Mary Did You Know You Are ... Palestinian?

So, the claim is that since Netflix cast the woman who portrays Mary in part because she is Jewish, everything is ok.

But, notice that she is an Ashkenazi Jew. According to DNA testing, while some (but not all, cf. Levite) Ashkenazi Jews can be traced back to the Middle East in the paternal line (Y chromosome), Ashkenazi Jews CANNOT be traced back to the Middle East along the maternal line (mitochondrial chromosomes). 

According to the maternal line, over 80% of Ashkenazi are purely European, with no ties to the Middle East at all. And, of course, rabbinic Talmudic Judaism claims to trace descent by the maternal line, not the paternal line.

So, according to the Ashkenazi's own genetic rules, most Ashkenazi Jews are not actually Jewish. And yes, the Israeli rabbinate is known to do DNA testing to establish Ashkenazi descent.  They test DNA, all the while denying that Judaism is a race or that there is "Jewish DNA." Obviously, given that Hitler argued precisely along these lines, this rabbinate-approved DNA testing is somewhat fraught with controversy. 

And, to be fair, there is NOT such a thing as Jewish DNA. There is no DNA test that proves you are Jewish, no DNA segment that is unique to Jews. The best you can get is "Middle East descent." Which could as easily include Arab Muslims (70% and 82% commonality in the Y chromosome) or Arab Christians (50% commonality). 

Thus, the Palestinians are not entirely wrong when they claim Netflix' casting is not genetically authentic. Indeed, they are correct to point out that, from a genetic perspective, anyone whose ancestors have an unbroken history of residing in the Middle East, such as, say, Palestinians, is much more suited to the role.

But, that's just genetics. When it comes to actual cultural/ethnic practice, any Jew who follows the rabbi-Talmud-synagogue system of authority is not very similar to Mary at all. Mary and her parents participated in the blood sacrifice of live animals at the Temple. They did not recognize the authority of rabbis or the Talmud. Before the destruction of the Second Temple, synagogues were more of a social club than a religious experience. No Jew alive today, no one alive today at all, shares a cultural or ethnic experience that has any real overlap with Temple Judaism. 

Besides which, Christians insist that while Mary may have begun her life as an observant Jew, she became the very first, and greatest, Christian. She was also dirt poor So, from a cultural perspective, the person best suited to the role of Mary would be one of three people, in order of descending preference: (a) an impoverished Palestinian Christian, (b) an impoverished Palestinian Muslim or (c) a 21st-century Jew who had converted to Christianity. 

After all, Muslims are much more aligned to Christian theology than unconverted Jews. Muslims agree that both Jesus and Mary were sinless. Muslims agree that Mary was a virgin and Jesus entered the world via virgin birth. Muslims at least have partial belief in Christian precepts.

Jews, on the other hand, don't agree with any of those things. Given that 21st-century Judaism is almost entirely unlike Temple Judaism, the Jew who converted to Christianity would be converting from an essentially monotheistic paganism to Christianity. As such, a Jew would need to learn to accept both sinlessness and virgin birth, two things which Mary understood from her lifetime of personal experience.

Casting a 21st-century Ashkenazi Jewish woman to play Mary is like casting Elizabeth Warren to play Pocahontas - you could do it based on her claims, but neither the genetics nor the history nor the culture really work to justify the claims.