Is Israel of the Bible the same as the one of the British Mandate?

Due to the relative scarcity of relevant historical records, the ethnic origins of present-day Ashkenazi Jews are debated [2], and in such a setting, genetic data provides crucial information. A number of recent studies have shown that Ashkenazi individuals have genetic ancestry intermediate between European (EU) and Middle-Eastern (ME) sources [4–8], consistent with the long-held theory of a Levantine origin followed by partial assimilation in Europe. The estimated amount of accumulated EU gene flow varied across studies, with the most recent ones, employing genome-wide data, converging to a contribution of around 50% of the AJ ancestry [4, 7, 9].

Underhill, Bustamante and their co-authors analyzed the Y chromosome - a piece of the human genome invariably handed down father-to-son - of a set of Ashkenazi men claiming descent from Levi, the founder of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. (Names such as Levy, Levine and Levitt, for example, bespeak a Levite heritage.)

If Ashkenazis were the spawn of Khazar royals, their DNA would show it. But those Y chromosomes were as Levantine as a levant sandwich. The same genetic "signature" popped up on every Levite sampled (as well as a significant number of non-Levite Ashkenazis), strongly implying descent from a single common ancestor who lived in the Fertile Crescent between 1,500 and 2,500 years ago. That signature is absent in the Y chromosomes of modern European non-Jewish men, and in male inhabitants of what was once Khazaria.