Armenians: descendants of Noach?

[Christel]

Hello everyone,

My name is Christel and I work as an intern for a television production company in Belgium, which is called Telesaurus:

http://www.entertainmentgroup.be/ (de site is in Dutch, but al least you have an idea about the company)

At the moment, we are making a travel program. For this, we also visit Armenia in september.We are very interested in the idea that some Armenians think that they are direct descendants of Noach...do you know people who think that or are you someone who believes in this? Please let me know!

Thanks in advance..

Christel

[jgk3]

Re: Armenians: descendants of Noach?

Noah and his descendants were basically the Old Testament providing a rudimentary ethnography on all known peoples. I don't think we bothered to link Noah as our earliest ancestor before we converted to Christianity. In order to incorporate the genealogy of Hayk and his family with Christianity, Movses Khorenatsi wrote that Hayk is the great grandson of Japheth, who in turn was one of Noah's sons.

By choosing Japheth, he clearly distinguishes the Armenians from the sons of Shem, where the word 'Semitic' comes from. By doing so, he also alienates the notion that Armenians were the descendants of Aram, son of Shem, this version being a popular by foreign nations in giving the Armenians an ancestor mentioned from the OT.

In short, being a descendant of Noah is nothing special, because according to the Bible, all of modern man necessarily has him as a common ancestor, much like Adam and Eve.

I personally feel that we do not need the Old Testament to discuss our genealogy anymore, especially now that we have knowledge of how DNA works. We can scientifically discuss man's migrations around the world, how genetically close one ethnic group is to another, etc... and often the accounts provided by mythology when discussing man's prehistory contradict the kind that is verifiable by DNA testing.

[Christel]

Re: Armenians: descendants of Noach?

Dear jgk3,

Thank you very much for your interesting answer! We are really interested in your story, but first I would like to know if you live in Armenia?

If you want to know more about our program or if you have other interesting information regarding this subject, you can email me at:

[email protected]

Thanks very much in advance,

Christel