When Was the Table of Nations Written?

Genesis 10's names were first recorded over two thousand years. Its core Japhethite names first appear in Assyrian texts of 837-669 BC, in Assyrian spellings, yet it omits the Persians, Chaldeans, Arabs and Urartu. That fits an old core updated in the Iron Age, as Kitchen and Ross hold, and not a one-off post-Babel record.

By AI (Claude Opus 5.5, thinking level unavailable; split into parent and children by Claude Opus 5.5) Draft:  October 2026

Summary

The names in Genesis 10 were not first recorded at one time, and the pattern of their first appearances is the best evidence for when the chapter took the form it has now.  This article sorts the attested names by date, sets out what the chapter omits, and weighs each scholar's date.  It is a child of The Table of Nations.  Its siblings argue the identifications and ask how the chapter has been read and how it fares against language, ancient DNA and geography.

The old names are old.  Erech, Asshur, Akkad, Elam, Babel and the Amorites reach the third millennium BC.  Togarmah, Caphtor, Elishah, Cush, Canaan, Shinar and the Phoenician coast reach the second.

The heart of Japheth's branch is young.  Six of its fourteen names, four of Japheth's seven sons with Ashkenaz and Tarshish, first appear between 837 and 669 BC, in Assyrian records and in Assyrian spellings:  Tabal, Amadaiia, Iaman, Gamir, Asguzai, Tarsisi.  Lud under Shem is the same.  Ashurbanipal says that none of the kings before him had heard the name of Lydia.1  A first record is a minimum, not a birth date, but for these newcomers it is close to first contact.

The omissions point the other way.  The Table leaves out four peoples the same Assyrian records name in the ninth century:  the name Parsua in 843 BC,2 Urartu in 858, the Arabs in 853, and Chaldea about 878.3  A list drawn up in the Babylonian exile, the usual critical date, would be expected to name the Chaldeans and the Persians.  Ezekiel, a sixth-century writer, names Persia.  Genesis 10 does not.  The argument has limits:  Josephus read Arpachshad as the Chaldeans,4 Genesis gives Ammon, Moab, Edom and the Arab tribes later ancestors of their own, and an omission is an argument from silence.  None of this explains the missing Persians or Urartu.

The scholars disagree, but not about a one-off record.  D. J. Wiseman put the compilation about 1500 BC or earlier.5  Kitchen proposes a first form in the early second millennium, a full form in the late second, and an update in the early first.6  Westermann dates the Japhethite list to the seventh century, Speiser puts it no later than the seventh, and Wenham reports that the majority prefer a first-millennium date.7  Every scholar's final form is a thousand years or more after the Masoretic Babel, about 2247 to 2008 BC.

The young-earth reading meets the horizon and has not answered it.  Robert Carter, Stephen Lee and John Sanford called the Table "a one-off documentation of the early post-Flood world".8  That predicts old names everywhere, and the core of Japheth's branch shows the opposite.  No young-earth source read for this article states the problem.

Two readings remain.  In the updating model, an old core list was brought up to date by later inspired editors who wrote the northern names in the forms of their own day.  It is Kitchen's model and Allen Ross's, whose Moses "used the old skeleton list".9  It predicts that the young names will be the peoples the updater's world had newly met, in his spellings, and they are.  Genesis 14:14 calls Laish by its later name, Dan, a precedent conservatives already accept.  In the eponym model, Gomer, Madai and Javan were real grandsons of Noah whose peoples stayed out of sight of literate states.  It fits any table of dates, so no date could count against it.

Verdict.  The updating model is the better fit.  It keeps every claim the chapter makes about where the peoples came from and gives up only the one-off reading.

Part 1: The date horizon

The names in Genesis 10 were not first recorded at one time, and the pattern of their first appearances is the best evidence for when the chapter took the form it has now.  The cities of Mesopotamia and Elam are named in the third millennium BC.  Canaan, Crete, Cyprus, Egypt and the Phoenician coast are named in the second.  Six of the fourteen names under Japheth, and Lud under Shem, are named first in Assyrian records of the ninth to seventh centuries BC, and in the forms the Assyrians used.  At the same time the chapter leaves out the Persians, the Arabs, the Chaldeans and Urartu, all four of which the same Assyrian records name from the ninth century.  The latest names put the present wording of the list no earlier than about 700 BC, unless Israel knew those peoples long before any surviving record does.  The omissions put it before the Persian empire.  Every scholar read for this article, conservative or critical, puts the present form somewhere between about 1500 and 600 BC.  None puts it in the generation after Babel.

What a first attestation can show.  The earliest text that names a people is a minimum for that people's existence, not its birth date.  A name can be old and unrecorded, because the record is patchy.  Most of the late dates in the table below come from the Assyrian royal annals of the ninth to seventh centuries, which survive in bulk, so a count of names by century partly measures which archives survived.  Kitchen says the same of the names nobody has found:  "these thirty-nine names are of no chronological significance for the present."6  But some of the late dates are more than gaps in the record.  Ashurbanipal says outright that no king before him had heard the name of Lydia.1  The Cimmerians and the Scythians were newcomers from the steppe, and Westermann, writing of all the Japhethite peoples, says "The majority of them came in contact with the Near East in the 8th century."10  For those names the first record is close to the first contact.

The horizon table.  Every name with an outside attestation, sorted by the date of its earliest one.  The dates and forms come from the master table in Genesis 10 Name by Name and from the editions cited there.  "Form" is the spelling in the earliest text, where it differs from the English.

