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after the time of Alexander the Great, as an expression of the friendly feeling of the Jews for their Hellenic conquerors. —Gu.'s explanation, which is put forward with all reserve, breaks ground in an opposite direction. Canaan, he suggests, may here represent the great wave of Semitic migration which (according to some recent theories) had swept over the whole of Western Asia (c. 2250 ), leaving its traces in Babylonia, in Phœnicia, perhaps even in Asia Minor, and of which the later Canaanites of Palestine were the sediment. Shem is the Hebræo-Aramaic family, which appears on the stage of history after 1500 , and no doubt took possession of territory previously occupied by Canaanites. It is here represented as still in the nomadic condition. Japheth stands for the Hittites, who in that age were moving down from the north, and establishing their power partly at the cost of both Canaanites and Arameans. This theory hardly explains the peculiar contempt and hatred expressed towards Canaan; and it is a somewhat serious objection to it that in 10$1$ (which Gu. assigns to the same source as 9$1$) Heth is the son of Canaan. A better defined background would be the struggle for the mastery of Syria in the 14th cent. If, as many Assyriologists think probable, the Ḥabiri of the Tel-Amarna Letters be the of the OT,—i.e. the original Hebrew stock to which Israel belonged,—it would be natural to find in Shem the representative of these invaders; for in 10$15$ (J) Shem is described as 'the father of all the sons of Eber.' Japheth would then be one or other of the peoples who, in concert with the Ḥabiri, were then seeking a foothold in the country, possibly the Suti or the Amurri, less probably (for the reason mentioned above) the Hittites.—These surmises must be taken for what they are worth. Further light on that remote period of history may yet clear up the circumstances in which the story of Noah and his sons originated; but unless the names Shem and Japheth should be actually discovered in some historic connexion, the happiest conjectures can never effect a solution of the problem.

—The Table of Peoples (P and J).

In its present form, the chapter is a redactional composition, in which are interwoven two (if not three) successive attempts to classify the known peoples of the world, and to