TNDL: “WHAT MADE NOAH’S BLOODLINE, ANY DIFFERENT FROM THE PEOPLE OF HIS DAY? THIS IS A BRIEF HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS OF THE DIVERSE PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN NOAH'S TIME PERIOD.”

.Generations of Noah
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to search
"Table of Nations" redirects here. For a list of countries, see list of sovereign states.
This T and O map, from the first printed version of Isidore's Etymologiae, identifies the three known continents as populated by descendants of Sem (Shem), Cham (Ham) and Iafeth (Japheth).
The world according to the Mosaic account (1854 map)
The Generations of Noah or Table of Nations (Genesis 10 of the Hebrew Bible) is a genealogy of the sons of Noah and their dispersion into many lands after the Flood,[1] focusing on the major known societies. The term nations to describe the descendants is a standard English translation of the Hebrew word "goy", following the c. 400 CE Latin Vulgate's "nationes", and does not have the same political connotations that the word entails today.[2]
The list of 70 names introduces for the first time a number of well known ethnonyms and toponyms important to biblical geography[3] such as Noah's three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, from which 18th century German scholars at the Göttingen School of History derived the race terminology Semites, Hamites and Japhetites. Certain of Noah's grandsons were also used for names of peoples: from Elam, Ashur, Aram, Cush and Canaan were derived the Elamites, Assyrians, Arameans, Cushites and Canaanites. From the sons of Canaan: Heth, Jebus and Amorus were derived Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites. Further descendants include Eber (from which "Hebrews"), the hunter-king Nimrod, and the Philistines.
As Christianity took over the Roman world, it adopted the idea that all the world's peoples were descended from Noah. But the tradition of Hellenistic Jewish identifications of the ancestry of various peoples, which concentrates very much on the East Mediterranean and the Near East and is described below, became stretched and its historicity questioned. Not all Near Eastern people were covered, and northern peoples important to the Late Roman and medieval world, such as the Celtic, Slavic, Germanic and Nordic peoples were not covered, nor were others of the world's peoples, such as sub-Saharan Africans, Native Americans and peoples of Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Far East and Australasia. A variety of arrangements were devised by scholars in order to make the table fit, with for example the Scythians, who do feature in the tradition, being claimed as the ancestors of much of northern Europe.[4]
According to Joseph Blenkinsopp, the 70 names in the list express symbolically the unity of humanity, corresponding to the 70 descendants of Israel who go down into Egypt with Jacob at Genesis 46:27 and the 70 elders of Israel who visit God with Moses at the covenant ceremony in Exodus 24:1–9.[5]