Joseph Powell

From the author of Seed of Israel: DNA Guide to Tracing Your Jewish Ancestry comes this great dive into the history of Ashkenazi Jews. While controversial debates spark disagreements on the crystallization of this Jewish Diaspora, modern genetic studies and personal DNA samples finally conclude the Levantine Middle Eastern and Mediterranean roots of Ashkenazi ancestry: Judean people from the Holy Land that journeyed across the Mediterranean to the bottleneck of Europe.

Dr. Joseph Elias Hayne (1848-1911) was a physician and minister of the American Methodist Episcopal Church. He was one of a number of early black writers who challenged white racist theories that demeaned people of African origin. In his book The Negro in Sacred History (1887), he sought to refute all prejudices against black people by tracing the descendants of the biblical Ham with reference to archaeological and historical scholarship. Hayne argued that Ham was Noah’s favorite son and identified the Mediterranean deity Jupiter Ammon as a representative figure of Ham.