THE GENETIC EVIDENCE: THE ANCIENT LEVANT WAS NOT UNIFORMLY "BROWN"

The claim that "Jesus looked like modern Palestinians" assumes the population has remained static. It has not.

• The Canaanite Baseline:

Ancient DNA from Bronze Age Sidon shows the Canaanites were the indigenous population; and modern Lebanese derive over 90% of their ancestry from them. The study [1] found the Canaanites "would have looked very similar to today's Lebanese population".

• The European-Related Component:

The Philistine DNA study (Max Planck Institute, 2019) is critical. It found that during the Iron Age, a "European derived ancestral component" was introduced into Ashkelon; not present in the Bronze Age predecessors. This component was "diluted by the local Levantine gene pool over the succeeding centuries".

This proves that European-related populations were present in the southern Levant during the biblical period. The Israelites were not the same as the Canaanites; they were a distinct, "peculiar" people (Deuteronomy 14:2). [SEE: Europeans are peculiar; this is why Europeans are the Israelites.]