Kittim was a settlement in present-day Larnaca on the east coast of Cyprus, known in ancient times as Kition, or (in Latin) Citium. On this basis, the whole island became known as "Kittim" in Hebrew, including the Hebrew Bible. However the name seems to have been employed with some flexibility in Hebrew literature. It was often applied to all the Aegean islands and even to "the W[est] in general, but esp[ecially] the seafaring W[est]". [1] Flavius Josephus (c. 100 AD) records in his Antiquities of the Jews that
The expression "isles of Kittim", found in the Book of Jeremiah 2:10 and Ezekiel 27:6, indicates that, some centuries prior to Josephus, this designation had already become a general descriptor for the Mediterranean islands. [3] Sometimes this designation was further extended to apply to Romans, Macedonians or Seleucid Greeks. The Septuagint translates the occurrence of "Kittim" in the Book of Daniel 11:30 as Ῥωμαῖοι ("Romans"). 1 Maccabees 1:1 states that "Alexander the Great the Macedonian" had come from the "land of Kittim". [4] In the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Kittim are referred to as being "of Asshur". [5] Eleazar Sukenik argued that this reference to Asshur should be understood to refer to the Seleucid Empire which controlled the territory of the former Assyrian Empire at that time, but his son Yigael Yadin interpreted this phrase as a veiled reference to the Romans. [6]
Answers in Genesis identifies the Greek god Cronus with Javan's son Kittim, [7] while others (including the Worldwide Church of God) have suggested that Kittim became the progenitor of various eastern Asian peoples. [8]
Some authors[ citation needed ] have speculated that it comes from an Akkadian word meaning "invaders". Others (following Max Müller) have identified Kittim with the land of Hatti (Khatti), as the Hittite Empire was known. [9]
Kittim (Hebrew: כִּתִּים, alternately transliterated as Chittim or Cethim) in the genealogy of Genesis 10 in the Hebrew Bible, is the son of Javan, the grandson of Japheth, and Noah's great-grandson.
The mediaeval rabbinic compilation Yosippon contains a detailed account of the Kittim. As the peoples spread out, it says, the Kittim camped in Campania and built a city called "Posomanga", while descendants of Tubal camped in neighboring Tuscany and built "Sabino", with the Tiber river as their frontier. However, they soon went to war following the rape of the Sabines by the Kittim, who are correlated to the Romans. This war was ended when the Kittim showed the descendants of Tubal their mutual progeny. They then built cities called Porto, Albano, and Aresah. Later, their territory is occupied by Agnias, King of Carthage, but the Kittim end up appointing Zepho, son of Eliphaz and grandson of Esau, as their king, with the title Janus Saturnus. The first king of Rome, Romulus, is made in this account to be a distant successor of this line. A shorter, more garbled version of this story is also found in the later Sefer haYashar. [10]
Japheth is one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, in which he plays a role in the story of Noah's drunkenness and the curse of Ham, and subsequently in the Table of Nations as the ancestor of the peoples of the Aegean Sea, Anatolia, and elsewhere. In medieval and early modern European tradition he was considered to be the progenitor of the European peoples, while Islamic traditions also include the Chinese people among his descendants.
Shem was one of the sons of Noah in the Bible and the Quran.
Tarshish occurs in the Hebrew Bible with several uncertain meanings, most frequently as a place far across the sea from Phoenicia and the Land of Israel. Tarshish was said to have exported vast quantities of important metals to Phoenicia and Israel. The same place name occurs in the Akkadian inscriptions of Esarhaddon and also on the Phoenician inscription of the Nora Stone in Sardinia; its precise location was never commonly known, and was eventually lost in antiquity. Legends grew up around it over time so that its identity has been the subject of scholarly research and commentary for more than two thousand years.
The Generations of Noah, also called the Table of Nations or Origines Gentium, is a genealogy of the sons of Noah, according to the Hebrew Bible, and their dispersion into many lands after the Flood, focusing on the major known societies. The term nations to describe the descendants is a standard English translation of the Hebrew word "goyim", following the c. 400 CE Latin Vulgate's "nationes", and does not have the same political connotations that the word entails today.
