Answer: Lately there have been critics of our teaching who claim that genetic DNA refutes the British-Israel belief. To determine if this is true, I spent an entire week in June of this year at the prestigious British Library in London, England, reading through dozens of books and articles with the latest scientific research into DNA and European origins. Contrary to the claim of some critics, what I actually found was significant respected scientific evidence that establishes a genetic link between ancient Israel and modern northwest Europeans.

One respected study confirms an early "diffusion spanning the entire European continent from the Levant" or Mideast. Another study speaks of "haplogroup H, the most frequent in Europe and one that is also common in the Near East." Still another study states that haplogroup H is a primary "signature...type of the ancient Hebrew population..." (Traces of Ancestry, p. 95, 2004)

Conversely, I have only found one small DNA study on today's Jewish people. This study itself raised the question of whether today's Jews are "the biological descendants [of ancient Israel]...or just their cultural successors." Further, the study states, "There is also considerable uncertainty concerning the extent to which those communities may be descended from the Jewish people of antiquity." In fact, it is now known that the Ashkenazi Jews constitute at least 90 percent of world Jewry, up from about 60 percent a millennium ago at the time of the conversion of the Turkish Khazar tribe to Judaism (ref: Threads to Antiquity: A Genetic Record of Sex-specific Demographic Histories of Jewish Populations, by Neil Bradman, et al., pp. 89-96, 2004). Ashkenaz was Japheth's grandson (Gen. 10:2-3), and therefore not of Semitic descent.

Yet popular theology totally equates modern Jews with ancient Israelites. The DNA study above cautions, "Before the twentieth century, most scholars would have considered contemporary Jews to be the direct descendants of the ancient Israelites, [but] genetic historians...warn against simplistic assumptions." This is the issue British-Israelites face: both the simplistic assumption that all Israelites are Jews today, and the simplistic assumption that all Europeans are non-Israelite Japhetites. Most Christians are completely unaware of these facts. We need to instruct the modern-day Christian faithful concerning a popular theology of simplistic assumptions based on error!