Sons of Japheth: Part I (No. 46A)

From the settlement by the sons of Noah after the Flood, Canaan the youngest son of Ham was already alive when they settled the land and before Noah had planted vines and was drunk on the wine (Heb. yayin; see the paper Wine in the Bible (No. 188)).

The term younger son in Genesis 9:24 actually refers to Noah’s grandson Canaan, as it is Canaan that is cursed and not Ham. Canaan was the last of Ham’s four sons, while Ham was the second son of Noah.

The Bible gives no indication of how long it was till Noah “began to be a vine dresser”. However, the vines either had to have regenerated after the Flood or planted virtually immediately after the Flood to preserve them. They could not remain indefinitely in pots.

The Bible indicates Canaan, and hence all the sons of Ham, was included in the immediate family grouping on the Ark. However, the Bible does not elaborate on the issue.

In this act against Noah (of which the Bible hints, but is not clear), Canaan is made a servant of both Shem and Japheth (cf. Gen. 9:18-27). In Genesis 9:27 the important blessing on Japheth is given where Noah says: “God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem and Canaan shall be his servant”.

Thus Japheth, the eldest of the three sons of Noah, was to be made very large and was to dwell in the tents of Shem, and be served by Canaan. In other words, the birthright promises of Shem were to be enjoyed by an enlarged Japheth, who would benefit from Shem’s promises but be larger than Shem in the process.

Japheth (jā'feth), son of Noah and ancestor of those who were to occupy the isles of the Gentiles. This is purported to mean the Mediterranean lands of Europe and Asia Minor. The meaning of his name is:

Japheth (SHD 3315) Yapheth from 6601 – expansion; 6601: a prim. root: to open i.e. be (make) roomy.

Japheth was the father of the Indo-European peoples, those stretching from India to the shores of Western Europe. They are each linked by linguistic similarities that may seem invisible to the layman but are more obvious to the linguist. He was also the ancestor of much of Asia and the Americas including some of the Pacific.

The break-up after Babel saw a number of linguistic groups develop.

Genesis 10:1-5 tells us who the sons of Japheth were.

¹ These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; sons were born to them after the flood. ² The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. ³The sons of Gomer: Ash'kenaz, Riphath, and Togar'mah. ⁴ The sons of Javan: Eli'shah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Do'danim. ⁵ From these the coastland peoples spread. These are the sons of Japheth in their lands, each with his own language, by their families, in their nations.

Note that the text says that each had his own language in their lands by families and by nations.

The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras.

The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Riphath and Togarmah.

The sons of Javan were Eli’shah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.

The text tells us that from these people the coastland peoples spread.

We have a number of histories from which to trace these people.

Josephus gives us valuable information regarding the sons of Japheth. In Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, Chapter Six, section 1 he says:

HOW EVERY NATION WAS DENOMINATED FROM THEIR FIRST INHABITANTS.

Now they were the grandchildren of Noah, in honor 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 which they light upon, which none had inhabited before, they called the nations by their own names. For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, [Galls,] but were then called Gomerites. Magog founded those that from him were named Magogites, but who are by the Greeks called Scythians.

Here we identify two of the sons of Japheth: Gomer and Magog.

Much is known of the people identified by Josephus. We see Gomer extend from the Taurus and Amanus Mountains in Asia Minor to the river Tanais and right across Europe to Cadiz in Spain.

The Book of Jubilees includes Cadiz as the border of the inheritance of Ham and Japheth. Cadiz was first established at the south-west of the Iberian Peninsula, as a colony of Tyre, and it is a Semitic word Gadir meaning walled or fortified.

We have dealt with the inheritance of Ham in the series Sons of Ham (No. 45A to 45E).

The inheritance of Japheth was thus all of Europe and the Asian mainland north of the mouth of the River Don, as we will see below. It extended also into the Americas, as we will see, where it was combined with the tents of Shem.

