Gomer

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For other uses, see Gomer (disambiguation).

Gomer (

Table of Nations" in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis
10).

The eponymous Gomer, "standing for the whole family," as the compilers of The Jewish Encyclopedia expressed it,[1] is also mentioned in Book of Ezekiel 38:6 as the ally of Gog, the chief of the land of Magog.

The Hebrew name Gomer refers to the

Assarhadon of Assyria sometime between 681 and 668 BC.[3]

Traditional identifications

Josephus placed Gomer and the "Gomerites" in Anatolian Galatia: "For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, but were then called Gomerites."[4] Galatia in fact takes its name from the ancient Gauls (Celts) who settled there. However, the later Christian writer Hippolytus of Rome in c. 234 assigned Gomer as the ancestor of the Cappadocians, neighbours of the Galatians.[5] Jerome (c. 390) and Isidore of Seville (c. 600) followed Josephus' identification of Gomer with the Galatians, Gauls and Celts.

According to tractate Yoma, in the Talmud, Gomer is identified as "Germamya".[6]

In Islamic folklore, the Persian historian

Nimrod, but was unsurpassed by anyone else mentioned in the Torah.[7]

The Cimbri were a tribe settled on Jutland peninsula in Germania (now Denmark) c. 200 BC, who were variously identified in ancient times as Cimmerian, Germanic or Celtic. In later times, some scholars connected them with the Welsh people, and descendants of Gomer. Among the first authors to identify Gomer, the Cimmerians, and Cimbri, with the Welsh name for themselves, Cymri, was the English antiquarian William Camden in his Britannia (first published in 1586).[8] In his 1716 book Drych y Prif Oesoedd, Welsh historian Theophilus Evans also posited that the Welsh were descended from the Cimmerians and from Gomer;[9] this was followed by a number of later writers of the 18th and 19th centuries.[9][10]

This etymology is considered false by modern Celtic linguists, who follow the etymology proposed by

Brythonic word *Combrogos ("fellow countryman").[10][11][12] The name Gomer (as in the pen-name of 19th century editor and author Joseph Harris, for instance) and its (modern) Welsh derivatives, such as Gomeraeg (as an alternative name for the Welsh language)[13] became fashionable for a time in Wales, but the Gomerian theory itself has long since been discredited as an antiquarian hypothesis with no historical or linguistic validity.[14]

In 1498

fourth son of Noah, and says ruled first in Germany/Scythia, was identified by later historians (e.g. Johannes Aventinus) as none other than Ashkenaz
, Gomer's son.

Gomer's descendants

Three sons of Gomer are mentioned in Genesis 10, namely:

Children of Ashkenaz were originally identified with the

Scythians (Assyrian Ishkuza), then after the 11th century, with Germany.[15][16]

Ancient

Georgian chronicles lists Togarmah as the ancestor of both people who originally inhabited the land between two Black and Caspian Seas and between two inaccessible mountains, Mount Elbrus and Mount Ararat respectively.[17][18]

According to

Khazar records, Togarmah is regarded as the ancestor of the Turkic-speaking peoples.[19]

Citations

  1. ^ "Gomer". The Jewish Encyclopedia. Funk and Wagnalls. 1906. p. 40. Retrieved May 10, 2011.
  2. ^ Cambridge Ancient History Vol. II pt. 2, p. 425
  3. ^ Barry Cunliffe (ed.), The Oxford History of Prehistoric Europe (Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 381–382.
  4. ^ Antiquities of the Jews, I:6.
  5. ^ Chronica, 57.
  6. ^ Yoma 10a
  7. ^ Tabari, Prophets and Patriarchs (Vol. 2 of History of the Prophets and Kings)
  8. ^ Camden's Britannia, I.17,19.
  9. ^ a b Lloyd, p. 191
  10. ^ a b University of Wales Dictionary, vol. II, p. 1485, Gomeriad. The editors note the false etymology.
  11. ^ Lloyd, p. 192
  12. ^ University of Wales Dictionary, vol. I, p. 770.
  13. ^ University of Wales Dictionary, vol. II, p. 1485.
  14. ^ See, for instance: Piggot, pp. 132, 172.
  15. Tarbiẕ
    3:423–435
  16. ^ Kriwaczek, Paul (2005). Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
  17. ^ Leonti Mroveli. "The Georgian Chronicles".
  18. Moses of Chorene. "The History of Armenia"
    .
  19. ^ Pritsak O. & Golb. N: Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century, Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982.

General and cited references

  • Lloyd, John Edward (1912). A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest.
  • Piggot, Stuart (1968). The Druids. Thames and Hudson: London.
  • University of Wales Dictionary, Vol. II.
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