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CHAPTER II. - THE NOAHIC PROGRAM.
THE voice of prophecy was not altogether
silent in the intervals between the seven successive commencements of
human history of which we have spoken. From time to time it gave utterance
to isolated predictions such, for example, as that of Enoch about the
coming of the Lord with ten thousands of His saints to judge the wickeda
very glorious prophecy, yet one which had in view exhortation and warning
rather than definite prediction. It was no chart of future events, it
did not foretell the course of human history, but only the moral aspects
of its final issues. As such detached and hortatory prophecies do not
form parts of the program we have to consider, we do not pause to dwell
on this utterance of ‘the seventh from Adam, ‘ who was translated that
he should not see death.
With the second father of the human family the definitely predictive element reappears. Not only was the approaching
end of the antediluvian age made known to Noah not only was he acquainted
beforehand with the purpose of God to destroy by a flood the evil generation
which had corrupted the earth but he was informed also of the exact
chronological distance of the deluge. It was not to overtake the world
for a hundred and twenty years: thus far would the longsuffering of
God wait, if men would perchance be warned and repent. This is the first
chronologic prophecy in the Bible, and it indicated in advance the
end of the antediluvian age. We shall see, as we proceed, that all the
other chronologic predictions of Scripture similarly throw their light
forward to the close of the
different ages to which they respectively belong.
Moved with fear the fear born of faith
Noah prepared an ark to the saving of his house, and while doing so
acted as ‘a preacher of righteousness’ to the evil generation in whose
midst his lot, was cast. His knowledge of the approaching end of the
age in which he lived did not make him idle, impracticable, speculative,
or despairing; it roused him rather to preach with power and labor with
diligence, and it separated him in spirit from the wickedness, the worldliness,
and the unbelief of his age. None of the wicked understood, believed,
or heeded his warning words. As decade after decade of the last century
of the old world rolled away, its millions remained as full as ever
of carnal confidence and unbelieving indifference. They were occupied
exclusively with earth and its interests agricultural, commercial, social
right up to the hour when Noah and his family entered into the ark.
The Divine Hand that shut him in, opened at the same time the windows
of heaven and broke up the fountains of the great deep; and though its
approach had been revealed by God more than a century previously, and
though His righteous servant had not failed to proclaim to men the counsel
and purpose of the Almighty, ‘they knew not until the flood came and
took them all away.’
When Noah and his family emerged into
the new world, they were wiser than our first parents in paradise. Adam,
gazing around him in Eden, may well have inwardly exclaimed as to God,
‘He can create’, but Noah, doing the same from Ararat, must surely have
added, ‘He can destroy.’ Sorely
must the second father of the human race have needed the light of promise
and of prophecy at the solemn crisis when he and his stood amid the
wreck of the old world the sole survivors of a perished race. Events
had forced upon them a vivid realization of the solemn fact that the
great Creator would actually destroy the works of His own hands, rather
than permit the victory of moral evil. It was a terrible revelation,
for did not they too belong to the sinful race? What was to be their
future and that of their posterity? Must they anticipate a recurrence
of the late awful catastrophe? Oh, how they needed the sure word of
prophecy as a lamp to shine in the dark place where they stood! The
wrath of God seemed to have recalled His gift of the earth to the sons
of men. Dared they take possession of this new earth as Adam had done
of the old? Evil might and probably would fill the world afresh, and
what then was their tenure to be?
Never did trembling mariners launching
on a stormy and unknown ocean more need the compass, pilot, and daylight,
than did the prisoners of the ark when they first alighted on Ararat
need the guidance of Divine promise. And hence, as might be expected,
the grace that had saved speedily reassured their fearful hearts: God
set His bow of promise in the cloud, and prophecy witnessed the reflection
of her beams of light from the retiring waters. A covenant of mercy
gave them a new charter of natural blessings, and a new grant of dominion
in the earth. A second time was the human family commanded to multiply
and replenish all its waste places. The word of promise soothed the
fears of the rescued; no recurrence of a deluge was to be apprehended.
Seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night,
were not again to be interrupted in their natural sequence; and four
thousand years have proved God’s faithfulness to His promise. The Noahic
covenant is our present lease of the earth. According to its terms,
God legislates for the winds and waves, the sunbeams and the storm clouds,
so as to secure to man the indispensable order of the seasons.
‘The great circle of the heavens
apparently described by the sun every year (owing to our revolution
round that body) is called the ecliptic... The plane of the earth’s equator, extended towards
the stars, marks out the equator of the heavens, the plane of which
is inclined to the ecliptic at an angle... known as the
obliquity of the ecliptic. It is this inclination which gives rise
to the vicissitudes of the seasons during our annual journey round the
sun... The obliquity of the ecliptic is now slowly decreasing at the
rate of about 48’ in 100 years. ‘It will not always, however, be on
the decrease; for before it can have altered 1½ N, the cause
which produces this diminution must act in a contrary direction, and
thus tend to increase the obliquity. Consequently the change of obliquity
is a phenomenon in which we are concerned only as astronomers, since
it can never become sufficiently great to produce any sensible alteration
of climate on the earth’s surface. A consideration of this remarkable
astronomical fact cannot but remind us of the promise made to man after
the deluge, that ‘while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, cold
and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.’
That the perturbation of obliquity consisting merely of an oscillatory
motion of the plane of the ecliptic will not permit of its inclination
ever becoming very great or very small, is an
astronomical discovery in perfect unison with the declaration made
to Noah, and explains how effectually the Creator has ordained the
means for carrying out His promise, though the way it was to be
accomplished remained a hidden secret until the
great discoveries of modern science placed it within human comprehension.’
‘(Chambers’ ’ Handbook of
Descriptive Astronomy, ‘ p. 73.)
The promises and predictions that followed
the flood were of a cheering and merciful nature, and exactly calculated
to restore in the hearts of those who had witnessed the evil effects
of the fall, and seen a guilty race whelmed in the darkness and death
of the deluge, hope, courage, and confidence in God. No threats, no
conditions were attached to the gracious covenant of which the rainbow
is the beautiful and abiding token. It should be noted here that the
promise of redemption was not
renewed in the Noahic covenant, because nothing that had happened had
in the slightest degree invalidated it. It stood as before; and Noah
and his family evinced their acquaintance with it by offering sacrifice.
They doubtless prized it in the new earth as they had ever done in the
old, for the dark background of judgment and perdition must have made
more precious than ever the hope of redemption and deliverance.
