What’s so surprising? Isn’t Judaism primarily spread via heredity? In other words, a largely non-proselytising faith.
If only ALL faiths can be like this. If you look at the history of "holy wars" they have usually been driven by faiths that proselytize (and I am including communism as a faith here).
Well put! The Roman Empire forbade the Jews from trying to convert people, probably because the Jewish population of the empire was pretty large at the time, and of course, the Roman Wars (more often called the Jewish Wars, after the book by Josephus) in Judea, which culminated in the Romans’ destruction of the Temple and most of the city of Jerusalem (even its name was changed), led to some animosity toward Judaism. Also, the mincing homosexual Emperor Hadrian didn’t like circumcision.
Through the mother. Mitachondrial DNA. We would look back to Sarah, not Abraham. Because of ishmael.