In the tenth chapter of Genesis we are given a brief genealogy of Noah’s lineage:
Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.
The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.
And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan… And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth… And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar…
Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born. The children of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram… These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations.
These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.1
Genealogy is the main tool of legitimization of a race or a family, the source of its claim to a given status or condition. Through it, a people or a lineage makes its family history public, they draw a line that connects them to the remote past; a past if not divine at least more dignified than its current condition. Through genealogy, the sovereign becomes a zone of indistinction between the public and the private.
Another important point: genealogy, the record of a lineage isolated from all the others, bestows on the sovereign the privilege of becoming an individual. However, this individualization still allows a measure of heterogeneity to his subjects who, although they are not individuals because their circumstances do not allow them to exercise their individuality, are nevertheless not equal to each other. Until the fall of the Old Regime, the power of the sovereign accepts human diversity, because in the eyes of God each soul is unique and different from the others.
This formula of “equal souls in unequal bodies,” to use the expression of Ibram X. Kendi, lies at the root of racism and colonialism.
- Gen, 10:1-31. ↩︎
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