The Tanais River appears in ancient Greek sources as the name of a river and the city on it situated in the Maeotian Marshes. It was anciently viewed as the border between the inheritance of the sons of Japheth to the North, North-east and West and the sons of Shem to the South.

The Scythian (and Iranian) word for river was Danu, and is the equivalent to the modern Ossetic word for river, don, and hence it is now called the Don River. It was a Khazar stronghold in medieval times dominated by the fortress of Sarkel, and its later 16^th- and 17^th-century inhabitants are called Don Cossacks. These are sons of Japheth but they are not sons of Gomer who were the original inhabitants.

The Book of Jubilees terms the river (Tina) the border between Japheth and Shem beginning at its westernmost point to its mouth. The mouth discharges into the Sea of Azov.

In Jubilees 8:10-9:15 we see the divisions of the people of the sons of Noah and the distribution, and the curses for breaking boundaries.

The text is not inspired, but it and the text in Josephus represents the understanding of Judah in the Temple period of the placement of the tribes.

The first portion was given to Gomer and the area to the north (termed inner north) of that was given to the sons of Magog who were the Scythians. Herodotus also places the Scythians in this area (Hist. 4).

The sons of Gomer also included the sons of Togarmah and these were described as inhabiting the uttermost parts, or the recesses, of the north (Ezek. 38:6). We shall identify these and the root division of the people and see just how numerous and widespread these people really are in Asia. By the time of Ezekiel they had spread over the entire north and that extended into Asia.

Magog

We know where these people were in Central Asia in what became the Steppes and into Persia. We know from the Irish and Scottish histories that these people founded the Scoto-Milesians that occupied Ireland and Scotland as the last conquerors of those areas before the Normans came into them. The Welsh also entered Britain and later some entered Ireland, however, these are not Scythians but rather Riphathian Celts of the kingdom of Wilusia whose capital was at Troy until 1054 BCE when it was overthrown by the alliance of the Greeks and Thracians called Phrygians. They merged with some Javanites in Britain where there were sons of Elisha and Tarshish, and hence we get the K2 YDNA in Britain as well as the Hamitic A and B and E Haplogroups from various sources that we will discuss in the relevant papers.

The genealogy of the Milesians is explained in the genealogy of the Geoghegan clan, which takes the Magogites from Adam to the Milesian clans in Ireland of recent centuries. Appendix 1 of this series is extremely helpful in understanding their history.

We know for a fact that the Scythians were as far east as the Uigur Autonomous Region of China at Urumqi in the second millennium BCE, as we have found their mummified bodies there in the middle of the twentieth century. Their physiology is Celt and the clothes and kilts they possessed resemble ancient Scottish hunting tartans and plaids. A textile expert, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, has written on the subject (The Mummies of Urümchi, London, 1999).

The Bible says clearly that in the Last Days the land of Magog is in fact occupied by the tribes of Meshech and Tubal under their leader, who is termed Gog. This name is used of the enemies of the sons of Israel, and extended from Agag of Amalek to Haman the Agagite or descendant of Agag the Amalekite, and on to the leader of the Last Days in the area of ancient Magog. This leader is not of Magog but of Meshech and Tubal ruling the area we now describe as central Russia and the countries that made up what was the Soviet Union. There is a letter Y immediately before Gog in the Hebrew and thus it should read Ygog or the old Agag.

In Ezekiel 1:2-3 God says to Ezekiel:

²Son of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, (or Chief Prince of depending on how “Rosh” is translated.), Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, ³And you shall say; So says the Lord God: Behold I am against you, Gog, the prince the head of Meshech and Tubal

Magog by this text no longer lives in its ancient lands in Scythia but has moved. As we trace it, we shall see that the tribe of Magog has moved all over the world. The leader that God is against is of the houses of Mesech and Tubal that now have occupied the lands of Magog in what was Scythia. We have examined this war in the paper War of Hamon-Gog (No. 294). It refers to the war of the Last Days and the alliance that comes against Israel.

