In the Beginning

by Isaac Asimov

  Could it be that Ham (or Canaan) castrated Noah in an attempt to rule the world (still relatively unpeopled in the wake of the Flood), but that Shem and Japheth, in alliance, prevented it? That is all purely speculation, however, and the literal reading of the Bible does not support a greater crime for Ham than accidental voyeurism.

  25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; 281 a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

  281. Again, this may be an indication that the original version of the legend implicated Canaan rather than Ham. Or it may be that the Biblical writers were anxious to implicate Canaan for their own purposes.

  There have been some who have considered Ham to have been a black and who have used the curse to justify black slavery. Even if such an argument were permissible, it is soon apparent that Ham was not a black. In the next chapter, the descendants of Ham are described, and it is clear they are ancient peoples who are well known and who were not blacks.

  26 And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

  27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; 282 and Canaan shall be his servant.

  282. No one has been able to explain this verse or to point out the clear significance of Japheth dwelling in the tents of Shem. Something may have been left out or distorted in the copying, and it may then be hopeless to puzzle out the meaning.

  28 And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.

  29 And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: 283 and he died.

  283. Noah is the last person in the Bible who is stated to have lived to be over nine hundred years. There were seven of them altogether: Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Jared, Methuselah, and Noah. From here on, the ages upon death, as they are given, decrease little by little until the present normal life-span is reached.

  At that, the P-document again errs on the side of caution. After all, Ut-Napishtim is granted immortality after the flood by the gods. Noah is not. He doesn’t even live as long as his grandfather Methuselah.

  Chapter 10

  1 Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth: 284 and unto them were sons born after the flood.

  284. Alter this second creation, the Biblical writers quickly organized the nations of the world, or of that part of it known to them, so that they could then proceed to concern themselves with the Israelites, who served as the central theme of their world story.

  The three sons of Noah represent the three great divisions of the peoples known to the ancient writers of the Bible.

  In general, the descendants of Shem are pictured as occupying the Arabian peninsula and the regions adjoining it to the north, including the Tigris-Euphrates regions. Since the descendants include the Israelites themselves, Shem is given the post of honor and is made the eldest son of Noah.

  The languages of these descendants are referred to, in modern times, as “Semitic” (“Sem” is the Graeco-Latin form of Shem). These languages include Hebrew, Assyrian. Aramaean, and Arabic.

  The descendants of Ham are described as inhabiting chiefly the corner of Africa adjacent to Asia. For this reason, the original languages of the area are called “Hamitic.” This includes Coptic, the Berber languages of North Africa, and some of the languages of Ethiopia, such as Amharic.

  The descendants of Japheth are described as inhabiting the regions to the north and east of the Tigris-Euphrates. Sometimes “Japhetic” is used to refer to certain languages in the Caucasus region. The term “Indo-European” is usually used, however, since related languages cover a broad swath from Spain to India.

  The writers of Genesis were not influenced by language, however. Modern notions of philology are strictly modern. Rather, the Biblical writers were guided by political connections and by geographic propinquity. Such connections often did bespeak common ancestry, as far as that can be judged by language-but not always.

  2 The sons of Japheth; 285 Gomer. 286 and Magog, 287 and Madai, 288 and Javan, 289 and Tubal, 290 and Meshech,291 and Tiras.292

  285. These verses are part of the P-document and, as in the Creation-tale the P-document organizes its material in such a way as to approach a climax. Thus, it starts with Japheth, the youngest son of Noah, then moves on to Ham, and finally to Shem, who is the ancestor of the Israelites.

  The names of the peoples and their locations would seem to represent the world as it existed in Assyrian times, in the seventh century B.C., or about a century before the Babylonian captivity.

  Japheth himself may be borrowed from the Greek traditions, which reached the early Israelites by way of Crete and Cyprus and the Philistines, Japheth has been identified by some with Iapetus, one of the Titans in the Greek myths. The two names are almost identical, actually. If we discount the conventional “-us” ending in Greek names, both are pronounced “Yapet” in the original.

