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Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People
A riveting scientific detective story crossed with a provocative and controversial re-examination of the meaning of race, ethnicity, and religion.
Could our sense of who we are really turn on a sliver of DNA? In our multiethnic world, questions of individual identity are becoming increasingly unclear. Now in Abraham's Children bestselling author Jon Entine vividly brings to life the profound human implications of the Age of Genetics while illuminating one of today's most controversial the connection between genetics and who we are, and specifically the question "Who is a Jew?"
Entine weaves a fascinating narrative, using breakthroughs in genetic genealogy to reconstruct the Jewish biblical tradition of the chosen people and the hereditary Israelite priestly caste of Cohanim. Synagogues in the mountains of India and China and Catholic churches with a Jewish identity in New Mexico and Colorado provide different patterns of connection within the tangled history of the Jewish diaspora. Legendary accounts of the Hebrew lineage of Ethiopian tribesmen, the building of Africa's Great Zimbabwe fortress, and even the so-called Lost Tribes are reexamined in light of advanced DNA technology. Entine also reveals the shared ancestry of Israelites and Christians.
As people from across the world discover their Israelite roots, their riveting stories unveil exciting new approaches to defining one's identity. Not least, Entine addresses possible connections between DNA and Jewish intelligence and the controversial notion that Jews are a "race apart." Abraham's Children is a compelling reinterpretation of biblical history and a challenging and exciting illustration of the promise and power of genetic research.
Could our sense of who we are really turn on a sliver of DNA? In our multiethnic world, questions of individual identity are becoming increasingly unclear. Now in Abraham's Children bestselling author Jon Entine vividly brings to life the profound human implications of the Age of Genetics while illuminating one of today's most controversial the connection between genetics and who we are, and specifically the question "Who is a Jew?"
Entine weaves a fascinating narrative, using breakthroughs in genetic genealogy to reconstruct the Jewish biblical tradition of the chosen people and the hereditary Israelite priestly caste of Cohanim. Synagogues in the mountains of India and China and Catholic churches with a Jewish identity in New Mexico and Colorado provide different patterns of connection within the tangled history of the Jewish diaspora. Legendary accounts of the Hebrew lineage of Ethiopian tribesmen, the building of Africa's Great Zimbabwe fortress, and even the so-called Lost Tribes are reexamined in light of advanced DNA technology. Entine also reveals the shared ancestry of Israelites and Christians.
As people from across the world discover their Israelite roots, their riveting stories unveil exciting new approaches to defining one's identity. Not least, Entine addresses possible connections between DNA and Jewish intelligence and the controversial notion that Jews are a "race apart." Abraham's Children is a compelling reinterpretation of biblical history and a challenging and exciting illustration of the promise and power of genetic research.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published October 24, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
December 26, 2010
Over the past few decades, geneticists have been looking at the Jews, just as they have been looking at the English and the Irish. The ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews through the male line seem to have come from the Middle East; if you look at the Y chromosome, Czech Jews are far more like the Lebanese than like the non-Jewish Czechs. Their ancestors through the female line are indistinguishable from those of other Europeans, though. Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the Khazars in any significant numbers, despite the fantasies of Arthur Koestler and an anti-Zionist Jew named Alfred Lilienthal, whose 1953 book What Price Israel, which was translated into Russian and published by the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public in the early 1980s, asserts that the descent of Eastern European Jews from the Khazars is a "historical fact", which Jewish historians allegedly acknowledge but Zionist propagandists deny. The Jews of Islam of course never left the Middle East. The Beta Israel formerly of Ethiopia are not descended from any ancient Israelites; their Ethiopian ancestors adopted an unusual form of Judaism. The ancestors of the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus came from the Middle East, but most ancestors of the Georgian Jews came from Europe. There are many groups around the world who claim Jewish ancestry, usually after contact with Protestant missionaries, from the Indian-Burmese border to Namibia; they have no genetic connection to the Middle East, except for one subclan of a native Namibian people, whose members have many genetic markers common to the Jewish cohens. I do not know whether it is true, but I remember reading somewhere that early-20th century Zionists envisioned Western European Jews as the elite of the future State of Israel and Eastern European Jews as its working class, and seems to have been unaware of the existence of Mizrahi Jews, who and whose descendants make up about half of Israel's present-day Jewish population. But the Ethiopians, and the tribe from the Indian-Burmese border? Did they have them in mind? A British historian Entine quotes says that the latter are "front-line troops for Israel's demographic war with the Palestinians." Something anti-Zionist Jews Israel Shamir and Ilan Halevy mention as a fact in their writings is that the Palestinians are largely descended from the Jews of Roman times. I wonder if this is true, but even if it is, the Palestinians themselves would be the last to acknowledge it; I read somewhere that Yasser Arafat's Ministry of Culture once claimed that the Palestinians are descended from the Canaanites who lived before Joshua's conquests.
