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
Shem Tov ibn Shem Tov Shem Tov ibn Shem Tov Shem Tov ibn Shem Tov (c. 1390 – c. 1440) (Hebrew: שם טוב אבן שם טוב) was a Spanish kabbalist and fierce opponent of rationalistic philosophy. Tov was president of a yeshivah in Spain. He lived about 1390-1440 (Gedaliah ibn Yaḥya, "Shalshelet ha-Ḳabbalah," ed. Venice, p. 62b). He was the father of Joseph ibn Shem-Tov and Isaac ibn Shem-Tov. He wrote: "Sefer ha-Emunot," on religious dogmas (Ferrara, 1556); "Sefer Yesodot" (perhaps only another title for the preceding); a commentary on the "Pesach Haggadah" (Steinschneider, "Cat. Munich," 264, 3; idem, "Cat. Bodl." col. 99). The "Sefer