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Chapter X.
The Table of Peoples
(Priestly-Code and Yahwist).

In its present form, the chapter is a redactional composition, in which are interwoven two (if not three) successive attempts to classify the known peoples of the world, and to exhibit their origin and mutual relationships in the form of a genealogical tree.

Analysis.—The separation of the two main sources is due to the lucid and convincing analysis of Wellhausen (Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments² 6 ff.). The hand of Priestly-Code is easily recognised in the superscription (^1a אֵלֶּה תּוֹלְדֹת), and the methodical uniformity of the tripartite scheme, with its recurrent opening and closing formulæ. The headings of the three sections are: בְּנֵי יֶפֶת (²), וּבְנֵי חָם (⁶), and בְּנֵי שֵׁם (²²); the respective conclusions are found in ^5. (mutilated) ^20. 31, verse ³² being a final summary. This framework, however, contains several continuous sections which obviously belong to Yahwist. (a) ^8–12; the account of Nimrod (who is not even mentioned by Priestly-Code among the sons of Kush) stands out both in character and style in strong contrast to Priestly-Code: note also יָלַד; instead of הוֹלִיד (⁸), יהוה (⁹). (b) ^13 f.: the sons of Mizraim (verb יָלַד). (c) ^15–19: the Canaanites (יָלַד). (d) ^21. 25–30: the Shemites (יֻלַּד ^21. 25; יָלַד ²⁶).—Duplication of sources is further proved by the twofold introduction to Shem (²¹ ∥ ²²), and the discrepancy between ⁷ and ^28 f. regarding חֲוִילָה and שְׁבָא. The documents, therefore, assort themselves as follows:

Priestly-Code: ^1a; ^2–5; ^6 f. 20; ^22 f. 31; ³².

Yahwist: ^1b (?); ^8–12; ^13 f.; ^15–19; ^21. 25–30.

Verses ^9. 16–18a and ²⁴ are regarded by Wellhausen and most subsequent writers as interpolations: see the notes. The framework of Priestly-Code is made the basis of the Table; and so far as appears that document has been preserved in its original order. In Yahwist the genealogy of Shem (^21. 25–30) is probably complete; that of Ham (^{13 f. 15 ff.}) is certainly curtailed; while every trace of Japheth has been obliterated (see, however, page 208). Whether the Yahwistic fragments stand in their original order, we have no means of determining.

The analysis has been carried a step further by Gunkel (² 74 f.), who first raised the question of the unity of the Yahwistic Table, and its connexion with the two recensions of Yahwist which appear in chapter 9. He agrees with Wellhausen, Dillmann, al. that 9^18 f. forms the transition from the story of the Flood to a list of nations which is partly represented in chapter 10; 10^1b being the immediate continuation of 9¹⁹ in that recension of Yahwist (Jehovist^Jahwist). But he tries to show that 9^20–27 was also followed by a Table of Nations, and that to it most of the Yahwistic fragments in chapter 10 belong (^{8. 10–12. 15. 21. 25–29} = Jehovist^Elohist). This conclusion is reached by a somewhat subtle examination of verse ²¹ and verses ^15–19. In verse ²¹ Shem is the ‘elder brother of Japheth,’ which seems to imply that Japheth was the second son of Noah as in 9^20 ff.; hence we may surmise that the third son was not Ham but Canaan. This is confirmed by the apparent contradiction between ¹⁵ and ^18b. 19. In ¹⁹ the northern limit of the Canaanites is Ẓidon, whereas in ¹⁵ Canaan includes the Ḥittites, and has therefore the wider geographical sense which Gunkel postulates for 9^20–27 (see page 186 above). He also calls attention to the difference in language between the eponymous כְּנַעַן in ¹⁵ and the gentilic הַכְּנַֽעֲנִי in ^18b. 19, and considers that this was a characteristic distinction of the two documents. From these premises the further dissection of the Table follows easily enough. Verses ^8–12 may be assigned to Jehovist^Elohist because of the peculiar use of הֵחֵל in ⁸ (compare 9²⁰ 4²⁶). verse ^13 f. must in any case be Jehovist^Jahwist, because it is inconceivable that Egypt should ever have been thought of as a son of Canaan; ^25–29 follow ²¹ (Jehovist^Elohist). Verse ³⁰ is assigned to Jehovist^Jahwist solely on account of its resemblance to ¹⁹. It cannot be denied that these arguments (which are put forward with reserve) have considerable cumulative force; and the theory may be correct. At the same time it must be remembered (1) that the distinction between a wider and a narrower geographical conception of Canaan remains a brilliant speculation, which is not absolutely required either by 9^20 ff. or 10¹⁵; and (2) that there is nothing to show that the story of Noah, the vine-grower, was followed by a Table of Nations at all. A genealogy connecting Shem with Abraham was no doubt included in that document; but a writer who knows nothing of the Flood, and to whom Noah was not the head of a new humanity, had no obvious motive for attaching an ethnographic survey to the name of that patriarch. Further criticism may be reserved for the notes.

