Архитектура Аудит Военная наука Иностранные языки Медицина Металлургия Метрология Образование Политология Производство Психология Стандартизация Технологии |
Scotland got its first Templar king, David I (1124-1153)
Contents
Preface page 1
CHAPTERS
1. The Origins of Scotland 3
2. DNA and Population Studies: “But Why Do You Think They Were Jewish? ” 24
3. Genealogies of the First Wave of Jewish Families, 1100-1350 C.E. 44
4. Genealogies of the Second Wave of Jewish Families, 1350-1700 C.E. 71
5. The Early Jews of France, 700-1200 C.E. 79
6. When Did Jews Arrive in Scotland? 88
7. To Scotland’s Stirling, Ayr, and Glasgow 97
8. The Knights Templar, Freemasons and Cabala in Scotland 131
9. The Judaic Colony at Aberdeen 152
10. The Religions of Scotland: Did Presbyterianism Have Crypto-Jewish Origins? 192
11. Jews in the National Consciousness of Scotland: Scott’s Ivanhoe 205
Appendix A: Raw Scores for Participants in Melungeon DNA Surname Project 215
Contents
Appendix B: Naming and Jewish Priest-Kings 218
Appendix C: Early Jewish Names in France and England 220
Appendix D: Davidic Jewish Genealogies 229
Appendix E: Border Reiver DNA 232
Chapter Notes 233 Bibliography 247 Index 253
Preface
All research inquiries worthy of the name are voyages of discovery. Initial ventures set sail for terra incognito, while those which follow usually must be content to map more precisely the exact dimensions of the intellectual locale, noting minute details of mental flora, fauna, minerals and climate. Along these latter explorations exacting meas- urements are taken, objects and phenomena carefully categorized and labels affixed according to the earlier theoretical structures already in place. Gradually an imposing edifice of agreed-upon understanding is constructed; overlaying topographical interpre- tations become concretized into dogma and no one bothers to re-examine the underly- ing structure itself.
Very commonly, these accreted Received Views are zealously guarded by their cre- ators, because they serve important social, political and ideological agendas. Such theo- retical edifices have become naturalized features of the cultural landscape and serve to support and perpetuate the prevailing world-view. To challenge this knowledge struc- ture, in whole or in part, is seen as a threat to the larger ideological narrative of “This is the way the world is” in which it is embedded. Received views, therefore, are defended vigorously and those challenging them do so with full awareness that they will likely be attacked by those stakeholders vested in maintaining the status quo.
The present work, brazenly titled When Scotland Was Jewish, is a privateering jour- ney into heavily traveled waters. We propose that much of the traditional historical account of Scotland rests on fundamental interpretive errors. Further, we believe that these errors have been perpetuated in order to manufacture and maintain an origin story for Scotland that affirms its identity as a Celtic, Christian society. While pursuing Scot- tish nationalism is likely a noble goal, the equation of Scotland with Celtic culture in the popular (and academic) imagination has obfuscated, indeed buried, a more accurate and profound understanding of its history.
As the title suggests, we believe that much of Scotland’s history and culture from the 1100s forward is Jewish. We believe that much of her population, including several national heroes, villains, rulers, nobles, traders, merchants, bishops, guild members, burgesses, and ministers were of Jewish decent. We describe how the ancestors of these persons originated in France and Spain and then made their way to Scotland’s shores, moors, burgs and cas- tles from the reign of Malcolm Canmore to the after-throes of the Spanish Inquisition.
We anticipate that our claims will be vigorously disputed, especially by those who hold most dear the notion of Scotland as a Celtic heartland. We expect that anti-Semi- tes will be incensed that we have dared to co-opt one of the principal archetypes of WASP iconography and graft it to Judaism. We expect also that Jews and philo-Semites will be bemused and confused — does this mean that they should stop by to reconnoiter Edin- burgh on their next trip to Jerusalem? We hope that Muslims will be pleased to learn that we have also identified remnants of Islamic culture in Scotland.
Our research proposals, as unlikely as they may seem, are founded upon documen- tation available to scholars for centuries— census records, archeological artifacts, castle carvings, cemetery inscriptions, religious seals, coinage, burgess and guild member rolls, noble genealogies, family crests, geographic place names and oil portraits. Indeed, the blatancy and bulk of the evidence was so overwhelming that we were amazed no one had presented the thesis before we did.
