Sons of Noah

As a table of nations a compilation of the descendants of Noah in the tenth chapter of the first book of Moses (Genesis) in the Old Testament of the Bible (Gen 10 EU) is called.

A similar compilation can be found in the Bible again in the first chapters of the first book of Chronicles ( 1 Chr EU).

According to biblical idea branched off of the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the peoples in the deluge the earth should re- occupy after the destruction of mankind. This is based on the common in the ancient underlying concept that an ethnic group can be traced back to the genealogical descent from a progenitor. Overall, the chapter lists - depending on interpretation - 70-72 names to those known in biblical Israel surrounding peoples.

The fact that descended from Shem peoples of Israel to the east, descended from Ham to the southwest, and the descendant of Japheth were spread out in a northwesterly direction, was at the time of the European Middle Ages to modern times, and in all of the biblical tradition influenced regions a common idea. On the cycle map from the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville from the beginning of the 7th century, printed in 1472 by Guntherus Ziner, you can see the names of the three sons of Noah, the continents of Asia ( Sem ), Europe ( Japheth ) and Africa ( Ham) assigned. On Isidor still engages Hartmann Schedel back in his World Chronicle ( 1493 ) when he, the three sons of Noah reflects on the edge of the world map, as they consider the populated areas of their offspring.

In the Euro-centric dominated linguistics and ethnology of the 19th century, the name was borrowed from the table of nations of the Old Testament, and from the supposed ethnic Collaboration was closed on language families. Contents of these theories has only the collective term Semitic languages ​​( see also: Semites and anti-Semitism ); the concept of a Hamitic language family is technically today as obsolete as the Japhetitentheorie Russian linguist.