At the end of the Millennium, Gog is conjoined with Magog and marches against Christ at Jerusalem (Rev. 20:7-8) under the influence of the newly-released Satan. This is another war altogether under another leader who embodies the spirit of the adversary, as what we would term the Antichrist. In this case, Gog is used rather that Antichrist, as the person carrying this label is already dead. The false prophet and this entity, Antichrist, are killed by Christ at his return. Gog and Magog in the end sequence are considered to be two beings of the fallen Host that influence all the lands of the Earth in the end of the Millennium rebellion.

The early Churchmen identified the Goths as the Getae of Thrace, rather than the Goths being the Magog as identified by Ambrose in De Fide (378) when the emperor Gratian was going to fight the Goths in the Gothic War of 376-382. Ambrose wrote Gog iste Gothus este meaning that Gog is the Goth. Gog has taken on the name of whoever is against you at the time. Note, however, that the Goths were identified with the Getae in Thrace by Jerome in his comment on Genesis 10:2. Augustine in his City of God identifies Gog and Magog as not being a particular people in a particular place, but says that they exist all over the world. The location of the Getae in Thrace ca. 390 by Jerome means that they had moved into Thrace and replaced the Tirasians from the horde of the Massagetae further east. They may have been part-Tirasian in Parthia as well, as were the Svear or Swedes who also claim descent from Magog among its leaders.

The Qur’an in Surah 21:96-97 refers to this letting loose as a sign of the end before the judgment.

But when Gog and Magog are let loose and they rush headlong down every height (or advantage). Then will the True Promise draw near.

The text is thus a paraphrase of Revelation 20.

The sons of Magog were the Scythians, whose own historians numbered themselves among them. The Spanish Visigoths claimed descent from Magog as we see from the writings of Isidore of Seville, who said that all the Goths were descended from Magog. The Swedes also claim descent from the Scythian Magogites. The Swede Johannes Magnus (1488-1544) held that Magog’s sons were Sven and Gethar (who is asserted to be also named Gog). They allegedly became the ancestors of the Swedes (Sven) and Goths (Gethar). Queen Christina of Sweden reportedly held she was number 249 in a list of kings going back to Magog. The line thus must have been simply the successive kings of the sub-tribe since the line from Magog in the Irish lineages only numbers between 122-130 from Magog to the present time (see the Genealogy of the Geoghegans at the Appendix).

We now look at the next of the sons according to Josephus.

Madai

Regarding Madai and the Medes, Josephus states:

Now as to Javan and Madai, the sons of Japhet; from Madai came the Madeans, who are called Medes, by the Greeks; (Ant. Jews, op. cit.)

The Medes were situated in the hill country north-west of the Elamites, who comprised the Persians in what was Persia and is now Iran.

These Medes formed the core of what became the Kurds in what is now Kurdistan. Their female mtDNA groups entered the Parthians and also the Riphathian Celts. That is why the I mtDNA Haplogroup is significant among Kurds, Italians and the English.

The error in Josephus concerns Javan. Jubilees ascribes the Greeks as deriving from Javan, however, the Spartan Greeks we know to be Semites of the sons of Keturah. The Greeks derived from Javan are in the islands and extend west on the Mediterranean to Spain. Some half of modern Greeks are E3b North Africans and are not sons of Japheth. Almost all modern Greeks are either Hamitic or Semitic at a ratio of approximately 55% to 45%. Josephus claims:

... but from Javan, Ionia, and all the Grecians, are derived.

As we now know this is incorrect in that the modern mainland Greeks are not all sons of Japheth.

These Ionian Greeks inhabited the islands and not mainland Greece.

Jubilees 8:25-26 identifies the inheritance of Japheth as being north of the Tina or Don River to the north-east of all the “region of Gog”. Thus the term Gog was originally applied to the Steppes in what was termed the former Central Soviet Republics and “everything east of it”.

