We skimmed over the table of nations (Genesis 10) in worship recently, however I want to think through its implications.
There are several intellectual issues with its description.
The primary issue is one of archaeological timescale. If we read these portions of Genesis as historically literalistic, then we may conclude in a date for the flood as being between 2,686-2,348 BC. Some literalist biblical scholars date the flood to 2,686 (Merrell for example), others between 2,543+- 25 years BC (per YEC models), and most popularly to 2,348 BC (per Archbishop Ussher’s model). Based on Ussher’s method, the Tower of Babel construction is dated to c. 2,200 BC, in the generation of Peleg, when “the earth was divided.”
The issue with any of these timescales is twofold: 1. The people groups mentioned are first securely attested far later than that time period 2. Numerous cities have archaeological records (without flood interruption) dating back far later than the 2000’s BC and through 2000 BC. My conclusion is that we cannot then read this as historically literalistic, though it is depicted as mythic history.
The Issue of Peoples
Both archaeological and linguistic evidence point away from nearly every figure or people-group as having existed directly after the time of flood (as viewed from a Young Earth perspective). Numerous people groups listed in the table of nations 1. Didn’t exist as that specific group between 2,686-2,348 BC or immediately after during post-flood reconstruction, and instead 2. Existed during the Israelite Kingdom(s) over a thousand years later. To spare myself the exhaustion of researching every single one of these, I am going to focus only on Japheth’s descendants and the sons of Cush.
Japheth’s Descendants
2 The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras.
3 The sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah.
4 The sons of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.
5 From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations.
Gomer: Scholars have argued that the people associated with Gomer are also called Cimmerians, known from Neo-Assyrian cuneiform royal inscriptions where Kings Sargon II and Esarhaddon explicitly document encounters with a group called the Gimirrai [here]. They originally came from the Pontic-Caspian steppe (modern southern Ukraine and Russia), and were nomadic Iranian-speaking pastoralists belonging to the ‘Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk’ archaeological culture. They migrated south into Anatolia after being driven across the Caucasus by other nomads around the 8th century BC (700’s) [here].
Sons of Gomer - Ashkenaz: Akkadian and Assyrian texts from the 7th century BC mention the Iškuza or Aškuza invading the Near East from the Eurasian steppes. The Hebrew text Ashkenaz represents a minor scribal variant of this exact name. Royal Scythian kurgan burials in Tuva and Southern Siberia (Pazyryk culture) prove their origins lie deep in Central Asia, from where they migrated westward into the Pontic steppe during the 9th–8th centuries BC [here].
Sons of Gomer - Riphath: Josephus links Riphath to Paphlagonia in Northern Anatolia near the Black Sea [here]. Classical geographers (Pliny the Elder in Naturalis Historia VI.4) note the river Rhebas (Rhebanos) runs through Paphlagonia into the Black Sea, which linguists have historically linked to the root of Riphath [here]. The Paphlagonian people group existed in the late Bronze Age (1200-500 BC) [here].
Sons of Gomer - Togarmah: The earliest textual attestations of Togarmah come from cuneiform tablets (c. 1800 BC) discovered at Kültepe (in ancient Anatolia). These tablets record Assyrian trade caravans stopping at a place called Tegarama, which was a trade station/city with continuous habitation from Hattic, Luwian, and Hurrian populations who spoke distinct Anatolian and Hurro-Urartian languages in south-central Anatolia [here] and [here] and [here]. Assyrian King Sennacherib records destroying the city, which the Assyrians then called Til-Garimmu, in c. 700 BC [here]. Regardless of the time period the text references, the place’s existence is first attested over 500 years after the purported dates of the flood.
Magog: Material evidence links "Magog" either to the Iron Age Kingdom of Lydia in western Anatolia or else to the Scythians, a Eurasian nomadic group. Linguistically, many Near Eastern scholars derive Magog from the Akkadian Mat-Gugi (meaning "Land of Gyges"). Gyges was a famous 7th-century BC (600’s) king of Lydia in western Anatolia, a kingdom that lasted until 546 BC [here]. An alternate theory is derived from Josephus, who argues that Magogites are also called Scythians. We can see from human genetics and Kurgan burial mounds that the Scythians originated in Central Asia and the Altai mountains, and migrated westward over centuries [here]. Whether taking Magog as the Anatolian Kingdom of Lydia (Mat-Gugi) or the Scythians of the northern steppes (as Josephus understood it), both refer to geopolitical entities that existed in the 1000’s BC northwest of Israel rather than the 2000’s BC.
