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Concept
Japhetites
Summary
The term Japhetites (in adjective form Japhethitic or Japhetic) refers to the descendants of Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible. The term has been adopted in ethnological and linguistic writing from the 18th to the 20th century but has now become obsolete.
In medieval ethnography, the world was believed to have been divided into three large-scale groupings, corresponding to the three classical continents: the Semitic peoples of Asia, the Hamitic peoples of Africa and the Japhetic peoples of Europe.
The term has been used in modern times as a designation in physical anthropology, ethnography and comparative linguistics. In anthropology, it was used in a racial sense for white people (the Caucasian race). In linguistics, it was used as a term for the Indo-European languages. These uses are now mostly obsolete. In a linguistic sense, only the Semitic peoples form a well-defined family. The Indo-European group is no longer known as "Japhetite", and the Hamitic group is now recognized as paraphyletic within the Afro-Asiatic family.
Among Muslim historians, Japheth is usually regarded as the ancestor of the Gog and Magog tribes, and, at times, of the Turks, Khazars, and Slavs.
Genesis flood narrative and Sons of Noah
In the Genesis, Japheth is mentioned as one of the three sons of Noah. The other two sons of Noah, Shem and Ham, are the eponymous ancestors of the Semites and the Hamites, respectively. In the Biblical Table of Nations (Genesis ), seven sons and seven grandsons of Japheth are mentioned:
Gomer
Ashkenaz
Riphath
Togarmah
Magog
Madai
Javan
Elishah
Tarshish
Kittim
Dodanim
Tubal
Meshech
Tiras
The intended ethnic identity of these "descendants of Japheth" is not certain; however, over history, they have been identified by Biblical scholars with various historical nations who were deemed to be descendants of Japheth and his sons — a practice dating back at least to the classical Jewish-Greek encounters. For example, the Roman Jewish historian Josephus states in the Antiquities of the Jews, I.VI.
Official source
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