That takes us into Asia proper, and East Asia. We will see the significance of this in later papers as we examine the distribution of the Japhethite tribes.

Jubilees identifies the origin of the term Celt in 8:26, where it says that the inheritance went “towards the mountains of Qelt toward the north, toward the Ma’uk Sea”; in other words, to the Caucasus. The term Ma’uk Sea means “the world ocean known to the Greeks as Okeanos” (cf. Jubilees to James H Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, p. 73, fn. s). In other words, the boundary for Japheth was the world sea that surrounds Europe and Asia from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Jubilees makes this clearer by saying that the border was also to the east of Cadiz, where it is at the edge of the water of the sea (i.e. the Atlantic).

Javan

The Book of Jubilees also identifies the five great islands of the Mediterranean as being the inheritance of Japheth and seemingly of Javan.

Now, there are six great islands of the Mediterranean. The text reads:

And to Javan the fourth portion was assigned, every island and the islands which are towards the side of Lud.” Lud was the son of Shem that was assigned the portion from Mt Asshur to the Mediterranean Sea and thus Javan held the islands off the Anatolian Coast.

The five great islands are mentioned in 1 Enoch 77:8 and these islands would be Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Cyprus and Crete, but Jubilees assigns four of these to Japheth, and the fifth (island) belongs to Arphaxad or Arphachsad, son of Shem. That is Crete (Caphtor) (cf. Jub. 8:21). In Jubilees 9:13 we see this island referred to as Kamaturi, which is understood to be a corruption of Caphtor (involving the substitution of a labial m for a labial p). The five islands of Japheth would thus be Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Cyprus, and Malta.

Some have linked Cyprus to Dan, as mention is made of the Danaan in the Mediterranean as well as in Ireland. These are a Semitic group associated with Javan and were in Ireland before the Milesian Magogites came there.

We have seen from the detail of the Sons of Ham Part III: Mizraim that Crete or Capthor ended up as part of the Libyan possessions of the sons of Egypt and not that of Arphaxad.

In the excavations of Crete and the palace at Knossos and from detail in the National Museum, however, we can see plainly that there were two types of people there. One was the dark-skinned Cretans and the other type was Semite ruling priestesses with dresses cut to reveal their breasts. They were deliberately painted with lighter skins. In the museum also there are earrings of the Golden Calf of the Semites in Shinar. In my discussions with the museum staff they appeared not to fully realise the importance or significance of what they had there, or they resisted the concepts for nationalist reasons. These were probably the early Assyrian Arphaxadites referred to by Josephus.

The distribution of the sons of Javan in the islands is also supported by the K2 YDNA groups in Malta and in Spain. We will discuss this aspect later in the paper on Javan.

However, every island was given to Javan and that in the first instance involved the settlement beyond the Mediterranean. The first settler of Ireland was one of these early Greeks called Parthelon, as we will see later. The islands that went to Javan were indeed extensive and extended to the island groups in Asia and the Pacific, as we will also see later from an examination of the distribution of the YDNA K Haplogroup and its Hg M derivative.

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 Aeolians. Tharsus to the Tharsians, for so was Cilicia of old called; the sign of which is this, that the noblest city they have, and a metropolis also, is Tarsus, the tau being by change put for the theta. Cethimus 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 has been 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 grandchildren 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: but the names in all cases are of one and the same ending; for the name we here pronounce Noeas, is there Noah, and in every case retains the same termination. (Josephus, Ant. Jews, ibid.)

The King of Javan

The Bible identifies Alexander of Macedonia as the King of Javan, which is rendered as the King of Greece in the KJV (Dan. 8:21; 10:20; cf. 11:2; and Zech. 9:13). It is thus assumed that we are speaking of the sons of Javan, son of Japheth here.

