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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2009
Introduction
Any description of Jewish geographical conceptions must deal with the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 and the influential tradition to which it gave rise. For Genesis 10, along with a few other biblical data, provided the main source of information for latter Jewish and Christian attempts to describe world geography and ethnography. As we shall see in Chapter 7, the Genesis 10 tradition arguably had a major influence on the medieval mappaemundi.
There is a certain irony in this Table of Nations tradition. For, although Genesis 10 presents the reader with a static view of the world and its inhabitants after the flood, the Genesis 10 tradition itself underwent numerous changes in the course of its centuries-long transmission. As Elias Bikerman observes in his justly famous article, “Origines Gentium” (1952):
The Bible taught the unity of mankind. We are all sons of Adam, and the chosen people is only a secondary branch on the common stem. This meek idea made pre-history static for the Hebrews. … The Jews could mechanically transfer an old name to some new people. First the Macedonians, then the Romans received the name of Kittim, which originally referred to the inhabitants of Citium (Cyprus). Such identification is purely nominal.
Hence, although the Table of Nations long remained the undisputed standard of world geography and ethnography, it nevertheless underwent a process of shaping, translation, and development to meet changing historical circumstances.
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