Name (verse) Line Earliest attestation outside the Bible Date BC Form
Erech (10:10) Ham the archaic tablets found at Uruk, the oldest Sumerian texts11 about 3200 Uruk
Asshur (10:11, 22) Ham and Shem the city Assur (Kitchen) about 2500 Assur
Akkad (10:10) Ham Sargonic royal inscriptions 24th c. Akkade
Elam (10:22) Shem texts from Elam about 2300 Elam
Babel (10:10) Ham a text of Shar-kali-sharri (Kitchen) 23rd-22nd c. Babylon
Amorites (10:16) Ham Sumerian texts (Kitchen) later 3rd millennium MAR.TU, later Amurru
Togarmah (10:3) Japheth Old Assyrian texts from Kültepe (Kitchen)6 19th c. Tegarama
Caphtor (10:14) Ham the Mari archives6 18th c. Kaptara
Elishah (10:4) Japheth Mari and Alalakh5 18th-17th c. Alashiya
Cush (10:6) Ham Egyptian texts (Kitchen); Amarna12 early 2nd millennium Kash, Kashi
Canaan (10:6) Ham Mari (Kitchen); Amarna12 18th c.; 14th c. Kinahhi
Shinar (10:10) Ham Amarna letter EA 3512 14th c. Šanhar
Mizraim (10:6) Ham Amarna letters 14th c. Misri
Sidon, Arkites, Arvadites, Zemarites (10:15-18) Ham Amarna letters 14th c. Sidon, Irqata, Arwad, Sumur
Dodanim, if the Danuna (10:4) Japheth Amarna letter EA 15112 14th c. Danuna
Aram (10:22) Shem an Egyptian list of Amenhotep III (Kitchen); Tiglath-pileser I13 about 1380; about 1110 Aram
Calah (10:11) Ham Middle Assyrian texts about 1250 Kalhu
Tiras, if the Teresh (10:2) Japheth Merneptah, year 514 about 1208 Teresh
Lehabim (10:13) Ham Merneptah's Israel Stela about 1208 Libu
Philistines (10:14) Ham Medinet Habu, year 8 of Ramesses III15 about 1177 Peleset
Meshech (10:2) Japheth Tiglath-pileser I, accession year13 about 1114 Mušku
Tubal (10:2) Japheth Shalmaneser III, year 2216 837 Tabal
Madai (10:2) Japheth Shalmaneser III, year 2416 835 Amadaiia
Sheba (10:7, 28) Ham and Shem Tiglath-pileser III17 after 733 Saba
Javan (10:2) Japheth Sargon II, in a restored line18 721-705 Iamnaya; Iaman under Esarhaddon
Gomer (10:2) Japheth letters of crown prince Sennacherib19 about 715-714 Gamir; Gimirrai in 673
Ashkenaz (10:3) Japheth Esarhaddon's prism20 673 Asguzai, Ishkuza
Pathrusim (10:14) Ham Esarhaddon21 671-669 Paturisi
Tarshish (10:4) Japheth Esarhaddon, the same passage 671-669 Tarsisi, which the editor reads as Tarsus
Lud (10:22) Shem Ashurbanipal, Prism B22 copies of 649-648 Luddi
Raamah (10:7) Ham an Old South Arabian inscription (Kitchen) 7th or 5th c. Ragmatum
Dedan (10:7) Ham an inscription naming two kings of Dedan (Kitchen) 6th c. Dedan
Sabtah, Sabteca (10:7) Ham uncertain6 perhaps 600-500 uncertain

About thirty names have no outside attestation at all, among them Magog, Riphath, Nimrod, Uz, Hul, Gether, Eber, Peleg and nine of the thirteen sons of Joktan.  They can date nothing.

Reading the table, line by line.  The Japheth branch is not uniformly young, and it should not be described that way.  Of its fourteen names, Togarmah (19th century), Elishah (18th), Meshech (about 1114) and, if the identifications hold, Dodanim (14th) and Tiras (about 1208) are attested in the second millennium.  Kittim is the Phoenician city Kition, a site older than the first millennium.  Magog and Riphath are unattested.  The six that remain are the young ones, and they are the heart of the branch:  four of Japheth's seven sons, Gomer, Madai, Javan and Tubal, with Ashkenaz and Tarshish.  All six first appear between 837 and 669 BC, in Assyrian records, in the Assyrian spellings.  The same horizon holds for Lud under Shem.  Under Ham, the late names are the South Arabian ones, Sheba, which first appears under Tiglath-pileser III, and Pathros, named by Esarhaddon after he conquered Egypt.  The old names are the ones nearest the Levant and Mesopotamia:  the cities of Shinar, Canaan and its coastal cities, Egypt, Crete and Cyprus.

What the chapter leaves out.  Four peoples that the Assyrian inscriptions name in the ninth century are missing from the Table, each checked against its edition:

  • The Persians. Shalmaneser III conquered "the lands Mannea (Munna), Allabria, Parsua" in his sixteenth year, 843 BC,2 and received "tribute from twenty-seven kings of the land Parsua" in his twenty-fourth.16 Caution: this Parsua lies in the central Zagros, and whether its people are the later Persians of Fars is argued. The attestation is of the name.
  • Urartu. Shalmaneser's first campaign, 858 BC, reached the fortified city of "Arrāmu of the land Urarṭu".23
  • The Arabs. The coalition that met Shalmaneser at Qarqar in 853 BC included "1,000 camels of Gindibuʾ of the land of the Arabs".23
  • The Chaldeans. Ashurnasirpal II, in the narrative of a campaign that follows the eponym year 878 BC: "Fear of my lordly majesty reached as far as Karduniaš (Babylonia) (and) awe of my weapons overwhelmed Chaldea."3

The usual critical date for the Priestly framework of the chapter is the sixth century, in or after the Babylonian exile.  A list drawn up then, by a writer living among Nebuchadnezzar's Chaldeans and watching Cyrus's Persians rise, would be expected to name both.  Ezekiel, writing in that century, puts Persia beside Lud and Put in the army of Tyre (Ezekiel 27:10) and beside Cush and Put in the army of Gog (38:5), alongside Gomer and Togarmah (38:6).  So a sixth-century Israelite writer did know Persia by name, and Genesis 10 does not have it.  Speiser saw the same problem from the other end, in the Babylonian part of the chapter:  "Another noteworthy omission is that of the Babylonians ... If this is true, the verses in question would have to be dated not later (in terms of source material) than the end of the Kassite period (end of twelfth century)."24

The omission argument has three limits, and a fair reader should weigh them.  First, the Chaldeans may be in the Table under another name.  Josephus read Arpachshad that way:  "Arphaxad named the Arphaxadites, who are now called Chaldeans."4  Westermann agrees;  Speiser calls the name insoluble.  Second, Genesis gives several missing peoples later ancestors of their own, and a writer who kept to the order of the story would not list them in chapter 10.  The Arab tribes descend from Ishmael's twelve sons and from Abraham's sons by Keturah (25:1-4, 13-16);  Moab and Ammon from Lot (19:37-38);  Edom and Amalek from Esau (36:1, 12).  Kitchen notices those omissions too:  "none of the later Ammon, Moab, or Edom got included, nor Midian nor Amalek ... Hostility might explain the former omissions, but not the latter."6  Narrative order explains them all.  It does not explain the Persians or Urartu, whom Genesis never derives from anyone.  Third, an omission is an argument from silence, like a missing attestation.  It is weaker than the late attestations because the Table never claims to be complete:  Wenham's reading is that it "mentions the major peoples known to Israel".7  Still, the Persians were a major people known to Israel from the sixth century on, and their absence is real.