The problem is that we are dealing with two Javans. One is the son of Japheth and the progenitor of the Ionian or island and coastal Anatolian Greeks, and the other is a descendant of Joktan (cf. Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary 3120). Javan, son of Joktan, was Haplogroup I from Shem, and a great many I and J are found in mainland Greece that were the early inhabitants of the sons of Joktan and Keturah, and the later Hg J sons of Abraham. Haplogroup J is a split from Haplogroup I which was the original Hebrew group, and both contain S2 and S22. The other half are the E3b North Africans that entered Greece at a later date. The Island and Anatolian Greeks seem to be Hg K2 (from the Dodanim) as are the Maltese and some Spaniards and some in Britain. The mainland Greeks are sons of Shem and Ham. Javan is also a place in Arabia, perhaps related also to Joktan. The YDNA simply does not support the contention that the Dodanim of Rhodes were mainland Greeks, mixed up with the Tirasians, as some suppose. If they were, they certainly moved with the Tirasians away from there with the fall of Parthia. There are certainly K2 Javanite bloodlines in Wales, as we know from the family of President Thomas Jefferson and others.

Tubal

Tubal, son of Japheth, is connected with the Tabali, an Anatolian tribe, and both the Iberians of the Caucasus and those of the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal), as well as Illyrians and Italics. In the Book of Jubilees he was bequeathed the three 'tongues' of Europe.

The Tabali (Tibarenoi in Greek) were Luwian tribes of Asia Minor of the 3rd-1st millennias BCE. They and other related tribes, the Chalybes (Khalib/Khaldi) and the Mossynoeci (Mossynoikoi in Greek), are sometimes considered the founders of metallurgy.

According to the Scriptures and secular history, Tubal's descendants, along with those of Magog, Gomer, Meshech and others form a great north and central Asiatic confederation that includes parts of Russia, Mongolia and China. Although mentioned in Bible history, most of what the Scriptures have to say about Tubal is yet-to-occur prophecy.

Iberia

The common view in antiquity was that the settlers of Iberes were the Thobelites. Iberes was originally in the area later occupied by Parthia near the Black Sea. The groups there also moved into the western Mediterranean and named the land there Iberia, now called Spain.

Thobel founded the Thobelites, who are now called Iberes; (Ant. Jews, ibid.)

The Iberes of the Caucasus were relatives of modern-day Georgians, founders of the city of Tobolsk.

The origins of the name Iberian has many theories of which the most accepted for scholars is the tribe of Tiberani (from the annals of the Assyrian Kings) or Tubal-kain from which name allegedly Iberian has derived. The name itself is used by ancient Greek authors who identify these early Georgian (Kartvelian) tribes as Iberoi and also in the Roman annals of Plutarch. The Iberians called their kingdom Kartli and their nation Kartlians. There are many theories among the scholars which claim that there are common ethnic and linguistic origins of Caucasian Iberians with pre-Indo European Iberians of the Iberian Peninsula in Spain (mainly Basques).

Retrieved from: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_Iberians"

A Georgian historian, Ivane Javakhishvili, considered Tabal, Tubal, Jabal and Jubal to be ancient Georgian tribal designations.

However, the Welsh historian Nennius stated that Tubal was ancestor to the Iberians, 'Italians' [i.e., Italic tribes] and 'Spanish' [who were also called Iberians]. Tubal is also said to be the founder of the Portuguese city of Setubal.

Basque intellectuals like Poza have named Tubal as the ancestor of Basques and, by extension, the Iberians. The French Basque author Augustin Chaho published The Legend of Aitor, asserting that the common patriarch of the Basques was Aitor, a descendant of Tubal.

Thus Thobel is in two places. One is in what is now Russia and the surrounding territories and the other is in Spain.

What is important is that most Georgian and Armenians are of Semitic bloodlines of Assyrian and Israelite origin from G, H, I and J. Approximately 40% only are Japhethitic.

Meshech

The next reference is to Mosoch or the Japhethite Meshech who inhabited Cappadocia in what was Anatolia.

