Sons of Japheth:Tiras

Christian Churches of God

Sons of Japheth:

Part I

(Edition 1.0 20071020-20071020)

The location of the sons of Japheth is an important task of identifying the nations of the world and the blessings given to Japheth by God through Noah.

Tiras

The next group are the Tirasians or Thirasians, called Thracians.

Thiras also called those whom he ruled over Thirasians; but the Greeks changed the name into Thracians (Ant. Jews, ibid.).

These people encompassed a great horde of the Parthians, and also from them sprang the Phrygians who invaded Anatolia from Thrace after the fall of Troy.

They too will provide a great surprise for the student of Bible history.

The Tirasians were the first fair-haired people known to antiquity and they allegedly later became known as part of the Getae. We will test this hypothesis in the paper on Tiras.

They are sometimes identifed as the Pereset (Peleset) or Sea Peoples know to the Egyptians also as Tursha and the Greeks as Tyrsenoi (cf. article ‘Tiras’, Wikipedia stub).

These people were of various origins and they attacked Egypt as a confederation in the reign of Rameses III. They are mentioned in a number of inscriptions.

In Year 8 of his reign the alliance of the “Nine Bows” appear again as a "conspiracy in their isles." In this record they are revealed unquestionably as sea peoples: the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh, which are classified as "foreign countries" in the inscription. They camped in Amor and sent a fleet to the Nile. (cf. Wikipedia article ‘Sea Peoples’). For the first time in history the Israelites are identified as one of the peoples that the 19^th dynasty fought against in the union of the Nine Bows. There were land armies and the Peoples of the Sea (also “Great Green”) who lived in ships and behaved like the later Vikings.

Some of these may have been Island Greeks and also Thracian groups coming out of the Black Sea.

The Book of Jubilees states that the inheritance of Tiras consisted of “four large islands in the midst of the sea which approaches the portion of Ham” (Jub. 9:13; cf. 8:29). This cannot be the islands of the Mediterranean as five of those islands were given to Javan and Crete was given to Arphaxad. They could not be the islands of the Aegean either as that does not approach the portion of Ham. They may have been occupied by the Tirasians in the beginning but their inheritance could appear to be in the Atlantic beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

Wikipedia says some have suggested that Tiras was worshipped by his descendants as Thuras, or Thor, the god of thunder. The earliest Norse sagas name Thor as an ancestral chieftain, and trace his origins to Thrace.

The Germanic peoples also worshipped a god called Tiwaz (which some scholars consider to originally have been Odin), whose name was rendered Tyr/Tir in Scandinavian languages, and Tiw in Old English.

The sagas hold Thor was the son of Odin and Jörd. Jörd means earth. Her rival is Frigg, the other wife of Odin (hence Friday).

Thus Tiw’s day or Tuesday, Woden’s day or Wednesday, Thir’s day or Thursday and Frigg’s day or Friday in the Norse and Saxon calendars. The separation of Tiwaz and Wotan or Woden make Tiwaz and Odin unlikely to be the same ancestor.

The medieval rabbinic Book of Jasher records the sons of Tiras as Rushash, Cushni, and Ongolis. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiras)

However, we note another reference to the sons of Tiras as being:

Jasher: Chapter 7.9 And the sons of Tiras were Benib, Gera, Lupirion and Gilak;

http://www.ccel.org/a/anonymous/jasher/7.htm

The connections with the Angles and English seems obvious for Ongolis. Even if the text is a medieval work it indicates that the authors understood the English as Tirasians or attempted to make them so.

Christian Churches of God

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(Copyright ã 2007 Wade Cox)