The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age

408 Pages·2017·13.99 MB·English

by  Steven Weitzman

The O rigin O f T he J ews

The Origin of the Jews
The Q uesT f Or r OOTs
in a r OOTless a ge
Steven Weitzman
PrinceTOn u niversiTy Press
PrinceTOn & OxfOrd
Copyright © 2017 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR
press .princeton .edu
Jacket art courtesy of Shutterstock
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978- 0- 691- 17460- 0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016960228
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Miller
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the memory of
Liba Feuerstein

cOnTenTs
List of Illustrations · ix
Introduction · 1
chaPTer 1 Genealogical Bewilderment:
Lost Ancestors and Elusive Lineages 25
chaPTer 2 Roots and Rootlessness: Paleolinguistics
and the Prehistory of the Jews 63
chaPTer 3 Histories Natural and Unnatural:
The Documentary Hypothesis and
Other Developmental Theories 101
chaPTer 4 A Thrice- Told Tel: The Archaeology
of Ethnogenesis 139
chaPTer 5 Thought Fossils: Psychoanalytic Approaches 174
chaPTer 6 Hellenism and Hybridity: Did the Jews
Learn How to be Jewish from the Greeks? 207
chaPTer 7 Disruptive Innovation: The Jewish
People as a Modern Invention 245
chaPTer 8 Source Codes: The Genetic
Search for Founders 274
Conclusion · 317
Acknowledgments · 329
Bibliographical Commentary · 333
Index · 383
[ vii ]

illusTraTiOns
1. Tampering with a biblical genealogy? 30
2. William Robertson Smith dressed
as “Abdullah Effendi.” 68
3. The trilingual Behistun Inscription. 128
4. Duncan Mackenzie, leader of the first
archaeological expedition to Tel Beth Shemesh. 150
5. Stela from El- Amarna depicting Akhenaten. 186
6. Wilhelm von Humboldt. 228
7. Figurine found in Egypt by the archaeologist
Sir Flinders Petrie. 282
8. Nazi propaganda slide of a Hitler Youth
educational presentation. 285
9. Illustrated family tree of Rabbi Ben Shull. 332
[ ix ]