We must not pause to dwell at any length
on these early Noahic predictions, the fulfillment of which has been
a matter of experience to the human race for four thousand years. We
must pass on rather to those given at a later point in the life of the
patriarch Noah, which partake more of the nature of a
program of the world’s history-
Just as it was subsequently granted
to Jacob and to Moses to foresee and to foretell the future of the different
tribes of Israel, so to Noah, the second father of the human race, it
was given towards the close of his long life of nine hundred and fifty
years, to foresee and foretell the future of the
races that should descend from him, by
whom the whole earth should in due time be overspread. We have no means
of fixing the exact date of the very remarkable prophecy in which he
does this.#Ge
9:24-29. Owing to
its position as the first recorded incident after the flood, it is often
taken for granted that it followed closely upon that event; but there
is really no ground for this assumption. It is the only
incident mentioned in the subsequent life of the patriarch; indeed,
with the exception of the death of Noah, the only incident recorded
between the flood and the building of Babela period of many centuries.
Its place in the narrative is therefore no
guide to its actual date, nor to its position in the life of Noah.
If it occurred as early as is generally supposed, then Noah’s grandson
Canaan is mentioned before he was born, or had done good or evil; which
is most unlikely. On the other hand, if it shortly preceded the event
next following in the record the death of Noah then the parallel with
the cases of Jacob and Moses is close, and an additional solemnity and
importance attaches to the prediction.
Further, this memorable utterance of
the great preacher of righteousness must never be regarded as the imprecation
of a curse and the bestowal of blessings, much less as if the words
had been prompted by any angry or vindictive feeling on Noah’s part
against his youngest son. A thoughtless reading of the narrative might
produce such an impression on the mind, but reflection will show it
to be an unworthy and wholly groundless one. The words were, as their
fulfillment proves, an inspired prophecy, not an imprecation the future
of each race is not so much assumed as foretold; and
the good or bad destiny in each case is connected not so much with the
moral character of Shem, Ham, and Japhet personally, as with that of
their descendants in distant ages, all whose deeds lay even then naked
and open before the eyes of the revealing Spirit of God. The incident
in connection with which the prophecy was given was not in any sense
the cause of the destinies declared, though it gave occasion to the utterance of the prediction.
The prophet speaks of races, not of individuals, as Isaac spoke of the
future of Jacob’s and Esau’s descendants, rather than of their own personal
experience. The portion foreseen for each was not merited by the parents’
conduct only or mainly, but by the character and conduct of their unborn
posterity. Such oracles are far removed from the nature of private fortune-telling;
they are utterances given by inspiration of God. As Bishop Newton well
observes on this passage: ‘Noah was not prompted by wine or by resentment,
for neither the one nor the other could infuse the knowledge of futurity
or inspire him with the prescience of events which happened hundreds,
nay thousands, of years afterwards. But God, willing to manifest His
superintendence and government of the world, endued Noah with the spirit
of prophecy, and enabled him in some measure to disclose the purposes
of His providence towards the future races of mankind.’
The points emphasized in Noah’s foreview
of human history are few but important. The predictions are brief and
clearly expressed. There is no indistinctness about them, no vague wording
which might apply equally well to any course of events. Like the predictions
in paradise, the sentences though simple contain a world of meaning,
are all inclusive in their scope, and reach right on to the end. On
the other hand, they differ from them widely in their subject-matter,
dealing not with the moral issues, fundamental physical experiences,
or final results of human history, but rather with the great
ethnological divisions of the race, with the distinctive fortunes of
its three main sections, and with their relations to each other.
The program of Noah presents the future
not of the race of mankind as a whole as did the Adamic foreview; nor
that of individual kingdoms and nations as do subsequent programs but
that of the three main races into which mankind
has been divided since the flood. The destiny foreseen for each race is sharply defined, and widely distinct from that foreseen
for the other two. Thousands of years of human history have elapsed
since this wonderful prophetic utterance: if therefore the prophecy
has been falsified by the event, it will be futile to deny it; and if,
on the other hand, it has been fulfilled, there can be no mistake about
the fact, which must be capable of full demonstration.
In our Authorized Version the prediction
runs thus ‘And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall
he be unto his brethren.
‘And he said, Blessed be the Lord God
of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
‘God shall enlarge Japhet, and he shall
dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.’ {#Ge
9:25, 26, 27}
Now the first question which arises
in considering this prediction is, Why is Canaan, the fourth son of
Ham, mentioned instead of his father, whose gross misconduct, evincing
his depraved moral character, afforded the occasion for the prophecy?
There is some ground to think that we have not here the true original
reading of the passage, that a copyist’s error has obscured it, and
that the two words, ‘Ham abi’ (Ham the father of),
have been omitted. Some copies of the Septuagint
and the Arabic Version give these words as the text. Their insertion
would certainly give the passage far more internal consistency, as well
as bring it into fuller harmony with other Scriptures. As it stands,
it does not include all the posterity of Noah, but leaves entirely unmentioned
nearly one-third of it that of all the sons of Ham, with the exception
of Canaan. Bishop Newton says, in speaking of this passage;
‘Hitherto we have explained the prophecy
according to the present copies of our Bible ; but if we were to correct the text, as we should that of any classic author in a like case, the whole might he made easier and plainer.
‘Ham, the father of Canaan.’ is mentioned in the preceding part of the
story; and how then came the person of a sudden to be changed into Canaan?
The Arabic version in these three verses hath ‘the father of Canaan,
‘ instead of ‘Canaan.’ Some copies of the Septuagint likewise have Ham
instead of Canaan, as if Canaan were a corruption of the text. Vatablus
and others by ‘Canaan’ understand ‘the father of Canaan, ‘ which was
expressed twice before. And if we regard the metre, this line, ‘Cursed
he Canaan, ‘ is much shorter than the rest, as
if something was deficient. May we not suppose therefore that the
copyist by mistake wrote only ‘Canaan, ‘ instead of’ Ham the father
of Canaan, ‘ and that the whole passage was originally thus ‘And Ham
the father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two
brethren without.... And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his
younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Ham the father of Canaan; a servant of
servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the
Lord God of Shem; and Ham the
father of Canaan shall be servant to them. God shall enlarge Japhet;
and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Ham
the father of Canaan shall be servant to them.’
‘By this reading all the three sons
of Noah are included in the prophecy, whereas otherwise Ham, who was
the offender, is excluded. or is only punished in one of his children.
