The Thirteenth Tribe

The Thirteenth Tribe (1976) is a book by Arthur Koestler. It advances the controversial thesis that the modern Jewish population originating from North / East Europe and Russia including their descendants, or Ashkenazim, are not descended from the historical Israelites of antiquity, but from Khazars, a people originating and populating the Caucasus region (historical Khazaria) who converted to Judaism in the 8th century and later voluntarily migrating or were forced to move westwards into current Eastern Europe (Russia, Hungary, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Germany and other places outside the Caucasus region) before and during the 12th and 13th century when the Khazar Empire was collapsing. 
Koestler stated that part of his intent in writing the book was to defuse anti-Semitism by undermining the identification of European Jews with the Jews of the Bible, rendering anti-Semitic epithets such as "Christ killer" inapplicable.Koestler, p. 223. Arthur Koestler himself was a Hungarian Ashkenazi Jew by ancestry. 
Koestler did not see alleged Khazar ancestry as diminishing the claim of Jews to Israel, which he felt was based on the United Nations mandate and not on Biblical covenants or genetic inheritance. In his view, "The problem of the Khazar infusion a thousand years ago…is irrelevant to modern Israel." In addition, he was apparently "either unaware of or oblivious to the use anti-Semites had made to the Khazar theory since its introduction at the turn of the century." Nevertheless, in the Arab world the Khazar theory has been adopted by anti-Zionists and anti-Semites;"Arab anti-Semitism might have been expected to be free from the idea of racial odium, since Jews and Arabs are both regarded by race theory as Semites, but the odium is directed, not against the Semitic race, but against the Jews as a historical group. The main idea is that the Jews, racially, are a mongrel community, most of them being not Semites, but of Khazar and European origin." Yehoshafat Harkabi, "Contemporary Arab Anti-Semitism: its Causes and Roots", in Helen Fein, The Persisting Question: Sociological Perspectives and Social Contexts of Modern Antisemitism, Walter de Gruyter, 1987, ISBN 311010170X, p. 424. such proponents argue that if Ashkenazi Jews are primarily Khazar and not Semitic in origin, they would have no historical claim to Israel, nor would they be the subject of God's Biblical promise of Canaan to the Israelites, thus undermining the theological basis of both Jewish religious Zionists and Christian Zionists.Plaut, Steven. "The Khazar Myth and the New Anti-Semitism", The Jewish Press, May 9, 2007 In the West, Koestler's thesis has also been embraced by some adherents of British Israelism and its offshoots such as the Christian Identity movement.
==Controversy==
Koestler's thesis relies on works of earlier historians, e.g., Ernest Renan (in Le Judaïsme comme race et religion, 1883, to which Koestler explicitly refers in his book). But Koestler's historiography was also attacked by many historians, particularly his discussion of theories about Ashkenazi descent. His analysis has been described as a mixture of flawed etymologies and misinterpreted primary sources by Abramsky and MaccobyAbramsky, Chimen. "The Khazar Myth." Jewish Chronicle (April 9, 1976): 19Maccoby, Hyam. "Koestler's Racism." Midstream 23 (March 1977).. Commentators have also noted that Koestler mischaracterized the sources he cited, particularly D.M. Dunlop's History of the Jewish Khazars (1954)McInnes, Neil. "Koestler and His Jewish Thesis." National Interest. Fall 1999.. In 1986, Bernard Lewis wrote: "This theory… is supported by no evidence whatsoever. It has long since been abandoned by all serious scholars in the field, including those in Arab countries, where the Khazar theory is little used except in occasional political polemics"Lewis, Bernard. Semites and Anti-Semites, W.W. Norton and Company, 1986 ISBN 0-393-31839-7, p. 48. Jeffrey Goldberg, while critiquing another work based on Koestler, described The Thirteenth Tribe as "a combination of discredited and forgotten." Evan Goldstein writes that "…Koestler and the Khazar theory he advanced lives on in the fever swamps of the white nationalist movement."
== See also ==
* The Invention of the Jewish People By Shlomo Sand, professor of film history at Tel Aviv University.
== External links ==
* 'The Thirteenth Tribe' by Arthur Koestler A review of 'The Thirteenth Tribe' a controversial book on Ashkenazim origins and history.
==References==
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Category:Books by Arthur Koestler
Category:1976 books
Category:European history books
Category:Ashkenazi Jews topics
Category:Khazar studies
Category:Jews and Judaism-related controversies
Category:Historical revisionism (political)
Category:Books about Jews and Judaism
Category:Jewish history books
Category:Historiography of Israel
bg:Тринадесетото племе
de:Der dreizehnte Stamm
fr:La Treizième Tribu
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