March 16, 2013
This is a complex, somewhat fluffy and somewhat controversial piece. I feel that the writer’s focus (along with his arguing points) was lost in abundance of digressions and somewhat confusing shift of tabular lines throughout the chapters. It is difficult to determine what author’s final intention was. The subject of genetic mutations has been somewhat of taboo for decades and it is something we may prefer to simply slip under the rug and ignore. On the other hand, most of people raised in a Jewish community will admit that we were all raised with some sort of inexplicable immense sense of common uniqueness that we all share. I am not sure whether I should contribute my academic success to my “Jewish DNA”, or simply to my mother’s typical “Jewish Mother” obsession with my scholarly well-being from as long as I can remember.
April 12, 2021
3.0 out of 5 stars Basically Good. A lot of what we already know.
Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2018
The book covers a lot of what we already know. If you've already taken a university class or two in Genetics, then you'll know that non-coding DNA can be used to calculate the divergence of different parts of the human genome. You'll know that mitochondrial DNA is used to trace the maternal line and y DNA is used to trace the paternal line. You'll also know a good deal of the Jewish enlightenment (Haskallah) and the various dislocations (destruction of the First and Second Temple).
A lot of what was covered (and that we already knew) was not really relevant to the topic, which was the Jewish genome. I can see some discussion to give a bit of historical background, but not quite as much as he actually did. The book was 352 pages of written text, but everything could have been said in under 200 pages. I was most concerned about intelligence, but the chapter on intelligence didn't satisfy me in terms of detail.
The organization of the book was a bit strange. I would have expected that he would have taken the various Jewish subgroups and devoted a chapter to *each one* analyzing each one along the *same axes* (IQ, genetic diseases, time of divergence from common ancestor, common markers, etc). The "Lost Tribes" chapter was nice (everyone thinks they have found/ are the lost tribes), but I could have done without it. I only want to know about the people that *were* proven to have relevant lineage.
A lot of questions went unanswered. The Sephardim and Ashkenazim account for over 95% of world Jewry, and so I would like to have known answers to a lot of things that just didn't get answered. For example: He devoted a whole, fuzzy chapter to the concept of Jewish Intelligence, but he wrote off the Sephardim as having an IQ of 91 (p.319, Richard Lynn's estimate) and says that they are not more likely to be in high achieving jobs (p. 302). (Since I don't find the word "Mizrahi" indexed one single time in this book, then that must mean that he is treating them as Sephardim.) Is it just me, or is neglecting the majority Jewish population of Israel in discussions of Jewish intelligence a bit.....sloppy?
Some things were just......inconsistent. He speaks of the Sephardim as having carried the intellectual torch for many centuries (Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza, for example), but then they have an IQ of 91, so how can that have happened? Around p. 298, he speaks of the Ashkenazim having become intellectual thoroughbreds over only the course of a few decades in the 1800s, but then he doesn't get into anything that someone reading this book might like to know, such as: What genetic scenario made that possible? (Can people be smartened up in a few generations? The Sephardi/ Ashkenazi gap is actually larger than the black white gap, and so what can be deduced about black white income differentials?) In the end, Entine just told us that intelligence was not likely to be linearly related to genes, and that the capacity for it was likely to be a probability (p. 308), but then he gave us about one page of discussion and left it at that.
Another thing that was......inconsistent: Ashkenazi Jewry took root in the 9th century (p. 209), then then 11 pages later (p.220) he quotes Michael Hammer's assumption that 80-100 generations has passed since the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry in the context of figuring how how much race mixing had occurred over time. The only way that these numbers can be consistent is if people gave birth at 10 years old.
He got into some strange anecdotal evidence about Gaucher's (p.314) patients having higher IQs. The sample size was 250 people. No average was calculated, nor was there any way to know if this was statistically significant.
How much can IQ even explain the Jewish intellectual success?? (I don't really need him to exhaustively explain that, but I would like to have had a few pages of discussion showing the working thesis and explaining why Jewish IQ is qualitatively different from, say, Korean IQ such that they have no Nobel Prize winners and Jews have them in abundance--in spite of having comparable numbers of people within Nobel Laureate ranges). Statistically, there have to be many more Chinese with IQs that are at the high end of the Jewish level, but there are exactly zero Chinese Nobel Laureates in sciences or Economics that did their research in China.