… and the Mosocheni 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. (Ant. Jews, op. cit.)

These people were displaced northwards with the sons of Tubal and were north of the Parthian and Scythian horde at a later date.

Probably Tubal was in Pontus, and Meshech was in the Moschian Mountains. Their movement was from eastern Asia Minor north to the Black Sea.

Meshech is named with Tubal as a principality of the prince of Gog in the land of Magog in Ezekiel 38:2 and 39:1, and was considered a Japhetite tribe identified by Flavius Josephus with the Cappadocian Moschoi and their capital Mazaca.

The extent of Magog may also indicate they are also in Mesech and Tubal.

The Mushki (Muški) were an Iron Age people of Anatolia, known from Assyrian sources. They do not appear in Hittite records. Several authors have connected them with the Moschoi (Μόσχοι) of Greek sources and the Georgian tribe of the Meskhi. Josephus identified the Moschoi with the Biblical Meshech (cf. Wikipedia article on Mushki).

These people can only be definitively identified by reference to the DNA.

Meshech (Easton’s Bible Dictionary)

They were in all probability the Moschi, a people inhabiting the Moschian Mountains, between the Black and the Caspian Seas. In Ps. 120:5 the name occurs as simply a synonym for foreigners or barbarians. "During the ascendency of the Babylonians and Persians in Western Asia, the Moschi were subdued; but it seems probable that a large number of them crossed the Caucasus range and spread over the northern steppes, mingling with the Scythians. There they became known as Muscovs, and gave that name to the Russian nation and its ancient capital by which they are still generally known throughout the East".

Tiras

The next group are the Tirasians or Thirasians, called Thracians.

Thiras also called those whom he ruled over Thirasians; but the Greeks changed the name into Thracians (Ant. Jews, ibid.).

These people encompassed a great horde of the Parthians, and also from them sprang the Phrygians who invaded Anatolia from Thrace after the fall of Troy.

They too will provide a great surprise for the student of Bible history.

The Tirasians were the first fair-haired people known to antiquity and they allegedly later became known as part of the Getae. We will test this hypothesis in the paper on Tiras.

They are sometimes identifed as the Pereset (Peleset) or Sea Peoples know to the Egyptians also as Tursha and the Greeks as Tyrsenoi (cf. article ‘Tiras’, Wikipedia stub).

These people were of various origins and they attacked Egypt as a confederation in the reign of Rameses III. They are mentioned in a number of inscriptions.

In Year 8 of his reign the alliance of the “Nine Bows” appear again as a "conspiracy in their isles." In this record they are revealed unquestionably as sea peoples: the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh, which are classified as "foreign countries" in the inscription. They camped in Amor and sent a fleet to the Nile. (cf. Wikipedia article ‘Sea Peoples’). For the first time in history the Israelites are identified as one of the peoples that the 19^th dynasty fought against in the union of the Nine Bows. There were land armies and the Peoples of the Sea (also “Great Green”) who lived in ships and behaved like the later Vikings.

Some of these may have been Island Greeks and also Thracian groups coming out of the Black Sea.

The Book of Jubilees states that the inheritance of Tiras consisted of “four large islands in the midst of the sea which approaches the portion of Ham” (Jub. 9:13; cf. 8:29). This cannot be the islands of the Mediterranean as five of those islands were given to Javan and Crete was given to Arphaxad. They could not be the islands of the Aegean either as that does not approach the portion of Ham. They may have been occupied by the Tirasians in the beginning but their inheritance could appear to be in the Atlantic beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

Wikipedia says some have suggested that Tiras was worshipped by his descendants as Thuras, or Thor, the god of thunder. The earliest Norse sagas name Thor as an ancestral chieftain, and trace his origins to Thrace.

The Germanic peoples also worshipped a god called Tiwaz (which some scholars consider to originally have been Odin), whose name was rendered Tyr/Tir in Scandinavian languages, and Tiw in Old English.