Sefer haYashar is a medieval Hebrew midrash, also known as the Toledot Adam and Divrei haYamim heArukh. The Hebrew title "Sefer haYashar" might be translated as the "Book of the Correct Record", but it is known in English translation mostly as The Book of Jasher following English tradition. Its author is unknown.
Ashur was the second son of Shem, the son of Noah. Ashur's brothers were Elam, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram.
Lud was a son of Shem and grandson of Noah, according to Genesis 10.
Tubal, in Genesis 10, was the name of a son of Japheth, son of Noah. He is known to be the father of the Caucasian Iberians according to primary sources. Later, Saint Jerome refashioned the Caucasian Iberia (Georgia) into the Iberian Peninsula and Isidore of Seville consolidated this mistake.
Madai is a son of Japheth and one of the 16 grandsons of Noah in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible.
Peleg is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as one of the two sons of Eber, an ancestor of the Ishmaelites and the Israelites, according to the Generations of Noah in Genesis 10–11 and 1 Chronicles 1.
The Jewish War or Judean War, also referred to in English as The Wars of the Jews, is a book written by Josephus, a first-century Roman-Jewish historian. It has been described by Steve Mason as "perhaps the most influential non-biblical text of Western history".
Tubal-cain or Tubalcain is a person mentioned in the Bible, in Genesis 4:22, known for being the first blacksmith. He is stated as the "forger of all instruments of bronze and iron". A descendant of Cain, he was the son of Lamech and Zillah. Tubal-cain was the brother of Naamah and half-brother of Jabal and Jubal. The Israeli kibbutz Tuval is named after him.
Togarmah is a figure in the "table of nations" in Genesis 10, the list of descendants of Noah that represents the peoples known to the ancient Hebrews. Togarmah is among the descendants of Japheth and is thought to represent some people located in Anatolia. Medieval sources claimed that Togarmah was the legendary ancestor of several peoples of the Caucasus
Javan was the fourth son of Noah's son Japheth according to the "Generations of Noah" in the Hebrew Bible. Josephus states the traditional belief that this individual was the ancestor of the Greeks.
Tiras is, according to the Book of Genesis and 1 Chronicles, the seventh and youngest son of Japheth in the Hebrew Bible. A brother of biblical Javan, its geographical locale is sometimes associated by scholars with the Tershi or Tirsa, one of the groups which made up the Sea Peoples "thyrsenes" (Tyrrhenians), a naval confederacy which terrorized Egypt and other Mediterranean nations around 1200 BCE. These Sea People are referred to as "Tursha" in an inscription of Ramesses III, and as "Teresh of the Sea" on the Merneptah Stele.
Elishah or Eliseus was the son of Javan according to the Book of Genesis (10:4) in the Masoretic Text. The Greek Septuagint of Genesis 10 lists Elisa not only as the son of Javan, but also a grandson of Japheth. His name is spelled differently in Hebrew to the prophet Elisha, ending in a hei instead of an ayin.
The term Japhetites refers to the descendants of Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible. The term has been adopted in ethnological and linguistic writing from the 18th to the 20th century but has now become obsolete.
Zimran, also known as Zambran, was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the first son of the marriage of Abraham, the patriarch of the Israelites, and Keturah, whom he wed after the death of Sarah. Zimran had five other brothers, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.
Kition was a Phoenician and Ancient Greek city-kingdom on the southern coast of Cyprus, one of the Ten city-kingdoms of Cyprus. According to the text on the plaque closest to the excavation pit of the Kathari site, it was established in the 13th century BC by Greek (Achaean) settlers, after the Trojan war.
Since early modern times, a number of biblical ethnonyms from the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 have been used as a basis for classifying human racial and national identities. The connection between Genesis 10 and contemporary ethnic groups began during classical antiquity, when authors such as Josephus, Hippolytus and Jerome analyzed the biblical list.