In June 2010, an article in
Newsweek titled "The DNA Of Abraham's Children" addresses through genetic analysis the book's assertion that modern European Jews are descended from Khazars, a Turkic group, and not from the Middle East: "The DNA has spoken: no."
[5] A
New York Times article on the same studies notes they "refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand in his book
The Invention of the Jewish People that Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times."
[6] Michael Balter, reviewing the study in the journal
Science, says the following:
... Shlomo Sand of Tel Aviv University in Israel argues in his book
The Invention of the Jewish People, translated into English last year, that most modern Jews do not descend from the ancient Land of Israel but from groups that took on Jewish identities long afterward.
Such notions, however, clash with several recent studies suggesting that Jewishness, including the Ashkenazi version, has deep genetic roots. In what its authors claim is the most comprehensive study thus far, a team led by geneticist
Harry Ostrer of the
New York University School of Medicine concludes today that all three Jewish groups—Middle Eastern, Sephardic, and Ashkenazi—share genomewide genetic markers that distinguish them from other worldwide populations.
[4]
