page_title: Biblical terminology for race
section_title: Isidore of Seville
hierarchical_section_title: Biblical terminology for race / Isidore of Seville
caption_attribution_description: T and O style mappa mundi (map of the known world) from the first printed version of Isidorus' Etymologiae (Kraus 13). The book was written in 623 and first printed in 1472 at Augsburg by one Günther Zainer (Guntherus Ziner), Isidor's sketch thus becoming the oldest printed map of the occident. Note: T-O-maps are typically displayed "East-up", show Jerusalem at the center and the paradise at the outmost East, balanced by the pillars of Hercules at the outmost West.
context_page_description: Biblical terminology for race has been used to classify human races, based on proposed Biblical lineage from the Table of Nations in Genesis 10, since antiquity.
  The early modern biblical division of the world's races into Semites, Hamites and Japhetites was coined at the Göttingen School of History in the late 18th century – in parallel with the color terminology for race which divided mankind into five colored races.
context_section_description: The scholar Isidore of Seville, in his Etymologiae (c. 600), repeats all of Jerome's identifications, but with these minor changes:
  Joktan, son of Eber: Indians
  Saleph, son of Joktan: Bactrians
  Magog, son of Japheth: "Scythians and Goths"
  Ashkenaz, son of Gomer: "Sarmatians, whom the Greeks call Rheginians".
  Isidore's identifications for Japheth's sons were repeated in the Historia Brittonum attributed to Nennius. Isidore's identifications also became the basis for numerous later mediaeval scholars, remaining so until the Age of Discovery prompted newer theories, such as that of Benito Arias Montano (1571), who proposed connecting Meshech with Moscow, and Ophir with Peru.
caption: This T and O map, from the first printed version of Isidoor's Etymologiae, identifies the three known continents as populated by descendants of Sem (Shem), Iafeth (Japheth) and Cham (Ham).
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