  According to the Greek myths, Iapetus was the father of Prometheus, who, in turn, fathered the human race by molding them out of clay, as Yahveh did in the J-document. For this reason, Iapetus could be considered by the Greeks to be the ancestor of mankind; and the Israelites may have accepted this to the extent of making him the ancestor of that portion of mankind to which the Greeks belonged.

  286. Gomer probably refers to the people who, in Assyrian inscriptions, are Gimirrai, and these, in turn, were the people known in Latin spelling as the Cimmerians. In earlier times, they lived north of the Black Sea (Crimea, part of their early homeland, is a distorted spelling of Cimmeria), but in the seventh century B.C., pushed on by new bands of tribesmen in the rear, they invaded Asia Minor and met the Assyrians there in great battles. The Cimmerians were eventually defeated, to be sure, but Assyria was badly wounded in the process. The Cimmerians were in particularly prominent view at the time this “table of nations” reached its final written form, and their eponymous ancestor, Gomer, would be viewed, very reasonably, as the firstborn of Japheth.

  287. Magog may represent “the land of Gog.” Gog (“Gyges” in the Greek form) was the king of the Lydians, a people in western Asia Minor, and he was one of the important adversaries of the invading Cimmerians. In fact, he died in battle against them about 652 B.C.

  288. Madai is supposed to refer to the Medes, who inhabited the territory east of Assyria and who were eventually among the final conquerors of Assyria.

  289. Javan is a name that is very like an archaic form of the Greek Ion, who was the eponymous ancestor of the Ionian Greeks. The Ionians had migrated eastward, about 1000 B.C., to occupy the islands of the Aegean Sea and sections of the western coast of Asia Minor. Of the various Greek tribes, they were the nearest to the Israelites and would be best known to them in Assyrian times. Their tribal name would be naturally applied to the Greeks generally.

  Thus, our word “Greek” is derived from the Latin. The Romans took the name of an obscure tribe they encountered in the west and applied it to all the Greeks generally. The Greeks called themselves Hellenes and considered themselves descended from an eponymous ancestor named Hellen, one of whose sons was Ion.

  290. Tubal may be a reference to a tribe called Tibarenoi by Herodotus; this tribe dwelt in a region southeast of the Black Sea. Tubal-cain was a smith of that region, as I said earlier.

  291. Meshech may be identified with a people called Mushki in Assyrian inscriptions. They had a king named Mita (Midas, in Greek), who ruled from 721 to 705 B.C. The reference could therefore be to the Phrygians, over whom Midas ruled and who dominated western Asia Minor until they were destroyed by the Cimmerians and replaced by the Lydians.

  292. Tiras may be related to a people called by the Greeks Tyrsenoi. They were supposed to have fled Asia Minor and migrated to Italy. If so, Tiras could represent the Etruscans.

  3 And the sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, 293 and Riphath, and Togarmah.294

  293. Ashkenaz may be identical with the name Ashguza, which is found among Assyrian inscriptions. This seems to refer to the people known to the Greeks as
the Scythians, nomadic tribes who entered the regions north of the Black Sea from somewhere in central Asia some time before 1000 B.C. It was their pressure southward against the Cimmerians that drove the latter into Asia Minor. The Scythians took the Cimmerian place in the steppelands north of the Black Sea, and from that stand-point, Ashkenaz (Scythia) might well be considered the eldest son of Gomer (Cimmeria).

  For some reason, the later Jews viewed Ashkenaz as the ancestor of the Teutonic people. Hence, Jews who spoke Yiddish (a form of German) were called Ashkenazim to distinguish them from those Jews who spoke Ladino (a form of Spanish) and who were called Sephardim, from Sepharad, a word taken by the Jews to refer to Spain.

  294. Concerning Riphath, nothing at all is known or can be guessed. Some people equate Togarmah with a tribe known as Tilgarimmu to the Assyrians, a tribe that lived along the upper Euphrates.