Each scholar's date, and his reason.  Sorted from earliest to latest.

  • D. J. Wiseman, 1955: "Accumulating evidence therefore points to a date of c. 1500 B.C. or earlier for the compilation of the 'Table of Nations'."5 His reasons are the Sodom border of 10:19, the omission of Tyre, and a match between the Table's geography and what the Egyptian court knew from its diplomatic letters: "It is becoming increasingly clear that the geographical information in Genesis 10 could have been available to the Egyptian court when Moses received his education there in the fifteenth or fourteenth century B.C."5 The Tyre argument fails, since Tyre's king writes to Pharaoh in the Amarna letters (Genesis 10 Name by Name). And a date of 1500 BC cannot cover Gomer, Ashkenaz, Madai or Lud, which Wiseman does not discuss as a horizon problem.
  • K. A. Kitchen, 2003: three phases, built from his count of first attestations by period, 11 names in the third millennium, 17 in the early second, 34 in the late second and 35 in the early first.6 A core in the early second millennium, a full form by the thirteenth century, and then an update: "This situation would suggest a second update in the first millennium, whether just once about the seventh century or in two subphases (IIIa, IIIb) in the tenth and seventh centuries respectively. It is premature to choose dogmatically, given the limits of our existing sources."6 His summary: "its first form in the early second millennium, its full form in the late second, and was finally updated in the early first".6
  • Allen Ross, 1988: "One could argue that Moses used the old skeleton list and added the material about Nimrod, the founding of the great empires, the Canaanite boundaries, and the cliché list of tribes ... but would not require a late date for the compilation."9 His footnote does not take up the Japhethite names.
  • W. F. Albright, reported by Wiseman in 1955: about 1000 BC, "but his reasons are so far as I know as yet unpublished."5
  • E. A. Speiser, 1964: two horizons. The Babylonian material is source material no later than the twelfth century, from the Babylonians' omission, as quoted above. The Japhethite list has a ceiling, not a floor: "The Japhethite group as recorded by P is not later than the seventh century b.c., since it was known to Jeremiah and Ezekiel, directly or indirectly. Yet much of the same information is too late for J's times."24
  • Claus Westermann, 1984: two horizons again. The Phoenician and South Arabian lists are Solomonic: "Because we know of commercial dealings with Phoenician cities and with South Arabia from the time of Solomon, we presume that the basis of these enumerations are lists from the commercial chancery of the Jerusalem court."10 The Japhethites are seventh-century: "this is not possible because they only became known to Israel in the 7th century (the greater number of these names occur also in Ezekiel)."10 His argument has a weakness he does not address. When Israel learned a name is not when the people existed, and he gives no reason why Israel must have learned the northern names at the moment Assyria first wrote them down.
  • The majority, as Wenham reports it in 1987: "The majority of scholars prefer a first-millennium date for the composition of this chapter, because some of the peoples listed here are not mentioned in extrabiblical texts until then".7

So "the scholars disagree" is true, and it does not help a one-off reading.  The dispute is between a Mosaic core about 1500 BC and an Israelite compilation of the tenth to seventh centuries, with updates either way.  On the Masoretic genealogies the dispersion at Babel falls 101 to 340 years after the Flood, about 2247 to 2008 BC on Ussher's Flood date (how that window is reached).  Wiseman's date is five to seven centuries after that window.  Kitchen's first form, somewhere in the early second millennium, could fall within a few centuries of it.  Every scholar's final form is a thousand years or more later.

What the young-earth readings predict.  Carter, Lee and Sanford wrote in 2018 that "The Table of Nations (Genesis 10) was a one-off documentation of the early post-Flood world".8  Taken at its word, a one-off record made in the generation after Babel predicts names that are old, in the forms of that generation, with no clustering of young names anywhere.  The table shows the opposite for the core of Japheth's branch.  Carter himself allowed the other reading in 2024:  the Table "might, on the other hand, describe all the people groups known to a later biblical writer long after the Babel dispersion".25  Henry Morris's method presumes change over time, "Allowing for the gradual modifications in form that always occur in such names with the passage of time",26 and Bill Cooper presents every name as attested and correct (The Table of Nations).  No young-earth source read for this article states the horizon as a problem, and none answers it.

Two readings remain open to a young-earth reader, and the evidence can partly tell them apart.

  1. The updating model. An old core list, carried by Moses or earlier, was brought up to date by later inspired editors, who wrote the names of the northern peoples in the forms current in their own day. This is Kitchen's model and Ross's. It predicts that the young names will cluster where the updater's world had changed most, and will appear in the updater's spellings. That is what the table shows: the young names are the northern peoples who reached the Near East in the eighth and seventh centuries, written as the Assyrians wrote them, Gamir, Asguzai, Amadaiia, Tabal, Iaman, Tarsisi, Luddi. The model has a precedent inside Genesis that conservatives already accept. Genesis 14:14 sends Abram in pursuit as far as Dan, a city that Judges 18:29 says was called Laish until the tribe of Dan took it. Laish is the name the Mari archive uses.6 A place name brought up to date by a later hand is an accepted feature of the text.
  2. The eponym model. Gomer, Madai and Javan were real grandsons of Noah, and the peoples named after them lived out of sight of any literate state until the Assyrians met them. This model is consistent with everything in the table. It is consistent with any other table too. It predicts nothing about which names should be late, so no attestation date could count against it. That makes it safe and untestable. It also has a harder time with the parts of the chapter that name later states and cities rather than founders: the Kittim and Rodanim in the plural, the gentilics of the Phoenician coast, and the Philistines, a people who arrived in Canaan about 1177 BC (Genesis 10 Name by Name).

