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.
The Philistines were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan during the Iron Age. The Philistines originated as an immigrant group from the Aegean that settled in Canaan circa 1175 BC, during the Late Bronze Age collapse. Over time, they gradually assimilated elements of the indigenous Semitic Levantine societies while preserving their own unique culture. In 604 BC, the Philistine polity, after having already been subjugated for centuries by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, was finally destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. After becoming part of his empire and its successor, the Persian Empire, the Philistines lost their distinct ethnic identity and disappeared as a people from the historical and archaeological record by the late 5th century BC.
The Tower of Babel narrative in Genesis 11:1–9 is an origin myth and parable meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages.
Amalek was a nation described in the Hebrew Bible as a staunch enemy of the Israelites. The name "Amalek" can refer to the nation's founder, a grandson of Esau; his descendants, the Amalekites; or the territories of Amalek, which they inhabited.
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.
Enoch is a biblical figure and patriarch prior to Noah's flood, and the son of Jared and father of Methuselah. He was of the Antediluvian period in the Hebrew Bible.
Asher, in the Book of Genesis, was the last of the two sons of Jacob and Zilpah and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Asher.
According to the Bible, Jochebed was a daughter of Levi and mother of Miriam, Aaron and Moses. She was the wife of Amram, as well as his aunt. No details are given concerning her life. According to Jewish legend, she is buried in the Tomb of the Matriarchs, in Tiberias. In the New Testament, she is praised for her faith in God.
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.
Keturah was a wife and a concubine of the Biblical patriarch Abraham. According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham married Keturah after the death of his first wife, Sarah. Abraham and Keturah had six sons. According to Jewish tradition, she was a descendant of Noah's son Japheth.
Kittim was a settlement in present-day Larnaca on the east coast of Cyprus, known in ancient times as Kition, or 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]". Flavius Josephus records in his Antiquities of the Jews that
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, Keturah, whom he wed after the death of Sarah. Zimran had five other brothers, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.
Josippon is a chronicle of Jewish history from Adam to the age of Titus. It is named after its supposed author, Flavius Josephus, though it was actually composed in the 10th century in Southern Italy. The Ethiopic version of Josippon is recognized as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
Ashkenaz in the Hebrew Bible is one of the descendants of Noah. Ashkenaz is the first son of Gomer, and a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations. In rabbinic literature, the descendants of Ashkenaz were first associated with the Scythian cultures, then later with the Slavic territories, and, from the 11th century onwards, with Germany and northern Europe, or the Indo-European people, in a manner similar to Tzarfat or Sefarad.
There is no scholarly consensus as to when the Hebrew Bible canon was fixed. Some scholars argue that it was fixed by the Hasmonean dynasty, while others argue it was not fixed until the second century CE or even later.
Edom was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and east. Most of its former territory is now divided between present-day southern Israel and Jordan. Edom appears in written sources relating to the late Bronze Age and to the Iron Age in the Levant.
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.