160 FISHBERG 



'* coarse " Jewish type and also North European, the Caucasian, 

 MongoHan and other types among them. ^ 



It is thus seen that most of the modern anthropologists who 

 have studied the physical characteristics of the Jews have 

 strongly discredited the theory of the racial purity of the Jews. 

 Renan aptly said " il n'y pas un type juif, il y a des types juifs," 

 and *'judaisme est une religion, mais n'est pas un fait ethnolo- 

 gique, mais une type accidentel." ^ Professor Ripley, after a 

 most thorough study of the literature on the subject, arrives at 

 the same conclusion.^ 



Physical Anthropology of the Jews. 



At the present there are no scientific writers on the subject 

 who claim that the Jews are the direct descendants of Shem, 

 the son of Noah, and that during the last 4,000 years have not 

 admitted any non-Jewish blood into their veins through inter- 

 marriage or conversions to Judaism. Even the sanguine de- 

 fenders of the racial purity of the Jews, as Andree, Jacobs and 

 Judt, agree that, in their early history, the ancient Hebrews 

 have intermarried with the various indigenous tribes of Egypt, 

 Syria and Palestine, and later during the diaspora with the Ro- 

 mans and Greeks. Biblical tradition and history abounds in 

 evidence to this effect. But not all agree on the question 

 whether the Jews have ethnically intermarried with European 

 races during the last 2,000 years of their dispersion. Some of 

 the authors cited above bring forth evidence in support of this 

 theory, while others deny its significance. From the present 

 state of physical anthropology it is to be expected that if these 

 intermarriages have really taken place to any extent the modern 

 Jews should be possessed of many or most of the morphological 

 traits which characterize their Gentile neighbors. This can be 

 ascertained by a study of the anthropology of the Jews, in the 

 same manner as Professor Boas has studied the American Indian 

 half-breeds, and Mainoff, the Yakout half-breeds in Russia. 



1 S. Weissenberg, " Die siidrussischen Juden," Archiv filr AntJu-opoL, XXIII, 



1895. 



2E. Renan, " Le Judaisme comme race et comma religion," Paris, 1883. 

 ^Wm. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, New York, 1899. Chapter XIV. 



