Japheth

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Japheth (יֶפֶת / יָפֶת "enlarge", Standard Hebrew Yéfet / Yáfet, Tiberian Hebrew Yép̄eṯ / Yāp̄eṯ) 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.

In Arabic citations, his name is normally given as Yafeth (يافث) 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. 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:

The term "Japhetic" was also applied by William Jones and other pre-Darwinian 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.

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:

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.

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 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 Indo-European etymology of Latin Iuppiter or Iūpiter, i.e. "Jupiter", is usually reconstructed as *dyeu-pəter, "sky-father" (the * denotes a hypothetical, unattested form).

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.


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