Madai (Medes): The Medes are first mentioned in Assyrian texts during the reign of Shalmaneser III (c. 844 BC) as the Mada [here]. They were part of the larger Indo-Iranian migration, archaeologically traced via distinctive "Painted Orange Ware" ceramics and Iron Age fortified sites. They moved from the Central Asian steppes into northwestern Iran around 1500–1000 BC. The Medes are first attested in Assyrian records only in 836–835 BCE, with archaeological evidence of an Indo-Iranian presence on the Iranian plateau pushed back only to roughly the mid-2nd millennium BC at the very earliest [here].
Javan (Ionians / Greeks): In classical linguistics, Javan shares the exact root as Iōn (Iaones in Homeric Greek). Neo-Assyrian records refer to maritime Greeks from the Aegean and Cilician coasts as the Iawani or Iauna. [here]. The origins of the Greek people stem from a blend of early Anatolian farmers who migrated to mainland Greece in the Neolithic era and Proto-Greek Indo-European speakers who arrived around 2000 BC, giving rise to the Bronze Age Mycenaean civilization [here]. This is the only name in the Table of Nations that fits anywhere near the purported archaeological time-scale (if viewed from a literal-historical perspective).
Sons of Javan - Dodanim: These were the inhabitants of the island of Rhodes (reading Rodanim, supported by the Septuagint and 1 Chronicles 1:7) [here]. The name Rodanim (the Rhodian people) describes an ethnic and political group whose unique identity (language, ceramics, burial habits, and city-state structure) only coalesced in the Early Iron Age (1100–900 BC) [here].
Sons of Javan - Elishah & Kittim: Both Elishah and Kittim refer to ‘brother’ states on the island of Cyprus. Elishah refers to Alisha - a Bronze Age Kingdom located in Cyprus. In Akkadian/Ugaritic cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics, the island state was written as A-la-ši-ya or ALṮY [here]. The Kingdom of Alisha’s earliest attested date is c. 1800 BC from the Mari archives, Tablet ARM 25, 715 [here]. Kittim derives directly from Kiti or Kition (Latin: Citium), an ancient major port city on the southeastern coast of Cyprus [here] and [here]. Excavations led by the Cypriot Department of Antiquities and the French Archaeological Mission at Larnaca prove that Kition was established as a major fortified Mycenaean coastal center around the 13th century BC (c. 1300–1200 BC) [here]. Kition was a term later applied generally to Aegean islanders [here] and [here].
Sons of Javan - Tarshish: Refers to either Tartessos in southern Spain or Sardinia/western Mediterranean trading ports. Archaeological digs in Andalusia, Spain, show Tartessos originated as a native Iberian Bronze Age culture that grew into a major metalworking power through trade contact with Phoenicians. The 9th-century BC Phoenician Nora Stone found in Sardinia bears an inscription referencing TRŠŠ (Tarshish) in connection with maritime trade [here].
Tubal: Is a Semitic exonym (ie the people group did not call themselves that name). It was applied by the Neo-Assyrians to describe the Tabal, the Luwian-speaking Neo-Hittite tribal coalition in central/southern Anatolia after the collapse of the Hittite Empire [here]. Their earliest attestation is in 837 BC in a royal campaign annal of Neo-Assyrian King Shalmaneser III [here]. Excavations throughout Cappadocia and the Taurus Mountains reveal Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions erected by kings of Tabal, who are also frequently noted in Assyrian tribute lists [here].
Meshech: Corresponds directly to the Akkadian Muški or Mushki, an Iron Age kingdom situated in central and eastern Anatolia that classical Greek sources conflate with or identify alongside the Phrygians [here]. Assyrian annals from Tiglath-Pileser I [here] down to Sargon II [here] record battles with the Muški. Their famous ruler Mita of Muški corresponds directly to King Midas of Phrygia, whose capital at Gordion has yielded extensive archaeological remains. Excavations at Gordion reveal that the Phrygians/Mushki migrated into Anatolia from the Balkans following the Late Bronze Age collapse (c. 1200 BC), replacing the indigenous Bronze Age Anatolian populations [here].