  4 And the sons of Javan; Elishah, 295 and Tarshish, 296 Kittim, 297 and Dodanim.298

  295. Elishah is similar to the Alashiyah found in Assyrian documents, which refers to the island of Cyprus. This had already been colonized by Greeks in Assyrian times, and it was then the closest of all Greek-speaking lands to Canaan, being only two hundred miles to the northeast. The name, both in Hebrew and Assyrian, may be a form of Hellas, the name the Greeks applied to the lands they populated.

  296. Tarshish, in this verse, is most likely to represent Tarsus, an important Greek town on the southern coast of Asia Minor, a hundred miles north of Cyprus. It was already an important city in Assyrian times.

  297. Kittim would seem to represent Kition, a city on the southern coast of Cyprus. Cyprus may thus be referred to twice in this verse.

  298. Dodanim is widely thought to be a misprint for Rodanim, and in that case it might refer to the island of Rhodes, two hundred miles west of Cyprus. On the other hand, both Dodanim and Rodanim may be alternate spellings for a word that originally referred to Dardania, the region of northwestern Asia Minor where the city of Troy had stood prior to 1200 b.c.

  5 By these were the isles of the Gentiles 299 divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, 300 after their families, in their nations.

  299. “Gentiles” means “tribal people,” from the Latin word gens, meaning “tribe.” To the Israelites it came to mean, in particular, people who belonged to tribes other than their own, so that in the end, there came to be the distinction between Jew and Gentile. In a sense, though, the term Gentile can now be used by any group to refer to outsiders. Thus, Mormons today refer to non-Mormons (even Jews) as Gentiles.

  “By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands” might be translated into present-day English thus: “The descendants of these migrated into and populated the various coastal lands.”

  Such a reading might indicate that they populated all the coasts of the world including the Americas and Australia, but this is scarcely likely. The actual regions named in the guise of eponymous ancestors refer entirely to Asia Minor, to the islands off its coast, and, possibly, to the northern coast of the Black Sea. The Israelites of the time knew nothing beyond that.

  300. It is assumed here that the descendants of Japheth spoke in different languages. This is difficult to understand, considering that all people were described as having been descended from a single family, that of Noah, in the not-too-distant past. The Biblical explanation of this is given in the next chapter.

  6 And the sons of Ham; 301 Cush, 302 and Mizraim, 303 and Phut, 304 and Canaan.305

  301. The P-document has gone as far as was thought necessary with the line of Japheth. It is dropped at this point, not to be resumed, and the P-document then passes on to the descendants of Ham.

  302. In connection with Genesis 2:13, I explained the possible confusion between two lands to which Cush might refer: to Nubia, just south of Egypt, or to Kossea, just east of the Tigris River. Here the word undoubtedly refers to Nubia.

  303. Mizraim is the Hebrew word for Egypt. Where it occurs in the Bible outside this chapter, Mizraim is translated into “Egypt,” a term of Greek origin.

  It may seem strange that Nubia is considered the oldest son of Ham, while Egypt, that ancient land of power and civilization, is placed second. However, at the time the “Table of Nations” was prepared, Egypt was in disarray and was under the rule of Nubia from 715 to 656 B.C.

  304. Phut (better “Put,” as given in the Revised Standard Version) is usually thought to represent the peoples west of Egypt, whom the Greeks called Libyans.

  305. Canaan is, of course, the land later dominated by Israel. If we translate Genesis 10:6 into modern geographic language, it would read: “And the sons of Ham: Nubia, Egypt, Libya, and Canaan.” This actually marks the extent of the Egyptian Empire in the times of its greatness between 1800 and 1200 B.C.

  The languages of Nubia, Egypt, and Libya were, in Biblical times, similar and belonged to the same linguistic family (Hamitic). The language of the Canaanites, however, was quite different and was, indeed, related to Hebrew. The Canaanites, therefore, spoke what we would now call a Semitic language, and if language were indeed the criterion for determining descent, Canaan would have to be accounted a descendant of Shem.

  Yet the compilers of the Table of Nations considered political connection rather than language the criterion and, besides, had an interest in not making the Canaanite-Israelite relationship too close or there would be trouble in justifying the Canaanite conquest and enslavement.