Ham is characterized as ‘the father of Canaan’ particularly, for the
greater encouragement of the Israelites, who were going to invade the
land of Canaan; and when it is said, ‘Cursed he Ham the father of Canaan;
a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren, ‘ it is implied
that his whole race was devoted to servitude, but particularly
the Canaanites. Not that this was to take effect immediately, but was
to be fulfilled in process of time, when they should forfeit their liberties
by their wickedness.’ ’Newton
on the Prophecies, ‘ p. ii.
There is a possibility that Ham alone
was mentioned in the original prophecy, and that the allusion to his
being ‘the father of Canaan’ was introduced by Moses in view of the
approaching invasion of the land of Canaan by the Israelites, to encourage
them hopefully to undertake the subjugation of its seven nations, by
recalling the fact that it had long since been predicted that the descendants
of Ham, including these wicked Canaanites, should be their servants.
But that the prophecy spoke of the Canaanites exclusively is not likely,
or even credible. As it correctly predicts the future of all
the descendants of Ham, not that of those of his fourth son merely or
mainly, it is most improbable that Canaan alone was mentioned.
It is true that in the parallel prophecy
of Moses the name of Joseph does not occur, but those of his sons Ephraim
and Manasseh do: so that the prophecy of Moses covered the entire posterity
of Jacob. Moreover, it was Ham’s misconduct, not Canaan’s, that was
the occasion, though not the causeof the delivery of this oracle. How
highly improbable then that his name should be omitted from it! The
Jews have a tradition that it was the young Canaan who first saw his
grandfather’s exposed condition, and called his father to join him in
ridiculing and mocking the aged patriarch. There is, however, nothing
but traditional evidence for this story; and even if it were true, it
would account only for a mention of both father and son, and not for
the exclusive naming of the son, as in our text. Whichever view be taken
as to the text, it makes however no difference as to the fulfillment of the prophecy. If the original prediction was worded
as in our version, it has been abundantly fulfilled, as we shall show;
and if Ham was mentioned as well as, or instead of, his son, it has
been fulfilled still more conspicuously on a wider sphere and through
a longer period. We lean to the view that all the three sons of Noah
were mentioned, and that thus the future of the entire human race was
outlined in this second program of the world’s history.
It contains several distinct points.
First, it implies that each of Noah’s sons would become the father of a
race. This might have been otherwise, as one of them might, like Abel,
have been cut off and have left no issue. Secondly,
it states that the descendants
of Ham were to be servants to their brethren. Servile subjection, including
various forms of slavery, would be their specially characteristic portion,
though there might, of course, be exceptions to the rule, which would
only tend to prove its general prevalence; that the race would be servants
of servants to their brethren is thrice over asserted. Thirdly,
it states that a peculiarly
sacred character would be connected with the descendants of Shem, that
Jehovah would be in some special sense the Lord God of Shem. The passage
must not be read as an invocation, as it sometimes is, as if it were
‘Blessed of Jehovah my God be Shem.’ It is an ascription of praise,
‘Blessed be Jehovah-Elohim of Shem!’ implying that the one living and
true God would be the God of Shem’s descendants, or, as Luther puts
it, that Shem should enjoy ‘a most abundant blessing, reaching its highest
point in the promised seed.’ The name Shem means ‘renown’; and the prophecy
shows that the exaltation and renown of his seed would depend rather
on spiritual and religious advancement than on mere political prosperity.
That it is the race of Shem,
and not he himself personally, that is contemplated by the prophecy,
is intimated in the plural pronoun, ‘Canaan shall be their servant, ‘ not his servant. Ham’s descendants would be in tributary
subjection to Shem’s descendants. Fourthly,
it is stated that the race
of Japhet, Noah’s eldest son, whose name means ‘the one that spreads
abroad, ‘ should be the most widely diffused and, as regards material
blessings, the most prosperous of the three; that God would greatly
multiply it, and open to it vast spheres. The words have been rendered,
‘God will concede an ample space’ to Japhet’s posterity, or ‘make wide
room’ for them. So great was to be this enlargement of Japhet that his
descendants would ultimately not only occupy all their own tents, or
dwelling-places, but inhabit also some of those belonging to Shem; and
though it is not distinctly stated in the prediction, yet there is nothing
in the words to exclude the thought that the enlargement of Japhet may
include vast intellectual
as well as material development, and that his descendants were to dwell
in the tents of Shem in this sense also, i.e.
to enter into their spiritual and religious inheritance. Japhet’s race,
like Shem’s, was also to hold in subjection Hamitic races.
Thus the patriarch, gazing down the
dim vista of ages then unborn, and extending his view even to our own
day, beheld with eyes opened by the revealing Spirit, the future of
his threefold family. He who in retrospect could recall the history
of the first human race, with its tragic close, was allowed in prospect
to foresee the main outline of the fortunes of the second family of
man his own family. And what did he foresee? For the Semitic races religious
supremacy and sacred renown; for Japhet’s posterity vast enlargement and political supremacy; and for the descendants
of Ham, the father of Canaan, servile
degradation.
We must not omit to note, in passing,
the important practical lesson taught by the fact that the evil races
for whom the doom of perpetual servitude is foreseen are the descendants
of a bad man. A straw shows which way the stream
runs; the incident here recorded of Ham is trivial in one sense, yet
it clearly shows what manner of man he was destitute of the fear of
God, without natural affection, gratitude, reverence, compassion, self-respect,
or decency; full of heartless levity, addicted to coarse amusement and
brutal vulgarity; in short, a bad son who could never make a good father.
It is a solemn thought for parents that they cannot help transmitting
to their offspring of the most distant generations, their own moral
character as well as their own physical features.
Now it is evident that before we can
trace the fulfillment of this prophecy, we must to some extent divide the races of mankind, both ancient
and modern, into ethnic groups, distinguish the families of nations
apart each from the other, ascertain which sprang from Shem, which from
Ham, and which from Japhet. The question consequently arises, Are there
in existence such materials as enable us to disentangle the complex
ramifications of the genealogical tree of the human race during the
last four thousand years, so as to arrive at satisfactory conclusions
on this subject? If not, it must of course be impossible to demonstrate
that the Noahic program has been fulfilled.
