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Sixteen Ancestors of Mankind
Elder Harold Hunt
The Bible is God's ultimate revelation to his children. It tells us everything we need to know and do religiously. It is the final revelation in every controversy with regard to the true religion.

But the Bible is all of that and more. Among many other things the Bible is the ultimate history of the human race. It lays down firm and clear and unmistakable landmarks against which all other history must be tested. It has been said that history is a system of agreed upon myths, and there is some truth in that, at least, as regards any history written by men. Human history is not the ultimate judge. Historians deal with the information that is available to them, and if that information is faulty, their conclusions are going to be faulty.

But while history may be a system of agreed upon myths, even the myths themselves fail us if we follow history back far enough. In the fifth century B.C. a Greek historian by the name of Herodotus took on the task of writing the history of the world up to his time. He wrote a huge nine volume history which has been recognized as an authority since that day. He earned himself the name of "the Father of History." Since the time of Herodotus we have had a reasonably accurate history, but prior to his day, the history of the world is a vast wasteland of fabulous myths and legends. There is not much real agreement among historians about specific details and events which took place very much before his day. Generation after generation handed down a system of legends, which were always slanted in favor of whichever nation was preserving the story. For that matter, not even Herodotus believed everything he wrote. He acknowledged that he included quite a few accounts simply because they made a more lively story.

For the last two hundred years or so, archaeologists have provided us with glimpses into the far distant past. Some of their findings can be very enlightening, and we would not deny the great benefit of their work. Especially, they have produced a wealth of information about the great empires of the Middle East. They have learned to decipher long forgotten languages. They have, very painstakingly, deciphered the inscriptions on old monuments to piece together information about old kingdoms, and old wars. But for all the benefits they provide, they are still only glimpses. What one archaeologist affirms another denies.
All of that stands in stark contrast to the record God has left us in the Bible. The Bible stands out as unique in all of
history. The archaeologist looks at his little collection of artifacts, and guesses. The student of ancient history reads his prehistoric myth, and wonders which part of it is true, or if indeed, any part of it can be believed.

The Bible is different. The Bible goes back, not to the dawn of history, but to the very morning of time itself. It gives the exact names of particular individuals and specific details of their lives. It traces family trees. It traces connections and relationships that are still profoundly affecting world events to this very day. Much of the conflict that is going on in world affairs at this very time is traceable to remote ages which are entirely unreachable by uninspired historians. The one and only source for some of that information is the historical evidence found in the Bible. It provides the only dependable record of ancient nations which have long since been absorbed by other people. Just to give one example, alongside of Egypt and Mesopotamia the ancient Hittite Empire was one of the most powerful forces in the early ancient world. But as important and as mighty as that great empire was, until the early 1800's the Hittite Empire was virtually lost to history. Encyclopedia Britannica acknowledges that "the total knowledge of 'the Hittites...... was derived from the Old Testament." That is quite an admission: that historians could not even verify the existence of such a powerful empire without the help of the Bible.

Then beginning about 1810 archaeologists began to discover the remains of the Hittite Empire. Since then they have pieced together much of their story. The Bible had much to say about the Hittites, but historians could not even find them.

The characters written about in the Bible were real; they really lived, and they did do the things they are recorded to have done. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were real. David was a real person. Noah was real. His sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, and his sixteen grandsons were actual people.

In tills little booklet I intend to very briefly examine the history of those sixteen grandsons of Noah. One of the greatest deficiencies of secular history, with regard to the early ancient world is the failure of historians to recognize the identity and the enormous importance of those sixteen men.

The grandsons of Noah literally provide the key to the history of the earliest ages of the world. In this little booklet I want to look at those sixteen men, and examine the evidence that they did live, and that the names recorded in the Bible were their names, and we will identify the various modern nations which sprang from each of those men.

Now bear in mind that those men lived over four thousand years ago. Uninspired historians cannot reach back that far.
Reliable human history cannot reach much farther than the tune of Herodotus in the fifth century B.C. When you go back that far, human history loses entire empires. What are the chances, then, that we can find sixteen individuals? What are the chances that we can show that those sixteen men were who the Bible says they were? Not only can we find all sixteen of those men, we can show where they lived and raised their families. God has provided us with absolutely mind-boggling evidence as to the existence and identity of those sixteen grandsons of Noah, and he has preserved that evidence in such form that it can never be lost or erased.

The identity of those sixteen grandsons of Noah is one of the most important facts in human history, and it is no credit to historians that they have not incorporated that fact into their histories.

There are some facts so important to be known that God has imprinted those facts on the memory of mankind in a way that all the ingenuity of men cannot erase them. The identity of those sixteen men is one of those facts. In this booklet we expect to demonstrate that God has provided mankind with a memory of those men in such a manner that the evidence has not been lost even after all these many centuries.

Just what is so important about those sixteen grandsons of Noah? Just this: those men are the ancestors of all mankind. Every person living today is descended from one of the other of those men.

Except for eight people the entire human race perished in the Genesis Flood. After sixteen hundred years of human history mankind had become so corrupt that God determined to destroy all of the human race except for Noah and Ws family. Gen. 6:5-8, "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually- And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at Ws heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord."

God sent a flood that covered the tallest hills, changed the entire geography of the earth, and destroyed every air breathing creature on earth, ("all in whose nostrils was the breath of life" Gen. 7:22). Only Noah, and his wife, and his three sons and their wives, and the creatures Noah took into the ark, escaped. The rest of the human race perished in the flood.

