The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram. The sons of Aram were Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash. Arphaxad begot Salah, and Salah begot Eber. Genesis 10:22-24
Picture 1: The Shemites are shown in the purple ovals. Notice that they settled in the Middle East and primarily Mesopotamia to start with.
Shem is the most important son of Noah for Biblical history. When words are translated from Hebrew into other languages an Sh is usually converted to just an S, so Shem is the father of the Semites. You have probably heard people who do not like Jews as being anti-Semitic. One of Shem’s descendants is Eber which has the same root word for where we get the word Hebrew. Also notice that Elam and Asshur were descendants of Shem. The Assyrians and Babylonians were also Semitic peoples and their Aramaic language was very similar to Hebrew. The Semitic people dominated the Mesopotamian region and then moved into the land of Canaan when God told Abram to move there.
Probably the first group of people mentioned in a history class is the Sumerians. Of all the people groups mentioned in Genesis chapter ten, the Sumerians are never mentioned. How can this be? One archaeologist came up with an interesting hypothesis. Not only does the Sh get converted to an S from Hebrew to English but also these languages did not write vowels so they can be interchanged. This would mean that Shemerian could be derived as Sumerian. Maybe the Bible doesn’t talk about Sumerians because that’s who was writing it, the Sumerians and Shemites are equivalent. This would also explain why Old Testament stories like the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Flood are so similar to Sumerian stories because they come from the same historical roots. These people began very early in the Zagros Mountains of northern Iran and then moved to the plains of Mesopotamia where they domesticated crops. Worship has always been associated with mountain tops so in the flat plains they constructed tall temples called ziggurats to worship on. Isn’t it interesting that so many Christians come back from special events even today and say they had a mountain top experience?
Picture 2: Zagros Mountains of Northern Iran where the birthplace of human civilization was.
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