Japhetites Japhetites Japhetite (in adjective form Japhethitic or Japhetic) in Abrahamic religions is an obsolete historical term for the peoples supposedly descended from Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible. The other two sons of Noah, Shem and Ham, are the eponymous ancestors of the Semites and the Hamites, respectively. In medieval ethnography, the world was believed to have been divided into three large-scale racial groupings, corresponding to the three classical continents: the Semitic peoples of Asia, the Hamitic peoples of Africa and the Japhetic peoples of Europe. The term has been used in modern times as
Levi ben Japheth of which, covering the first ten chapters of Joshua, still exists (Brit. Mus. Or. No. 308). Steinschneider believes it possible that Levi was also the author of the short commentary on Psalms found in the British Museum (No. 336). According to Ali ben Sulaiman, Levi made a compendium of the lexicon "Agron" of David ben Abraham; however, this is contested by Abu al-Faraj, who asserts that the compendium was prepared by David himself. Levi ben Japheth Levi ben Japheth (Heb. Levi ben Yafet ha-Levi; Arab. Abu Sa'id Levi ibn Yafat was a Karaite Jewish scholar who flourished, probably at Jerusalem,