The peoples' classification in Genesis is to be seen
as an attempt of Hebrews to classify them and their
neighbours, just it. It's hard to fit Noah scheme in
the scientifical views.
For example, Canaanites and Phoenicians were
classified as "Hamitic", but their close relatives
Hebrews are "Semitic"
The Japhet-peoples seem to be the ones who the Hebrews
knew later: they are mainly Mediterranean and
Anatolian peoples, Greeks (Yawan), Tartessians
(Tharshish), Cimmerians (Gomer).
The Ham-peoples occupied southern and western lands:
North Africa, Arabia, Crete, but also Canaan. They
seem to be a group of people seen as "enemies" or "bad
neighbours".
The Shem-people included the Hebrews themselves,
Assyrians (Assur), Lydians (Lud), Arameans (Aram) and
Elam (Elamites or Persians).
There are people like Joqtan (South Arabia) that
appeared contraditoriously both in Shem's and Ham's
clusters.
Joao SL
--- Richard Wordingham
<
richard.wordingham@...> escreveu:
---------------------------------
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Jarrette
<anjarrette@...> wrote:
> I actually should have emphasized that the Biblical
stories of Shem
and Japheth and Ham, especially if taken
metaphorically as
descriptions of groups of languages, may have a kernel
of truth (apart
from these names actually being used formerly to name
three language
families), since Nostratic theory says that
Indo-European and Semitic
are ultimately related.
Surely it's just the recurring idea of monogenesis!
Have you read Genesis x recently? Note that Ham begot
Canaan, who in
turn begot Heth (i.e. the Hittites), and that Shem
begot Lud, who is
presumed to mean the Lydians. Now, the Hittites and
Lydians were
Indo-European, and the Canaanites were Semitic - or at
least, the
Phoenicians were, and Sidon is the eldest son of
Canaan. I don't
think there's anything particularly Semitic about Elam
either.
If Ham encompasses all with Egyptian connections, then
the rest are
divided between coastal people to the North and West,
and landlubbers
to the East and north. The Hebrews belong in the
latter group, and
otehr peoples don't figure at all. Lud = Lydians and
Lud being a son
of Shem make no sense to me.
> I assume here that the earlier use of "Semitic",
"Japhetic", and
"Hamitic" was adopted before it was proved, or at
least empirically
suggested (only recently, was it not?), that these
language families
are actually related ("Japhetic" being of course
Indo-European).
I believe St Augustine mentions that Punic was similar
to Hebrew, so
the savants should have known that the labels were
only approximate.
According to my dictionary, 'Semite' etc. only came
into use in the
19th century in English, so these terms are not
independent of an
understanding of linguistic relatedness in that
example. 'Hamitic',
of course, doesn't seem to be much more meaningful
than 'North
African' in linguistic terms, though attempts were
made to define it
more rigorously.
Richard.
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