The reply is, There are, in the good providence of God, ample materials in existence for this
preliminary inquiry a rich and ever-increasing abundance; and so well
have these materials been utilized of late by scholars that the main
questions connected with this difficult problem are practically set
at rest. Many a minor point may still remain obscure. There are certain
tribes and peoples, both of ancient and modern times, whose ethnic relations
may be doubtful, but the outline is clearly ascertained, and details
do not affect our argument. The sources of information are: the wonderful
genealogical table in the tenth of Genesis, and other Bible notices
on the subject; the statements and tables of profane historians and
other ancient writers, such as Herodotus, Strabo, Josephus, etc.; the
hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions on monumental remains and other
antiquities, brought to light and deciphered by modern archeological
research in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere; the ever-multiplying
observations and investigations of modern explorers and travellers into
the languages, laws, customs, traditions, and ethnic affinities of newly
visited tribes and peoples; and last, but not least, the very important
and interesting, though somewhat bewildering, young science of language, which, though almost the youngest of the sciences,
is yet one which has already secured great acquisitions of knowledge,
read some of the puzzling riddles of antiquity and ethnology, and, like
all other true science, confirmed in a wonderful way the veracity of
Scripture. We must gather and focus a few of the rays proceeding from
these various sources on the point we have in hand.
The tenth chapter of Genesis the most
ancient genealogical table in existence a wonderful and profoundly interesting
document, is our first guide. It is a book in itself, the book of ‘the
generations of the sons of Noah’; and short as it is, it contains more
important matter than many a bulky volume. A careful study of it will
show that the first five verses give us the names of the seven sons
of Japhet and their descendants; the next, and by far the longest section
(verses 6 to 21), mentions the four sons of Ham and the nations which
sprang from them, including the Canaanites; while the third and closing
section enumerates the five sons of Shem with their posterity, including
that family descended from Eber, from which Abraham the Hebrew was ultimately
called out. The great value of this ancient record in our present investigation
is, that it links the three races of mankind with the geographical spheres
which they originally occupied, and from which their first migrations
took place.
‘It is impossible to exaggerate the
importance of this ethnological table. Whether regarded from a geographical,
a political, or a theocratical standpoint, ‘this unparalleled list,
the combined result of reflection and deep research, ‘ is ‘no less valuable
as a historical document than as a lasting proof of the brilliant capacity
of the Hebrew mind.’ Undoubtedly the earliest effort of the human intellect
to exhibit in a tabulated form the geographical distribution of the
human race, it bears unmistakable witness in its own structure to its
high antiquity, occupying itself least with the Japhetic tribes which
were furthest from the theocratic center, and were latest in attaining
to historic eminence, and enlarging with much greater minuteness of
detail on those Hamitic nations, the Egyptian, Canaanite, and Arabian,
which were soonest developed, and with which the Hebrews came most into
contact in the initial stages of their career. It describes the rise
of states, and, consistently with all subsequent historical and archeological
testimony, gives the prominence to the Egyptian or Arabian Hamites,
as the first founders of empires. It exhibits the separation of the
Shemites from the other sons of Noah, and the budding forth of the line
of promise in the family of Arphaxad. While thus useful to the geographer,
the historian, the politician, it is specially serviceable to the theologian,
as enabling him to trace the descent of the woman’s seed, and to mark
the fulfillments of Scripture prophecies concerning the nations of the
earth, In the interpretation of the names which are here recorded, it
is obviously impossible in every instance to arrive at certainty, in
some cases the names of individuals being mentioned, while in others
it is as conspicuously those of peoples.”’The
Pulpit Commentary, ‘ p. 156.
From this table we learn
1. That the descendants of Japhet’s seven
sons peopled ‘the isles of the Gentiles, ‘ in which expression not islands
only are included, but all those countries from which visitors would
approach Palestine by sea the coasts of the Mediterranean and the adjoining
maritime provinces, the shores of the Black Sea, and of the Caspian,
the Levant, Archipelago, and Adriatic.
2. That the four sons of Ham settled in
the more southern portions of the then known world in Southern Babylonia
round the head of the Persian Gulf, in Southern Arabia, in Abyssinia,
Ethiopia, Egypt, and other parts of Northern Africa; and especially
that Nimrod, the first founder of imperialism, was descended from Cush,
Ham’s eldest son, as well as that the seven nations afterwards expelled
by the Jews from the land of promise were the offspring of Canaan, his
youngest son.
3. That the five sons of Shem were ancestors
of the Syrians, Lydians, Elamites, Arabs, and Hebrews.
Now here we have, as we have said, three
ethnic groups linked with three distinct sets of localities; the young
nations are mentioned in connection with their respective habitations.
In other words, the primary geographical distribution of the descendants
of the sons of Noah is plainly indicated in this genealogical table
of his posterity. Profane history, as far as it has anything at all
clear to say on the subject, adds its confirmation to these statements,
and modern discovery and research are producing every year fresh proof
of their accuracy.
But Noah’s predictions about his threefold
posterity have less to do with their primitive settlements than with
their permanent fortunes. The question we must therefore consider next
is, whether it is possible clearly to connect these original nations
and peoples, first, with their representatives in the ages of subsequent
history, and secondly, with their descendants now living? This will
evidently be no easy matter. Peoples, tribes, and nations flourish for
a time and then fade from view, to reappear afterwards under other names
in other connections, and possibly in distant spheres. Nation rises
against nation, conquest leads to the subjection of one people to another,
to the merging of many into one, or again to the breaking up of one
into many. Such political changes have introduced great complexity into
the mutual relations of the different peoples of the earth; so that
in the course of ages the problem of their ethnic affinities becomes
of necessity an exceedingly difficult one. Unless, however, it can to
some extent be solved, it is evident that we can never discern the fulfillment
of the Noahic program.
We ask then, Have historians been able
to do for the existing nations of the earth what Garter King-at-Arms
and the College of Heraldry do for the representatives of ancient families
trace out their genealogies, establish their relationship by unquestionable
evidence, exhibit their connections, and show, not only the line of
their own descent, but that of the collateral branches of their families?
The answer is, that, to a large extent, they have.
