1903. J JASTROW — THE HAMITES AND SEMITES. 181 



natural successors of the Hebrew compilers and redactors would 

 have proceeded in the same way, only they would probably have 

 introduced the second source by the word kila, ''others say," and 

 would have summed up the situation by the usual exclamation, 

 ** Allah knows best " — which source is correct. 



How complete the Jahwistic Volkertafel originally was is, of 

 course, a question to which no definite answer can be given. If the 

 reference to Nimrod as the son of Cush (8*) belonged to the oldest 

 source in J, it would suffice as evidence that at least two branches — 

 Semites and Hamites — were included and this conclusion is con- 

 firmed by the inclusion of Canaan and Mizraim (13-15) but there 

 is no reference in any of the remaining parts of J to Japheth. This 

 may of course have been due to the omission of the Japheth gene- 

 alogy by the redactor who combined J with P, and if this be the 

 case the further conclusion would be justified that J contained 

 nothing of moment with regard to Japheth that was not already 

 mentioned in P. But besides the possibility that J did not con- 

 tain any genealogy of the descendants of Japheth — though in view 

 of the heading Gen. 9, 18 this is unlikely — there remains as an 

 alternative that Japheth may have been included by J under Shem. 

 There are some strong reasons for concluding that such was the 

 case in at least one of the sources worked up by the ''J " school 

 of narrators. Attention has long since been directed ^ to the cir- 

 cumstance that in the story of Noah's curse pronounced on his 

 youngest son (9, 25-27) which is attributed by GunkeP to J"", the 

 name of the son who is disgraced is Canaan, doomed to be ''a 

 servant of servants unto his brethren," and this is emphasized by a 

 triple repetition of the curse (verses 25, 26, 27), each time with 

 the name of Canaan. It follows accordingly that the three sons 

 according to what is evidently an earlier tradition are Shem,^ 

 Japheth and Canaan. In the poetical fragment of the curse, 

 Shem and Japheth are represented to be in close contact with each 

 other. Accepting with Gunkel,"* Griitz^s simple and striking 

 emendation of verse 26'', 



1 Se'e, e.g., Budde, Urgeschichte, p. 300 sq.y and the discussion of Gunkel 

 {^Coni, to Genesis, -pp. 71-76) and Holzinger (Genesis, pp. 91-93). 



2 Genesis, p. 71. 



3 Or perhaps Eber. See below, pp. 201 and 204. 



* Z. c, p. 78. The change proposed by Grafz merely involves an alteration 

 in the vowels of one word barukh ("blessed") for which Gratz suggests bdrekh 



