The Table of Nations
Genesis 10
The Bible teaches that Noah lived for 950 years, 600 years before the flood and 350 years after the flood. Chapter 10 of Genesis, known as the table of nations, tells us how Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Yapheth, continued to populate the Earth after the flood. Here are some facts about Shem, Ham, and Japheth that will help you understand and discern that so long as you read the Bible based on modern -day migratory societies, without taking ancient history into account, your understanding of God's Word is likely to be completely flawed.
Often, those who attempt to establish the table of nations do not provide a direct account, but rather use religious, metaphorical, or cryptic language, while focusing solely on contemporary societies and cultures. The problem with this approach is that it creates paradoxes because it fails to take historical context into account and, to some extent, misrepresents the Word of God. The Lord calls people to examine their past in order to foster collective memory. Preserving, studying, and teaching ancient sources and evidence are biblical prescriptions.
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Isaiah 46:8-9 "Remember this and be brave; take it to heart, you transgressors! Remember what happened long ago."
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Job 8:8 "Please inquire of past generations and consider the discoveries of their fathers."
The Ethiopic Bible canon includes books such as the Book of Jasher and the Book of Jubilees (known as the “Little Genesis”), which were formerly held in high esteem by many Church Fathers but are now rejected as apocryphal by most modern Christian groups. However, it seems somewhat strange that these books, which recount in detail the flood and the division of the Earth among Noah's sons, have not been fully accepted by the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Churches, which despite extracting several biblical verses from these books, nevertheless chose to remove them from their canon.
However, when we conducted an in-depth analysis of the division of the Earth (according to the Bible and apocryphal books), we found that the general principle behind the affectation of the various nations comprising the Table of Nations is very vague and riddled with difficulties. The more you seek to research and understand world history according to exegesis, the more you will be confronted with complexities that have led modern biblical critics to speculate about the intertwining of numerous sources and textual corruptions, or to hypothesize that some changes may have taken place in a more recent version of human history.
Had they encompassed the whole of the earth?
It is apparent that biblical texts were composed in light of the geographical data of later eras. However, it seems that when Christianity took root in the Roman Empire, scholars did not cover the entire planet. Claiming to encompass all of humanity, they focused solely on Europe, Arabia, and Mesopotamia. But what about the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, and Australia, where numerous empires and kingdoms existed and thrived in their regions over many thousands of years prior to the arrivals of the colonizers? Who did the indigenous peoples of these vast regions of the world actually descend from? Why were these regions of the world excluded from the division of the earth, as if their presence was of no importance and should not be taken into account?
To this end, Flavius Josephus, a Jewish priest, scholar, and historian born in 37 AD, made the following statements, claiming that certain historical names had been altered.
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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. |Flavius Josephus of the Antiquities of the Jews — Book I, Chap. 6:2|
This reinforces the hypothesis that the narrative may have changed in an earlier version of human history, and that certain truths had been suppressed before the first century.


