Jews have always known that the Table of Nations – “Noah’s Sons” – is not an actual family genealogy, but rather a catalog of peoples that make up Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. The list does not include a name for South African peoples beyond the African Cushite nation, nor a name for the First People/Nation of Europe (the Sardinians). That is, unless you include them into the sea-faring Phoenician people, but which the Sards predate. Nor is there a name for First Peoples/Nations of (the unknown) other continents – think Navajo, Cherokee, the Australian aboriginals, etc.
The nations represented by the son “Ham” is the two Semetic peoples known as Arabia and Egypt and the African Cushite people (which, by extension, represents all South Africans, as well). The nations represented by the son “Shem” are the Hittite people of the northwest where Turkey is located today (and, by extension, indigenous Europeans). The nations represented by the son “Japhet” are the indigenous peoples known today as Kurds, and the Persian, Turkish, and Aegean peoples (and, by extension, to India of today). In the center of all this is the Levant, proper – represented by the ancient name Canāan, which represents Moab, Edom, and Israel-Judea (the descendants of the Canāanites).
Now! How all this fits together in “Biblical” myths is the following:
The first creation story is a macro creation that occurs in six days, which includes the creation of humans upon the earth, male and female, together at the same time – all over the earth. Then, the Creator god takes a day off from creating to rest. Then, the second creation story begins and is a parallel micro creation. Now, this Creator god begins to create on his assigned portion of the continent (the Levant). It is here that the Levantine people are created to work the garden that this Creator god has produced on his land.
When Cain gets banished from the Levant for murdering his brother, he makes a successful life for himself with the humans outside the Levant that were created a few days early, and he makes a nation of himself with them.
Then, comes the Creator god’s fear that they, the pantheon of Canāanite gods, have made humans too much in their image! So, Babylon to confuse languages and the flood, because humans think too independently.
Now, the flood only occurs upon the continent known to these writers of our ancestral Torah myths. From Cush/Egypt to Turkey/Aegean is the flood upon the land.
And it is from here that we get the Table of Nations, wherein all known peoples are now direct descendants of Adam v’Chava (Eve, “life-giver”), through “Noah’s” family directly. The Table of Nations, Sons of Noah, are a representation of these nations upon the land around 1500 BCE.
It really helps to not let modern religions’ stain-glassed biased and agenda’ed takes on ANE Jewish literatures to get in the way of hearing the story as it was *meant to be heard* by the scribal redactors! Welcome to a new year of reading these literatures all over again – and have fun learning!
https://www.thetorah.com/article/decoding-the-table-of-nations-reading-it-as-a-map
Decoding the Table of Nations: Reading it as a Map
The key: Where was the author of the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 located?
————-
Did Noah and family save the Levantine peoples from a famine or from a flood? Noah’s name directly says that he is, by his birth and life, the end to a famine upon the land, for which “God” promises will never occur again (he grants pardon to Adam descendants).
Let’s review: “God” creates humans to *work* the soil of his Levant land and live comfortably within it (the comfort of Eden). Because, humans became like gods, knowing “good” and “evil,” “God” curses the land with an unending famine that makes cultivating difficult. “Noah,” then, breaks the curse of the famine, and “God” promises to never parch the land again with thirst (back to humans working the land in the comfort of Eden again).
But, there is more to this! For the scribes felt the need to include the Sumerian flood myth within the original Judean mythic narrative. They gave this Sumerian story of trouble between gods and humans, which was still circulating amongst the nations, a uniquely Jewish spin to the story – and redacted it into the Judean famine story, while preserving the original (as usual!).
Thus, Noah now saves the Middle East from both a long time famine upon the land *and* a flood so great in size upon the land that it literally ended the halted seasons that humans had been suffering under for many generations. Thanks to a flood, the Torah says, YHWH god will never curse the land with a famine again יומם ולילה, meaning “perpetually.” Humans will be able to cultivate and live upon the Levant, and the nations of Moab, Edom, Israel, and Judea will thrive upon the land.
” “by day and by night,” i.e. perpetually. Implied in YHWH’s promise is that, until that moment, summers had been cold, winters dry, seedtime and harvest perverted. This describes well a drought and famine, not a flood. ”
https://www.thetorah.com/article/noah-hero-of-the-great-primeval-famine
Noah, Hero of the Great Primeval Famine
Noah’s name expresses his father’s hope that Noah will bring comfort from the pain of the curse of the land, and before he plants his vineyard, he is called “a man of the land” (איש האדמה). These and other verses point to an older core narrative which spoke not of a flood but of a primeval famine that Noah brings to an end.
0 Comments