Generations of Noah

The Generations of Noah, also called the Table of Nations or Origines Gentium,^[1] is a genealogy of the sons of Noah, according to the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 10:9), and their dispersion into many lands after the Flood,^[2] focusing on the major known societies. The term 'nations' to describe the descendants is a standard English translation of the Hebrew word "goyim", following the c. 400 CE Latin Vulgate's "nationes", and does not have the same political connotations that the word entails today.^[3]

The list of 70 names introduces for the first time several well-known ethnonyms and toponyms important to biblical geography,^[4] such as Noah's three sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, from which 18th-century German scholars at the Göttingen school of history derived the race terminology Semites, Hamites, and Japhetites. Certain of Noah's grandsons were also used for names of peoples: from Elam, Ashur, Aram, Cush, and Canaan were derived respectively the Elamites, Assyrians, Arameans, Cushites, and Canaanites. Likewise, from the sons of Canaan: Heth, Jebus, and Amorus were derived Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites. Further descendants of Noah include Eber (from Shem), the hunter-king Nimrod (from Cush), and the Philistines (from Misrayim).

As Christianity spread across the Roman Empire, it carried the idea that all people were descended from Noah. Not all Near Eastern people were covered in the biblical genealogy, as well as the Northern European peoples important to the Late Roman and Medieval world, such as the Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, and Nordic peoples; nor were others of the world's peoples, such as sub-Saharan Africans, Native Americans, and peoples of Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Far East, and Australasia. Scholars derived a variety of arrangements to make the table fit, with for example the Scythians, which do feature in the tradition, being claimed as the ancestors of much of Northern Europe.^[5]

According to the biblical scholar Joseph Blenkinsopp, the 70 names in the list express symbolically the unity of humanity, corresponding to the 70 descendants of Israel who go down into Egypt with Jacob at Genesis 46:27 and the 70 elders of Israel who visit God with Moses at the covenant ceremony in Exodus 24:1–9.^[6]