Tubal

Tubal (תֻבָל, Ṯuḇāl), in Genesis 10 (the "Table of Nations"), was the name of a son of Japheth, son of Noah. He is known to be the father of the Caucasian Iberians (ancestors of the Georgians) according to primary sources. Later, Saint Jerome refashioned the Caucasian Iberia (Georgia) into the Iberian Peninsula (Western Europe) and Isidore of Seville consolidated this mistake. Modern scholarship has identified the biblical Tubal with Tabal, an Anatolian state and region mentioned in Assyrian sources. Tabal was a post-Hittite Luwian state in Asia Minor in the 1st millennium BC. Its neighbours, the Mushki, are traditionally associated with Meshech. Some historians further connect Tabal and Tubal with the tribe on the Black Sea coast later known to the Greeks as Tibareni, although this connection is uncertain. The Tibareni and nearby tribes, the Chalybes (Khalib/Khaldi) and the Mossynoeci (Mossynoikoi in Greek), were sometimes considered the founders of metallurgy. The Greeks considered the Tibareni to be a Scythian people. Most reference books, following Flavius Josephus, identify Tubal in Ezekiel's time as an area that is now in Turkey. Many authors, following the Jewish historian Josephus (1st century AD), related the name to Iber- Caucasian Iberia. Concerning the question of the ethnic affinity of the population of Tubal, Josephus wrote: "Tobal gave rise to the Thobeles, who are now called Iberes" - Caucasian Iberia. This version was repeated by Patriarch Eustathius of Antioch, Bishop Theodoret, and others. However, Jerome, Isidore of Seville, and the Welsh historian Nennius stated another tradition that Tubal was ancestor to not only Iberians, but also the 'Italians' [i.e., Italic tribes] and 'Spanish' [who were also called Iberians]. A divergent tradition recorded by Hippolytus of Rome (3rd century) lists Tubal's descendants as the "Hettali" (or Thessalians in some later copies), while the Book of the Bee (c. 1222) states that he was progenitor of Bithynians. Tubal's sons are given different names in rabbinic sources.