Tiras: Egyptian inscriptions at Karnak under Pharaoh Merneptah mention maritime raiders named the Tursha or Teresh, who are archaeologically linked to the Balkan Bronze Age complex or the "Sea Peoples" [here]. When 1st-millennium BC scribes compiled the Table of Nations, they transcribed the widely known Aegean/North Anatolian maritime group (T−R−S) directly into Hebrew as Tiras [here]. Carbon-dated settlements in Bulgaria and Greece show continuous development in the northern Aegean starting from 1300-1000 BC [here], and their arrival into Mesopotamia around 1200-1175 BC [here].
Ham’s Descendants
6 The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.
Cush: Cush is etymologically linked to Egyptian Kš/Kꜣš, the standard name for Nubia in pharaonic records. This name survives directly in the historical Kingdom of Kush [here]. The Kerma culture in Upper Nubia shows organized, stratified settlement from c. 2500 BC (Kerma ceramic and burial sequences). By 1750 BC, Kerma had evolved into a centralized, highly stratified kingdom capable of building massive mudbrick monuments and military defenses that rivaled Middle Kingdom Egypt. Following the retreat of New Kingdom Egyptian occupiers, native Nubian leaders formally re-established the independent Kingdom of Kush centered at Napata (near Jebel Barkal) around 1000 BC [here]. By 744-656 BC, King Piye and King Taharqa conquered all of Egypt, establishing Kushite rule from Khartoum to the Mediterranean delta [here].
Egypt (Mizraim): This is the Hebrew dual form endonym/exonym (possibly reflecting "Upper and Lower Egypt"), and appears as Misri in Amarna-period Akkadian correspondence [here] and [here]. The earliest archaeological evidence of a unified Egyptian state from c. 3,100 BC (First Dynasty, Narmer Palette) [here], atop millennia of continuous Predynastic culture in the Nile Valley [here]. If the flood is dated to 2,686 (per some models), then Egypt was already in the 3rd dynasty of the Old Kingdom. If the flood is dated to 2,543+- 25 years BC (per YEC models), then Egypt was in the midst of the 4th dynasty of the Old Kingdom. If it is dated to 2,348 BC (per Archbishop Ussher’s model), then Egypt was in transitioning from the 5th to 6th dynasty of the Old Kingdom. If the text is understood as saying that Mizraim founded Egypt, and any of these dates are the case, then it is not possible from Ham’s son, Egypt, to go into the land and found the kingdom of Egypt, as it already had existed for quite some time.
Put: The etymology of Put is contested. The Septuagint renders it Libyes (Libya), while some scholars connect it to the land of Punt on the Horn of Africa [here]. Libyan tribes appear on the earliest Egyptian historical monuments, including the Libyan Palette (c. 3100 BC) and the Narmer Palette, under the names Tjehenu and Temehu [here] and [here] and [here]. But the specific ethnonym Libu (from which the Greek Libyes derives) appears prominently in Egyptian military inscriptions under Pharaoh Merneptah and Ramesses III (c. 1208 BC), describing organized Libyan tribal confederations raiding the Western Delta [here] and [here] and [here]. On the other hand, the earliest explicit mention of Punt appears in the Palermo Stone during the reign of Pharaoh Sahure (c. 2480 BC), which records an expedition returning with thousands of measures of myrrh, gold, and electrum [here] and [here]. The most famous archaeological evidence comes from Queen Hatshepsut's (c. 1470 BC) temple reliefs at Deir el-Bahari, depicting detailed trading ships, Puntite stilt-houses [here]. Regardless of which identification is correct, the earliest archaeological evidence for either predates the proposed Flood dates of 2348/2686: the Libyan Palette (c. 3100 BC) by a comfortable margin, and Sahure's Egyptian-side record of trade with Punt (c. 2480 BC) by a narrower one. Neither shows an archaeological gap or restart at the Flood boundary. The most detailed and historically specific attestations, meanwhile — Hatshepsut's Punt reliefs (c. 1470 BC) and the ethnonym Libu specifically (first named under Merneptah, c. 1208 BC) — appear over a thousand years after the proposed post-Flood founding window, not immediately after it.
