IT will be noticed that the order of Noah's sons is now changed. Japheth has the first place, when we come to genealogic survey; and this is even explained when we arrive at the line of Shem (ver. 21), who for spiritual reasons had been uniformly set in that place of honor hitherto, even Ham being otherwise put before Japheth. That many Jews, followed by others, should overlook the spirit of scripture, in their zeal for the progenitor of the chosen people, is easily understood; but some weighed the word with more care and less prejudice. So Nachmanides remarks that the enumeration begins with Yapheth, because he is the firstborn. It proceeds with Ham, although the youngest, and reserves Shem to the last, because the narrator wishes to enlarge on the history of his descendants. Rashi also, though admitting the doubtfulness of the phrase, decides similarly from comparing other scriptures— “From the words of the text I do not clearly know whether the elder applies to Shem or Japheth. But as subsequently we are informed that Shem was one hundred years old and begat Arpachshad two years after the deluge (chap. 11: 10), it follows that Yapheth was the elder. For Noah was five hundred years old when he began to have children, and the deluge took place in the six hundredth year of his age. His eldest son must consequently have been one hundred years old at the time of the deluge; whereas we are expressly informed that Shem did not arrive at that age till two years after the deluge.”
We next come to the family of the firstborn. “Sons of Japheth: Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras” (ver. 2).
Here is presented the distinct statement of what scholars have regarded as the greatest triumph of modern research in comparative philology. The Asiatic Society instituted in 1784 at Calcutta gave the great impulse, Sir W. Jones declaring that “no philologer could examine the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and Celtic had the same origin with the Sanskrit. The old Persian may be added to the same family.” Long after this scholars were still incredulous, clinging to the heathen notion of aboriginal races with their respective tongues, modified by the thought of a Hebrew primaeval source. Hence, in his prejudice for the honor of Greek and Latin, so cultivated and able a person as the late Professor Dugald Stewart (Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 3: 100-137) denied the reality of Sanskrit as a tongue of the past! and imputed its forgery! to unprincipled Brahmans whom he supposed to have founded it on the model of the old classic languages to deceive the world. F. Schlegel however, though more a genius than a scholar, had scanned the secret early in the century when he gave the name Indo-Germanic to the Aryan tongues of ancient Persia (the Zend), Greece, Italy, and Germany. He might have included quite as surely Celtic, Scandinavian, and Sclavonian under the wider generalization of Indo-European. They were the tongues of the Japhetic or, as moderns speak, the Aryan families.
It was the task of Franz Bopp to set the matter on a sound basis of proof, not only in his essay of 1816 and others, but in his Comparative Grammar of 1833-1852. Others, as Eugene Burnouf in France and Max. Muller in this country, have contributed not a little since.
Now if the Mosaic account had been given its just place, the fact would have been known all through, which is far more simple and to the believer more authoritative than inferences ever so plain and sure drawn from the comparison of these many languages. For it became evident that Sanskrit, old as it may be, is no more the parent of these tongues than Greek, but that they were all sisters, derived from a language earlier than any of them. Thus the tongues were seen to have a family relationship no less than the races of mankind; and phonetic changes follow according to observed principle instead of the more obvious derivatory resemblance. That they had (as Sanskrit proved) in the east a common source was for the learned a recent discovery. But in our verse we are told authoritatively that Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras were sons of Japheth. Thus were they all linked together, dialectically distinct, but of common origin. Nor is it difficult to distinguish those races in general.
Thus Gomer embraces the Cimbri, or the more modern Kelts, who appear to have come first of the Aryan family to Europe from their early seat in the north of India. At one time they had a considerable hold on northern Italy, as well as Spain, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and south of the Danube; but Belgium, Britain, Gaul, were long their own; and even now the Welsh and the Breton dialects (and till recently the Cornish) attest the fact, as also the closely related Erse, Gaelic, and Manx. It was a body of marauders from Gaul, chiefly the three tribes of Tectosages, Tolistobogii, and Trocmi, who overran Asia Minor and gave their name to Galatia where they settled: a consideration not without considerable interest to those who weigh the Epistle addressed to them by the apostle Paul. They seem to have migrated to Asia Minor on their route to Europe, before this final return and settlement for some in that quarter.
Next, Magog (cf. Ezek. 38:22Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, (Ezekiel 38:2)) quite as certainly is identified with the land we call Russia (a name derived from the river Volga, called in Greek 'Pa, as 'Pk is their Greek title). To these we must add Meshech and Tubal, races long known as Moschi and Tibareni: these are the Muskai and the Tuplai of the Assyrian inscriptions, who find their representatives in Moscow and Tobolsk. This is the Sclavonian branch.
Madai again is the unchanged name for the Medes and their country, with whom was the Persian race or Parsee, though Elam was Shemitic. Even to this day the Persian tongue, though debased by Arabic importations, is essentially Aryan, as the alder language, the Zend, was exclusively, and of course closely akin to Sanskrit.
Javan also is the proper Hebrew for Greece, as in Dan. 8 where we hear of the Medes and Persians. The less may be said as here no question can be. Details will follow in due course which confirm the general fact.
There remains but Tiras, which from the likeness of the name has been generally believed to mean the representative of the Thracians. Though they lacked cohesion and persevering purpose and so made little mark politically, it is well to remember that Herodotus set them next to the Indians as the most considerable nation in his day. The absence of the vowel “i” may be accounted for by its subscription in the Greek term. Still the question cannot be said to be settled, like all the others which precede.
The learning of the Greek was at fault at least as much as the tradition of the Jew. Scripture had not been weighed or trusted by either. And when the discovery of Sanskrit came, the issue was so startling that the erudite at first recoiled from that which not only brought in larger views, but shook to its foundations much they had been building up. The method of derivation alone had been trusted; whereas the newly ascertained facts pointed to parallel descents from a common parent in at least six great lines with their modern offspring. But this so revolutionized the entire groundwork as to show that erudition had been on a false scent, especially as to the inflexions and the conjugations of tongues ever so distant locally, which indicate affinity far more surely and thoroughly than isolated words. K. O. Müller was one of the first seriously to own the old position embarrassing; and G. Hermann before him had written sarcastically of those who sought light from “a sort of aurora borealis, reflecting the gleams of eastern illumination, and who, betaking themselves to the Brahmans and Ulphilas, endeavored to explain Greek and Latin by the help of languages which they only half understood.” K. A. Lobeck carried on the war in his celebrated works, Aglaophamus (1829), Paralipomena (1837) and Pathologic (1843), as Ellendt did in the Preface to his Lex. Sophocl. (1835). Yet the truth remains that God marks certain families of language in the great dispersion, and that with their specified differences they give sure evidence of a common kindred. The same grammatical framework belongs to them; and it differs totally too from that of the Shemitic tongues; as the varied Turanian group differs in this from them both.
The Jews, as is known, assign to Cush (translated Ethiopia ordinarily) not only his African seat but the opposite coast of Arabia and the southern shore of Asia generally into India. And this is well founded. But Arabia received also a large Shemitic population which gave character to their language; and this as we shall see not only from Joktan, Eber's son, but from Jokshan, Abraham's son by Keturah, and from Ishmael's twelve sons, with some of Esau's decendants. Even Homer (Od. 2: 23, 24) speaks of Ethiopians as divided into two parts, the most distant of men, some at the setting sun, and some at the rising. It was a Turanian race, which included the Turks, but not the Armenians who were rightly given to Japheth. But the Jews seem never to have realized the fact that the ancient Persian tongue (Zend) and that of northern and central India (Sanskrit) yield the fullest indication of Japhetic origin.