I know next to nothing about this subject. The blog post comes off as a scholarly work worthy of serious consideration. It makes me want to read Sand's book. I haven't read other NT commentary as I write this, so I'm eager to see what others think. I plan to forward this to a number of Jewish friends who may have a clearer understanding of the subject than I. This sense of wanting to know more tends to make me believe that this is in fact good journalism.

The historical investigation of the myths is revealing. The use of the myths to justify war crimes in Gaza is strong motivation to look at this history factually. The article is interesting and well written.

It's an exposition of one more interesting theory (incidentally, the Khazar story was reported by Arthur Koestler years ago). I strongly suspect that some of the historical information is wrong, but haven't got the time or energy to prove it. Bottom line: so what? Jews and Israelis are here now - deal with it!

Courageous and truthful writing.

A very interesting perspective, and the book will be interesting to investigate. However, the summary of the genetic studies (some of which I have read) leaves much to be desired and siginificantly undermines the rest of the information given Mr. Strong's review.

Fascinating stuff. Conquest of any given land during the past millenia generally resulted in a change of leadership at the upper levels of society but the general population remained in place. This likely was true in Palestine as well.