Talk:Riphath

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I propose the following edits:

Riphath (ree-fath) is a great-grandson of Noah and a son of Gomer in the Biblical Table of Nations (Gen. 10:3, 1 Chronicles 1:6), in most manuscripts. In some manunscripts the name is rendered as Diphath, which is believed to be a scribal error.*

Josephus influentially identified Riphath as the ancestor of Paphlagonians. However, Josephus's interpretations of the Table of Nations have proven to be unreliable; for example, he identified Riphath's brother, Ashkenaz as the ancestor of Germans, whereas modern scholarship identifies Ashkenaz with the Ishkuzi of Assyrian texts.* Riphath's father, Gomer, is identified by modern scholars with the Cimmerians, while his other brother, Togarmah, is associated by modern scholars with [Til-Garimmu] of Assyrian texts*, by Josephus with the Phrygians, and by Armenian and Georgian traditions as their nations' common ancestor.

Riphath's name is believed by some classicists to be etymologically related to the Rhipaean Mountains of classical Greek geography.* These mountains appear in early Greek texts in the context of references to The Arimaspae, a lost epic about the travels of the bard Aristeas to the country of the Issedones, who lived to the south of the range. The epic included legends about a race of one-eyed people called Arimaspians, who mined gold in the mountains under the protection of griffons, and of the Hyperboreans, who lived in a paradise north of the mountains.

Early Greek and Roman geographers up to Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder identified the Rhipaean Mountains with the Caucasus. That interpretation supports a reading of the Table of Nations in which Gomer and his sons are understood to represent nations living in the general vicinity of the Caucasus, as the Cimmerians and Ishkuzi certainly did. However, claims widely distributed on the internet that Pomponius Mela and Pliny wrote of people named "rhipaci" or "rhipaces"* are untrue.

Some Irish traditions say Riphath is the ancestor of the Celts [citation needed].Mrcautious (talk) 19:08, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology

Great that we get the name 'Riphat' in Hebrew, but would it be possible to include the etymology as well?