The sagas hold Thor was the son of Odin and Jörd. Jörd means earth. Her rival is Frigg, the other wife of Odin (hence Friday).

Thus Tiw’s day or Tuesday, Woden’s day or Wednesday, Thir’s day or Thursday and Frigg’s day or Friday in the Norse and Saxon calendars. The separation of Tiwaz and Wotan or Woden make Tiwaz and Odin unlikely to be the same ancestor.

The medieval rabbinic Book of Jasher records the sons of Tiras as Rushash, Cushni, and Ongolis. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiras)

However, we note another reference to the sons of Tiras as being:

Jasher: Chapter 7.9 And the sons of Tiras were Benib, Gera, Lupirion and Gilak;

http://www.ccel.org/a/anonymous/jasher/7.htm

The connections with the Angles and English seems obvious for Ongolis. Even if the text is a medieval work it indicates that the authors understood the English as Tirasians or attempted to make them so.

Parthia

Parthia at its greatest extent in the First Century BCE was an aggregation of Tirasians, Gomerites, Scythians, Medes, Afghan and North Persian tribes. In the First Century BCE Parthia extended into Asia Minor and included all Judaea and Galilee under the Parthian appointed rule of the Jewish Antigonis. The Romans deposed him and placed Herod on the throne. The break-up of the Parthian Empire occurred at the beginning of the Third Century CE.

The city of Tarsus of which Paul was born was in Cilicia on the south-east coast of Asia Minor on the right bank of the Tarsus River (ancient Cydnus) ten miles from the present coastline. It has never changed location since its founding and has a better claim than Damascus to be the most ancient city in the world. Called Gozlu Kule, the most ancient section is the prehistoric mound on the SW side of the city. It was in the country of Kizzuwatna in the ancient Hittite records and its name Tarsa is preclassical and probably its original name. Hittite objects are found there dating to the period 1400-1200 BCE This was the time of the commencement of the hostilities towards Troy (cf. Acts 9:11,30; 11:25; 21:39; 22:3; cf. Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Art. ‘Tarsus’, Vol. 4, p. 518).

The city of Tarsus should not be confused with the Tarshish of the sons of Japheth on the Black Sea in what was called Iberes (and associated by some with the term Parthenia allegedly changed by the sons of Tarshish). There was a Jewish population there in both Tarsus and in Parthia as there were Israelites throughout Parthia. They seemed to have moved to Tarshish in Spain, and named the area Iberia also. Some may have perhaps moved then to Ireland, but the Milesian Irish and the Scots are Scythians Magogites and not sons of Javan. However, there were sons of Javan there. The Scythians were sons of Magog and adjoined the Parthians, who were sons of Gomer and Tiras. At its greatest extent Parthia included Scythian Magog; and Parthian and Scythian burial customs were similar.

The Taurus mountains were a chief source of gems and metal for the ships of Tarshish as was Britain the source of tin and other metals for them for centuries, and from the time of David (see the paper Rule of the Kings Part II: David No. 282B)).

In 224 CE Persia revolted under Ardashir I who defeated the last Parthian king. During his reign, eastern Iran, the former Kushan Empire, was also conquered. In 226 CE the Parthian Empire ended and Ardashir I took Mesopotamia, which was a major portion of Parthia as an empire.

In 227 CE the Sasanian Empire was formed by Ardashir I. The Empire lasted until 651 CE.

The sons of Madai who were the Medes remained, more or less, in situ in what became Kurdistan, which spreads from eastern Turkey across northern Iraq to north-west Iran. Originally it was further north, but later the Medes were pushed into the south by the Khazar, and subsequent, northern hordes.

The north-western Parthians left Parthia in the area between what is now Albania and Bulgaria and the Caspian Sea for Europe, where they completed their occupation.

We will study these movements in greater detail in each of the papers dealing with the sons of Japheth and their place in prophecy.

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