How — or perhaps why — were surnames such as Izatt, Hyatt, Abell, Oliphant, Elphinstone, Isaac, Sharon, Lyon, Mamluke and Yuell not recognized as Judaic and Islamic by prior investigators? How could the presence of the Tetragrammaton — emblazoned on the title page of a Glasgow psalter dating from 1623 — be overlooked for almost 400 years? Why did no one question the presence of Islamic crescents and stars engraved throughout Fyvie Castle? Why was the presence of Stars of David on Scottish coins dat- ing from the 1200s not commented upon previously? Did the fact that the Marquis of Argylle’s castle is located in the village of Succoth (a major Jewish holiday) not seem odd to prior historians? Were not other onlookers puzzled by the dark, Semitic and Mediter- ranean appearances of the royal Stewart family — especially the Earl of Moray, James Stew- art — or of John Knox, Archibald Campbell or Allen Ramsey as their portraits hung in the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland? Put bluntly, why were these marked inconsis- tencies with a presumed Celtic past not interrogated forcefully, or indeed at all?
Despite our drawing attention to these uncomfortable pieces of the historical record, however, we knew that advocates of the traditional story of Scotland would remain uncon- vinced. Thus, we also made use of an evidentiary source not available to prior scholars: DNA testing. Beginning in 1998 commercial testing of paternal and maternal DNA hap- lotypes became publicly available. In 2000, we availed ourselves of this new technology and began examining the lineages of some of the major “clans” in Scotland which we believed, based on historical evidence, were of Jewish descent. As is discussed in detail in the present work, all of the lines we examined do show evidence of Mediterranean origins and do have matches to present-day practicing Jews. Further, independent DNA testing conducted by other researchers on Scottish populations has confirmed the pres- ence of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern genes in Scotland’s population.
It is our great hope that readers will embark on this journey with an open mind and a willingness to entertain the possibility that Scotland’s origins may indeed require revi- sion. We believe that you will find, as we did, that there is ample evidence of a strong Jewish presence in Scotland and that you will never again view Scotland — her people or her history — as you once did.
Chapter 1
The Origins of Scotland
Scotland today is a country smaller than the state of South Carolina, with about 5 million inhabitants, two-thirds of whom live in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness and Stirling, its Six Cities. Half the size of England, it has a higher standard of literacy and education, and as many'urban centers and universities, as its southern neigh- bor. Scotland is located on the same northern latitude as Labrador, Norway and Mos- cow; the average summer temperature registers a brisk 57 degrees. It has been said, “There are two seasons in Scotland, June and winter.”
Although Scotland is home to one of the oldest continuous kingdoms and parlia- ments in existence, its political standing as a part of the United Kingdom remains ambigu- ous. “The sense of national identity seems to have emerged much earlier here than elsewhere in Europe, ” according to a leading authority (Cunliffe 2001, p. 546). The national tourism board captures this distinction very delicately when it says that Scot- land’s civic culture and nationhood are “not readily defined, but readily identifiable. So the question arises of why the influence of this rather small, inclement and remote nation should loom so large.
Significantly, the pursuit of its native history was long prohibited in Scotland. Elit- ist English authorities excluded Scottish history from the national curriculum as a mat- ter of educational policy. In 1949, Lord Cooper complained to the Scottish Historical Society that it was possible for a Scottish student to take a degree in history without any knowledge of Scottish history. “There was a subject called British History, ” he said, “which proved on examination to be English history with occasional side glances at Scotland through English spectacles whenever Scotland crossed England’s path” (L. Kennedy 1995, pp. 7-8). 1
If the modern history of Scotland is unsettled, there is even less agreement about the medieval period that preceded it. As one American historian comments, “Scottish history suffers from a profusion of very general surveys, a multitude of specialized stud- ies and monographs, and not enough good books in between” (Herman 2001, p. 431). This appraisal applies with particular aptness to the early period of Scottish history, where both specialists and generalists find it difficult to come to terms with the emergence of
Modern Scotland and its major cities. Map by Donald N. Yates.
Scotland against the backdrop of European history. The Stewart dynasty remains partic- ularly mystifying. Until the appearance of an “official” genealogical compilation in the 1990s (and some would say even after it), the origins of the Scottish royal family were simply not known.
1. The Origins of Scotland
The authors of an Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Scotland (1911 edition) sug- gest that the historical causes which kept England and Scotland separate for 700 years were mainly racial, though they then somewhat contradictorily go on to state that from a very early period, the majority of the people of Scotland were, if not purely English by blood, anglicized in language and, to a great extent, in institutions.” More riddles occur as we delve into Scotland’s earlier periods of development:
In A.D. 78-82 Agricola, carrying the Eagles of Rome beyond the line of the historical border, encountered tribes and confederations of tribes which, probably [emphasis added], spoke... varieties of the Celtic language. That the language had been imposed, in a remote age, by Celtic-speaking invaders, on a prior non-Celtic speaking population, is probable enough, but is not demonstrated. There exist in Scotland a few inscriptions on stones, in Ogam, which yield no sense in any known Indo-European language. There are also traces of the per- sistence of descent in the female line, especially in the case of the Pictish royal family, but such survivals of savage institutions, or such a modification of male descent for the purpose of ensuring the purity of the royal blood, yield no firm ground for a decision as to whether the Piets were Aryans or non- Aryans.