In the first century of our era, for
instance, Josephus gives a glance at the problem as it presented itself
in his day, eighteen hundred years nearer to the dispersion of mankind
than our own, and when consequently it must have been comparatively
easy to trace back the genealogy of nations. He says
‘Now they were the grand-children of
Noah, in honour of whom names were imposed on the nations by those that
first seized upon them. Japhet, the son of Noah, had seven Sons. They
inhabited so, that, beginning at the mountains Taurus and Amanus, they
proceeded along Asia, as far as the river Tanais, and along Europe to
Cadiz; and settling themselves on the lands they light upon, which none
had inhabited before, they called the nations by their own names. For
Gomer founded those whom the Greek now called Galatians (Gauls), but
were then called Gomerites. Magog founded those that from him were named
Magogites, but who are by the Greeks called Scythians. Now as to Javan
and Madai, the sons of Japhet; from Madai came the Madeans, who are
called Medes by the Greeks; but from Javan,
Jonia (or lonia) and all the Grecians are derived. Thobel founded
the Thobelites, which are now called Iberes; and the Moscheni were founded
by Mosoch; now they are Cappadocians. There is also a mark of their
ancient denomination still to be shown; for there is even now among
them a city called Mazaca, which may inform those that are able to understand,
that so was the entire nation once called. Thiras also called those
whom he ruled over Thiracians; but the Greeks changed the name into
Thracians. And so many were the countries that had the children of Japhet
for their inhabitants. Of the three sons of Gomer, Aschanaz founded
the Aschanasians, who are now called by the Greeks Rheginians. So did
Riphath found the Ripheans, now called Paphlagonians; and Thruggramma
the Thrugrammeans, who, as the Greeks resolved, were named Phrygians.
Of the three sons of Javan also, the son of Japhet, Elisa gave name
to the Eliseans, who were his subjects.; they are now the Eolians. Tharsus
to the Tharsians, for so was Cicilia of old called; the sign of which
is this, that the noblest city which they have, and a metropolis also,
is Tarsus, the Tau being by change put for the Theta. Cethimas possessed
the island Cethima: it is now called Cyprus; and from that it is that
all islands, and the greatest part of the sea-coasts, are named Cethim
by the Hebrews; and one city there is in Cyprus that has been able to
preserve its denomination; it is called Citius by those who use the
language of the Greeks, and has not, by the use of that dialect, escaped
the name of Cethim. And so many nations have the children and grand-children
of Japhet possessed. Now when I have premised somewhat, which perhaps
the Greeks do not know, I will return and explain what I have omitted;
for such names are pronounced here after the manner of the Greeks, to
please my readers; for our own country language does not so pronounce
them.
‘The children of HAM possessed the land
from Syria and Amanus, and the mountains of Libanus; seizing upon all
that was on its sea-coasts, and as far as the ocean, and keeping it
as their own. Some indeed of its names are utterly vanished away; others
of them being changed, and another sound given them, are hardly to be
discovered; yet a few there are which have kept their denominations
entire; for of the four sons of Ham, time has not at all hurt the name
of Cush; for the Ethiopians, over whom he reigned, are even at this
day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Cushites. The
memory also of the Mesraites is preserved in their name; for all we
who inhabit the country (of Judea) call Egypt Mestre, and the Egyptians
Mestreans. Phut also was the founder of Libya, and called the inhabitants
Phutites, from himself. There is also a river in the country of the
Moors which bears that name; whence it is, that we may see the greatest
part of the Grecian historiographers mention that river and the adjoining
country by the appellation of Phut. But the name it has now, has been
by change given it from one of the sons of Mestraim, who was called
Lybyos. We will inform you presently what has been the occasion why
it has been called Africa also.
‘Canaan, the fourth son of Ham, inhabited
the country now called Judea, and called it from his own name Canaan....
Nimrod, the son of Cush, stayed and tyrannised at Babylon, as we have
already informed you. Now all the children of Mesraim, being eight in
number, possessed the country from Gaza to Egypt, though it retained
the name of one only, the Philistim, for the Greeks call part of that
country Palestine..
‘The sons of Canaan were these; Sidonius,
who also built a city of the same name; it is called by the Greeks,
Sidon; Amathus inhabited in Amathine, which is even now called Amathe
by the inhabitants, although the Macedonians named it Epiphania, from
one of his posterity; Arudeus possessed the island Aradus; Arucas possessed
Arce, which is in Libanus. But for the seven others (Eucus), Chetteus,
Jeboseus, Amorreus, Gergesus, Eudeus, Sineus, Samareus, we have nothing
in the sacred books but their names, for the Hebrews overthrew their
cities.
‘Shem, the third son of Noah, had five
sons, who inhabited the land that began at Euphrates, and reached to
the Indian Ocean. For Elam left behind him the Elainites, the ancestors
of the Persians Ashur lived at the city of Nineve and named his subjects
Assyrians, who became the most fortunate nation, beyond others. Arphaxad
named the Arphaxadites, who are no called Chaldeans. Aram had the Aramites,
which the Greeks call Syrians, as Laud founded the Laudites, which are
now called Lydians. Of the four sons of Aram, Us founded Trachonitis
and Damascus; this country lies between Palestine and Celesyria....
Sala was the son of Arphaxad; and his son was Heber, from whom they
originally called the J exvs, Hebrews. Heber begat Joctan and Phaleg:
he was called Phaleg or Peleg because he was born at the dispersion
of the nations to their several countries; for Phaleg, among the Hebrews,
signifies division. Now Joctan, one of the sons of Heber, had these
sons.... And this shall suffice concerning the sons of Shem.’
This statement of Josephus and many
similar ones might, if space permitted, be presented from both earlier
and later historians forms a link between the primitive state of things
and the present. It gives us a glance at one of the countless stages
by which the young nations enumerated in the tenth of Genesis have been
gradually developed in the course of four thousand years into the world
full of nations and peoples, civilized and savage, with which we are
familiar.
The process has resembled that of organic
growth. The Noahic acorn has become an immense and ancient oak, its
three main stems having divided into numerous great branches extending
in all directions, each giving rise in its turn to countless shoots
and twigs bearing generation after generation of leaves. Is
it not destined to develop yet into a forest, and to fill many of the
myriads of worlds belonging to our own galaxy, with the ransomed race
of man?
Josephus modernizes in measure the archaic
nomenclature of Genesis. ‘The isles of the Gentiles’ are seen to include
‘Europe and Cadiz, ‘ Gomer becomes ‘the Galatians and the Gauls, ‘ ‘Javan’
changes into the Ionians and the Grecians; and instead of a list of
names which convey to our modern minds only the most hazy ideas, we
get Cappadocians and Thracians, Phrygians or Eolians, the island of
Cyprus, the land of Palestine, Egypt, Judea, Persia, the Indian Ocean,
the Lydians, the Chaldeans, and the Syrians. Here we see our way, and
feel that there can be no insuperable difficulty in connecting the condition
of things in Josephus’ day with that existing in our own. It might be
difficult to recognize in old age a man known only in infancy, but not
so if he had been seen at intervals through life. To the uninitiated
it may seem that there must be a good deal of guess work and uncertainty
in the identification of modern nations with primitive peoples, but
the historian who has traced the whole process of development feels
that he stands on terra firma,
and his conclusions may be accepted with confidence.
