2 Japheth, the European 'race' and its early influence on Indology
Wikipedia's article on the biblical <b>Japheth</b> as at 25/26 July 2006 (Wikipedia are more reliable in articles about neutral/non-negative aspects of Christian and biblical 'history'):
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Japheth [] is one of the sons of Noah in the Bible. He is most popularly regarded as the youngest son, though some traditions regard him as the eldest son. Genesis 10:21 refers to relative ages of Japheth and his brother Shem, but with sufficient ambiguity to have given rise to different translations. The verse is translated in the KJV as follows, "Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born.". However, the Revised Standard Version gives, "To Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the elder brother of Japheth, children were born."
In Arabic citations, his name is normally given as Yafeth [] ibnu Nuh (Japheth son of Noah).
For those Jews, Muslims, and Christians who take the genealogies of Genesis to be historically accurate, Japheth is commonly believed to be the father of the Europeans. <b>The link between Japheth and the Europeans stems from Genesis 10:5</b>, which states that the sons of Japheth moved to the "isles of the Gentiles," commonly believed to be the Greek isles. According to that book, <b>Japheth and his two brothers formed the three major races</b>:
- <b>Japheth is the father of the Japhetic race </b>
- Ham is the father of the Hamitic race
- Shem is the father of the Semitic race
The term <span style='color:red'>"Japhetic" was also applied by <b>William Jones</b> and other pre-Darwinian linguists to what later became known as the <b>Indo-European language group</b>.</span> In a different sense, it was also used by the Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr in his Japhetic theory.
In the Bible, Japheth is ascribed seven sons: Gomer, Magog, Tiras, Javan, Meshech, Tubal, and Madai. According to Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews I.6):
"Japhet, the son of Noah, had seven sons: they inhabited so, that, beginning at the mountains Taurus and Amanus, they proceeded along Asia, as far as the river Tanais (Don), and along Europe to Cadiz; and settling themselves on the lands which they light upon, which none had inhabited before, they called the nations by their own names."
Josephus subsequently detailed the nations supposed to have descended from the seven sons of Japheth.
Among the nations various later writers have attempted to assign to them are as follows:
Javan: Greeks (Ionians)
Magog: Scythians, Slavs, Irish, Hungarians
<b>Madai: Mitanni, Mannai, Medes, Persians, Indo-Aryans, Kurds </b>
Tubal: Tabali, Georgians, Italics, Illyrians, Iberians, Basques
Tiras: Thracians, Goths, Jutes, Teutons
Meshech: Phrygians, Caucasus Iberians, Algonquians
Gomer: Scythians, Turks, Armenians, Welsh, Picts, Irish, Germans.
In the same vein, Georgian nationalist histories associate Japheth's sons with certain ancient tribes, called Tubals (Tabals, Tibarenoi in Greek) and Meshechs (Meshekhs/Mosokhs, Moschoi in Greek), who they claim represent non-Indo-European and non-Semitic, possibly "Proto-Iberian" tribes of Asia Minor of the 3rd-1st millennias BC.
<b>In the 19th century</b>, Biblical syncretists associated the sons of Noah with ancient pagan gods. Japheth was identified by some scholars with figures from other mythologies, including Iapetos, the Greek Titan; the Indian figures Dyaus Pitar and Pra-Japati, and the Roman Iu-Pater or "Father Jove", which became Jupiter. Some or all of these resemblances may be mere coincidence; the actual Proto-Indo-European etymology of Latin Iuppiter or IÅ«piter, i.e. "Jupiter", is usually reconstructed as *dyeu-pÉter, "sky-father" (the * denotes a hypothetical, unattested form).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If 'Madai' referred to the Medes (in the time o OT composition), then they were probably one of the Indian/Iranian people known to the middle-east in the times that the OT was composed. No mention of Parthia and Persia as separate countries is a strange thing. Were the Medes thought to have given rise to the Parthians and the Persians? Is this why they imagine that the trail of the supposed Oryans was from the W into the E in India?
The OT composers seem to have merely listed the peoples they knew of according to their particular classification system at the time.
To think that European linguistic and racial 'sciences' are based on the classification schemes of the OT composers who did not know all the people of the world (Australian aboriginals, native Americans) nor anything about genetics!
Strange that in the final paragraph they are arguing about "the <i>actual</i> Proto-Indo-European etymology of Latin Iuppiter" which itself is based on the Biblical assumption being true (only the 19th century biblical syncretists are corrected, not the underlying idea with its Biblical origins).
The evolving history of the names of 'European race': Japhetic to Caucasian/European. Then, with the discovery of Samskritam, Aryan also became a racial marker. With the ban on 'Aryan' as a race, Indo-European is sneakily used by some as a race or ethnicity.