The updating model gives up the one-off reading and keeps every claim the chapter makes about where the peoples came from.  Genesis 10 does not name its compiler, and nothing in the text requires that the forms of the names be those of Noah's grandsons' day.  The eponym model keeps the one-off reading, at the cost of making it unfalsifiable.  On the evidence the updating model is the better fit, and it is the one this article adopts.

Objections and responses

"The chapter is an exilic composition, so its accuracy proves nothing about age."  An exilic writer of the sixth century would be expected to name the Chaldeans of Nebuchadnezzar and the Persians of Cyrus.  The Table names neither, though the Assyrians knew Parsua from 843 BC and Kaldu from about 878, and Ezekiel, a sixth-century writer, names Persia beside Lud and Put (Part 1).  Its Phoenician cities are in the Amarna letters of the fourteenth century and in Tiglath-pileser I's annals of about 1100 BC (Genesis 10 Name by Name).  Kitchen counts 28 names attested before the late second millennium.6  Two cautions keep this from being decisive.  The Chaldeans may be hidden under Arpachshad, as Josephus thought, and an omission is an argument from silence.  But the late names alone do not make the whole list late.  They make its present wording no earlier than the seventh century.

"No Assyrian knew Lydia before 660 BC, so the Table is late."  Only if Lud is Lydia, and only for the wording of that one name.  Lud is contested:  Wenham offers the Lubdu of the upper Tigris, and Westermann leaves the question open (Genesis 10 Name by Name).  If Lud is Lydia, the updating model already allows for it.  Kitchen's own suggestion is that Lud replaced an older name such as Luku or Arzawa.6  A name brought up to date is evidence of an edition, not of a first composition.

"If the chapter was updated, nothing in it can be trusted."  Updating a name is not inventing a people.  Genesis 14:14 calls Laish by its later name, Dan (Judges 18:29), and no one concludes that Abram's pursuit is fiction.  Robert Wilson, whose study of genealogies is the basis of the political reading, put the general rule:  "genealogies may contain accurate information and may be potentially valuable sources for the modern historian."27  The test is name by name, and Genesis 10 Name by Name runs it.  Where the Table can be checked against the Assyrian, Egyptian and Amarna texts, its names are in the right places and the right combinations.

"First attestation dates nothing:  Gomer's people existed long before Assyria wrote about them."  Agreed, as to existence.  The eponym model, in which Gomer was a real grandson of Noah whose people lived out of sight of literate states, is consistent with the evidence.  But it is consistent with any evidence, so it cannot be confirmed by any.  Two things do bear on it.  The young names are written in the forms the Assyrians used, Gamir, Asguzai, Amadaiia, Tabal, Iaman, and Ashurbanipal says Lydia was a name no earlier king had heard (Part 1).  Those facts fit a list whose northern names were written down when the Near East first met those peoples, in the eighth and seventh centuries.

"Moses wrote Genesis, so the chapter cannot have been updated after him."  Genesis 10 does not name its compiler.  Mosaic authorship of Genesis is compatible with later inspired editing of place names, and conservative scholars who defend Mosaic authorship accept it:  Ross allows that Moses "used the old skeleton list",9 and Kitchen's model has updates in the tenth and seventh centuries (Part 1).  CMI's own geneticist uses the same argument.  In his 2023 article on the Philistines, Carter cites Dan for Laish in Genesis 14:14 to explain why Genesis can call the people of Abraham's day Philistines.  A young-earth reader who accepts that argument for the Philistines has accepted it for the Table.

"Kitchen's model can absorb any evidence, so it explains nothing."  Partly true:  a model with an old core and later updates can fit many distributions of attestation dates, and Kitchen's counts cannot test it.  But it makes two predictions that could have failed.  The young names should be the peoples the updater's world had newly met, in his spellings;  they are.  And a list updated no later than the seventh century should lack the peoples who rose after it;  it lacks the Persians and the Chaldeans.  A Persian-era or Hellenistic name in the core, the Greeks of Alexander or the Parthians, would have falsified it.  None is there.

Issues and unanswered questions

  • Arpachshad. Whether Arpachshad hides the Chaldeans is unresolved, and it bears on the omission argument in Part 1. Speiser calls the problem insoluble.

Verdict

The pattern of first attestations is not what a one-off record from the generation after Babel predicts.  The old names are old, reaching the third and second millennia BC.  But the heart of Japheth's branch and Lud under Shem enter the record between 837 BC and the 640s, in the spellings the Assyrians used, and the chapter omits the Persians, the Chaldeans, the Arabs and Urartu, whom the same records name from the ninth century.  Unless Israel knew the northern peoples long before any surviving record does, the present wording is no earlier than about 700 BC, and the omissions put it before the Persian empire.

The model that fits is an old core updated in the Iron Age, which is Kitchen's and Ross's.  It made two predictions that could have failed:  the young names should be the peoples the updater's world had newly met, in his spellings, and the list should lack the peoples who rose after him.  Both hold.  It costs a young-earth reader nothing the text claims, since Genesis 10 does not name its compiler and Genesis 14:14 already brings a place name up to date.  It costs only the reading of the chapter as a one-off record.  A skeptic who dates the chapter to the exile must explain why it omits Babylon's own Chaldeans and the Persians.

Companion pages

Sources

  1. 1.

    Novotny, Jamie, and Joshua Jeffers.  “Ashurbanipal 011 (Prism A).”  The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668-631 BC), Assur-etel-ilani (630-627 BC), and Sin-sarra-iskun (626-612 BC), Part 1, RINAP 5/1.  Eisenbrauns, on Oracc.  2018.  The critical edition and translation of Ashurbanipal's Prism A, whose copies are dated 644 to 642 BC.  Column ii reports the submission of Gyges of Lydia and the Cimmerian wars, and carries the king's own statement that no earlier Assyrian king had heard of Lydia, which fixes the earliest Mesopotamian attestation of the name Genesis 10:22 gives as Lud.

    1. 1a.

      Column ii, line 95:  “(As for) Gyges, the king of the land Lydia — a region on the opposite shore of the sea, a remote place, the mention of whose name none of the kings, my ancestors, had (ever) heard”. ↩ ↩

  2. 2.

    Grayson, A. Kirk.  “Shalmaneser III no. 10, annals on a stone tablet from Assur.”  The Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), after RIMA 3 A.0.102.10.  Oracc.  2016.  Grayson's edition of an annal text written in Shalmaneser III's twentieth year, 839 BC, as adapted for the Oracc RIAo project.  Its account of the sixteenth year, 843 BC, holds the earliest mention of Parsua, the name later borne by the Persians, whom Genesis 10 does not list.