Canaan: The name's linguistic origin is itself debated. One view treats Kinaḫḫu/Kinahna as a native West Semitic term appearing across Amarna letters [here], Egyptian execration texts [here], and Ugaritic tablets [here], referring to the Levantine coastal region. A competing view, advanced by Julius Lewy and developed further by E.A. Speiser and W.F. Albright, holds that "Canaan" derives from a Hurrian term connected to the purple-dye trade — Speiser proposed the word was an adjective derived from "Canaan" as the native name for Phoenicia, while Albright argued the reverse: that kinahhi was a genuine Hurrian adjective meaning "purple," making "Canaan" essentially "Land of Purple," a reference to the region's famous murex-dye industry rather than a self-chosen ethnic name [here]. Either way, the term is first attested in the Mari archive texts from the 1,700’s BC as a place name [here], though the region's Early Bronze Age material culture, including cultic structures excavated at Tel Megiddo dating to 2850–2650 BC, is considerably older than the name's first attestation [here].
The Issue of Cities
Not only are there issues with the names of these peoples, there are also issues with the establishment of Nimrod’s cities occurring after the flood. Again, if we view the flood as having occurred between 2,686-2,348 BC then the cities should be founded immediately after a date within that time period.
10 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
11 From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and
12 Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.
First, to look at the non-problems: Three of Nimrod’s purported cities have not been found. This is not a particular ‘issue’ since many cities are lost to history, however it is worth noting they are Calneh (perhaps Nippur or Kullaba), Rehoboth-Ir (perhaps just a courtyard in Nineveh?), and Resen. Additionally, there are two cities whose dates are consistent with an historical-literal view of the flood: Babylon’s [Babel’s] earliest established settlement date is 2,300 BC [here], which, if attempting to reconcile with Genesis 10, fits best within Archbishop Ussher’s model (surprisingly). Accad [Akkad/Agade] is attested by numerous sources which also mention Sargon making it his capital in 2,334 BC [here], but the location has never been found.
But, there are three cities which simply do not square with the purported dates of the flood: Nineveh, Erech, and Calah.
Nineveh had already been settled by 6,000 BC [here], approximately 3,300-3,600 years prior to the historical-literalist estimated dates of the flood. Even if the flood of Scripture is not literal, and references instead the collective memory of the Black Sea flood of approximately 5,500 BC [here], Nineveh predates this as well.
Erech’s [Uruk’s] earliest established settlement date is 4,000-3,300 BC [here], fitting well outside of a 2,686-2,348 BC timeline for the flood.
Calah [Nimrud, Kalhu] is dated to 1,300 BC [here], far after the timeline for post-flood construction.
Not only this, but extra-biblically, there is evidence of several cities that were founded prior to the purported dates of the flood:
-Jericho (9,000-8,000 BC) [here]
-Byblos (8,800-7,000 BC) [here]
-Megiddo (8,000-5,000 BC) [here]
-Nineveh (6,000-5,000 BC) [here]
-Eridu (5,400 BC) [here]
A Response
Non-literalist biblical scholars position the flood as a mythic homage to an actual event (possibly occurring 5,500 BC) and/or an homage and critique of shared cultural myths. The purpose of the story is to explain current phenomena (possibly), to describe the true God as intervening in the life of his people out of grace, and as a warning of a judgment to come [rather than capriciously destroying people out of annoyance like the gods of the nations as depicted in the Eridu Genesis and the Atrahasis Epic].
In regards to the table of nations, the author(s) and/or editor(s) appear to include these people groups via eponymy—attributing the name of a contemporary (8th century) nation or ethnic group to a mythical or ancient founding ancestor (2000’s BC). Because of this, it functions more as a map of the author(s)/editor(s) time rather than an actual family tree [here] and [here] and [here]. There are similar examples in neighboring cultures, where they utilized pseudo-genealogical and familial idiom (for example in texts like the Amarna letters) to define international alliances, dependencies, and shared cultural spaces [here].
The purpose of the table of nations, then, is to describe the purported origins of the political map of the day, encode a society’s current allies and enemies, catalog the world and insist on authoritative knowledge of it, depict the true God as the Ruler and Creator of all peoples (not just Israel), and as a literary device to hone in on the gracious choice of God of Abram out of the lineage of Seth.