The names in the Table are throughout eponymous: that is to say, each nation is represented by an imaginary personage bearing its name, who is called into existence for the purpose of expressing its unity, but is at the same time conceived as its real progenitor. From this it was an easy step to translate the supposed affinities of the various peoples into the family relations of father, son, brother, etc., between the eponymous ancestors; while the origin of the existing ethnic groups was held to be accounted for by the expansion and partition of the family. This vivid and concrete mode of representation, though it was prevalent in antiquity, was inevitably suggested by one of the commonest idioms of Semitic speech, according to which the individual members of a tribe or people were spoken of as ‘sons’ or ‘daughters’ of the collective entity to which they belonged. It may be added that (as in the case of the Arabian tribal genealogies) the usage could only have sprung up in an age when the patriarchal type of the family and the rule of male descent were firmly established (see William Robertson Smith Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia², 3 ff.).

That this is the principle on which the Tables are constructed appears from a slight examination of the names, and is universally admitted. With the exception of Nimrod, all the names that can be identified are those of peoples and tribes (Madai, Sheba, Dedan, etc.) or countries (Miẓraim, Ḥavilah, etc.—in most cases it is impossible to say whether land or people is meant) or cities (Zidon); some are gentilicia (Jebusite, Ḥivvite, etc.); and some are actually retained in the plural (Rodanim, Ludim, etc.). Where the distinctions between national and geographical designations, between singular, plural, and collective names, are thus effaced, the only common denominator to which the terms can be reduced is that of the eponymous ancestor. It was the universal custom of antiquity in such matters to invent a legendary founder of a city or state;¹ and it is idle to imagine any other explanation of the names before us.—It is, of course, another question how far the Hebrew ethnographers believed in the analogy on which their system rested, and how far they used it simply as a convenient method of expressing racial or political relations. When a writer speaks of Lydians, Lybians, Philistines, etc., as ‘sons’ of Egypt, or ‘the Jebusite,’ ‘the Amorite,’ ‘the Arvadite’ as ‘sons’ of Canaan, it is difficult to think, e.g., that he believed the Lydians to be descended from a man named ‘Lydians’ (לוּדִים), or the Amorites from one called ‘the Amorite’ (הָֽאֱמֹרִי); and we may begin to suspect that the whole system of eponyms is a conventional symbolism which was as transparent to its authors as it is to us.² That, however, would be a hasty and probably mistaken inference. The instances cited are exceptional,—they occur mostly in two groups, of which one (^16 ff.) is interpolated, and the other (^13 f.) may very well be secondary too; and over against them we have to set not only the names of Noah, Shem, etc., but also Nimrod, who is certainly an individual hero, and yet is said to have been ‘begotten’ by the eponymous Kush (Gunkel). The bulk of the names lend themselves to the one view as readily as to the other; but on the whole it is safer to assume that, in the mind of the genealogist, they stand for real individuals, from whom the different nations were believed to be descended.

The geographical horizon of the Table is very restricted; but is considerably wider in Priestly-Code than in Yahwist.¹ Yahwist’s survey extends from the Hittites and Phœnicians in the North to Egypt and southern Arabia in the South; on the Elohist he knows Babylonia and Assyria and perhaps the Kašši, and on the West the Libyans and the south coast of Asia Minor.² Priestly-Code includes in addition Asia Minor, Armenia, and Media on the North and North-east, Elam on the East, Nubia in the South, and the whole Mediterranean coast on the West. The world outside these limits is ignored, for the simple reason that the writers were not aware of its existence. But even within the area thus circumscribed there are remarkable omissions, some of which defy reasonable explanation.

