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
Tower of Babel 70) languages scattered from Babel are the Old Irish poem "Cu cen mathair" by Luccreth moccu Chiara (c. 600); the Irish monastic work "Auraicept na n-Éces"; "History of the Prophets and Kings" by the Persian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (c. 915); the Anglo-Saxon dialogue "Solomon and Saturn"; the Russian "Primary Chronicle" (c. 1113); the Jewish Kabbalistic work "Bahir" (1174); the "Prose Edda" of Snorri Sturluson (c. 1200); the Syriac "Book of the Bee" (c. 1221); the "Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum" (c. 1284; mentions 22 for Shem, 31 for Ham and 17 for Japheth for a total of 70); Villani's