Who Are The Dodanim of Genesis 10:4?

Old Testament / History

The short answer: nobody.

The longer answer…

Ge. 10:4 The descendants of Javan: Elishah and Tarshish, the Kittim and the Dodanim.
Ge. 10:5a From these the maritime nations branched out…

Chapter 10 of the Book of Genesis lists a table of nations. Technically, it consists of a list highlighting the repopulation of the earth from the sons of Noah and their descendants. Most of the nations listed can be identified with nations or peoples present at the time of writing during the early centuries of the Iron Age. However, there is one curious nation which eludes identification: the Dodanim (דדנים). Who are they?

A little digging around has revealed that this seems to be a very old spelling mistake (i.e. a typo). One that seems to have been around for many centuries, if not longer. Now why do I say that it is a typo? The first clue comes from the book of 1 Chronicles:

1 Chr 1:7 The sons of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Rodanim.

Isn’t that interesting? A complementary book, in the same Old Testament actually lists a nation we can easily identify: the Rodanim (רודנים). That is, the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean. But how can we be sure that this is correct?

Clue number two can be observed in the Septuagint (LXX) [1]:

Ge. 10:4 And the sons of Jovan, Elisa, and Tharseis, Cetians, and Rhodians.

Yes, another source saying Rhodes, well, Rhodians (Ρόδιοι). Anything else? Yes! The third clue will be found in the Samaritan Pentateuch [2], where in the same Genesis verse we find the name Rodanim (רודנים); mirroring what is found in the Masoretic Texts (MT) [3] of 1 Chronicles.

Okay, we now know that it is meant to be read as the island nation of Rhodes but why is this important? Tradition has it that the Torah has been copied letter by letter with such precision that it isn’t possible for such an error to occur. And yet here we are.

How could such an error happen in the first place? This seems like a simple mistake of confusing two very similar Hebrew letters: the dalet (ד) and the resh (ר). If not cleanly legible, the two characters can indistinguishable from one another.

What this scribal error shows is that mistakes can be found in the scriptures and it is very likely that this isn’t the first and only error.

Featured image: The Colossus of Rhodes. (Aliv123 / CC BY-SA 4.0)

Notes

[1] The Septuagint (abbreviated as LXX and sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament) is the first translation of the Jewish Bible into the Greek language from the original Hebrew. It was translated in Egypt and at the request of Ptolemy II (3rd century BCE) by 72 Jewish translators.

[2] The Samaritan Pentateuch is the text of the Torah written in the Samaritan script and used by the Samaritans. It dates to the Second Temple period and is believed to be no older than the mid-5th century BCE.

[3] The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. It was copied, edited and distributed by the Masoretes Jews between the 7th and 10th centuries CE.