Lud, son of Shem Lud, son of Shem Lud (Hebrew: ) was a son of Shem and grandson of Noah, according to "Genesis" 10 (the "Table of Nations"). Lud should not be confused with the Ludim, said there to be descended from Mizraim, a son of Ham. The descendants of Lud are usually, following Josephus, connected with various Anatolian peoples, particularly Lydia (Assyrian "Luddu") and their predecessors, the Luwians; cf. Herodotus' assertion ("Histories" i. 7) that the Lydians were first so named after their king, Lydus (Λυδός). However, the chronicle of Hippolytus of Rome (c. 234 AD) identifies Lud's descendants with the "Lazones" or
Japheth ever mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, leading scholars to suppose that the history is a late composition, attached to Genesis to serve as an introduction to that book and to the Torah. Japheth (in Hebrew, Yaphet) is a transliteration of the Greek Iapetos, the ancestor of the Hellenic peoples. His sons and grandsons associate him with the geographic area of the eastern Mediterranean and Asia - Ionia/Javan, Rhodes/Rodanim, Cyprus/Kittim, and other points in the region of Greece and Asia Minor - approximating to one of the three kingdoms into which the generals of Alexander the Great divided his empire