    1. 2a.

      Column iii, line 33b:  “In my sixteenth regnal year, I crossed Mount Kullar (and) conquered the lands Mannea (Munna), Allabria, Parsua, (Bīt-)Abdadāni, (Bīt-)Ḫamban, Namri, (and) Tupliyaš (Tugliyaš).”  Shalmaneser's year 1 is 858 BC, so the sixteenth year is 843 BC. ↩ ↩

  3. 3.

    Grayson, A. Kirk.  “Ashurnasirpal II no. 1, Annals A.”  The Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), after RIMA 2 A.0.101.1.  Oracc.  2016.  Grayson's edition of Ashurnasirpal II's main annals, as adapted for the Oracc RIAo project.  Its campaign narrative after the eponym year 878 BC carries the first mention of Chaldea, a people Genesis 10 does not name, and its building account says the city of Kalhu, biblical Calah, had first been built by Shalmaneser I.

    1. 3a.

      Column iii, line 24:  “Fear of my lordly majesty reached as far as Karduniaš (Babylonia) (and) awe of my weapons overwhelmed Chaldea.”  The transliteration writes Chaldea as KUR.kal-du.  The campaign follows the entry for the eponymy of 878 BC at iii 1. ↩ ↩

  4. 4.

    Josephus.  Antiquities of the Jews, book 1.  Translated by William Whiston.  Edited by Benedikt Niese.  c. 94 (edition of 1890).  Josephus's account of Genesis 10 in Antiquities 1.122-147, the oldest surviving name-by-name identification, written for Greek readers in the first century AD.  Cited by Niese's section numbers in Whiston's English.  Right where a name had stayed in use to his day, wrong where it had died out and he matched sounds to the peoples of the Roman map.

    1. 4a.

      Section 1.144:  “Arphaxad named the Arphaxadites, who are now called Chaldeans.  Aram had the Aramites;  which the Greeks call Syrians:  as Laud founded the Laudites, which are now called Lydians.” ↩ ↩

  5. 5.

    Wiseman, D. J.  “Genesis 10:  Some Archaeological Considerations.”  Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute 87:13–24.  1955.  A paper read to the Victoria Institute in December 1954 by the British Museum Assyriologist, an evangelical, arguing that the Table was compiled about 1500 BC or earlier and could have reached Moses at the Egyptian court.  Still the conservative starting point;  two of its arguments, from Tyre's founding and from the Canaanite names, are contradicted by evidence available in 1955.

    1. 5a.

      Page 18:  “Elisha (Alashia), a name for Cyprus which is frequently found in cuneiform documents in the eighteenth century B.C. (e.g. at Alalakh) and which is linked with ym'n in the Ras Shamra texts.” ↩

    2. 5b.

      Page 14:  “Possible meanings of mishpahoth show that the relationships discussed may be physical and/or linguistic and political ... Accumulating evidence therefore points to a date of c. 1500 B.C. or earlier for the compilation of the 'Table of Nations'.”  From the synopsis printed at the head of the paper. ↩ ↩

    3. 5c.

      Page 24:  “It is becoming increasingly clear that the geographical information in Genesis 10 could have been available to the Egyptian court when Moses received his education there in the fifteenth or fourteenth century B.C.” ↩

    4. 5d.

      Page 14:  “The chapter is thought to conform to a geographical knowledge current through trade about the seventh century B.C. ... Professor Albright has recently opted for about 1000 B.C. as the date of composition, but his reasons are so far as I know as yet unpublished.” ↩

  6. 6.

    Kitchen, K. A.  On the Reliability of the Old Testament.  Eerdmans.  2003.  A conservative Egyptologist's survey of the Old Testament against the external evidence.  Chapter 9 section B tabulates every Genesis 10 name by the century of its earliest external attestation and builds a three-phase literary history from the counts.  Kitchen is not a young-earth writer;  his method dates the list's final form to the first millennium BC and he says so.

    1. 6a.

      Page 435:  “these thirty-nine names are of no chronological significance for the present.” ↩

    2. 6b.

      Page 435:  “For the third millennium we have eleven names for sure that go on into later periods, plus Tidnum (not certainly Dedan), and very early 'Arams,' disputed.  For the early second millennium we have seventeen names ... For the late second millennium we have thirty-five names, strictly thirty-four because Ashur occurs twice ... For the early first millennium we have thirty-seven names, strictly thirty-five ... only two names, of uncertain attestation (Sabta/Sabteca), may genuinely only be attested this late”. ↩ ↩ ↩

    3. 6c.

      Page 447:  “The Table of Nations with early roots had its first form in the early second millennium, its full form in the late second, and was finally updated in the early first (a text history like that of the patriarchal narratives).” ↩ ↩

    4. 6d.

      Page 592:  “Togarmah is older Tegarama and Takarma in Anatolia, in nineteenth-century Old Assyrian sources (cf. P. Garelli, Les Assyriens en Cappadoce [1963], 117-18), then fourteenth/thirteenth century Hittite sources”.  Note 18. ↩

    5. 6e.

      Page 340:  “Caphtor is ancient Kaptara, well attested from the early second millennium, when the Mari archives actually mention a king of Hazor sending gifts to Kaptara (Caphtor).  Egyptian Keft(i)u (originally Kaftur) is simply a local variant of Kaptara;  it is solidly attested from the sixteenth century to the thirteenth, and may be traced back to the Twelfth Dynasty (ca. 1973-1795) and before.” ↩

    6. 6f.

      Pages 340-341:  “Is it not because these are in fact merely 'modernized' Caphtorians, with a different profile to the later 'historic' Philistines? ... The Mari report of sending tin to kings of Laish and Hazor (in Canaan) and to Kaptara (Crete) suggests that the traffic was not all one way.” ↩

    7. 6g.

      Page 438:  “So, did Lud (Lydia) similarly replace such as Luku (Lycia) and Arzawa?  And so on?  This we will almost certainly never know.” ↩

    8. 6h.

      Page 438:  “What is interesting, also, are the omissions.  For example, none of the later Ammon, Moab, or Edom got included, nor Midian nor Amalek ... Hostility might explain the former omissions, but not the latter.” ↩

    9. 6i.