He begins with the main branches of the oak, and following one till
it forks, he traces its divisions down to the latest shoot.
The student of language, on the other
hand, adopts the opposite course, and approaches the problem the other
way. He examines the languages of existing nations, and traces them
backwards to their origin. He finds the latest shoots running into older
twigs, these again into small branches, these in their turn to larger
ones, and these finally into one or other of the three main stems of
the old tree. When the results of historian and philologist agree, we
may rest satisfied that they are substantially correct.
But there are multitudes of nations
to-day in Central Africa, Asia, Western America, and elsewhere, who
have no history, who have sunk so low that, like the arab children of
our streets, they do not know where they were born, nor how old they
are, nor to whom they belong, and scarcely can tell their own family
name. In discovering the birth and parentage, the relationships and
affinities of such nations, the science of language is especially helpful.
Experience has proved that there is no basis for a classification of
the innumerable nations and tribes into which mankind is now divided
so broad and so certain as that of language.
‘Physical resemblances, or diversities,
are not found to present so ultimate a ground of classification as those
of the human speech. The Word is the highest outward expression for
the soul; and the properties of the immaterial part of man his unconscious
instincts, his hopes, his passions, his imaginings, his tendency of
thought, his general habit of nature, appearing in language and its
forms are transmitted more entirely from generation to generation, and
are less liable to he changed by external influences than any features
of the face or the body. It is well known that time and external circumstances,
and the mingling with other stocks, can change to a considerable degree
(how far, is not here in consideration) the color, the hair, the shape
of the skull, and the size of the body. Yet after many generations,
when the physicist could scarcely, by external signs, recognize the
bonds of common blood binding different peoples together, the student
of language discerns the clearest and most irrefutable proofs of their
common descent. What scholar doubts now the brotherhood of descent,
at a remote period, between the Hindu and the Englishman? and yet how
few physical ethnologists could discover it by any bodily feature. It
is as if the more intangible properties of man’s nature were those most
acted upon by the principle of inheritance, and the last to he changed
or destroyed by external physical influences.” Brace’s
‘ Manual of Ethnology, ‘ p. 3.
Language then, alone or in connection
with history, is the clue to the discernment, not of nationality, but
of race a far stronger and deeper bond than mere nationality. There
is a mysterious, far-reaching influence connected with heredity and
conveyed by blood, which associates a distant ancestor with his remotest
posterity, and links together by common characteristics the families,
tribes, and nations descended from him, marking them off at the same
time from all others. It might have been supposed that the mixture of
nations which. has taken place all over the world during the last four
thousand years, through emigrations, conquests, and colonization, would
have so mingled languages that it would now be impossible to distinguish
their original character. This is far from being the case. Such agencies
have extensively modified
language, but research shows that no tongue is ever entirely obliterated
by another, and that the primary
streams of language, even though they may meet in close contact, never
merge into each other, as Norman and Saxon did in the formation of English.
These were cognate tongues to begin with, spoken by different families
of one race. But where, as in Western Asia at present, three primary
languages, belonging to three different races Tartar, Arabic, and Persian
co-exist side by side, it is found that no such combination takes place;
the three races remaining distinct in speech, as in appearance, character,
and habits.
Now, at the furthest point to which
history and tradition can conduct us in the past, we discover three prominent families of nations from
whom have come down through the ages of history three broad streams of language covering the ancient continents, from
which have branched out tile almost innumerable rivulets of speech which
now interlace with each other all the world over. They are THE HAMITIC,
THE SEMITIC, and THE ARYAN, or INDO-EUROPEAN, families of language.
These three, however, do not include all the languages of the world.
There is no fourth family, but there is a fourth group
the Turanian languages. This large and widely scattered group is
less distinctly defined, and its various branches are less distinctly
related to each other than are those of the three families above named,
though they have some common characteristics. It includes the nomad
languages, those which are less settled and more changeable than any
others, which have a remarkable facility in assuming new forms and producing
rapidly diverging dialects of great irregularity. According to some
authorities it includes also the Chinese language, which has been called
the most infantile form of human speech, and which seems in some respects
to antedate other forms even of Turanian language. But this is one of
the unsettled problems of the science, other authorities classing Chinese
as Hamitic. The group of so-called ‘Turanian’ or barbarous tongues will
probably be in due time, as a result of further investigation, to a
large extent distributed among the three principal families leaving
a residuum of dialects which may be degenerate descendants of the mother
tongue, from which all languages alike sprung. At present the Turanian
group is considered by Professor Max Muller to consist of the Tungusic,
Mongolic, Turkic, Samoyedic, Finnic, and aboriginal Indian languages.
’Turanian speech is rather a stage than a form
of language. It seems to be the earliest mould into which human discourse
naturally and as it were spontaneously throws itself, being simpler,
ruder, coarser, and far less elaborate than the later developments of
Semitism and Aryanism. It does not, like those tongues, possess throughout
its manifold ramifications a large common vocabulary, or even a community
of inflections. Common words are exceedingly rare, and inflections,
though formed on the same plan, are entirely unlike.... We are not justified
in assuming the same original ethnic unity among the various nations
whose language is of the Turanian type, which presses upon the mind
as an absolute necessity when it examines the phenomena presented by
the dialects of the Semitic or of the Aryan stock.’(Rawlinson’s ‘Herodotus,
‘ vol. i. p. 645.)
The ethnological connections of this
Turanian group being extremely uncertain, it is evident that it can
have no bearing on our present argument. We pass it by consequently,
remarking merely that the existence of such a group of miscellaneous
unclassified languages affords no presumption against the historical
veracity of the statement in the tenth of Genesis, that the human race
divided after the flood into three great branches. The genealogies there
refer of course to descent by blood and not to linguistic connection.
We know that tribes and nations often change their languages, though
they cannot alter their ethnic connections. All Jews, for instance,
are children of Abraham, no matter what language they may speak; and
the Negroes in America do not cease to be Africans because they talk
English. In a word, language may or may not be a clue to the ancestry
of a people. It needs to be considered in connection with history and
geography; taken alone it may be valueless.
In the case of the Turanian nations,
where history and geography afford little light, language is an insufficient
guide to genealogical connection; while in the case of the three great
families of language, their speech forms a principal clue to the relation
of the different nations and peoples, leading us to attribute a common
descent to some that re now tar separated socially and geographically,
though th ir earliest ancestors dwelt under the same roof tree.