The authors conclude that it is “unnecessary here to discuss the Pictish problem, ” about which, as we shall see, no satisfactory solution has gained acceptance even to this day. 2
Curiously, we also are informed that European scholarship, centered around the revival of letters in the reign of Charlemagne (768-814), was, in large part, inspired by an international elite of Irish and Scottish scholars (Moss 1998, pp. 249-50, 288; Laist- ner 1957). It was Irish and Scottish monks who rescued the flame of civilization from the collapse of Rome and carried arts and sciences to the Continent during the Dark Ages. The Celtic Church was responsible for founding Luxeuil, Fontenelle and Corbey in France; Bobbio and Susa in Italy; St. Gall, Fulda, Salzburg and Wurzburg in Germany, and most of the other seats of learning that, in turn, generated the efflorescence of culture of the Carolingian age and, later, the twelfth-century renaissance, with its “discovery of the individual” (Southern 1961; Haskins 1957). The Scottish mathematician Michael Scot (? 1175-1234) was regarded as the most brilliant mind of his era. He studied philosophy and science at Oxford, Paris, Bologna and Rome, acquired knowledge of Arabic in Spain and Italy, and produced a fresh translation and commentary on the philosophy of Aris- totle, as well as influential works on science and medicine ( J. W. Brown 1897). His coun- tryman John Duns Scotus, who died in 1308, was the founder and leader of the famous Scotist School (T. Williams 2003). Who were these Scottish culture-bearers?
Into this scholarly and historical breach arrive two researchers with purportedly Scottish ancestry and a thesis that seems, on the face of it, absurd: Scotland was Jewish. This assertion not only flies in the face of “received history (what little of it there is), but also assaults two longstanding cultural stereotypes of what Scots are like and what Jews are like. In the popular imagination, Scots are large, red- or blond-haired persons of fierce demeanor, who wear plaid wool kilts, brandish swords and war axes, drink copious amounts of ale and whiskey, and eagerly seek out forums in which to exhibit their prowess as warriors. They are unschooled, wild marauders, loyal to clan, kith, and kin.
Jews, on the other hand, are seen commonly as originating in shtetls in Eastern
Europe, timid, bookish, dark-haired, clad in dark apparel, and usually hunkered down over ancient Hebrew manuscripts. Except for the juxtaposition of, let us say, Eskimos and Parisians, it is hard to conjure up two more opposite ethnic stereotypes. 3
So why are we proposing that many of Scotland’s people were Jewish? For the sim- ple reason that is true. In the chapters that follow, we present evidence from several empirical sources— DNA, public records, anthropological observations, architecture, archeological excavations, family and clan genealogical records, censuses, cemetery inscriptions, burgess and guild membership rolls, ethnographic reports, and synagogue membership rolls. These document the seemingly incredible claim that Scotland was, and remains, a country populated largely by persons of Jewish descent.
The evidence presented does not suggest some ancient Jewish visitation based on a “lost tribes” theory, in other words, that a Jewish tribe dispersed from Judea/Palestine in antiquity and somehow wandered its way to Scotland, morphing over time into a pop- ulation of Gaelic warriors. No; our argument is grounded upon documented historical migrations into Scotland from various European countries, primarily France, the Low Countries, Hungary, and Germany. These migrants, we propose, were persons of Jewish ethnicity whose descendants now comprise the majority of the present population of Scotland. Further, we also argue that the greater part of the estimated 4 million Scots and Scots-Irish who immigrated to the New World were drawn from this same ethnic ancestry.
The Melungeons
Our story begins with an ethnic group to which both authors belong. The Melun- geons are a people who have been dwelling in the Appalachian Mountains of the south- eastern United States for between 300 and 500 years. Their origins have been the subject of intense speculation for at least three centuries (Ball 1984; Bible 1975; Elder 1999; Gal- legos 1997, 1998; Mira 1998). 4 Typically, they are described as having dark skin, black or dark-brown straight hair, brown or blue eyes and European features (Ball 1984; Bible 1975). A popular culture book written by a self-identifying Melungeon (N. B. Kennedy 1996) renewed interest in investigation of the group’s origins and stimulated an abun- dance of scholarly research. A detailed biogenetics study undertaken by the present authors supported what Kennedy had earlier proposed: The Melungeons were, in large |
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