      Page 436:  “This situation would suggest a second update in the first millennium, whether just once about the seventh century or in two subphases (IIIa, IIIb) in the tenth and seventh centuries respectively.  It is premature to choose dogmatically, given the limits of our existing sources.”  Kitchen's phase III, the first-millennium names. ↩

  7. 7.

    Wenham, Gordon J.  “Genesis 1-15.”  Word Biblical Commentary 1.  Word Books.  1987.  An evangelical commentary that gives the standard identifications with more caution than Kitchen and more sympathy for the text than Westermann.  Reads the chapter's "sons of" as political and geographical affiliation as well as descent, counts seventy by leaving out the Philistines, and states plainly which names are unknown.  The most even-handed of the reference works used here.

    1. 7a.

      Page 214:  “This list does not purport to be an exhaustive list of the nations of the world (cf. 10:5);  rather it mentions the major peoples known to Israel and their relationship to each other and to Israel.  In particular, it is probably significant that this chapter lists seventy peoples, whereas Jacob's family comprised seventy souls.  Israel is thus a microcosm of the wider family of humanity described in this chapter.” ↩

    2. 7b.

      Page 214:  “Its cosmopolitan outlook suggests an author well informed about world affairs and possibly connected with a royal court, whether fourteenth century Egypt (so Wiseman) or tenth/seventh century Jerusalem (so Westermann, 1:503).  The majority of scholars prefer a first-millennium date for the composition of this chapter, because some of the peoples listed here are not mentioned in extrabiblical texts until then”. ↩ ↩

  8. 8.

    Carter, Robert W. et al.  “An overview of the independent histories of the human Y chromosome and the human mitochondrial chromosome.”  Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, 133–151.  Creation Science Fellowship.  2018.  A young-earth conference paper by three creationist geneticists.  Its genetics belongs to the Y-chromosome article;  here it matters for two statements about Genesis 10:  that the Y tree need not have sixteen branches for Noah's sixteen grandsons, and that the Table was "a one-off documentation of the early post-Flood world".

    1. 8a.

      Page 147:  “The Table of Nations (Genesis 10) was a one-off documentation of the early post-Flood world, with about 4,0000 years of history since.  Much more work needs to be done before we can claim to precisely identify any of the biblical patriarchs.”  "4,0000" is the authors' misprint, presumably for 4,000. ↩ ↩

  9. 9.

    Ross, Allen P.  Creation and Blessing:  A Guide to the Study and Exposition of Genesis.  Baker.  1988.  An evangelical exposition that reworks Ross's two 1980-81 Bibliotheca Sacra studies of Genesis 10.  Reads the chapter as a segmented genealogy in which "sons" and "brothers" can mean dependent tribes and allies, counts seventy names, and in a footnote allows that Moses used an older skeleton list and added the Nimrod and Canaan material.  The clearest conservative statement that the Table is partly a political classification.

    1. 9a.

      Page 33:  “One could argue that Moses used the old skeleton list and added the material about Nimrod, the founding of the great empires, the Canaanite boundaries, and the cliché list of tribes.  This hypothesis would explain the difference in style ... but would not require a late date for the compilation.”  Footnote 12. ↩ ↩ ↩

  10. 10.

    Westermann, Claus.  Genesis 1-11:  A Commentary.  Augsburg.  Translated by John J. Scullion.  1984.  The standard critical commentary, translated from the 1974 German.  Reads the chapter as a Priestly list with Yahwistic insertions, grades every name by its attestation, and treats the "sons" as peoples rather than persons.  Its absolute dates for Sargon and Hammurabi are the old ones and are not used here;  its grading of the names is the baseline this article starts from.

    1. 10a.

      Page 509:  “the peoples mentioned will have become known in Israel in the 7th century as the peoples of the far north.  This coincides with what we know of them from other sources.  The majority of them came in contact with the Near East in the 8th century.”  Said of the fourteen Japhethite names. ↩

    2. 10b.

      Pages 502-503:  “Because we know of commercial dealings with Phoenician cities and with South Arabia from the time of Solomon, we presume that the basis of these enumerations are lists from the commercial chancery of the Jerusalem court.” ↩

    3. 10c.

      Page 503:  “The sons of Japheth however, the nations of the far north, have nothing at all to do with a genealogy of the sons of Noah;  this is not possible because they only became known to Israel in the 7th century (the greater number of these names occur also in Ezekiel).” ↩

  11. 11.

    The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages.  Cambridge University Press.  Edited by Roger D. Woodard.  2004.  The standard reference on the languages of the ancient world, one chapter per language by a specialist in it, each giving the language's family and the reasons for the placement.  The chapters cited are named on each claim.

    1. 11a.

      Page 19:  “The oldest Sumerian texts — perhaps even the oldest written texts known to us — are the approximately five thousand clay tablets found discarded in debris in the ceremonial center of the city of Uruk ... These tablets, which are dated around 3200 BC”.  Michalowski, "Sumerian". ↩

  12. 12.

    Moran, William L.  The Amarna Letters.  Johns Hopkins University Press.  1992.  The standard English edition of the diplomatic archive of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten, about 1360-1332 BC.  Cited by letter and line.  Supplies the fourteenth-century attestations of Alashiya, Shanhar (Shinar), Canaan, Danuna, Kashi (Cush) and the Phoenician coast cities of Genesis 10:17-18.

    1. 12a.

      Section EA 35, lines 49-53:  “You have not been put (on the same level) with the king of Hatti or the king of Šanhar.  Whatever greeting-gift he (my brother) sends me, I for my part send back to you double.”  Moran's index reads "Sanhar, biblical Shinar, a name for Babylonia, 24 iv 95;  35:49". ↩

    2. 12b.

      Section EA 8, lines 13-26:  “my merchants who were on their way with Ahu-tabu, were detained in Canaan for business matters ... in Hinnatuna of Canaan ... Canaan is your country, and [its] king[s are your servants].”  Burna-Buriaš II of Babylon to the Pharaoh. ↩

    3. 12c.

      Section EA 151, lines 49-58:  “The king, my lord, wrote to me, 'Write to me what you have heard in Canaan.'  The king of Danuna died;  his brother became king after his death, and his land is at peace.”  Abi-Milku, king of Tyre, to the Pharaoh. ↩

    4. 12d.

