Wives aboard Noah's Ark Noah's wife was one of his "own kindred" (). In the Book of Jubilees (160–150 BC) the names of the wives of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth are as follows: It adds that the three sons each built a city named after their wife. (written in the late 1st century AD) states that there were eight people on the Ark. According to the Sibylline Oracles, the wives of Shem, Ham and Japheth enjoyed fantastically long lifespans, living for centuries, while speaking prophecy to each generation they saw come and go. According to the preface of the "Oracles", the Sibyl author
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