The Lemba (Africans with Jewish markers) are supposed to be elite and have some of the same customs as practicing Jews, but can anyone give me quantitative degree of their eliteness? And if they, too have genetic neurological defects (these are supposed to be the mechanism of higher intelligence).
At some point, Entine gets obnoxious. He uses yellow journalism to characterize Kevin MacDonald as "Ichabod Crane" (p. 324). A sneer is something that you can't refute.
There were some great indexes with useful information.
This book is not quite worth the second hand price ($10 with shipping), and it does have some good points. But, ultimately, it was written by a journalist trying to write science and does not have quite the same feel as it would if it were written by a scientist who had tried to write a popular book (Dawkins, Gould, Hawking).
Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2018
The book covers a lot of what we already know. If you've already taken a university class or two in Genetics, then you'll know that non-coding DNA can be used to calculate the divergence of different parts of the human genome. You'll know that mitochondrial DNA is used to trace the maternal line and y DNA is used to trace the paternal line. You'll also know a good deal of the Jewish enlightenment (Haskallah) and the various dislocations (destruction of the First and Second Temple).
A lot of what was covered (and that we already knew) was not really relevant to the topic, which was the Jewish genome. I can see some discussion to give a bit of historical background, but not quite as much as he actually did. The book was 352 pages of written text, but everything could have been said in under 200 pages. I was most concerned about intelligence, but the chapter on intelligence didn't satisfy me in terms of detail.
The organization of the book was a bit strange. I would have expected that he would have taken the various Jewish subgroups and devoted a chapter to *each one* analyzing each one along the *same axes* (IQ, genetic diseases, time of divergence from common ancestor, common markers, etc). The "Lost Tribes" chapter was nice (everyone thinks they have found/ are the lost tribes), but I could have done without it. I only want to know about the people that *were* proven to have relevant lineage.
A lot of questions went unanswered. The Sephardim and Ashkenazim account for over 95% of world Jewry, and so I would like to have known answers to a lot of things that just didn't get answered. For example: He devoted a whole, fuzzy chapter to the concept of Jewish Intelligence, but he wrote off the Sephardim as having an IQ of 91 (p.319, Richard Lynn's estimate) and says that they are not more likely to be in high achieving jobs (p. 302). (Since I don't find the word "Mizrahi" indexed one single time in this book, then that must mean that he is treating them as Sephardim.) Is it just me, or is neglecting the majority Jewish population of Israel in discussions of Jewish intelligence a bit.....sloppy?
Some things were just......inconsistent. He speaks of the Sephardim as having carried the intellectual torch for many centuries (Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza, for example), but then they have an IQ of 91, so how can that have happened? Around p. 298, he speaks of the Ashkenazim having become intellectual thoroughbreds over only the course of a few decades in the 1800s, but then he doesn't get into anything that someone reading this book might like to know, such as: What genetic scenario made that possible? (Can people be smartened up in a few generations? The Sephardi/ Ashkenazi gap is actually larger than the black white gap, and so what can be deduced about black white income differentials?) In the end, Entine just told us that intelligence was not likely to be linearly related to genes, and that the capacity for it was likely to be a probability (p. 308), but then he gave us about one page of discussion and left it at that.
Another thing that was......inconsistent: Ashkenazi Jewry took root in the 9th century (p. 209), then then 11 pages later (p.220) he quotes Michael Hammer's assumption that 80-100 generations has passed since the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry in the context of figuring how how much race mixing had occurred over time. The only way that these numbers can be consistent is if people gave birth at 10 years old.
He got into some strange anecdotal evidence about Gaucher's (p.314) patients having higher IQs. The sample size was 250 people. No average was calculated, nor was there any way to know if this was statistically significant.
How much can IQ even explain the Jewish intellectual success?? (I don't really need him to exhaustively explain that, but I would like to have had a few pages of discussion showing the working thesis and explaining why Jewish IQ is qualitatively different from, say, Korean IQ such that they have no Nobel Prize winners and Jews have them in abundance--in spite of having comparable numbers of people within Nobel Laureate ranges). Statistically, there have to be many more Chinese with IQs that are at the high end of the Jewish level, but there are exactly zero Chinese Nobel Laureates in sciences or Economics that did their research in China.
The Lemba (Africans with Jewish markers) are supposed to be elite and have some of the same customs as practicing Jews, but can anyone give me quantitative degree of their eliteness? And if they, too have genetic neurological defects (these are supposed to be the mechanism of higher intelligence).
