> presumably boat-semites carried on worshiping saturn and reorganised as jews. not entirely unjustified to view it like that. semites were always a rowdy bunch, and their history definitely leaves room for this, as in the phoenicians; though they were not strictly "jews". nobody was strictly "jews" by modern standards since their religion as such was only created a couple hundred years ago, 1200-something at best. understandably it took the "jewish community" a long time to reorganize, losing many of their ethnic roots in the process, producing ashkenazim and so on; and the origin of these "jews" was quite diverse, from various backgrounds. ultimately it may well have been the diaspora that allowed jews to survive and reform. already in babylonian times there was a jewish diaspora (and yes, they were mostly merchants), and these didn't necessarily return to israel at any point. some lost their faith, some did not, and existed as a minor sect for centuries before the religion regained some traction and cohesion, a lot of which may have been a larp, as in: did they even have any actual jewish heritage instead of taking up a larp? like the kazhars.
Germany