Chapter I: The Two Ararats. the Sons of Japheth

=1.= Although =the tradition of the Flood= seems to have reached to almost every nation, it has been referred locally to some part of Western Asia, and particularly to that part known as Armenia. The Scriptures tell us that the ark rested upon “=the mountains of Ararat=,” Gen. 8:4, not upon any particular mountain called Ararat, as it has been assumed.

=2.= The word Ararat is found in the Assyrian inscriptions for Armenia.[21] A mountain 500 miles north of Babylon is called Mt. Ararat by travellers, and seems first to have been announced as the “Mt. Ararat” in A. D. 1250, as Bochart says.

=The other claimant= is 50 miles north of Nineveh and is called _Mt. Kudur_, the meaning being “the great ship.”[22] This view is supported by older historians, such as Berosus and others. The Mt. Ararat of present travellers is a solitary double peak, called _Mt. Massis_ by the Armenians, which rises 17,500 feet above the sea.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF RACES.

=3.= The tenth chapter of Genesis is considered one of the most remarkable chapters because of the aid it affords in tracing =the early emigrations= and distributions of the race. In this chapter the descendants of the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, are given. The descendants of Shem are known among scholars as Shemites or Semites, as those of Ham are known as Hamites. Although Shem is named first in order, Japheth is called the elder (ver. 21), and the genealogy begins with him.

THE SONS OF JAPHETH: THEIR MORE RECENT NAMES.

=4.= (a) =Gomer.= These were the Cimmerians of antiquity, the Cimbri of Roman times, and the Cymry or Celts still existing. Their ancient country was north of the Black Sea, including the Crimea and the shores of the Sea of Azov.

The name Crimea is a corruption of the ancient name. It is to this north land Ezekiel refers in chap. 38:2, 6. A part of them went southward to Asia Minor when driven out by the Scythians, and some emigrated to the west of Europe and to Britain. The Welsh call themselves Cymry. “The SONS OF GOMER” were “ASHKENAZ, RIPHATH, and TOGARMAH.”

=5. Ashkenaz.= The name means “THE HORSE MILKERS,” and suggests some race of a wandering tribe of the same general country of the Cimmerians or of that land northeast of them. The names _Ascanius_, a river and lake in Asia Minor, and _Scandia_ and _Scandinavia_, suggest that they may have entered Phrygia, as Bochart supposes, but the associations are uncertain. They seem in later times to have in some degree returned to a region near Armenia, since Jeremiah associates them with Ararat, Jer. 51:27.

=6. Riphath= seems to be suggested by the name of the Rhiphæan Mountains in the distant regions of the north of Scythia. More probably we may find some intimation of their presence near Armenia in the name Riphates, which is that of a mountain range in that vicinity.

=7. Togarmah= is supposed to be represented by the tribes of the Caucasus, Georgians and Armenians, who call themselves “the House of Torgona,” the latter word being the same as Togarmah.

=8.= (b) =Magog=, the name of the second son of Japheth, was also the name of a country. Slavonic tribes in the north and northeast of Europe are supposed to be comprehended under this term as descendants from the grandson of Japheth, and the original country of Magog was the Caucasian Mountains and the country around the northern part of the Caspian Sea.

=9.= In the =time of the prophet Ezekiel= they had become a powerful people and had overrun the north of Europe. The Russians are, and the Scythians were, the descendants of Magog, and Gog is the “prince of Rosh,” of Meshech, and of Tubal. They are described by Ezekiel, chaps. 38:15 and 39:3, as a wild race of mounted men armed with the bow. This seems also to describe the Scythians who invaded Palestine B. C. 625, and left the evidence of their presence in the city called Scythopolis, formerly Beth-shean, now _Beisan_, on the Jordan.[23]

=10.= (c) =Madai= is the name by which the Medes are known on the Assyrian monuments. Their country was south of the Caspian Sea.

=11.= (d) =Javan= was the progenitor of the Greeks, and the name occurs on the Assyrian monuments as Javanu; a term also used by Darius, the Mede.[24]

=12.= The sons of =Javan= were: (1.) ELISHAH, who settled in the northwest of Asia Minor from the Propontis eastward throughout Mysia and Lydia and the adjacent islands. (2.) TARSHISH, supposed to be the ancestor of the Etruscans who inhabited the northern part of Italy; but the name as it occurs in Isa. 23:6‒10; Ezek. 27:12 and 38:13, seems to refer to a city on the southern coast of Spain whither Jonah attempted to escape. Jonah 1:3. (3.) KITTIM. This name is afterwards spelled Chittim, but it is the same word in the Hebrew text. It has the plural ending (_im_), and therefore refers to a people of that name. In Isa. 23:1, 12, Chittim refers to the island of Cyprus; but when “_the isles of Chittim_” are mentioned, as in Jer. 2:10 and in Ezek. 27:6, the phrase includes the island of Crete and the islands along the coast of Asia Minor and the Ægean Sea, thus embracing a great sea district, with probably all Greece. In Dan. 11:30 Chittim includes Macedonia, because of its supposed settlement from the former, as Bochart shows.[25]

(4.) DODANIM is the same as Rodanim, which is also in plural form, and refers to the Greeks of the island of Rhodes, which is particularly one of the islands of Kittim or Chittim.

=13. The other sons of Japheth= were: (e) Tubal and (f) Meshech and (g) Tiras. Of these Tubal and Meshech appear as tribes neighboring with the Scythians and other northern tribes, and perhaps remained about the southeastern parts of the Black Sea. The Tubal of Isa. 66:19 was, as supposed, in Spain; but a tribe called Tyrrhenians in later times settled the islands of Lemnos and Imbros.[26] The name is supposed to be derived from the turreted walls by which the early Tyrrhenians surrounded their fortifications, and not from Tyre, as some have said; this Bochart shows. Tiras is supposed by some to represent ancient Thrace, but this is doubtful, as the people seem to have been associated with the Achæans, Lydians, Sicilians, and Sardinians fourteen centuries B. C., in an invasion of Egypt, as Chabas shows.[27] They seem in remote antiquity to have been seafarers and pirates upon the Italian seas and Greek Archipelago.[28]