When Noah and his family stepped out of the ark one year later, they stepped out into a vast empty earth. Those eight people were the only people on earth. God told them to "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth" (Gen. 9:2). It fell to Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three sons of Noah, and their sixteen sons to repopulate the earth, and that is what they did. Those three sons of Noah and their wives came out of the ark after the flood and made homes for themselves. Then their sons, these sixteen grandsons of Noah, fanned out over the earth and established the various nations of the ancient world.
Those sixteen men were the ancestors of the entire human race, and it is simply mind-boggling to examine the amount of evidence God has left us as to their individual existence and identity. Again bear in mind that we are talking about sixteen individuals who lived over four thousand years ago. That is a time so remote that historians lose entire empires. Historians finally rediscovered the Hittite Empire only during the last century, and archaeologists are still discovering the shattered remains of civilizations they are completely unable to identify. Perhaps God left us such a legacy of proof with regard to those men for the purpose of stopping the mouths of skeptics, who are so fond of ridiculing the Bible. Skeptics in every age have insisted that the Bible is a book of myths and legends, but God has left us all the evidence we need to prove that those characters really lived, that they were who the Bible says they were, and that the names the Bible provides were their exact names. We will only have time and space to take a brief look at each of these men, and the evidence regarding them, but we believe that it will be sufficient to demonstrate that further inquiry win bear out the conclusions reached.

One important fact which secular historians rarely mention is that when the European explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries began to travel to the remote corners of the earth, wherever they went, they found primitive cultures who were still talking about the Genesis Flood. For the most part, those people had no written language. They did not have books, magazines, nor newspapers. There was no written record of the flood, but they were still talking about it. How could it have happened that they still knew about the flood literally thousands of years after the fact? For one thing, they did not have the distractions of books, and newspapers, and radio, and television; so they had an abundance of time to talk to each other. Before all of our modern advancements people communicated with each other on an individual basis more than we ever have since. For four thousand years those primitive, unlettered people sat around in the evening and told each other tales of long ago, and the most often repeated story was about a world destroying flood, and the one man and Ws family who survived to repopulate the new world. That was the most momentous event in the history of the world up until their time, and cultures all over the world were fascinated by the story. For four thousand years they could not stop telling it.

The explorers traveled to the remotest corners of the globe, and wherever they went, they found the natives repeating that story. And wherever the story was told, the basic facts were always very similar. Whether it was the Gilgamesh Epic of the Babylonians or another version told by American Indians, or stiff another version told by the Polynesians of the South Pacific, the main story line was always the same. Mankind had violated the law of his God; his disobedience brought a world destroying flood, and only one man and his family escaped. One story had the ark shaped like a cigar; one had it shaped like a cube; another story allowed that the ark had nine stories. The details varied, but the basic facts were always the same: a violated law, a world destroying flood, an huge boat, and one man and his family who survived to populate the new world. Skeptics can ridicule the Bible, but they have no explanation of why (if the Genesis Flood did not happen) did primitive cultures all over the world --- cultures which had no contact with each other --- pass that legend down for four thousand years. What was the source of the legend if it never happened?

Pagan religions worshipped Noah under a variety of names. The ancient Romans worshipped him under the name of Janus. You may remember from your ancient history classes that Janus was the god with two faces, one facing in each direction. That was the Roman version of Noah, the man who lived in two worlds, the world before the flood, and the world after the flood. In other words, he could look in two directions, toward two different worlds. The human race is divided into three distinct groups. Down through the ages historians have always recognized three major divisions of the races, the Hamitic, the Japhetic, and the Semitic, exactly corresponding to the three sons of Noah. The Hamitic races lived primarily in Africa and parts of Southwest Asia. The Japhetic lived in Europe and Northern Asia, And the Semitic lived primarily in the Middle East and Eastward from there. Modern anthropologists with their evolutionary turn of mind do their best to ignore the fact that their predecessors have always recognized those three major groups. For instance, under the heading of Race Encyclopedia Britannica says, "Tradition favored an oversimplified phylogeny, a three-race theory," but their evolutionary prejudice will not allow them to even list those names, much less to point out that the traditional names of the races (the Hamitic, the Japhetic, and the Semitic) exactly correspond to the names of the three sons of Noah.

But I am not so concerned with Noah and his three sons as I am with his sixteen grandsons. It is in those sixteen grandsons that the various nations find their origins, and it was by those famines that the earth was repopulated.

After the flood the ark came to rest "upon the mountains of Ararat" (Gen. 8:4). Mount Ararat is located at the very Eastern limit of Turkey, where Turkey and Soviet Armenian and Iran meet. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the Persian (Iranian) name for Ararat is Koh-i-Nuh, meaning Noah's Mountain. Modern skeptics deny the very existence of Noah; it is embarrassing to them that for thousands of years the Armenians have called Mount Ararat by Noah's name. Mount Ararat is still sacred to the Armenians; they call it The Mother of the World. They still tell the story of Noah and the Genesis Flood, and insist that they were the first race of people to appear after the flood. Local legend maintains that the remains of the ark were for many years visible on the mountain.

At any rate, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, and from there the sons and grandsons of Noah fanned out into the vast empty places of the earth. In the providence of God they and their descendants left a very clear record of where those families came to live, and the nations that were produced by them. But before we examine each of those names, we need to notice one important aspect of that age of the world. That age had one very important characteristic which does not apply to any other age, either before or since.

Before the flood men lived to be very old. If you will look at Genesis chapter five, you will discover that it was not at all uncommon for somebody to live to be almost a thousand years old. Adam lived to be nine hundred and thirty years old (vs. 5).