THE BIBLE PEDIGREE OF THE NATIONS OF TEE WORLD. 127 



ascribed to him an immediate parents Heaven and Earth, which 

 is just what after the lapse of ages would naturally be said of 

 any one of the three patriarchs who first after the Hood began 

 to repeople the world ; and they ascribed to him as consort a 

 daughter of the Ocean, which was more natural still, seeing that 

 in the ark he had lived with his wife on the bosom of the 

 Ocean all the great while that it lay spread over the older 

 world. That Noah, under the name of Deukalion, should be 

 said to have been the grandson of Japhet instead of being his 

 father, will not greatly surprise us, when we remember the vast 

 gap in time (about 1500 years) that severs the Flood and the 

 Dispersion from the earliest Greek writings in which we can 

 read such traditions — those of Homer, which are placed roundly 

 in 850 B.C., and those of Hesiod, which are fixed at about 735 

 B.C., and when we further perceive tlie legends to be so jumbled 

 that sometimes Klymene is called the wife of Japetos, some- 

 times of his nephew Helios (the Sun) and sometimes of his son 

 Prometheus. That the Grecian Noah and the Grecian Japhet, 

 on the other hand, come so close together in genealogy points 

 to an original agreement between the Greek narrative and the 

 Bible. 



Leaving Japhet himself, let us now look at his sons and 

 named grandsons in detail. 



The sacred text runs (in verses 2 and 3) : — 



" The sons of Japheth ; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and 

 Javan, and Tubal, audi Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of 

 Gomer ; Ashkenaz, and Eiphath, and Togarmah.""^ 



Herodotus (who wrote his historo-geography about 450 B.C.) 

 tells us of a nation called the Kimmerioi, who had formerly 

 dwelt along the northern shores of the Pontos Euxinos, or 

 Black Sea, and in the peninsula which we now call the Crimea, 

 but who had been driven from their seats by the Scythians, 

 and, passing round the eastern end of that sea, had overrun 

 Western Asia in the reign of Ardys, king of Lydia (674 to 626 

 B.c.)t and had actually taken his capital, Sardis, near the 

 ^gean Sea, but were at length driven out of Asia by his 

 grandson Alyattes (615 to 559 b.c.).J: 



* In the original Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Thubhal Meshekh, 

 Thiras, Ashkenaz, Eiphath, and Thogarmah. The names always recur 

 with this spelling, except that. Thubal is sometimes written with long 21 

 or short a and thrice with plain T, that Ashkenaz is written Ashkenaz in 

 Jeremiah and Thogarmah TOgarm-ah twice in Ezekiel, and that Eiphath is 

 also read Diphath ("7 for hi 1 Chron. i (but Josephms has Eiphath). 



t Her. IV, 11, and I, 15. + Her. I, 16. 