The conclusions of ethnologists do not
contradict the genealogical table of Genesis x., but confirm it. It
asserts that there were three original races. The science of language
asserts that there are still three distinct families of nations, but
it adds that there are also a number of nations
whose ethnic relations cannot be traced
out from historic or linguistic clues. What more natural than that such
should be the case after the lapse of four thousand years, and especially
with regard to the less important and more uncivilized and remote branches
of the human race? New dialects, not to say new languages, spring up
even now as a result of isolation and barbarism among peoples who have
no literature and hold no public assemblies.
But if the Turanian group throws no light on our subject, the
three families of language
throw not a little, and we will now proceed briefly to consider them
in their order.
THE SEMITIC FAMILY.
The Semitic family is divided into three
main branches the Aramaic, the Hebraic, and the Arabic. The Aramaic
includes Syriac and Chaldee. The former is still spoken in a corrupt
form by the Nestorians and other Christians in Kurdistan and Armenia;
and the latter was the language adopted by the Jews in Babylon. After
the captivity, Syriac became vernacular in Palestine; it was tile language
spoken by our Lord and 1-lis disciples, and was the speech of common
life over all the territory extending from the Mediterranean to Mesopotamia.
The Hebraic includes the Biblical Hebrew, the language in which the
Samaritan Pentateuch was written, and the language of the Carthaginian
and Phcenician inscriptions. It was the language of the later Canaanites,
though not of the original seven nations of Canaan. The Arabic branch
includes the Amharic tongue, the Gees language of Abyssinia, and the
ancient Himyaritic inscriptions in Arabia. It includes also the languages
spoken along the north of Africa from Egypt and Ethiopia to the Atlantic
Ocean.
‘Of all the families of man, the Semitic
has preserved the most distinet and homogeneous mental characteristics.
‘Always, in all its branches, tenacious
of the past, conservative, not inclined to change or reform, sensual
and strong of passion, yet deeply reverent and religious in temperament,
capable of the most sublime acts, either of heroism or fanaticism, it
was, from the first, a fit medium for some of the grandest truths and
principles which can inspire the human soul. Its very peculiar itiesits
tenacity and sensuousness and reverence adapted it to feel and retain
and convey Divine inspirations. The Semitic mind was never capable of
artistic effort, but has made its great contributions to human knowledge
in the invention of the alphabet, and in the exact sciences. In poetry,
it has given to the world the most sublime lyrics which human language
can present; though in the drama, it has produced only as it were the
type or introduction, and in the epic it has contributed nothing. The
Semitic races have never shown themselves skilled in colonization even
the Phoenician colonies formed no permanent States and they seemed almost
as little capable of organizing enduring governments. Individuality
has been too strong with them for permanent associated effort.
‘In one of their earliest branches the
Phoenicians and in the modern Jew, they have manifested a wonderful
capacity for traffic and commerce. In the primeval ages, probably no
one influence tended so much to unite and civilize mankind as the Semitic
commerce and ingenuity under the Phoenicians. The sensuousness and the
religious reverence of the race so vividly shown in the Bible history
united in the heathen Semites, the tribes of Syria and Asia Minor, to
produce a mythology debasing and corrupt beyond what the human imagination
has anywhere else brought forth; a mythology which, transplanted to
Greece and refined by the Grecian sense of beauty, has poured through
all ages a flood of sensual and licentious imaginations, corrupting
art and literature almost to the present day.
‘Three of the great religions of history
Mohammedanism, Judaism, and Christianity have come forth from the Semitic
races, and through future time it will be their glory that with all
their former vices, and their subsequent degradation, one of their humblest
tribes was fitted to receive and was appointed to convey the purest
oracles of God to all succeeding generations.’
The influence of the Semites reasserted
itself very strongly in the Middle Ages. Under the rule of the Aryan
Romans and Byzantines they had been subject and inferior tribes; but
‘With the tenacity peculiar to the race, they had still retained, under
all the conquests, their national characteristics, and after centuries
of submission and quiet they rose again at the call of religious fanaticism,
with the same fire and passion which they had shown as Jews, under the
Maccabees or against Titus. The foundations for their remarkable conquests
were laid by the constant emigration of Arab tribes to Persia and various
countries of Asia, whose population became thus gradually much mingled
with Semitic elements.
‘In 622 Mohammed proclaimed the Semitic
doctrine of the unity of God and the peculiar tenets of the Islam faith.
Within twenty years vast countries of Europe and Asia were overrun and
conquered by his fiery disciples. Syria was subdued from 632 to 638;
Persia from 632 to 640; Egypt in 638; Cyprus and Rhodes in 649.
‘Within a century the Semitic Moslems
had conquered Asia from Mount Taurus to the Himalaya and the Indus,
and from the Indian Ocean to Mount Caucasus and the Iaxertes on the
north; they held the north of Africa, and after defeating the Teutonic
Goths in Spain, took possession of most of that country. They had even
invaded France, and seemed about overrunning all Europe, when they were
defeated at Tours, in 732, by Charles the Hammer.... Since this brilliant
period of conquest, the Semitic family of nations has never again attained
to a leading place among the races of men.
‘Even as in the ancient days of Semitic
glory in Assyria, this race again distinguished itself in the exact
sciences and in architecture. Geometry, astronomy, anatomy, and chemistry,
all witnessed a revival under the new Arabian civilization; and the
Moorish architecture, a product of the sensuous Semitic mind, under
the more graceful influences of Byzantine taste, covered Spain with
its gorgeous and fantastic structures.
‘This family of the human race is distinguished
by the peculiar character of the language which it spoke. Those languages,
in fact, constitute a group clearly separated from the other leading
forms of human speech. The great peculiarity of the group lies in the
very structure of its roots, which consist mostly of three consonants,
while those of the Aryan and Turanian groups have only one or two. Out
of these tri-literal roots the mass of their words were coined by merely
varying the vowels, and in some cases by adding a syllable; on the other
hand, words formed by composition are almost unknown. The verb has but
two tenses, the noun but two genders, and the relations of cases are
not, in general, expressed by inflected forms. In the structure of the
sentence, the Semitic dialects present little more than a process of
addition; words and propositions are placed side by side, and are not
subject to the involution and subordination of clauses, so striking
in many of the Indo-European tongues.
‘In short, these languages have a kind
of poetic power, and express passion and feeling with great intensity;
but they are lacking in logical precision, deficient in analytical terms,
and imperfectly adapted to embody the grandest results of human thought.’
