Noah and the Flood
A Look into the Father of Mankind, his Children, and a Brief Origin of Political History following the Flood
Last time we discussed the earliest archeological cultures present in the near east and their geographic regions. This time we will look at how early states and ethnicities began forming. These are the final two sections before we move onto Noah’s sons.
Noah: The Father of Geopolitics
The first names listed in the Torah under a geopolitical context are the names of Noah’s sons. They each form their own distinct nations and consequently are framed in a environment regarding their foreign relations and interactions with external tribes/nations.1 While not explicitly ‘Jewish’, Noah and his sons are the origin point for all nations found within the Tanakh and must be discussed prior to an analysis of strictly ‘Jewish’ history as many of these nations are later entwined with Jewish events. These stories form the earliest examples of geopolitics in the Torah and as we understand from modern Jewish history, Jews do not exist in a bubble.
The generations of Noah are an interesting starting point, since they obviously lead directly into Abraham, the eventual descendent of Noah’s son Shem, namesake of the word “Semitic”. In addition to Shem, Noah had two other sons. Traditional westernized spellings of their names give us “Ham” and “Japheth”, but the actual Hebrew implies their names were “Cham” and “Yaphez”, pronunciations often critical to understanding certain etymological links between them and the places they founded. Traditional scholarship in and outside Judaism identifies Japheth with the Indo-Europeans; the name “Yaphez” potentially having some link to one of the four major tribes of Greeks and main Greek dialect, Ionian. It should be noted for those unfamiliar with aspects of Greek etymology that Greek has no “Y” sound, and thus the name “Yapheth” would be rendered as “Iopheth” in Greek. This Japheth is most likely the same character as the Greek titan Iapetus, progenitor of mankind. Ham is traditionally associated with the Canaanites, as well as Egypt itself and the whole of Africa. The name “Cham” has uncertain etymological origin, as well as an even more uncertain phonological evolution.
Many of the names of these men and their children hint at where and who these individuals were. There are even implications for their character traits - but there are no events that can give us any indication of what these people's lives were like. Thus the geopolitics of the era are unknown until we arrive at Genesis 10. This is the subject of the following chapter, and lays the groundwork for the paths that much of the Torah takes.
Genesis 10 opens up with the line: “And these are the generations of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and sons were born to them after the Flood.” Already from this one line we can glean a few key details of the settings. The line does not open up with the events of those figures' lives, but rather chooses to affirm a list of generations of the individuals to set the stage for the political events to come; these events being those that transpire “after the Flood”. In addition we can note that while Noah and his sons are born prior to the flood, their children are all born after the Flood.
At first glance this seemingly unimportant line may not mean much but it serves to separate those that were born prior to the flood as “ethnic” forefathers, rather than specific nations, and those born after the flood being more concrete place names of nations/cities. Shem, Ham, and Japeth are not understood to be “places” but terms to describe peoples with similar, yet different, ethnic background, in contrast to the intention of the terms that follow. Many names of the descendants are suspected or verified countries, nations, and cities of specific geographic location - unlike the direct sons of Noah who should not be assumed to be geographically constrained, or even limited regionally.
It is important to grasp that cities of the ancient world were national polities unto themselves and prior to the Flood - often held their names as synonymous with the wider nation it governed. “Babylon” was a later example - being both an empire and city, as well as the city of Assur, more familiarly known as Assyria.2 This evolution of city-state to nation-state post Flood, squares away with scholarship's understanding of the evolution of the “nation” separate from mere city’s exerting influence over rival cities. Prior to the Flood there were few unified identities among nations, most cities operating as a sort of hub world for a tribe that spent most of its time and resources operating outside of the city as nomads. After the Flood these national identities became more essential for survival and prosperity. Thus understanding and analyzing the increased complexity of geopolitics and the interaction of nation-states is crucial to understanding Jewish history and how that can inform the present.
In academic scholarship the very first treaties preserved are those of Lagash and Umma, Lagash being the supreme and largest city-state of the antediluvian Sumerian period. These treatises took place around the year 2100 BCE, and after the Flood within the Sumerian religion. This begins to give us a timeframe for when these events occurred, putting the Flood under the (secular) timeline prior to around the year 2300 BCE.
The Deluge
There are two timelines to synthesize: the secular and the rabbinic. While it is often unnecessary to note minor differences between the two (boiling down to a highly complex method of counting and a debate over “missing years” in the rabbinic timeline) the traditional Jewish dating puts the Flood at the year 2105 BCE. This would date to 100 years after Noah’s first son Japheth was born in 2205 BCE, with Ham and Shem born in the two proceeding years. It is difficult to date anything prior to the flood within a rabbinic context as there is still ongoing debate over dating. Many of the lifespans are difficult to explain without overly complex theories relating to mystical counting, or non-literalist approaches. I therefore must shelve any real attempts to date events prior to the Flood, or the events that follow and rely on dates and lifespans obtained through that Kabbalistic counting mechanism I am not initiated to understand.
Saving the debate about mystical numerology theories and the younger dryas impact event being a 10,000 BCE “global” flood that actually could be dated as the real Flood, explaining an almost 7000 year gap;3 there was a documented second Flood in the region where Noah and Abraham settled around the year 2300, which took out a significant chunk of very populated land in the Persian Gulf. Many of the cities that were submerged permanently, lost access to previous hydrologic expectations, or faced irreparable damage to the point of reset were directly affiliated with, or ruled over what became the remnants of Sumeria in the antediluvian period. Nearly the entire “known world” of Mesopotamia and the surrounding regions would have sunk underwater for some period of time. The mountains in the north did stay above water levels however, and this is where Ararat is reportedly located, according to Genesis 8.
Academic scholarship would doubt the truly “world changing” effects of such a localized event in 2300, but there is no debate that an event wiping out all of the major cities of Sumeria would result in a similar decimation of the political systems previously upheld. Much like a Kohen Gadol,4 the head of a specific occupational cult, or tribe, would be the only one who knows the complete picture. This was a fragile culture that had relied on complex systems passed down through filial responsibility and generational education. Much of their knowledge was not written down, and was instead passed through oral traditions. Once lost it would be impossible to rediscover this information. The resulting world was completely new and the knowledge of old - what little remained - lost its relevance to a vastly different emerging political climate. An entirely new political climate emerged following this collapse. Even within the early chapters of Genesis we see that knowledge of the Garden of Eden is lost after this event and rabbinic sources citing this event have the intended goal of eliminating prior knowledge, considering it a corrupted world.
Regardless of the exact context behind Noah’s Ark and the aforementioned Deluge it is clear that Noah’s sons represent the beginning of what would be a new geopolitical landscape. With what can only be presumed to be a near complete monopoly over livestock and the remaining agricultural wisdom, what remained of the world was soon joined to one of the three brothers' cultural identities. Each of their sons in-turn founding nearly all of the world’s major nations in the coming years.
In the attached picture you will see a full-size complete map of the world on the eve of the early Bronze Age. This will be helpful (not required) to become familiar with the regional culture types.5
Next time we will begin the first official “Chapter” and son of Noah, Japheth. Feel free to let me know any criticisms or comments you have down below.
Tribe and Nation are essentially the same term here, with tribe being something more akin to ‘people’.
Assur is not just the name of the City and Nation, but the Assyrian people, and their national God ‘Ashur’. Despite giving their name to Syria, geographically it contains none of the Assyrian heartland.
Ask Randal Carlson about this one, I’m not exactly sold and I haven’t square it away yet since there is too little information present at hand.
The high priest in Judaism.
Very well done. Appreciated the tie ins with ancient cultures and the maps were very helpful.