The nearer neighbours and kinsmen of Israel (Moabites, Ishmaelites, Edomites, etc.) are naturally reserved for the times when they broke off from the parent stem. It would appear, further, that as a rule only contemporary peoples are included in the lists; extinct races and nationalities like the Rephaim, Zuzim, etc., and possibly the Amalekites, being deliberately passed over; while, of course, peoples that had not yet played any important part in history are ignored. None of these considerations, however, accounts for the apparent omission of the Babylonians in Priestly-Code,—a fact which has perhaps never been thoroughly explained (see page 205).

From what has just been said it ought to be possible to form some conclusion as to the age in which the lists were drawn up. For Priestly-Code the terminus a quo is the 8th century, when the Cimmerian and Scythian hordes (^2 f.) first make their appearance south of the Caucasus: the absence of the Minæans among the Arabian peoples, if it has any significance, would point to the same period (see page 203). A lower limit may with less certainty be found in the circumstance that the names פָּרַם and עֲרָב, עֲרָבִי (Persians and Arabs, first mentioned in Jeremiah and Ezekiel) do not occur. It would follow that the Priestly List is pre-exilic, and represents, not the viewpoint of the Priestly-Code (5th century), but one perhaps two centuries earlier (so Gunkel). Hommel’s opinion (Aufsätze und Abhandlungen arabistisch-semitologischen Inhalts 314 ff.), that the Table contains the earliest ethnological ideas of the Hebrews fresh from Arabia, and that its “Grundstock” goes back to Mosaic times and even the 3rd millennium B.C., is reached by arbitrary excisions and alterations of the names, and by unwarranted inferences from those which are left¹ (see Jeremias Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 252).—The lists of Yahwist, on the other hand, yield no definite indications of date. The South Arabian tribes (^25–30) might have been known as early as the age of Solomon (Brown, Encyclopædia Biblica, ii. 1699),—they might even have been known earlier,—but that does not tell us when they were systematically tabulated. The (interpolated) list of Canaanites (^16–18) is assigned by Jeremias (l.c. 256) to the age of Tiglath-pileser III.; but since a considerable percentage of the names occurs in the Tel-Amarna letters (v.i.), the grounds of that determination are not apparent. With regard to the section on Nimrod (^8–12), all that can fairly be said is that it is probably later than the Kaššite conquest of Babylonia: how much later, we cannot tell. On the attempt to deduce a date from the description of the Assyrian cities, see page 212.—There are, besides, two special sources of error which import an element of uncertainty into all these investigations. (a) Since only two names (שְׁבָא and חֲוִילָה) are really duplicated in Priestly-Code and Yahwist,² we may suppose that the redactor has as a general practice omitted names from one source which he gives in the other; and we cannot be quite sure whether the omission has been made in Priestly-Code or in Yahwist. (b) According to Jewish tradition, the total number of names is 70; and again the suspicion arises that names may have been added or deleted so as to bring out that result.³

The threefold division of mankind is a feature common to Priestly-Code and Yahwist, and to both recensions of Yahwist if there were two (above, page 188 f.). It is probable, also, though not certain, that each of the Tables placed the groups in the reverse order of birth: Japheth—Ham—Shem; or Canaan—Japheth—Shem (see verse ²¹). The basis of the classification may not have been ethnological in any sense; it may have been originally suggested by the tradition that Noah had just three sons, in accordance with a frequently observed tendency to close a genealogy with three names (4^19 ff. 5³² 11²⁶ etc.). Still, the classification must follow some ethnographic principle, and we have to consider what that principle is. The more obvious distinctions of colour, language, and race are easily seen to be inapplicable.

