[bradfordarner]

Just to throw in an additional perspective of what I find fascinating about this topic.

I don't think that all long lasting things are particularly interesting. Rocks have been around longer than the Jewish people but we don't celebrate that as extraordinary. It is considered perfectly natural. It is noteworthy when something is unnaturally long lasting; when other peoples/belief system were put under similar pressures the results have been drastically different. Imagine 50 people are dragged under water on a beach by a horrible undertow and held underwater for an hour. 2 out of the 50 survive while the other 48 don't; the 2 who survived are definitely of interest because we would want to know how they survived.

[reggieband]

Isn't that literally Suvivor bias?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

[staikken]

Not if you include those that did not survive in your sample / analysis. From the link "concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not".