Tubal
Tubal (
Saint Jerome refashioned the Caucasian Iberia (Georgia) into the Iberian Peninsula (Western Europe) and Isidore of Seville consolidated this mistake.[1]
Modern scholarship
Modern scholarship has identified the biblical Tubal with Tabal, an Anatolian state and region mentioned in Assyrian sources.[2][3]
Tabal was a post-Hittite
Most reference books, following Flavius Josephus, identify Tubal in Ezekiel's time as an area that is now in Turkey.[11]
Early theories
Many authors, following the Jewish historian
Thessalians in some later copies), while the Book of the Bee (c. 1222) states that he was progenitor of Bithynians
.
Tubal's sons are given different names in rabbinic sources. In
rape of the Sabines by the Kittim. This war was ended when the Kittim showed the descendants of Tubal their mutual progeny. A shorter, more garbled version of this story from Yosippon is also found in the later Book of Jasher
, known from c. 1625, which additionally names Tubal's sons as Ariphi, Kesed and Taari.
Later theories
Basque intellectuals like Andrés de Poza (16th century) have named Tubal as the ancestor of
Augustin Chaho (19th century) published The Legend of Aitor, asserting that the common patriarch of the Basques was Aitor
, a descendant of Tubal.
According to
Francolí river of the Iberian Peninsula in 2157 BC, where he founded a city named after his son Tarraho, now Tarragona. He then proceeded to the Ebro (like Iberia, named after his second son Iber), where he built several more settlements, including Amposta. His third son's name is given as Semptofail. Noah himself is said to have visited them here about 100 years later. Tubal is said to have reigned for 155 years, until he died while preparing to colonize Mauretania
and was succeeded by Iber.
Other traditions make Tubal son of Japheth (sometimes confounded with
Pedro IV of Aragon
(c. 1370) includes the basic premises, that Tubal was the first person to settle in Iberia, that the Iberians were descended from him as Jerome and Isidore had attested, and that they had originally been called Cetubales and been settled along the Ebro, before changing their name to 'Iberians' after that river.
An earlier scholar-king,
Umayyad conquest of Hispania by Tariq ibn Ziyad, written around AD 750 by Abulcasim Tarif Abentarique. It holds that Japheth's son Tubal or (Sem Tofail) divided Iberia among his 3 sons — leaving his eldest Tarraho the northeast section (called Tarrahon, later Aragon); to his second son, Sem Tofail the younger, he left the west, along the ocean (later called Setúbal); and to his youngest, Iber, he left the eastern part, along the Mediterranean, called Iberia. Tubal then built for himself a city he called Morar (today Mérida, Spain
) — where Abentarique claimed to have seen a large stone above the main city gate inscribed with these details, which he translated into Arabic.
The Arabic dictionary Taj al-Arus by al-Zubaidi (1790) notes that although some Islamic authors make the Khazars descendants of Japheth's son Khasheh (Meshech), others hold both the Khazars and Saqaliba (Slavs) to have come rather from his brother, Tubal.[14]
Benjamin Martin, an 18th century lexicographer who compiled one of the early English dictionaries, published in his study on natural philosophy the Bibliotheca Technologica that Tubal "is affirmed to be the father of the Asiatic Iberians".[15] The
Caucasian Iberians were ancestors of modern Georgians. Some modern Georgians also claim descent from Tubal, Togarmah and Meshech; a Georgian historian, Ivane Javakhishvili, considered Tabal, Tubal, Jabal and Jubal to be ancient Georgian tribal designations.[16]
See also
Literature
- Ivane Javakhishvili. "Historical-Ethnological problems of Georgia, the Caucasus and the Near East" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1950, pp. 130–135 (in Georgian)
- Giorgi Melikishvili. "About the history of ancient Georgia" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1959, pp. 9, 13, 14, 18, 72–78, 108–110, 121, 175, 226, 227, 253 (in Russian)
- Simon Janashia. "Works", vol. III, Tbilisi, 1959, pp. 2–74 (in Georgian)
- Guram Kvirkvelia. "Foreign scientists about the metallurgy of the ancient Georgian tribes" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1976, pp. 3–90 (in Georgian, Russian summary).
- Nana Khazaradze. "The Ethnopolitical entities of Eastern Asia Minor in the first half of the 1st millennium BC" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1978, pp. 3–139 (in Georgian, Russian and English)
- *Electronic edition of G. Pujades, Crónica Universal del Principado de Cataluña (in Spanish)
- Jon Ruthven. The Prophecy That Is Shaping History: New Research on Ezekiel's Vision of the End. Fairfax, VA: Xulon Press, 2003. [1]. A major study on the historical geography of Rosh, Meshech, Tubal and the other northern nations listed in Ezekiel 38–39 and elsewhere.
References
- ISBN 978-1-5308-6832-2.
- ISBN 978-1-61097-650-3.
- ISBN 978-1-58983-658-7.
- ISBN 978-1-4674-2371-7.
- ^ Toumanoff, Cyril (1963). Studies in Christian Caucasian History. Georgetown University Press. p. 56.
- ^ "Tabal, an 'out-group' definition in the first Millennium BCE". G. Lanfranchi et al. (eds.), Leggo, Fs F.M. Fales, Wiesbaden. 2012-01-01.
- ^ Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. 2.378, 1010
- ^ Xenophon. Anabasis. Vol. 5.5.2.
- ^ Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax
- ^ Stephanus of Byzantium. Ethnica. Vol. s.v. Τιβαρηνία.
- ISBN 978-1-134-25958-8. "The Hebrew Bible also mentions both Tubal (Tabal) and Meshech (Muski)"
- ^ Rapp, S. H. (2003) Studies in medieval Georgian historiography : early texts and Eurasian contexts / by Stephen H. Rapp Jr. Lovanii: Peeters. p.139
- ^ A Brief History of Spain (1700)
- ^ D. M. Dunlop, History of the Jewish Khazars 1954, p. 13.
- ^ Martin, Benjamin (1737). Bibliotheca Technologica, or, a Philological Library of Literary Arts and Sciences. The British Library; p. 288
- ^ Ivane Javakhishvili. "Historical-Ethnological problems of Georgia, the Caucasus and the Near East" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1950, pp. 130–135