The ancient Egyptian division of foreigners into Negroes (black), Asiatics (light brown), and Libyans (white) is as much geographical as chromatic (Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, 32); but in any case the survey of Genesis 10 excludes the true negroes, and differences of colour amongst the peoples included could not have been sufficiently marked to form a basis of classification. It is certainly noteworthy that the Egyptian monuments represent the Egyptians, Kōš, Punt, and Phœnicians (Priestly-Code’s Hamites) as dark brown (Dillmann 167); but the characteristic was not shared by the offshoots of Kush in Arabia; and a colour line between Shem and Japheth could never have been drawn.—The test of language also breaks down. The perception of linguistic affinities on a wide scale is a modern scientific attainment, beyond the apprehension of an antique people, to whom as a rule all foreign tongues were alike ‘barbarous.’ So we find that the most of Priestly-Code’s Hamites (the Canaanites and nearly all the Kushites) are Semitic-speaking peoples, while the language of Elam among the sons of Shem belongs to an entirely different family; and Greek was certainly not spoken in the regions assigned to sons of Javan.—Of race, except in so far as it is evidenced by language, modern science knows very little; and attempts have been made to show that where the linguistic criterion fails the Table follows authentic ethnological traditions: e.g. that the Canaanites came from the Red Sea coast and were really related to the Cushites; or that Babylonia was actually colonised from central Africa, etc. But none of these speculations can be substantiated; and the theory that true racial affinity is the main principle of the Table has to be abandoned. Thus, while most of the Japhetic peoples are Indo-European, and nearly all the Shemitic are Semites in the modern sense, the correspondence is no closer than follows necessarily from the geographic arrangement to be described presently. The Hamitic group, on the other hand, is destitute alike of linguistic and ethnological unity.—Similarly, when Yahwist assigns Phœnicians and Hittites (perhaps also Egyptians) to one ethnic group, it is plain that he is not guided by a sound ethnological tradition. His Shemites are, indeed, all of Semitic speech; what his Japhetic peoples may have been we cannot conjecture (see page 188).

So far as Priestly-Code is concerned, the main principle is undoubtedly geographical: Japheth representing the North and West, Ham the South, and Shem the East. Canaan is the solitary exception, which proves the rule (see pge 201 f.). The same law appears (so far as can be ascertained) to govern the distribution of the subordinate groups; although too many of the names are uncertain to make this absolutely clear. There is very little ground for the statement that the geographical idea is disturbed here and there by considerations of a historical or political order.

The exact delimitation of the three regions is, of course, more or less arbitrary: Media might have been reckoned to the Eastern group, or Elam to the Southern; but the actual arrangement is just as natural, and there is no need to postulate the influence of ethnology in the one case or of political relations in the other. Lûd would be a glaring exception if the Lydians of Asia Minor were meant, but that is probably not the case (page 206). The Mediterranean coasts and islands are appropriately enough assigned to Javan, the most westerly of the sons of Japheth. It can only be the assumption that Shem represents a middle zone between North and South that makes the position of Kittîm appear anomalous to Dillmann. Even if the island of Cyprus be meant (which, however, is doubtful; page 199), it must, on the view here taken, be assigned to Japheth. It is true that in Yahwist traces of politico-historical grouping do appear (אַשּׁוּר and בָּבֶל in ^8–12; כַּפתֹּרִים, פְּלִשְׁתִּים in ^13 f.).—As to the order within the principal groups (of Priestly-Code), it is impossible to lay down any strict rule. Jensen (Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, x. 326) holds that it always proceeds from the remoter to the nearer nations; but though that may be true in the main, it cannot be rigorously carried through, nor can it be safely used as an argument for or against a particular identification.

The defects of the Table, from the standpoint of modern ethnology, are now sufficiently apparent. As a scientific account of the origin of the races of mankind, it is disqualified by its assumption that nations are formed through the expansion and genealogical division of families; and still more by the erroneous idea that the historic peoples of the old world were fixed within three or at most four generations from the common ancestor of the race. History shows that nationalities are for the most part political units, formed by the dissolution and re-combination of older peoples and tribes; and it is known that the great nations of antiquity were preceded by a long succession of social aggregates, whose very names have perished. Whether a single family has ever, under any circumstances, increased until it became a tribe and then a nation, is an abstract question which it is idle to discuss: it is enough that the nations here enumerated did not arise in that way, but through a process analogous to that by which the English nation was welded together out of the heterogeneous elements of which it is known to be composed.—As a historical document, on the other hand, the chapter is of the highest importance: first, as the most systematic record of the political geography of the Hebrews at different stages of their history; and second, as expressing the profound consciousness of the unity of mankind, and the religious primacy of Israel, by which the Old Testament writers were animated. Its insertion at this point, where it forms the transition from primitive tradition to the history of the chosen people, has a significance, as well as a literary propriety, which cannot be mistaken (Dillmann 164; Gunkel 77; Driver 114).

The Table is repeated in 1 Chronicles 1^4–23 with various omissions and textual variations. The list is still further abridged in LXX of 1 Chronicles, which omits ^13–18a and all names after Arpachshad in ²².—On the extensive literature on the chapter, see especially the commentaries of Tuch (159 f.) and Dillmann (170 f.). See also the map at the end of Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients.