To: lbs1989 who wrote (80798 ) 1/16/2002 8:05:36 AM From: E. Charters Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 116753 You are largely right. The Khazars (Kassars ~ Cossars) are the adoptees of the Jewish religion based on the Talmud, which is lifted for the most part, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, from the Babylonians. This in part accounts for why the Jews look so Caucasian with minor Arabic ME features in most. It is because the Khazars were Caucasian, i.e. they were from e Caucasus itself being transplanted Cossacks, another term for Khazars. The Shepardim got their name many years later in Spain after their much earlier diaspora. They could call themselves the real roots of the Jewish people as they are more pure of descent. We can see an even lighter skin tone and hair colour in Shepardim but it is hard to say where it comes from. Mixture with the native Spanish Celts, or from the Essenes known lighter complexion from being multi-racial themselves. Or it may stem from the fact that the Jews were not originally Arabic, or Babylonian at all. How multi-racial was the middle east? The Hittites may have been Caucasoid or perhaps Dravidian. They were not of the same race as the Egyptians. They were not Iraquis, some think Persian, so Dravidian is close. The Sumerians, one of the earlier civilizations of the ME, were not Semitic speaking and were probably the ancestors of the Ancient Hungarians, a Caucasoid tribe. The Scythians may have been more than one race, from time to time and at one time. They may have incorporated Orientals of Mongoloid descent and they had some bearded Caucasians as well and blonde hair. Perhaps they were the early Ukrainians. The Greeks held sway as the Phillistines in early Tyre and Sidon which they built. They had come from the Black Sea and Peloponessus area much earlier, perhaps after the fall of Atlantis in the that area. Still another group in that area is the Armenians, who are a mixed Caucasoid group. The Jews settled in Babylon at a very early time too, after fleeing a great flood of the Black Sea, which the Babylonians recorded. The Jews adopted the Babylonian scriptures and incorporated a single deity, which they had brought with them on their travels west from the Orient as they said. (You cannot go very far east from the ME before you are in the Orient. the Turks and Iranians are Oriental tribes.) This early Talmud perhaps dates from 5800 BC and was in pictographic script. (the Babylonians scripts date from then) Later it became psuedo cuneiform and still later adopted the Aramaic alphabet of the Phoenicians. The Jews would meet the Greeks in Chaldea after their last ME migration and fight and perhaps mix with them. The Essenes were written of as fair of hair and light skinned. It is known that their credo of adoption took no notice of race. The other Jews however shunned all other races in marriage, the penalty since Phineas was death for intermarriage. How much this kept the Jews to themselves cannot be attested to but it a factor to consider. Most of the Jews today are not of the racial descent of the Jews of the original travels into Babylon, they are converts. What happened to the Jews of the ME? Hard to say. They may have been absorbed by the Khassars, who found a natural home in Russia and Poland, in part they migrated to Spain and also got absorbed by the other people of the ME. Their racial continuity is largely a myth. They are certainly not of the tribes of the area that are Semitic speaking, although I will admit they were there for a very long time. EC<:-}