’Long before recorded history, perhaps even before the full formation of
their distinctive language, that family of mankind from which the Semitic
tribes have come, poured forth its hordes from Asia over the northern
portion of Africa. Of these, one vigorous tribe, with the tenacity of
the Semitic stock, have held possession of the valleys of the Atlas
under all the successive waves of conquest which have passed over Northern
Africa. The colonies and conquests of the Phmnicians, the Romans, the
Byzantines, the Vandals, and the Arabs, have not destroyed or absorbed
this tough and warlike people. Pressed farther to the south by the fierce
attacks of the Arabs, in the first half of the eleventh century, they
could not be driven from the desert; and they hold, now, a larger extent
of territory than is occupied by any other race on African soil.’ From
the Atlantic Ocean, on the west, their tribes extend to the borders
of Egypt on the east, and from the Atlas chain on the north over the
oases of the Great Desert.
Their traders form the great media of commerce between the Soudan and the
Mediterranean coast, ‘while their wild and nomad hordes are the special
obstacle and danger to the traveller. They are known under the name
of Libyans in the most ancient history; their distinguishing features
are beheld even on the pictures of Egyptian monuments, and, on the other
hand, the most warlike and distinguished of modern military corps is
formed originally of their soldiers, the Zowaves.
‘The name by which this race is best
known is BERBER, a word much disputed, but whose origin may be naturally
traced to the Roman name of these people, Barbari.’(Brace’s ‘ Manual
of Ethnology, ‘ p. 171.)]
The Semitic territory in antiquity included
Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, Assyria, Susiftna,
and the immense deserts of Arabia. The Semites had less tendency to
spread abroad in the earth than either of the other great families.
It was not till the thirteenth century
before Christ that they began to become prominent; and though at that
time their political importance was not great, they soon rose to be
the principal commercial and manufacturing
people in the world.
They planted commercial stations around
the whole length of the Mediterranean, which it took at that time seventy
or eighty days to traverse. Their ships brought tin from England, and
the luxuries of India from the mouths of the Indus. They had a chain
of commercial stations into the interior of Asia, and traded between
points as far separated from each other as Babylon and Cadiz, Italy
and India, Arabia and Armenia. During tile same period they established
the old Assyrian empire on the Upper Tigris, an empire which lasted over six and a half centuries, and held a
vast extent of country in subjection, from Suza in Persia to Lower Egypt.
The turning point in the history of this empire was the destruction
of Sennacherib’s host by pestilence, B.C. 691. It gradually declined
after that event, and its great city, Nineveh, fell before an Aryan king, Cyaxares the Mede, in BC. 625. The second Babylonian empire
lasted scarcely a century, and the MEDO-PERSIAN empire which followed
was the open ing of the Aryan
period of history. Cyrus the Persian belonged to the Aryan race;
and when his empire fell, the ruling power in the world passed from
Asia to Europe.
‘What is especially remarkable of the
Semitic family is its concentration, and the small size of the district
which it covers compared with the space occupied by the other two. Deducting
the scattered colonies of the Phoenicians, mere points upon the earth’s
surface, and the thin strip of territory running into Asia Minor from
Upper Syria, the Semitic races in the time of Herodotus are contained
within a parallelogram 1, 600 miles long from the parallel of Aleppo
to the south of Arabia, and on an average about 800 miles broad. Within
this tract, less than a thirteenth part of the Asiatic continent, the
entire Semitic family was then, and, with one exception, has ever since
been comprised.
‘Once in the world’s history, and once
only, did a great ethnic movement proceed from this race and country.
Under the stimulus of religious fanaticism, the Arabs in the seventh
century of our era burst from the retirement of the desert, and within
a hundred years extended themselves as the ruling nation from the confines
of India to Spain. But this effort was the fruit of a violent excitement
which could not but be temporary, and the development was one beyond
the power of the nation to sustain. Arabian influence sank almost as
rapidly as it had risen, yielding on the one side before European, on
the other before Tartar attacks, and, except in Egypt and Northern Africa,
maintaining no permanent footing in the countries so rapidly overrun.
Apart from this single occasion, the Semitic race has given no evidence
of ability to spread itself either by migration or by conquest. In the
Old World, indeed, commercial enterprise led one Semitic people to aim
at a wide extension of its influence over the shores of the known seas;
but the colonies sent out by this people obtained no lasting hold upon
the countries where they were settled, and after a longer or a shorter
existence they died away almost without leaving a trace. Semitism has
a certain kind of vitality a tenacity of lifeexhibited most remarkably
in the case of the Jews, yet not confined to them, but seen also in
other instances, as in the continued existence of the Chaldeans in Mesopotamia,
and of the Berbers on the North African coast.
‘It has not, however, any power of vigorous
growth and enlargement, such as that promised to Japhet, and possessed
to a considerable extent even by the Turanian family. It is strong to
resist, weak to attack, powerful to maintain itself in being notwithstanding
the paucity of its numbers, but rarely exhibiting, and never for any
length of time capable of sustaining, an aggressive action upon other
races. With this physical and material weakness is combined a wonderful
capacity for affecting the spiritual condition of our species, by the
projection into the fermenting mass of human thought, of new and strange
ideas, especially those of the most abstract kind. Semitic races have
influenced, far more than any others, the history of the world’s mental
progress, and the principal intellectual revelations which have taken
place are traceable in the main to them.’
THE ARYAN FAMILY.
The great Indo-Aryan, or Japhetic family,
is so extensive and so varied that we shall best convey a fair idea
of it by presenting Professor Max Muller’s own table of its principal
members.
____________________________________________________________________________
1 Rawlinson’s ‘Herodotus, ‘ vol. i.
p. 661.
____________________________________________________________________________
——————————————————————————————————————
GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE ARYAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES.
Living
Languages. Dead Languages. Classes.
Dialects of India Prakit and Pali
Indic SOUTHERN DIVISION
Dialects of the Gipsies Indic SOUTHERN DIVISION
Dialects of Persia Parsi - ‘Pehlevi’
Iranic SOUTHERN DIVISION
Dialects of Afghanistan Iranic SOUTHERN DIVISION
Dialects of Kurdistan Iranic SOUTHERN DIVISION
Dialects of Armenia Old Armenian Iranic
SOUTHERN DIVISION
Dialects of Ossethi Iranic SOUTHERN DIVISION
Dialects of Wales Keltic SOUTHERN DIVISION
Dialects of Brittany Keltic SOUTHERN
DIVISION
—— Cornish Keltic NORTHERN
DIVISION