      Section EA 117, note:  “are also called men or troops of Kaši (Cush), and Meluhha is probably identified as Kaši (EA 127:36;  132:56;  133:17)”.  Moran's note on the Nubian troops in the Byblos letters. ↩

  13. 13.

    Grayson, A. Kirk.  “Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114-859 BC).”  The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods 2.  University of Toronto Press.  1991.  The standard edition of the Assyrian royal inscriptions from Tiglath-pileser I to Ashurnasirpal II.  Supplies the earliest Assyrian attestations of the Mušku (Meshech) in Tiglath-pileser I's accession year, about 1114 BC, and of Sidon, Arvad, Sumur and Amurru about 1100 BC.

    1. 13a.

      Page 14:  “In my accession year:  20,000 Musku with their five kings, who had held for 50 years the lands Alzu and Purulumzu ... (the Musku), whom no king had ever repelled in battle, being confident of their strength they came down (and) captured the land Katmuhu.”  Tiglath-pileser I, text A.0.87.1, column i, lines 62-88. ↩

    2. 13b.

      Page 23:  Tiglath-pileser I, text A.0.87.1, column v, lines 44-63, on his campaigns against the ahlamu-Aramaeans, about 1110 BC. ↩

  14. 14.

    Breasted, James Henry.  Ancient Records of Egypt, Volume III:  The Nineteenth Dynasty.  University of Chicago Press.  1906.  Breasted's translation of the Nineteenth Dynasty inscriptions.  Section 574 translates Merneptah's Great Karnak Inscription of his fifth year, about 1208 BC, which names the Teresh among the Sea Peoples allied with Libya.

    1. 14a.

      Page 241:  “Beginning of the victory which his majesty achieved in the land of Libya, Ekwesh, Teresh (Tw-rw-š), Luka (Rw-kw), Sherden, Shekelesh, Northerners coming from all lands.”  Section 574.  Breasted adds in his notes that the Teresh may equally well be the Etruscans. ↩

  15. 15.

    Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament.  Princeton University Press.  3rd edition.  Edited by James B. Pritchard.  1969.  The standard anthology of ancient Near Eastern texts in English translation.  John Wilson's translation of the Medinet Habu war record of Ramesses III's eighth year, about 1177 BC, is the first attestation of the Philistines under their own name.

    1. 15a.

      Page 262:  “The foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands ... No land could stand before their arms, from Hatti, Kode, Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya on, being cut off at [one time] ... Their confederation was the Philistines, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denye(n), and Weshesh, lands united.”  Wilson's notes add that Alashiya is probably Cyprus and that the Denyen, cuneiform Danuna, might be the Danaoi. ↩

  16. 16.

    Grayson, A. Kirk.  “Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858-745 BC).”  The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods 3.  University of Toronto Press.  1996.  The standard edition of the inscriptions of Shalmaneser III and his successors.  The Black Obelisk's annals give the earliest attestations of Tabal (Tubal) in Shalmaneser's twenty-second year, 837 BC, and of the Medes (Madai) in his twenty-fourth, 835 BC, counted from his first year, 858 BC.

    1. 16a.

      Page 67:  “In my twenty-second regnal year I crossed the Euphrates for the twenty-second time (and) went down to the land Tabal.  At that time I received gifts from twenty-four kings of the land Tabal.”  Black Obelisk, text A.0.102.14, lines 104b-107a. ↩

    2. 16b.

      Page 68:  “I received tribute from twenty-seven kings of the land Parsua.  Moving on from the land Parsua I went down to the lands Mēsu, Media (Amadāiia), Araziaš, (and) Harhār”.  Black Obelisk, text A.0.102.14, the twenty-fourth regnal year;  the transliteration on page 68 reads KUR a-ma-da-a-a. ↩ ↩

  17. 17.

    Tadmor, Hayim, and Shigeo Yamada.  “Tiglath-pileser III 42.”  The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726-722 BC), RINAP 1.  Eisenbrauns, on Oracc.  2011.  The edition of a summary inscription of Tiglath-pileser III.  Its reverse lists the Arabian peoples who submitted after the defeat of queen Samsi in 733 BC, among them the tribe Saba, the earliest cuneiform attestation of Sheba.

    1. 17a.

      Line 27':  “The people of the cities Masʾa (and) Tema, the (tribe) Saba ... who are on the border of the western lands”.  The transliteration reads LÚ.sa-ba-ʾa-a-a. ↩

  18. 18.

    Frame, Grant.  “Sargon II 001 (Khorsabad annals).”  The Royal Inscriptions of Sargon II, King of Assyria (721-705 BC), RINAP 2.  Eisenbrauns, on Oracc.  2021.  The edition of Sargon II's annals from his palace at Khorsabad.  Line 117 names the Ionians (restored after Winckler), and line 123 records tribute from Pharaoh, from Samsi queen of the Arabs and from Itʾamar the Sabaean in the seventh regnal year, 715 BC.

    1. 18a.

      Line 117:  “In ord[er to conquer the Ionians, whose abode] is situated [in the] m[iddle of the s]ea”.  The bracketed words are the editor's restoration;  Frame's note 69 adds that the Ionians are mentioned in several of Sargon's inscriptions. ↩

  19. 19.

    Parpola, Simo.  “SAA 1 30, 31 and 32:  letters of crown prince Sennacherib on the Cimmerians.”  The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I:  Letters from Assyria and the West, State Archives of Assyria 1.  Helsinki University Press, on Oracc.  1987.  Three undated letters from the crown prince to Sargon II reporting that the king of Urartu had been routed on an expedition against the Cimmerians.  Historians place them about 715-714 BC because they precede Sargon's eighth campaign;  they are the earliest mention of the Cimmerians anywhere, and one writes the land as Gamir.

    1. 19a.

      Section SAA 1 31, line obverse 9:  “ma-a LUGAL KUR.URI-a.a a-na KUR.ga-mir”.  The transliteration;  "the king of Urartu to the land Gamir". ↩

  20. 20.

    Leichty, Erle.  “Esarhaddon 001 (Nineveh A prism).”  The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680-669 BC), RINAP 4.  Eisenbrauns, on Oracc.  2011.  The edition of Esarhaddon's main prism, whose copies are dated to the eponymy of Atar-ili, 673 BC.  Column iii reports the defeat of Teušpâ the Cimmerian and of Išpakāia the Scythian with the Manneans, the first royal-inscription attestations of the peoples Genesis 10 calls Gomer and Ashkenaz.

