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The Pathan people (also known as the Pasthun) is an ethnic group of around 50 million living scattered across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and also Iran and India.

Wikipedia explains:

There are many conflicting theories about the origin of Pashtuns, some modern and others archaic, both among historians and the Pashtuns themselves. According to most historians and experts, the true origin of the Pashtuns is some what unclear.[

However, there is also a claim that they could be one of the lost tribes of Israel.

Experts at Mumbai's National Institute of Immunohaematology believe Pashtuns could be one of the ten "Lost Tribes of Israel".

Source Daily Telegraph

Until now the supposed link between Pathans and Jews has only been discussed on the fringes of the academic and anthropological worlds. But now Shahnaz Ali, an Indian researcher from the National Institute of Immunohaematology in Mumbai has received a grant from Israel to test the theory with DNA samples she collected from Pathans in India. She will conduct her research at the prestigious Technion Institute in Haifa.

Source ABC News

The purported Jewish origins of the Afridis is well documented in medieval texts. "The tribe was driven into exile and eventually into oblivion by the Assyrians in 721 BC. Great Jewish writers like the 10th century Saadia Ga'on and the 11th century Moses ibn Ezra mention Afghanistan and the Pathan territories in Pakistan as the home of Jews descending from the Lost Tribes," Aafreedi says. "And the second President of Israel, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, a Lost Tribes enthusiast, wrote in great detail about the Israelite descent of the Afridi Pathans in his book The Exiled and the Redeemed in 1957."

Source: Blog about Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi research

Note: Afridi is a tribe among pathans and they are linked to Ephraim tribe.

This video also claims that Pathan are actually Jews.

Some claim that Pathans are the lost tribes of Israelites, e.g. this book and this documentary.

Some claim that Pathans have similar customs to Jews.

Oddthinking
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TheTechGuy
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    For curious, Talibans are for most part comprise of Pathans so they could have Jewish origin! – TheTechGuy Feb 08 '12 at 13:10
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    No records were kept after the exile of 722BC, precisely because the point of the Assyrians was to annihilate all traces of vanquished cultures. Many peoples claim to be "Lost tribes" of Israel (Ugandans, Ethiopians, and even some very Southern African tribes who claim to have been shown to have Hebrew DNa) but no claims can ever be verified because the records were intentionally never kept. – Affable Geek Feb 09 '12 at 04:19
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    Warning: The Pashtun people can be defined according to a number of criteria (see the Wikipedia page). The Jewish people can be similarly defined. I (along with others, including Richard Dawkins) have a low tolerance for indiscriminately ascribing belief systems to all members of a ethnic or national (rather than religious) group. If you are going to argue that some Muslims are Jews, please be explicit with your definitions to avoid (or at least reduce!) offence. – Oddthinking Feb 09 '12 at 09:35
  • @Oddthinking, it is just a reference, meaning that these people really live like one block. Even though they live in far place from each other and yet they have one religion is interesting from history point of view and where they came from. – TheTechGuy Feb 10 '12 at 13:32
  • Believer, either you say "You are a Pashtun *because* you have certain religious beliefs", in which case it isn't interesting to remark they all have one religion, or you say "You are a Pashtun because you are the child of a Pashtun", in which case you are going to need a mighty impressive reference to show they all believe in exactly the same thing. – Oddthinking Feb 10 '12 at 13:45
  • oddthinking, I find your remark confusing. I am not sure you original comment was about my question or about my comment. If it was about my comment, I can remove it. Speaking of your second comment "You are pashtun because you are son of pashtun" is correct. Because it is a race with their own tradition. You cannot become a pashton or you can say I am not a pasthun if you are one. It is not religion at all. I am not sure if I clarified your comment. – TheTechGuy Feb 10 '12 at 16:15
  • @Oddthinking, in this case Jews refers to ethnicity and not religion. Just like John Stuart and Albert Einstein who were of Jewish ethnicity and heritage but don't uphold the Jewish Religion. Just like (some) Irish people in the US are called Irish because their grandparents came from Ireland but they and their parents were born in the US. So it's not a meter of showing that all the people of Pashtun ethnicity uphold the Jewish religion, but that the Pashtun and the Jewish people (Nations) have common ancestors. – SIMEL Apr 15 '12 at 13:28
  • @Ilya: If you look at the first version of the question, before I pared it back, there were strong claims about the *beliefs* of the Pashtun. Claiming that someone is strongly faithful to a particular religion based on their ethnicity is dangerously unsupported. (Then using the ambiguous and overloaded term "Jews", without *explicitly* stating that it was referring to DNA, not religious belief, was adding fuel to the fire.) – Oddthinking Apr 15 '12 at 14:26
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    @Oddthinking,I don't know what the original question was, I just read the Q now. In any way, cultural heritage can give an idea of the biological heritage. For example, if the tribe has practices similar to Jewish practices like observing the Sabbath or not eating meat and dairy, while no other tribe in the area has them may show Jewish roots. So cultural examination together with other proofs may provide an answer to the question. – SIMEL Apr 15 '12 at 17:45
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    But, The deportation of the "lost tribes" happened at 721 BC and the first claims of a relation between the two start popping up only almost 2000 years later, which is a very long time and we have no documentation of the survival of the 10 lost tribes. So they chances that the Pashtun have relation to them, or that the tribes didn't complitly assimilated with the other Asyrian people is slim to none. – SIMEL Apr 15 '12 at 17:49
  • And, they are not Jewish. Jews are the descendants of the Judah kingdom which was taken down by the Nebuchadnezzar II in 686 BC, while the 10 tribes of Israel were of the kingdom of Israel and of other tribes. The religion was probably very different then, and the 10 tribes are different, so the genetic resemblance is also not very high (I guess). – SIMEL Apr 15 '12 at 18:09
  • I would tent to agree with @Ilya. This could be the case of similar culture/names but that does not mean they are the same people. I am not sure if genetics would be able to prove any linkage in this case. – TheTechGuy Apr 16 '12 at 02:22

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