At some point, Entine gets obnoxious. He uses yellow journalism to characterize Kevin MacDonald as "Ichabod Crane" (p. 324). A sneer is something that you can't refute.
There were some great indexes with useful information.
This book is not quite worth the second hand price ($10 with shipping), and it does have some good points. But, ultimately, it was written by a journalist trying to write science and does not have quite the same feel as it would if it were written by a scientist who had tried to write a popular book (Dawkins, Gould, Hawking).
April 6, 2025
Rounding Up from 4.5
This is an excellent review of what DNA testing reveals about Jewish ancestry and the connections between diverse Jewish people around the world.
While Judaism is matrilineal, genetic testing most compellingly authenticates Jewish identity through the Y chromosome, tracing the Cohen lineage to the Middle East at the time of Moses and Aaron. Interestingly, the female lineage of most Ashkenazi Jews indicates significant intermarriage by Jewish men.
The material in the text is amplified with helpful appendices discussing genetic science and genetic testing resources.
This is a fascinating account for those interested in Jewish genealogy, with one caveat. Those familiar with the history of Judaism will find lengthy digressions into the history and culture of the Jewish people — material with which they are already well-acquainted. This group can readily skip or skim those sections.
Readers who are new to the history and culture of Judaism will find all of this volume worthwhile.
This is an excellent review of what DNA testing reveals about Jewish ancestry and the connections between diverse Jewish people around the world.
While Judaism is matrilineal, genetic testing most compellingly authenticates Jewish identity through the Y chromosome, tracing the Cohen lineage to the Middle East at the time of Moses and Aaron. Interestingly, the female lineage of most Ashkenazi Jews indicates significant intermarriage by Jewish men.
The material in the text is amplified with helpful appendices discussing genetic science and genetic testing resources.
This is a fascinating account for those interested in Jewish genealogy, with one caveat. Those familiar with the history of Judaism will find lengthy digressions into the history and culture of the Jewish people — material with which they are already well-acquainted. This group can readily skip or skim those sections.
Readers who are new to the history and culture of Judaism will find all of this volume worthwhile.
August 14, 2021
This book opens with a crucial correlation between Jewish genetic diseases and why understanding Jewish ancestry remains pertinent today. The author's journalistic background comes through in the humanizing narrative of both Arabs and Jews throughout the piece. At a time when it has become trendy among progressive Jewish and non-Jewish circles alike to frame the topic of Jewish genetics as "race science" and tout Jewishness as "only a religion", this work delves into the connection Jews have to each other as well as to today's Israel, lending a solid legitimacy to Zionism as a core concept of Jewish values.
December 22, 2021
The historical parts were interesting and informative. I’m not a geneticist by any stretch but I found the genetics parts to be more than a bit suspect.
April 29, 2008
In this complex book covering a wide variety of issues, Entine explores the implications of being able to trace "Jewish" DNA through the male side to the biblical era in the Middle East, potentially lending truth to biblical history, and through the female Ashkenazic side to four lines of women in various parts of Europe in the middle ages. The genealogies of so-called "Crypto-Jews" who fled to the New World from the inquisition can now be traced to Jewish roots, as can the particularly Jewish diseases (BRCA1 and BRCA2) now affecting many of these apparently Catholic families. Huge percentages of people claiming to be members of the Cohanim or priestly caste (with surnames such as Cohen, Kahn, Kohn), are found to share a certain genetic marker. Migratory patterns can be shown through genetic markers, and so-called lost tribes from India, the African Continent, and China, can be shown (or not) to have genetic links to other Jews. And Entine doesn't hesitate to take on the difficult implications of viewing Jews as a race, but explores the historical uses and misuses of "racial science" throughout history. A fascinating look at Jewish history, religion, and identity through the lens of science.
October 14, 2015
The most interesting parts of this book is the (poorly fact-checked) post-biblical history of the Jewish people. Even this part suffered from such gaffes as claiming that the Assyrians invaded Palestine around 600 BC and implying that events of 1158 were motivated by policies introduced in 1215.
Credibility is further eroded by an author who treats "Marxism" and "Marxist" as pejoratives, and impugns the credibility and motivations of any academic researcher who has findings that disagree with the author's ideology. While a kind soul would think that the expertise granted by the author's undergraduate degree in "Pre-Law" trumps post-doctoral Genetics research, a more cynical soul such as myself only sees the tantrums of an adolescent author as he tries to make the still-very-premlinary science tell the story that the author wishes was true.
