Joktan
Encyclopedia
Joktan or Yoktan was the second of the two sons of Eber
Eber
Eber is an ancestor of the Israelites, according to the "Table of Nations" in and . He was a great-grandson of Noah's son Shem and the father of Peleg born when Eber was 34 years old, and of Joktan. He was the son of Shelah a distant ancestor of Abraham...

 (Gen. 10:25; 1 Chr. 1:19) mentioned in the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...

. His name means "small" or "smallness".

In the Book of Genesis 10:25 it reads: "And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg
Peleg
__notoc__Peleg is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as one of the two sons of Eber, an ancestor of the Israelites, according to the "Table of Nations" in and . Peleg's son was Reu, born when Peleg was thirty, and he had other sons and daughters. According to the Hebrew Bible, Peleg lived to the age...

; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan."

Joktan's sons in the order provided in Gen. 10:26-29, were: Almodad
Almodad
Almodad was a descendant of Noah and the first named son of Joktan in and . While the Bible has no further history regarding Almodad, this patriarch is considered to be the founder of an Arabian tribe in "Arabia Felix"...

, Sheleph
Sheleph
Sheleph was a son of Joktan, of the family of Shem. . Sheleph means "drawing out" or "who draws out" ....

, Hazarmaveth
Hazarmaveth
Hazarmaveth is the third of thirteen sons of Joktan, who was a son of Eber, son of Shem in the table of the Sons of Noah in Genesis chapter 10 and 1 Chronicles chapter 1 in the Bible...

, Jerah, Hadoram
Hadoram
Hadoram is the son of Joktan mentioned in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. One of Shem's sons was Arpachshad. One of Arpachshad's sons was Eber...

, Uzal
Uzal
Uzal, in the Hebrew Bible, is a descendant of Joktan whose clan supposedly settled in Yemen. He was believed to be the founder of an Arabian tribe. Joktan became the father of Almodad and Sheleph and Hazarmaveth and Jerah and Hadoram and Uzal and Diklah...

, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba
Sheba
Sheba was a kingdom mentioned in the Jewish scriptures and the Qur'an...

, Ophir
Ophir
Ophir is a port or region mentioned in the Bible, famous for its wealth. King Solomon is supposed to have received a cargo of gold, silver, sandalwood, precious stones, ivory, apes and peacocks from Ophir, every three years.- Citations :...

, Havilah
Havilah
Havilah is in several books of the Bible referring to both land and people.The story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:11: "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads...

, and Jobab.

In Pseudo-Philo
Pseudo-Philo
Pseudo-Philo is the name commonly used for a Jewish pseudepigraphical work in Latin, so called because it was transmitted along with Latin translations of the works of Philo of Alexandria but is very obviously not written by Philo...

's account (ca. 70), Joktan was first made prince over the children of Shem
Shem
Shem was one of the sons of Noah in the Hebrew Bible as well as in Islamic literature. He is most popularly regarded as the eldest son, though some traditions regard him as the second son. Genesis 10:21 refers to relative ages of Shem and his brother Japheth, but with sufficient ambiguity in each...

, just as Nimrod
Nimrod (king)
Nimrod is, according to the Book of Genesis and Books of Chronicles, the son of Cush and great-grandson of Noah and the king of Shinar. He is depicted in the Tanakh as a man of power in the earth, and a mighty hunter. Extra-Biblical traditions associating him with the Tower of Babel led to his...

 and Phenech were princes over the children of Ham
Ham, son of Noah
Ham , according to the Table of Nations in the Book of Genesis, was a son of Noah and the father of Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan.- Hebrew Bible :The story of Ham is related in , King James Version:...

 and Japheth
Japheth
Japheth is one of the sons of Noah in the Abrahamic tradition...

, respectively. In his version, the three princes command all persons to bake bricks for the Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel , according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar .According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where...

, however twelve, including several of Joktan's own sons, as well as Abraham and Lot, refuse the orders. Joktan smuggles them out of Shinar
Shinar
Shinar was a geographical locale of uncertain boundaries in Mesopotamia. The name may be a corruption of Shene nahar , Shene or , or Sumer .It has been suggested that Shinar must have been confined to the northern part of Mesopotamia Shinar (Hebrew Šin`ar, Septuagint Σεννααρ Sennaar) was a...

 and into the mountains, to the annoyance of the other two princes. The traditional history of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church also maintains that Joktan's sons would take no part in the tower building, and that they were thus allowed to preserve the original Ge'ez language
Ge'ez language
Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the northern region of Ethiopia and southern Eritrea in the Horn of Africa...

