Tubal

Tubal , תובל IPA [ tʷu'bal ] or תבל [ tu'bal ], "Thou shalt be brought", in Genesis 10 (the Table of Nations ), was the name of a son of Japheth , son of Noah .¹ Many authors, following the Romanized Jewish author Josephus (1st century AD), related the name to Iber . Concerning the question of the ethnic affinity of the population of Tubal, Josephus wrote: "Tobal gave rise to the Thobeles , who are now called Iberes". This version was repeated by Patriarch Eustathius of Antioch , Bishop Theodoret , and others. A divergent tradition recorded by Hippolytus of Rome lists Tubal's descendants as the "Hettali". According to a Catalan legend , Japheth's son Tubal is said to have sailed from Jaffa with his family and arrived at the Francolí river of Spain 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 (who is often confounded with Tubal-Cain son of Lamech, a figure from before the flood) to be the founder of Ravenna in Italy, Setúbal in Portugal, and Toledo and many other places in Spain. The earliest source for most of these legends seems to have been the Pseudo-Berosus published by Annio da Viterbo in 1498, now widely considered a forgery. Basque intellectuals like Poza (16th century) have named Tubal as the ancestor of Basques , and by extension, the Iberians . The French Basque author Augustin Chaho (19th century) published The Legend of Aitor , asserting that the common patriarch of the Basques was Aitor , a descendant of Tubal. 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. The Tabali ( Tibareni in Greek ) were Luwian tribes of Asia Minor of the 3rd - 1st millennias BC . They and other related tribes, the Chalybes ( Khalib / Khaldi ) and the Mossynoeci ( Mossynoikoi in Greek), are sometimes considered the founders of metallurgy . Tubal's sons are given different names in rabbinic sources. In Pseudo-Philo (written c. AD 70), his son's names are Phanatonova and Eteva , and they were given the land of "Pheed". The later mediaeval Chronicles of Jerahmeel gives these sons' names as Fantonya and Atipa , and says they subdued "Pahath"; elsewhere these chronicles include information derived from Jerome, identifying Tubal's descendants with Iberia and Hispania. In still another place, the Chronicles of Jerahmeel reproduces a more detailed legend taken from the earlier Yosippon (c. 950): Tubal's descendants, it says, camped in Tuscany and built a city called " Sabino ", while the Kittim built "Posomanga" in neighboring Campania , with the Tiber river as the frontier between the two peoples. However, they soon went to war following the 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 . 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.²