LrrBRATCRH.— Schiirer, IIJ P 11. iii. 149fT. ; Zockler, Apokr. d. AT, i-Zi ; F«briciu», Cudex piendepigr. IT, i. 813-S-25.
J. T. Makshall.
JANOAH.— 1. (n'l];). A town in the northern mountains of Najihtali, near Kedesh, 2 K 15''-'. It is the modern i'anilh. See Sif'P vol. i. sheet ii. 2. ("lij^J.". AV Januhah). A place on the border of Ephraim, east of Taanath-shiloh, Jos IG"- '. In the 4tli cent. A.D. (Onomasticon, s.v. 'Jano') it was known a-s lyin" in Akrabattine (the region of Akrabch in the liills east of Shechem), 12 Roman miles east of Neapolis (Shechem), or where the present Y&nAn now stands, with the supjiosed tomb of Nun. See SWP vol. ii. sheet xii. (cf. Kobinson, HUP iii. 297 ; Guirin, Satiuirie, ii. 6 ; Buhl, GAP 178). C. K. Conder.
JAPHETH (r;;, 'Id0f9).— The name of one of the sons of Noah, and the ancestor of a number of tribes (esii. Gn 10''*).
1. In tiie article Ham we have seen reasons for adojiting the opinion according to which the three sons of Noah originally represented a division of the inhaliitauts of Palestine, but which part of the population was represented by Jnpheth is not clear : Wellhausen {JDTh xxi. 403) conjectured the Philistines; Budde ( f/r<7<McA. 338 II'.), the Phoi- nicians ; but the words in the blessing of Noah (Gn 9"), ' God make room (so perhaps literally) for Japhcth to dwell in the tents of Shem,' would •eeui to imply a closer relationship than that of neighbouring nations, and one more resembling that of castes of tribe-s forming a single state, like the Kanines and Titles in Kome, or the Brahmins and Kshaltriyas of llimlustan. Of the name ' Japheth,' however, with any such denotation there is no trace. The text of Gn oilers no etymology for the name, but only an assonance with Aram, td 'to be wide' ; and though a name derived from this root would perhaps have a parallel in the Nabattcon ^'nGK,
there are other Semitic roots from which the nama could with equal probabilitj' be derived; tlia etymolo''y which has found most favour Ls from the Hebrew ns> ' to be beautiful,' whence the Arabic-speaking Jews make it the equivalent of ' Al-Uasan ' ; and this, though not free from gram- matical dilliculty, is accepted by some modem authorities.
2. As the name of one of the founders of the human race, it is natural to compare Japheth with lapetos, a personage who appears in Homer (//. viii. 479) as a giant, and in Ilesiod as the fatliei of Prometheus ; while in a pas.sage of Berosas, quoted on the very questionable authority of Sloses of Chorene (ed. Florival, i. 30), a Chaldiean cosmogony makes an lapetos joint founder of tlia human family with two others whom Moses not unnaturally identities with Ham and Shem.* The only value of this notice is tliat we learn from it who first compared the Greek and Hebrew legend.s. The identification Is etymologically possible (La- gaide, Gesammelte Abnandlungen, 25G), but not certainly correct, since the Greek language oilers a sufiicientlj' good derivation for the name of the giant lapetos (Ebeling, Lexicon Ilomcruum, s.o.), and the original import of the biblical Japheth is not obviously connected with the giant : if the two names are in reality traceable to the same source, the latter b more probably Semitic than Greek, but it may very well be neither.
3. Many attempts have been matle, both in ancient (Jos. Ant. I. vi. 1 ; Talm. Bab., Yoma, f. 10a ; Talm. Jer., Megillah, p. 19 ; for other Rabbinic references see Neubauer, G(og. du Talm. 421 II.) and in modem times (see Lagarde, I.e., and esp. Lenormant, Orig. de VUist." 1SS2) to identify the tribes derived from Japheth, of which Madai or Media, Javan or Ionia, and of Javan's sons Citium and Tarshish are familiar, and perhaps .Meshech and Tubal may be said to be known ; while the remaining names occur either in this table only (Tiras, Ripliath) or chielly besides in Ezk (esp. chs. 27. 38) and Jer (Ashkenaz). The omission of the name of Persia, which is known to Ezekicl (27" 38'), seems to give us a terminus ad quern for the composition of the list, while the fact that Magog occupies the second place shows that it can be little earlier than kzekiel's time. The names of the grandsons may represent the results of more extended knowledge than tliat exi>ressed in the names of the sons ; but it is unlikely that the table in any form was derived from an official source ; the names which it contains belong to distant nations, known to the Israelites of Ezekiel's time chielly by hearsay, though several of them had by that date acquired some political importance. The writer who niiule them descendants of Japheth would seem to have already a<lopted the interpretation of Cn O'" which appears in the Targ. OnK., and Talm. Bab. I.e., acconling to which it is liod, not Jajilietli, who is to dwell in the tents of Shem. The hrst clause, ' God make room for Japheth,' when the room was no longer confined to Palestine, would be a g'round for counting among Japheth's descendants the bar- barians who peopled tlie unknown north and the islands of the unexplored sea.
D. S. Marooliouth. JAPHETH {'Id(pf9).—A region whoso identity is uncertain, mentioned in Jth 2*. Holofernes ' came unto the l>orders of Japheth, which were toward the south, over against Arabia.'