Genesis 10 - An Origin Story

Genesis 10 is another origin story from Genesis to explain the world of the author's time. Because all the earth was destroyed by the Flood, the world had to be repopulated by the sons of Noah: Japheth, Ham & Shem.

The sons of Japheth turned out to be the maritime tribes, each with their own language.

The sons of Shem turned out to be the Semitic tribes.

The sons of Ham turned out to be a pretty illustrious bunch in the Ancient Orient. Ham's sons were Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan. Cush's son was named Nimrod and Nimrod was a very busy boy. Nimrod established Babylon, Uruk, Akkad, Kalneh, Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen.

Another interesting point about the sons of Ham are that the Philistines are a direct descendant of Ham. Ham gave birth to Egypt, Egypt produced the Kasluhites and from the Kasluhites came the Philistines.

Obviously Genesis 10 isn't an exhaustive record of where some pretty powerful Empires and city-states came from. However, it does give some insight into the way that the Hebrews of the time saw their world. First, it is very Hebraic-Centric. All of the mighty nations around them came from a Jewish patriarch, Noah. That doesn't necessarily make it wrong, but it might be a bit incomplete. Obviously, my religious slant comes into a bit of play here, but an open-minded investigation has to at least consider the possibility that while this is by no means a "here it is" factual representation of the whole history of the Ancient Near East, there might be some validity to the description. If there was a catastrophic flood that wiped out many peoples or all people then these nations and city-states had to come from somewhere. I tend to think that there was some great flood because so many ancient civilizations reference it. So, coming from a Hebraic text it makes sense that there is a Hebraic origin to all of the surrounding peoples.

The story of Nimrod is an interesting one. Is the text suggesting that Nimrod founded all these cities, or that the descendants of Nimrod founded all of these cities? It would be interesting to research the origin stories from all of these cities to see what they all said for themselves. What would be the similarities between the origin stories? Maybe this is impossible, but maybe not.

Story material: The Life of Nimrod.