Which Biblical Character According To The Legend Is The Progenitor Of Slavic - Alternative View

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Which Biblical Character According To The Legend Is The Progenitor Of Slavic - Alternative View
Which Biblical Character According To The Legend Is The Progenitor Of Slavic - Alternative View

Video: Which Biblical Character According To The Legend Is The Progenitor Of Slavic - Alternative View

Video: Which Biblical Character According To The Legend Is The Progenitor Of Slavic - Alternative View
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Where did the Slavs come from? Of course, you can turn to ethnographic sources, but there are mythological sources on this topic, which also deserve attention. So, the medieval Russian chronicles directly indicate the origin of the Slavic peoples from Japheth, one of the sons of Noah.

Japheth and his sons

By the way, the name Japheth (variations - Japhet or Iapet) means, on the one hand, "beauty", on the other - "spread" or "expansion". According to the Book of Genesis, Japheth founded the city of Jaffa even before the Flood. After he escaped with his wife on Noah's ark, they had seven sons - Homer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Firas, who, in turn, eventually had sons. "From them the islands of the peoples in their lands were inhabited, each according to his language, according to his tribes, in his peoples" (Gen. 10, 1-5).

The Tale of Bygone Years says: “After the destruction of the pillar and after the division of the peoples, the sons of Shem took the eastern countries, and the sons of Ham took the southern countries, the Japheths took the west and the northern countries. From the same 70 and 2 languages came the Slavic people, from the tribe of Japheth - the so-called noriks, who are the Slavs. After a long time, the Slavs settled down the Danube, where the land is now Hungarian and Bulgarian … From those Slavs, the Slavs spread across the land and were nicknamed by their names from the places on which they sat. So some, having come, sat down on the river by the name of Morava and were nicknamed Morava, while others called themselves Czechs. And here are the same Slavs: White Croats, and Serbs, and Horutans. When the Volokhs attacked the Danube Slavs, and settled among them, and oppressed them, these Slavs came and sat on the Vistula and were called Lyakhs, and from those Poles came the Poles, other Poles - lutichi, others - Mazovians,some are Pomorians, others are encouraged. Likewise, these Slavs came and sat down the Dnieper and called themselves glades, and others - Drevlyans, because they sat in the forests, while others sat between Pripyat and Dvina and called themselves Dregovichi, others sat down the Dvina and called themselves Polotsk, along the river that flows into the Dvina, called Polota, from her and named Polotsk. The same Slavs, who sat near Lake Ilmenya, called themselves by their name - the Slavs, and built the city and named it Novgorod. Others sat along the Desna, and along the Seim, and along the Sule, and called themselves northerners. And so the Slavic people dispersed, and by their name and the letter was called Slavic. "some sat down the Dvina and called themselves Polotsk, along the river that flows into the Dvina, called Polota, from which they called themselves Polotsk. The same Slavs, who sat near Lake Ilmenya, called themselves by their name - the Slavs, and built the city and named it Novgorod. Others sat along the Desna, and along the Seim, and along the Sule, and called themselves northerners. And so the Slavic people dispersed, and by their name and the letter was called Slavic. "some sat down the Dvina and called themselves Polotsk, along the river that flows into the Dvina, called Polota, from which they called themselves Polotsk. The same Slavs, who sat near Lake Ilmenya, called themselves by their name - the Slavs, and built the city and named it Novgorod. Others sat along the Desna, and along the Seim, and along the Sule, and called themselves northerners. And so the Slavic people dispersed, and by their name and the letter was called Slavic."

The myth of the three brothers

There is also a myth according to which the ancestors of all Slavic peoples are the three sons of Japheth, whose names were Chekh, Lech and Rus. They were first mentioned at the beginning of the 12th century in the "Czech Chronicle" by Kozma Prazhsky. From them, respectively, went the Czechs, Poles and Russes (Russians). By the way, the Arab traveler Ibn-Fadlan, who visited Russia, mentions Ruse even earlier, in the 10th century. In his writings he writes about the origin of Russians from "Rus, son of Japheth and grandson of Noah" … True, the Russian historian V. N. Tatishchev believes that the legend of the three brothers, the descendants of Noah and Japheth, is just a fiction.

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The theory of the 16th century Dalmatian historian and the abbot of the Benedictine monastery on the island of Mljet Mauro Orbini, set forth in the book "The Slavic Kingdom" (published in 1601 in Italian), is even less resistant to criticism. She claims that the ancestors of the Slavic peoples were the great-grandsons of Japheth, Scythian, Rus and Slaven. Moreover, according to her, peoples such as the Vandals, Goths, Alans, Avars originally belonged to the Slavs, and many European nations allegedly originated from them: Swedes, Finns, Normans, Burgundians, Bretons …

Descendants of Mosokh?

And at the beginning of the 17th century, the Swedish historian Petr Petrei de Erlezunda came to the conclusion that the ancestor of the Russians (Muscovites) was the son of Japheth Meshech, "commonly called Mosokh." “The Muscovites got their name partly from the Moscow river, partly from Mosokh, the son of Japhetov,” he writes in his “History of the Grand Duchy of Moscow” (1615).

Thus, at least the fact that the Slavs descend from Japheth is the generally accepted point of view and the most likely option, as it is said in many sources. And it is not so important what exactly were the names of the descendants of the son of Noah, who founded different Slavic peoples.