1904.] JASTROW — THE HAMITES AND SEMITES. 173 



THE HAMITES AND SEMITES IN THE TENTH CHAP- 

 TER OF GENESIS. 



BY MORRIS JASTROW, JR. 



{Read Ajyril 4, 1903.) 

 I. 



The loth chapter of Genesis is generally admitted to be one of 

 the most remarkable but also one of the most puzzling documents 

 of antiquity. Scholars have been engaged ever since the days of 

 the Talmud' and of Eusebius in attempts to identify the nations 

 named in the chapter and in endeavors to determine the point of 

 view from which the division of nations has been made and to 

 ascertain the character of the underlying ethnological and ethno- 

 graphical scheme, if there be one in the chapter. Modern research, 

 aided to a certain extent by ancient tradition, has succeeded in 

 identifying a large number of the nations enumerated,'^ but the 

 attempts to discover any system in the grouping of the nations have 

 failed chiefly because of the erroneous assumption that an ancient 

 document could give evidence either of scientific accuracy or of 

 ethnological finesse. An adequate conception of what really con- 

 stituted a nation lay beyond the mental horizon of the ancient 



For a partial bibliography see DilJmann's Genesis (Engl, transl. of sixth ed., 

 Edinburgh, 1 897), p. 325. For the Talmudical views and identifications see 

 Neubauer, La Geographie du Talmud (Paris, 1868), pp. 421-429. 



2 See for recent expositions the commentaries of Gunkel (1901), Holzinger 

 (1899), Strack (1894), and Driver (1903) to the chapter in question; also 

 Schrader, Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament (London, 1885), Vol. 

 i, pp. 61-103 ; and Glaser, Skizze der Geographie tind Geschichte Arabiens, ii 

 (Berhn, 1890), chaps. 26 to 28. The chapter in Alfred Jeremias' Das Alte 

 Testament if?i Lichte des Alten Orients (Leipzig, 1904), pp. 145-170, is to be 

 especially recommended as the latest summary of accepted identifications and 

 because of its valuable supplementary statements, and suggestions toward the 

 solution of the many problems in the loth chapter of Genesis. A serious defect, 

 however, of Jeremias' treatment of the chapter is his failure to take sufficiently 

 into account its composite character, consisting, as it does, of two distinct docu- 

 ments together with many glosses and insertions. Thus, what he says about the 

 supposed "■ Arabian " origin of Nimrod (p. 158) falls to the ground if verses 8-12 

 are recognized as an addition that stands in no connection with verse 7 ; nor 

 does Jeremias' general view of the Volkertafel as a unit Cp. 145) commend 

 itself in the light of the critical analysis of the chapter. 