 — which their descendants, the Agazyan, carried across the Red Sea into Ethiopia as they mixed with the Cushitic and Agaw people to form the hybrid Habesha race.

The Arab peoples comprise numerous clans and tribes. Many historians trace the peoples of the southern Arabian Peninsula
Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula is a land mass situated north-east of Africa. Also known as Arabia or the Arabian subcontinent, it is the world's largest peninsula and covers 3,237,500 km2...

 to Joktan. However, early Biblical ethnographers, including Josephus
Josephus
Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...

 and Hippolytus, identified Joktan's sons with peoples around the Indus river.

One scholar believes Joktan's family separated from his brother Peleg
Peleg
__notoc__Peleg is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as one of the two sons of Eber, an ancestor of the Israelites, according to the "Table of Nations" in and . Peleg's son was Reu, born when Peleg was thirty, and he had other sons and daughters. According to the Hebrew Bible, Peleg lived to the age...

's near a place called Mesha - see , at or near Mashhad
Mashhad
Mashhad , is the second largest city in Iran and one of the holiest cities in the Shia Muslim world. It is also the only major Iranian city with an Arabic name. It is located east of Tehran, at the center of the Razavi Khorasan Province close to the borders of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. Its...

, he theorizes - and went east over the Silk Road toward the Orient, fathering the Sinitic peoples.

In pre-Islamic literature

Details about the three of Joktan's sons, Sheba, Ophir and Havilah, were preserved in a tradition known in divergent forms from three pre-Islamic Arabic and Ethiopic sources: the Kitab al-Magall (part of Clementine literature
Clementine literature
Clementine literature is the name given to the religious romance which purports to contain a record made by one Clement of discourses...

), the Cave of Treasures
Cave of Treasures
The Cave of Treasures, sometimes referred to simply as The Treasure, is a book of the New Testament apocrypha.-Origin:This text is attributed to Ephrem Syrus, who was born at Nisibis soon after AD 306 and died in 373, but it is now generally believed that its current form is 6th century or...

, and the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan
Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan
The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan is a Christian pseudepigraphical work found in Ge'ez, translated from an Arabic original and thought to date from the 5th or 6th century AD....

.

Kitab al-Magall: "He [Nimrod] died in the days of Reu
Reu
Reu or Ragau in Genesis was the son of Peleg and the father of Serug, thus being Abraham's great-great-grandfather.He was 32 when Serug was born and lived to the age of 239 , according to the Masoretic text...

, and the third thousand since Adam was completed. In his days the people of Egypt set up a king over them called Firnifs. He reigned over them for sixty-eight years. In his days also a king reigned over the town of Saba and annexed to his kingdom the cities of Ophir and Havilah, his name was Pharaoh. He built Ophir with stones of gold, for the stones of its mountains are pure gold. After him there reigned over Havilah a king called Hayul. He built it and cemented it, and after the death of Pharaoh women reigned over Saba until the time of Solomon son of David."

Cave of Treasures: "And in the days of Reu, the Mesraye, who are the Egyptians, appointed their first king; his name was Puntos, and he reigned over them sixty-eight years. And in the days of Reu a king reigned in Shebha (Saba), and in Ophir, and in Havilah. And there reigned in Saba sixty of the daughters of Saba. And for many years women reigned in Saba--until the kingdom of Solomon, the son of David. And the children of Ophir, that is, Send (Scindia ?), appointed to be their king Lophoron (?), who built Ophir with stones of gold; now, all the stones that are in Ophir are of gold. And the children of Havilah appointed to be their king Havîl, who built Havilah, that is, Hend (India ?)."

Conflict of Adam and Eve: "And in those days Ragu [Reu] was 180 years old, and in his 140th year Yanuf [Apophis
Apophis
Apophis may refer to:* Apep, an Ancient Egyptian mythological demon, in Greek known as Apophis* Apepi , a Hyksos pharaoh of Lower Egypt* 99942 Apophis, a near-Earth asteroid...

] reigned over the land of Egypt. He is the first king who reigned over it, and he built the city of Memphis, and named it after his own name. That is Misr, whose name is rendered Masrin. This Yanuf died; and in his stead, in the days of Ragu, one from the land of India reigned, whose name was Sasen, and who built the city of Saba. And all the kings who reigned over that country were called Sabaeans, after the name of the city. Then again Phar'an reigned over the children of Saphir [Ophir], and built the city of Saphir with stones of gold; and that is the land of Sarania, and because of these stones of gold, they say that the mountains of that country and the stones thereof are all of gold. Then the children of Lebensa of the country of India, made king over them, one called Bahlul, who built the city of Bahlu. Then Ragu died in his 289th year."
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