    1. 20a.

      Column iii, lines 59-61:  “I scattered the Mannean people, undisciplined Gutians, and its army;  I put to the sword Išpakāia, a Scythian, an ally who could not save himself.”  The transliteration writes the Scythian as URU.as-gu-za-a-a;  the Nineveh B prism has KUR.áš-gu-za-a-a. ↩

  21. 21.

    Leichty, Erle.  “Esarhaddon 060.”  The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680-669 BC), RINAP 4.  Eisenbrauns, on Oracc.  2011.  The edition of a fragmentary inscription from Assur written after Esarhaddon's conquest of Memphis in 671 BC.  Its obverse names Egypt, Upper Egypt and Kush and then the kings "from Yadnana (Cyprus) (and) Ionia to Tarsus", the only cuneiform attestation of the name Tarshish, which the editor translates as Tarsus.

    1. 21a.

      Section obverse, lines 8'-10':  “I conquered (Lower) Egypt, Upper Egypt, and Kush ... I wrote to all of the kings who are in the midst of the sea, from Yadnana (Cyprus) (and) Ionia to Tarsus, (and) they bowed down at my feet.”  The transliteration reads KUR.mu-ṣur KUR.pa-tú-ri-si u KUR.ku-u-si ... TA KUR.ia-da-na-na KUR.ia-man a-di KUR.tar-si-si:  Mizraim, Pathros, Cush, Javan and Tarshish of Genesis 10 in one line. ↩

  22. 22.

    Novotny, Jamie, and Joshua Jeffers.  “Ashurbanipal 003 (Prism B).”  The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668-631 BC), Assur-etel-ilani (630-627 BC), and Sin-sarra-iskun (626-612 BC), Part 1, RINAP 5/1.  Eisenbrauns, on Oracc.  2018.  Column ii, line 86:  The edition of Prism B, whose copies are dated 649-648 BC, carrying the earlier version of the Gyges report, with the transliteration KUR.lu-ud-di for Lydia. ↩

  23. 23.

    Grayson, A. Kirk.  “Shalmaneser III no. 2, the Kurkh Monolith.”  The Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), after RIMA 3 A.0.102.2.  Oracc.  2016.  Grayson's edition of the Kurkh Monolith as adapted for the Oracc RIAo project by Jamie Novotny.  Its second column lists the coalition Shalmaneser III fought at Qarqar in 853 BC, which includes the Arkites, Arvadites and Sinites of Genesis 10:17-18 and the earliest mention of the Arabs.

    1. 23a.

      Column ii, lines 89b-95:  The Qarqar coalition of 853 BC:  Byblos, Egypt, "the land Arqâ (Irqanatu)", "Mattan-Baʾal of the city Arwad", "the land Usnû (Usanātu)", "Adūnī-Baʾal of the land Siʾannu".  Line 94:  “1,000 camels of Gindibuʾ of the land of the Arabs”. ↩

    2. 23b.

      Column i, line 23b:  “Arrāmu of the land Urarṭu”.  The city Sugunia, besieged in the accession-year campaign of 858 BC. ↩

  24. 24.

    Speiser, E. A.  “Genesis:  Introduction, Translation, and Notes.”  Anchor Bible 1.  Doubleday.  1964.  The Anchor Bible commentary by a Pennsylvania Assyriologist working within the documentary hypothesis.  Argues that the Table classifies by several criteria at once, so that its groupings cannot match language families, and proposes Tukulti-Ninurta I for Nimrod and the Kassites for Nimrod's Cush.  The mainstream witness for the multi-criterion reading, stated case by case.

    1. 24a.

      Page 72:  “Another noteworthy omission is that of the Babylonians ... If this is true, the verses in question would have to be dated not later (in terms of source material) than the end of the Kassite period (end of twelfth century).” ↩

    2. 24b.

      Page 71:  “The Japhethite group as recorded by P is not later than the seventh century b.c., since it was known to Jeremiah and Ezekiel, directly or indirectly.  Yet much of the same information is too late for J's times.” ↩

  25. 25.

    Carter, Robert W.  “Can we place the sons of Noah on the Y chromosome tree?”  Creation Ministries International.  Oct 29, 2024.  A web article by CMI's geneticist.  States that the Table traces male lines and is therefore a record of Y-chromosome descent, rejects the popular continent map as wrong and racist in origin, argues that the three lines overlap across most of their range, and ends by warning against pegging lineages to places.  The most careful young-earth statement about what Genesis 10 does and does not predict.

    1. 25a.

      Paragraph 1:  “It appears to describe all the people groups that spread out from Babel.  It might, on the other hand, describe all the people groups known to a later biblical writer long after the Babel dispersion ... Importantly, the Table of Nations traces the male lines only.  Thus, it is also a record of Y chromosome descent.  A quick glance at the tree, however, informs us that it is far from complete.”  The first paragraph of the body, under figure 1. ↩

  26. 26.

    Morris, Henry M.  The Genesis Record:  A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings.  Creation-Life and Baker.  1976.  The founder of the Institute for Creation Research's commentary on Genesis.  Treats every Genesis 10 name as an ancestor and traces modern nations to them by name survival;  its chapter 10 is the source of the Moscow, Tobolsk, Cathay and China identifications in later young-earth literature.

    1. 26a.

      Page 247:  “Allowing for the gradual modifications in form that always occur in such names with the passage of time, and noting pertinent references in both Scripture and early secular historical writings and on excavated archaeological monuments, we can trace most of these names and recognize them as ancestors of the Indo-European peoples.” ↩

  27. 27.

    Wilson, Robert R.  “Genealogy and History in the Biblical World.”  Yale Near Eastern Researches 7.  Yale University Press.  1977.  A Yale study comparing oral lineage genealogies recorded by anthropologists in Africa and Arabia with Mesopotamian king lists and the biblical genealogies.  Establishes that segmented genealogies are fluid and serve social and political functions, while holding that they may still carry accurate history.  It does not analyse Genesis 10;  Ross and Oded applied its model to the chapter.

    1. 27a.

      Page 200:  “All of our evidence also indicates that in fact genealogies may contain accurate information and may be potentially valuable sources for the modern historian.” ↩