The names of Genesis 10 as early and later readers placed them

Says Genesis 10 sets out Noah’s descendants “according to their clans, languages, lands, and nations” (Gen 10:20; cf. 10:5, 31). From Japheth’s line “the maritime peoples separated into their territories” (10:5; אִיֵּי הַגּוֹיִם, iyye haggoyim, “coastlands of the nations”).

Josephus names founders: “Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now called Galatians”, Magog the Scythians, “from Javan, Jonia, and all the Grecians, are derived”, Tharsus is Cilicia, Cethimus “possessed the island Cethima: it is now called Cyprus”, and Phut founded Libya. Pseudo-Jonathan gives Japheth’s “provinces” as “Afriki, and Germania, and Medi, and Makadonia, and Iatinia, and Asia, and Tharki”. Charles glosses Jubilees: “Cush = Ethiopia”, “Mizraim = Egypt”, “Put = Libya”. Keil takes Gomer as “most probably the tribe of the Cimmerians”, Javan as the Ionians and Togarmah as “the Armenians”, holds that “the connection with the Spanish Tartessus must be retained”, and grants “names which cannot be identified with absolute certainty”. Calvin finds it “a frivolous curiosity to seek for certain and distinct nations in each of these names”, and says Greece, Italy, Rhodes and Cyprus “are called islands by the Hebrews, because the sea interposed”. These are their identifications.

Uncertain Which identifications hold (Tarshish as Tartessus or Cilicia; Kittim as Cyprus; Caphtor as Crete, which Keil says “is not decisively proved”), and whether Havilah and Sheba (10:7, 28–29) and Lud (10:13, 22) are one people or two, are open. No lean is taken, and these identifications do not fix the meaning of Gen 10.