Japheth

[jey-fith]

Japheth, in the Bible, son of Noah and ancestor of those who were to occupy the isles of the Gentiles. This has been supposed to mean the Mediterranean lands of Europe and Asia Minor.

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Japheth

Japheth (Hebrew. יפת, Greek Ιάφεθ , Iapheth , Latin Iafeth or Iapetus, Arabic: يافث) is one of the sons of Noah in the Bible. In Arabic citations, his name is normally given as Yafeth ibn Nuh (Japheth son of Noah).

Order of birth

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."

The place in Noah's family

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. The link between Japheth and the Europeans stems from Genesis 10:5, 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, Japheth and his two brothers formed the three major races:

Japheth is the father of the Japhetic race
Ham is the father of the Hamitic race
Shem is the father of the Semitic race

William Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part II contains a wry comment about people who claim to be related to royal families. Prince Hal notes of such people,

...they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japhet. (II.ii 117-18)

Genesis 10:5 was often interpreted to mean that the peoples of Europe were descended from Japheth. Clearly, then, any two Englishmen must have at least this one ancestor in common, and thus any individual could claim kinship with the king.

Japhetic descendants

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:

Gomer: Armenians, Cimmerians, Scythians, Welsh, Irish, Germans, Huns, Turks, Franks.
Magog: Scythians, Slavs, Mongols, Hungarians, Irish, Finns
Madai: Persians, Indo-Iranians, Mitanni, Mannai ,Medes , Tajiks, Pashtus, Kurds, Balochis, Talishis, Mazandaris, Zazas, Sengesaris and Tati . According to the Book of Jubilees (10:35-36), Madai had married a daughter of Shem, and preferred to live among Shem's descendants, rather than dwell in Japheth's allotted inheritance beyond the Black Sea; so he begged his brothers-in-law, Elam, Asshur and Arphaxad, until he finally received from them the land that was named after him, Media.
Javan: Greeks (Ionians)
Tubal: Tabali, Georgians, Italics, Iberians, Basques
Tiras: Thracians, Goths, Jutes, Teutons
Meshech: Phrygians, Illyrians, Caucasus Iberians, Russians

The "Book of Jasher", published in the 17th century, provides some new names for Japheth's grandchildren not seen in the Bible or any other source, and provided a much more detailed genealogy (see Japhetic).

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 millennia BC.

Proposed correlations with deities

In the 19th century, Biblical syncretists associated the sons of Noah with ancient pagan gods. Japheth was identified by some scholars with figures from other mythologies, including Iapetus, 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 Iupiter, i.e. "Jupiter", is usually reconstructed as *dyeu-p?ter, "sky-father" (the * denotes a hypothetical, unattested form).

Japhetic language

The term "Japhetic" was also applied by William Jones and other early linguists to what later became known as the Indo-European language group. In a different sense, it was also used by the Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr in his Japhetic theory.

Japheth in literature

Japheth is a major character in the Madeleine L'Engle novel Many Waters (1986, ISBN 0 374 34796 4). He is characterized as thoughtful and intelligent, a kind-hearted young man who is on good terms with feuding family members Noah and Lamech, with the seraphim, and with visiting time travelers Sandy and Dennys Murry. Depicted in the book as Noah's younger son, Japheth is barely into adulthood, but at Noah's instigation is already married. His equally kind wife, Oholibamah, is an unusually fair-skinned woman with black hair, who may have been sired by one of the nephilim.