Japheth the sons of Noah following the Flood, beginning with the descendants of Japheth: The Book of Genesis is the first of the five books of the Torah, that accounts of Israel's origins as a people. Scholars increasingly see this as a product of the Achaemenid Empire (probably 450-350 BCE), although some would place its production in the Hellenistic period (333-164 BCE) or even the Hasmonean dynasty (140–37 BCE). The story of Japheth and his brothers may be even more recent: almost none of the persons, places and stories in the first eleven chapters of Genesis (called the Primeval history) are
Japheth as having been composed in stages beginning with the time of Solomon, when the Philistines still existed (they vanish from history after the Babylonian conquest of Canaan). However, Genesis 10:14 identifies their ancestor as Ham rather than Japheth. For those who take the genealogies of Genesis to be historically accurate, Japheth is commonly believed to be the father of Europeans. The link between Japheth and the Europeans stems from Genesis 10:5, which states: According to that book, Japheth and his two brothers formed the three major races: William Shakespeare's play "Henry IV, Part II" contains a wry comment about people