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The Semitic family includes Hebrew, Assyrio-Babylonian, Arabic, Syriac, and
Ethiopian. The third, the Turanian, or Hamitic group, comprises all the languages of Asia
and Europe not included in the Aryan or Semitic groups. In the Proceedings of the
Society of Biblical Archæology, 1889 and 1890, is shown the close connection between
the Accadian, an undoubted Hamitic tongue, the most ancient language of Babylonia, and
the Chinese, which Mr. J. 100: Ball calls "the new Accadian".
The science of philology has led to the conclusion that there is a threefold division of
the human race corresponding with the threefold division of Gen. 10:
One more testimony from archæology and we pass to other things. Gen. 10: places the
new beginning of the race in Western Asia. Is there any evidence that these three
families have left their mark here? Professor Rawlinson says:--
"In Western Asia the several ethnic branches of the human family were more closely
intermingled, and more evenly balanced than in any other portion of the ancient world.
Semitic, Indo-European, and Tartar or Turanian races, not only divided among them this
portion of the earth's surface, but lay confused and interspersed upon it in a most
remarkable entanglement. It is symptomatic of this curious inter-mixture, that the Persian
monarchs, when they wished to publish a communication to their Asiatic subjects in such
a way that it should be generally intelligible, had to put it out not only in three different
languages, but in three languages belonging to the three principal divisions of human
speech.
The region retains the same peculiarity to the present day. It is still inhabited by
representatives of the three great divisions of the human race, and when the Government
publishes its edicts, it has still to employ Indo-European (Persian), Semitic (Arabic), and
Turanian (Turkish) speech."
We must now leave this testimony to the truth of the Scriptures to consider in brief
"the generations of the sons of Noah". Shem is named first because of the fact that he
was the father of the line of promise, although Japheth was the first-born (I Chron. 1: 5).
THE SONS OF JAPHETH.--The name of Japheth means "enlargement", and the
fulfillment of the promise, "God shall enlarge Japheth" is seen to this day in the fact that
the "white man" is still the colonizer and pioneer. The sons of Japheth are seven in
number, who have seven sons, and "by these were the coast-lands of the Gentiles divided
in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations". Brief
notes are all that can be given upon these sons and their descendants.
GOMER.--Ezek. 38: 6 places Gomer in "the north quarter". In the Assyrian
inscriptions Gomer is called Gimirra, and by the Greek writers Kimmerii. The name is
preserved in the word "Crimea". By the Romans Gomer was called Cimbri. This in turn
is the name Cymry, the name of the Welsh or the Celtic race. They have left traces of
their journey across Europe from the Crimea to Cumberland.
MAGOG.--Ezek. 38: 2-6 associates Gomer with Magog, and nothing very
definite can be said of this man's descendants.
MADAI.--The title of the multifarious tribes to the east of Kurdistan; the Medes.