  7 And the sons of Cush; 306 Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtecha: and the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan.

  306. The five sons and two grandsons of Cush here represent regions that are almost certainly located in various parts of Arabia. There were occasions in ancient times when regions on the Arabian shore of the Red Sea dominated the African shore, and vice versa. This verse could conceivably reflect the memory of this connection between Nubia and Arabia.

  8 And Cush begat Nimrod: 307 he began to be a mighty one in the earth.308

  307. At this point, the J-document takes over. The Biblical editors apparently interrupted the dry P-document listing of names whenever something colorful could be found in the J-document.

  308. Nimrod was, apparently, a ruler and conqueror.

  9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: 309 wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.

  309. To be “a mighty hunter before the Lord” is an idiomatic way of saying “to be a very great hunter.” Apparently, Nimrod’s feats became proverbial.

  As we are to see in the next verse, the scene of his exploits was the Tigris-Euphrates valley, and hunting was a favorite pursuit of the Assyrian monarchs. Assyrian art was powerful, and one of the favorite objects of portrayal was that of Assyrian kings in pursuit of big game.

  One of the first of the great Assyrian conquerors was Tukulti-Ninurta I, who reigned from 1244 to 1208 B.C. From his home base in Assyria on the upper Tigris, he extended his sway northward into Urartu and southward into Babylonia.

  The Greeks to the west may have heard vague tales of his conquests (just prior to the Trojan War), for in later times they told of a conquering king whom they called Ninus, a Greek form of the second part of Tukulti-Ninurta’s name, and who, they said, founded the Assyrian Empire. It may be that the Israelites also knew of these early conquests and that to them Tukulti-Ninurta became Nimrod.

  10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, 310 and Erech, 311 and Accad, 312 and Calneh, 313 in the land of Shinar.314

  310. The important towns of Nimrod’s realm are listed. Babel is better known by the Greek version of its name, Babylon. Babylon was a small and unremarkable village until about 1900 B.C., when a tribe from the middle Euphrates, the Amorites, seized control and made it the capital of an expanding empire.

  Under the sixth king of the Amorite dynasty. Hammurabi, who reigned about 1700 B.C., Babylon became a world metropolis and remained one for two thousand years.

  311. Erech is the city of Uruk,
located on the lower Euphrates. It dates back to 3600 B.C. at least, and was one of the important Sumerian city-states. The mythical Gilgamesh was once king of this city, and it was ruled by a historical conqueror, Lugal-zaggisi, shortly after 2300 B.C. Lugal-zaggisi was the first person we know of to rule a sizable empire in the Tigris-Euphrates region.

  312. Accad, or Akkad, is, in the ancient inscriptions, Agade. Its exact site is unknown, but it was probably on the Euphrates about 140 miles upstream from Uruk.

  The Akkadians were at first under Sumerian domination, but about 2280 B.C., an Akkadian ruler, Sargon of Agade, came to power. He expanded his dominions, and in 2264 B.C., he defeated Lugal-zaggisi to found an Akkadian Empire.

  313. The location of Calneh is unknown, and there is general agreement now that its inclusion is an error and that the word is not the name of a city but is Hebrew for “all of them.” The verse is made to read in the Revised Standard Version: “The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar.”

  314. There is general agreement that “the land of Shinar” is Sumeria and, more generally, the Tigris-Euphrates region.

  11 Out of that land went forth Asshur, 315 and builded Nineveh, 316 and the city Rehoboth, 317 and Calah, 318

  315. The beginning of this verse is now generally accepted as distortion due to the accidental omission of a pronoun in the Hebrew. The Revised Standard Version has the verse begin: “Out of that land he went forth into Asshur,” where the “he” refers to Nimrod.

  Asshur is the region along the upper courses of the Tigris River. The town of Asshur, which gave its name to the region, was located on the Tigris about 230 miles north of Babylon; it was founded as early as 2700 b.c. Asshur is far better known by the Greek version of its name, Assyria.