Book Review: When Scotland Was Jewish

By Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman and Donald N. Panther-Yates
(McFarland & Company, 2007)

Review by Andrew M. Cowan

The stated intent of this book is to assemble historic, genealogical, linguistic, archeological, and geographic evidence, combined with the relatively new technique of Y-DNA analysis, to open a new perspective of the history of Scotland: that most of Scottish history and culture was of Jewish origin. In addition, its further purpose is to create a better understanding of the great diversity in origins of the Scottish population, dispelling the view of orthodox historians of the prevalence of the Celtic population in Scotland.

The authors of this book paint an image of themselves as two researchers on a voyage of discovery, sailing into a scholarly and historical breach onboard a hypothesis of Jewish Scotland, observing signs missed by everyone for four hundred years. They are very brave to have embarked on such a fragile and leaky vessel with their banner “Scotland was Jewish” waving like the Jolly Roger (with its telltale Jewish crossbones) high on the mast.

Readers will find some elements of this book demonstrate a commendable degree of scholarship, but even in a cursory examination the inferential evidence will be seen as very weak.

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