Credibility is further eroded by an author who treats "Marxism" and "Marxist" as pejoratives, and impugns the credibility and motivations of any academic researcher who has findings that disagree with the author's ideology. While a kind soul would think that the expertise granted by the author's undergraduate degree in "Pre-Law" trumps post-doctoral Genetics research, a more cynical soul such as myself only sees the tantrums of an adolescent author as he tries to make the still-very-premlinary science tell the story that the author wishes was true.
April 8, 2011
Lengthy and lacks and overall argument or position. Starts off quite offensive to those involved in interfaith relations (mentions the dangers of assimilation in the same sentence as the Holocaust). Muddle through a few hundred pages on the history of the Jewish people and FINALLY you get to some good stuff at the back about Jewish diseases and Jewish intelligence and the nature of race and ethnicity. But then the author starts discussing Antisemitism, and racism, and he honestly looses his voice. You can't really tell what his point is, because he really just describes things and completely fades under the facts.
Some interesting points, but can be summed up with the Tay-Sachs wikipedia page, and everything else is redundant or speculative.
Some interesting points, but can be summed up with the Tay-Sachs wikipedia page, and everything else is redundant or speculative.
February 27, 2016
How did he dare write this? His citations are ridiculous and his DNA info is garden variety. But what is more disturbing is his use of the name "Palestine" to describe the place called Israel. It was annoying and said everything I needed to know about his politics. He hardly mentioned serious and factual and numerous books on the subject of Jews and DNA and he aggravated me - although I read it all. Sorry Mr. Entine. Choose a subject you are actually familiar with and then add real citations. I was very disappointed.
March 24, 2009
This is a well presented middle-brow book on the recent research into the genetics of Jews and the contributions genetics has made to paleoanthropology, tracing the migration of Jews through their genes. The book is well footnoted, but if you already have a familiarity with Jewish history, then you can get the same information from a few chapters in _Before the Dawn_, minus all the basic Jewish history you would get from _A Short History of the Jewish People_.
February 8, 2017
Interesting.
August 16, 2009
Fascinating subject race and DNA! This book (much like the last book--Taboo) treads warily through the mine fields but argues that race is a legitimate construct (especially in medicine). Lots of interesting stories to found in here, but I am not sure what the thesis was. I wonder how it was received? Easy read and interesting if meandering.
April 20, 2012
I thought that the information contained in this book was fascinating, but the science writing was incoherent. I didn't come away feeling that I knew whether the science did or didn't uphold the notion that all Jews are related. I read a lot of it in a beach house on the North Shore of Oahu, so that't not bad.
May 29, 2016
I would have liked more information about my haplogroup. This book ends up being an apology for looking at DNA. I understand why that is and why the author feels defensive about his subject. But there's more defensiveness in this book than information. It's a long, boring read at the end of which this reader at any rate felt like they got precious little for their time.
April 21, 2010
Though a bit repetitive at times, this book was very interesting to me. It shifted the way I think about what it means to be Jewish (or to "be" anything). I feel like I now have a deeper understanding of the physical history of the Jewish people. It's a quick and easy read, and not too technical.
May 10, 2010
i actually really loved this book. it takes a science-y spin on Jewish historical and cultural myths. the book does take a good lull in the middle, but power through! The end was definitely worth it. I suggest this book for history lovers, theists, athiests, and those interested in geneology.
May 16, 2012
Interesting study of DNA. Started strong and faded for me and I limped into the end of the book, but was glad I read it. I especially liked the personal sections where Jon wrote in first person - as contrasted with some sections that read a bit like a text book.
October 7, 2012
I enjoyed this book on many different levels. Someone interested in cancer and other diseases research will like the chapters relating to such. I got this on iBooks for $.99 and would have willingly spent full price.
October 23, 2016
The author tackles a number of big issues, some uncomfortably. I appreciate the insights but I'm not sure I share all his conclusions. I do find the link between our oral histories and genetic "proof" quite interesting.
March 7, 2010
First non fiction I've read in awhile. Very interesting perspective on Jewish history.
June 8, 2010
Interesting topic
May 11, 2011
Enjoyable, best in small servings. There is more history and social Science than Biochemistry and Genetics.
Read
August 7, 2011This will be one of the few titles that I'm going to have to read again -- and soon -- because there are many nuances that I'm not sure that I captured during the first time around.
December 11, 2011
Godless book....
February 9, 2013
Intriguing book
February 11, 2014
Very technical , but interesting book
March 29, 2014
Very Interesting though it got preachy in the end
December 14, 2016
Good book of our DNA
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews