dosth (which he found in an old Chaldsean volume), into “ Shem, Ham, and Japheth;”
and the race of Habedosth, Merod, Sirath, and Thahlath, became, in his pious hands,
“ Gomer, Thiras, and Thorgomus! ” “ It was thus that he reconciled the sacred with
the profane, and that the Haik of the ancient Chaldsean volume, son of Thahlath, was
superimposed upon Thorgomus, as a descendant of Japheth.” History abounds with
similar fraudulent genealogies. Thus, skilfully observes Jardot, “ R&shid-ed-Deen,
Vizir)of the Emperor Gazan-Kh&n, has left at the commencement of the fourteenth century,
upon the origin of the Mongols, erroneous notions, which Arab, Turkish, and Persian
historians have copied; and even Aboo ’1-Ghazee, Governor of Kharizm, in 1654.
Misguided by a false religious sentiment, R&shid-ed-Deen attached the antique traditions
of the nomad hordes of Asia to those of the Jews, as preserved in the Koran: —
Japhet, son of Noah, transported himself to the East, and it is from, him, that descend the
people of those countries, afterwards partitioned between two brothers, Tatar-Khdn and Mo-
goul-Khdn. All this recital is fabulous, and does not correspond with any of the
accounts furnished by the Chinese.” Even in our day, the “ Caucasian” missionary is
stipended to instil into the ill-furnished crania of African Hottentots and Australian
Papuas the fond hope that they are positively and lineally descended from Ham !
The Turks did not approach the Euphrates from their aboriginal hive on the confines
of China until about 1000 a . d. ; and consequently all ascriptions of the name Togar-
mah to them seem to be linguistically and historically fallacious. Whether in the
appellative ‘ Turcoman ’ there be any demonstrable connexion, we will not aver or
deny. But the Armenians, a primordial people upon their native mountains, call
themselves “ the house of Thorgom; ” and there is no good reason to suppose that
Armenia is not T o g a rm a h .586
Gen. x. 4.— jV \D— BeM-KCST — “Affiliations of Ionia.”
1 1 . — A L I S H — | E l ish a h . ’
Indo-Germanic; not, t God that gives help.’
Elisa, ‘ Elis,’ on the coast of Peloponnesus, one of the earliest historical settlements
of Greece, divides -with Hellas the honor of being catalogued in Hebrew geography.
The former, 'EXis, or the Elide, would seem supported by E z e k . xxvii. 7 — “ blue and
purple from the isles of Elishah; ” purple-bearing shells having been abundant, anciently,
on the 'Laconian shore. The latter, “EXXas, whence ’EXXijws became the national
name for Greeks, does not appear to have possessed, in the times of Homer (whose
disputed era cannot be much removed from that of the writer of Xth Genesis), the pan-
Hellenic extension it had acquired about the fifth century B. c., when Herodotus and
Thucydides flourished: having previously been restricted to a district and town of
Thessaly. But, adds Grote, no sooner do we step beyond the “ first Olympiad, 776
B. c., our earliest trustworthy mark of Grecian time,” than the quicksands of mythical
legend engulph the criteria by which the relationship of facts can alone be decided.
Thus, to the Judaic compiler of Xth Genesis, IUN, Ionia, would seem, to have been the
parent of ELiSail, Elis, or Hellas. On the contrary, Grecian tradition reverses the
order; and Ionia, in Asia Minor, becomes an affiliation of Hellas, about 1050 years B c.
There is no jSA- in Greek alphabets, and consequently that articulation was foreign to
the people. The author of Xth Genesis wrote A, L, I, S, H, in the unknown alphabet
he used. E l i s h a h , is not older than the Masora Rabbis. The LXX read 'EXivn.
Either view, however, establishes a close affinity between Ionians and Hellenes, or
Eleans; and Greeks in general, as well along the shores of the Morea as on the isles
of the Archipelago, would adequately represent the geography of A l i s h ; but, in view
of restricted knowledge (and no HA), it seems more probable that JEoles and ¿Eolia,
in Asia Minor, were the nation and country intended by the writer of Xth Genesis.®1
12. JW IH — TfRSIS — f Tarshish.’
I n d o -G e rm a n ic (? ), o r Semitic(? ); n o t ,‘ contemplation.’
