined in recent years by secular scholars. In the professional journal “Frontiers in Genetics” (Vol. 8, 20 June 2017) is an in-depth study titled, “The Origins of Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews, and Yiddish,” authored by Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler, Mehdi Pirooznia, and Eran Elhaik. These scholars examined the issue from several standpoints: historic, genetic, geographic, and linguistic. All of the evidence leads to a conclusion stating, “These findings were compatible with the hypothesis of an Irano-Turko-Slavic origin for AJs [Ashkenazic Jews] and a Slavic origin for Yiddish and at odds with the Rhineland hypothesis advocating a Levantine origin for AJs and German origins for Yiddish.” Levantine refers to the land of the eastern Mediterranean, especially Palestine.

Regarding genetics, these scholars say, “Remarkably, AJs exhibit a dominant Iranian (88%~) and residual Levantine (3%~) ancestries.” This relatively tiny three-percent eastern Mediterranean origin would include a variety of non-Hebrew ancestors such as Canaanites, Amorites, Edomites, Hittites and many others, and would hardly qualify a claim of a dominant Hebrew ancestry. 

In addition to language contacts, the scholars tell us that the Silk Roads also provided the motivation for “widespread conversion to Judaism by populations eager to participate in the extremely lucrative trade, which had become a Jewish quasi-monopoly along the trade routes (Rabinowitz, 1945, 1948; Baron, 1957).”

Historically, the famed Jewish commentator and French scholar Rashi (1040?-1105) used aškenaz in the meaning of “Slavic” and the term aškenaz assumed the meaning “German lands” only after the Eleventh century. It is evident that the claim that the Germans are descended from Ashkenaz developed only in the Middle Ages. According to the scholars, in about the tenth century “the Judaized Khazar kingdom diminished, and their trading networks collapsed forcing them to relocate to Europe.” It was not until the 16th century that Ashkenaz was identified with Germany in a work by Hebrew grammarian Elia Baxur.

Geographically, the scholars tell us that “AJs were localized to modern-day Turkey and found to be genetically closest to Turkic, southern Caucasian, and Iranian populations.” It is interesting to note that an anti-B.I. internet site has made the claim that Jews have “Turkic and other Mideast ancestry” as proof of Abrahamic descent. The Turkish tribes originated in Far East Asia and only arrived in the Mideast nearly a millennium after Christ; giving Abrahamic ancestry to the Turks is geographical and historical nonsense.

Instead of adopting the name “Ashkenazic” only upon arriving in Germany and Poland as the Rhineland theory asserts, the scholars have established that they were known by that name centuries earlier when dwelling in Turkey and Khazaria. The aforementioned scholars advise, “GPS [Geographical Population Structure] traced nearly all AJs to major ancient trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to four primeval villages whose names resemble “Ashkenaz:” İşkenaz (or Eşkenaz), Eşkenez (or Eşkens), Aşhanas, and Aschuz.” The Bible also supports a Turkic geographical origin for Ashkenaz. A prophecy in Jeremiah 51:27 calls upon Ashkenaz, Ararat, and Minnai, all located in Turkey, to oppose Babylon.  

Linguistic evidence also supports this. The scholars advise, “Yiddish was created by Slavo-Iranian Jewish merchants plying the Silk Roads.” The Jewish migration to Germany and Poland initially was due to trade routes from Turkey and the Khazar kingdom to Europe. The scholars relate, “There is also a quantifiable amount of Iranian and Turkic elements in Yiddish. The Babylonian Talmud, completed by the Sixth century A.D., is rich in Iranian linguistic, legalistic, and religious influences. From the Talmud, a large Iranian vocabulary has entered Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic, and from there spread to Yiddish. This corpus has been known since the 1930s and is common knowledge to Talmud scholars (Telegdi, 1933).”

  The scholars referenced above summarize the evidence saying, “Overall, the combined results are in a strong agreement with the predictions of the Irano-Turko-Slavic hypothesis…and rule out an ancient Levantine origin for AJs.”

The Bible is clear that the Ashkenazic Jews are of Japhetic, not Semitic, origin, although it is commonly denied in our schools and churches today. This biblical truth is countered by an alibi known as the Rhineland Hypothesis that has no actual historic, genetic, geographic, or linguistic factual basis.