Wikipedia's article on the biblical <b>Japheth</b> as at 25/26 July 2006 (Wikipedia are more reliable in articles about neutral/non-negative aspects of Christian and biblical 'history'):
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Japheth [] is one of the sons of Noah in the Bible. He is most popularly regarded as the youngest son, though some traditions regard him as the eldest son. Genesis 10:21 refers to relative ages of Japheth and his brother Shem, but with sufficient ambiguity to have given rise to different translations. The verse is translated in the KJV as follows, "Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born.". However, the Revised Standard Version gives, "To Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the elder brother of Japheth, children were born."
In Arabic citations, his name is normally given as Yafeth [] ibnu Nuh (Japheth son of Noah).
For those Jews, Muslims, and Christians who take the genealogies of Genesis to be historically accurate, Japheth is commonly believed to be the father of the Europeans. <b>The link between Japheth and the Europeans stems from Genesis 10:5</b>, which states that the sons of Japheth moved to the "isles of the Gentiles," commonly believed to be the Greek isles. According to that book, <b>Japheth and his two brothers formed the three major races</b>:
- <b>Japheth is the father of the Japhetic race </b>
- Ham is the father of the Hamitic race
- Shem is the father of the Semitic race
The term <span style='color:red'>"Japhetic" was also applied by <b>William Jones</b> and other pre-Darwinian linguists to what later became known as the <b>Indo-European language group</b>.</span> In a different sense, it was also used by the Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr in his Japhetic theory.
In the Bible, Japheth is ascribed seven sons: Gomer, Magog, Tiras, Javan, Meshech, Tubal, and Madai. According to Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews I.6):
"Japhet, the son of Noah, had seven sons: they inhabited so, that, beginning at the mountains Taurus and Amanus, they proceeded along Asia, as far as the river Tanais (Don), and along Europe to Cadiz; and settling themselves on the lands which they light upon, which none had inhabited before, they called the nations by their own names."
Josephus subsequently detailed the nations supposed to have descended from the seven sons of Japheth.
Among the nations various later writers have attempted to assign to them are as follows:
Javan: Greeks (Ionians)
Magog: Scythians, Slavs, Irish, Hungarians
<b>Madai: Mitanni, Mannai, Medes, Persians, Indo-Aryans, Kurds </b>
Tubal: Tabali, Georgians, Italics, Illyrians, Iberians, Basques
Tiras: Thracians, Goths, Jutes, Teutons
Meshech: Phrygians, Caucasus Iberians, Algonquians
Gomer: Scythians, Turks, Armenians, Welsh, Picts, Irish, Germans.
In the same vein, Georgian nationalist histories associate Japheth's sons with certain ancient tribes, called Tubals (Tabals, Tibarenoi in Greek) and Meshechs (Meshekhs/Mosokhs, Moschoi in Greek), who they claim represent non-Indo-European and non-Semitic, possibly "Proto-Iberian" tribes of Asia Minor of the 3rd-1st millennias BC.
<b>In the 19th century</b>, Biblical syncretists associated the sons of Noah with ancient pagan gods. Japheth was identified by some scholars with figures from other mythologies, including Iapetos, the Greek Titan; the Indian figures Dyaus Pitar and Pra-Japati, and the Roman Iu-Pater or "Father Jove", which became Jupiter. Some or all of these resemblances may be mere coincidence; the actual Proto-Indo-European etymology of Latin Iuppiter or IÅ«piter, i.e. "Jupiter", is usually reconstructed as *dyeu-pÉter, "sky-father" (the * denotes a hypothetical, unattested form).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If 'Madai' referred to the Medes (in the time o OT composition), then they were probably one of the Indian/Iranian people known to the middle-east in the times that the OT was composed. No mention of Parthia and Persia as separate countries is a strange thing. Were the Medes thought to have given rise to the Parthians and the Persians? Is this why they imagine that the trail of the supposed Oryans was from the W into the E in India?
The OT composers seem to have merely listed the peoples they knew of according to their particular classification system at the time.
To think that European linguistic and racial 'sciences' are based on the classification schemes of the OT composers who did not know all the people of the world (Australian aboriginals, native Americans) nor anything about genetics!
Strange that in the final paragraph they are arguing about "the <i>actual</i> Proto-Indo-European etymology of Latin Iuppiter" which itself is based on the Biblical assumption being true (only the 19th century biblical syncretists are corrected, not the underlying idea with its Biblical origins).
The evolving history of the names of 'European race': Japhetic to Caucasian/European. Then, with the discovery of Samskritam, Aryan also became a racial marker. With the ban on 'Aryan' as a race, Indo-European is sneakily used by some as a race or ethnicity.