Perhaps, in endeavoring to attain the exact point of view of the author of Xth Genesis
this is the most enigmatical problem left to modern solution; although commentators
of the present day slide over its difficulties, and range themselves under one of
two schools: the first of which claims Tartessus on the Spanish, the second, Tarsus on
the Cilician coast, to be the true locality. ^
The question is so far important, that in it is involved the occidental limit of the
geographical knowledge of the Hebrefws at the time when Xth Genesis was compiled;
and, as customary, modern orthodoxy, which discovers the Chinese in the SINIM of
Is. xlix. 12— the Negroes in KAaM, Ham, of Gen. x. 1 ! and the “ ten lost tribes of
Israel ” in the American aborigines, contends for the widest interpretation.
Scriptural texts require the word T a b s h i s h to be classed under three categories: —
^ Thrsws, Tapaos — now Tarsous, on the coast of Caramania —- an ancient city on
the river Cydnus: birth-place" of Paul, and sepulchre of Julian. Between TiaRSIS
of Xth Genesis, or other passages of the text, and TaRS.oS, there is no difference, philo-
logically, except a “ mater lectionis,” or vowel, which, in palaeography, is vague.
The Masoretie points, like the Greek tonic accents, are unauthoritative, beyond indicating
the traditionary phonetism of post-Christian writers in either tongue: and the
Masora commences only six centuries after Christ.
The amphibious adventure of Jonah, which, the Rev. Prof. Stuart says, “ plainly
savors of the miraculous,” might possibly indicate the Spanish Tartessus, as the correspondent
of Tarshish during the uncertain, but recent, age at which this prophetic
book was.composed — a treatise that.must not be confounded with the scientific and
more ancient document — Xth Genesis.
[The NaBI, ‘ J o n a h , ’ rebelled against IeHOwaH’s command, “ go to Nineveh,” and
therefore encountered the fate .from which Perseus delivered Andromeda,, v iz .: that
of deglutition by “ a great fish,” or monstrous ^
cetu$ — the Whale: which became a sempiternal Fig* 35°*
emblem of icthyophagy, when, assuming the
forms of Cepheus and Cassiepea, it ascended to
the heavens, or, as Glaucus, descended to the
sea. In 1850, a paragraph, started in the New
York “ Sunday Messenger” by Major N o a h ,
went the rounds of the religious and profane
newspapers throughout the Union. It asserted
that the portrait of the Prophet J o n a h had been
found on the walls of Nineveh ! Here he is (Fig.
855).
Olives, Oannes (of Berosus) as IOANes; and
Jonah, I Jonas,’ as IONAS; both being ¿-ON-es— c the su n ’ — were identified long
ago with Dagon, DAG-ON; i. e. the “ sun in pisces,” incarnated in this Assyrian fish-
god. The same mythe lies in Atergatis, or Derceto, and especially in those Christian
forgeries called the “ Sibylline verses,” beneath the acrostical
I should not hesitate, but for the above prseternaturalities,. in reading the Tarsus of
Cilicia as the destination of the ship whereupon Jonah took his passage, and “'paid the
fare,” on an obedient voyage from Joppa to Nineveh, (as a convenient route anciently,
before steam-navigation, as now “ caeteris paribus”), for compliance with the “ tetra-
grammaton’s ” behests: but he spitefully “ rose up to flee unto Tarshish, from the
presence of ADONAI ” ; and, in consequence, while Jonah was righteously punished
for his obduracy, it seems that his intention was to escape through a western, in lieu
of proceeding in an easterly, direction; and therefore Tartessus of Hispania, or elsewhere
so long as Jonah could realize a contrary, would appear to have been the
country for which the vessel cleared, and wherein dwelt her consignees. — G. R. G.]