Dodanim

Name of sons of Javan, brothers to Elishah, Tarshish, and the Kittim, in the ethnographic table in Genesis (x. 4). The ancestor being Javan (= Ionian), the Dodanim must represent also a Greek clan. This can not be Dodona in the interior of Epiros, as both the association with the Kittim (= Cyprians) and Gen. x. 5 indicate a people settled on the seashore. Dardanians (the northern Ionians) have been suggested, but it is not likely that the author of this list had such detailed knowledge of the subdivisions of the Greek population. In I Chron. i. 7 the reading is "Rodanim," as it is in the Samaritan, the Septuagint, and Jerome. In Gen. x. 4 these are the inhabitants of the island Rhodus, well known to the Phenicians of old (compare Homer's "Iliad," ii. 654). The only difficulty in the way of this identification is the long "o" in the Hebrew, where the Greek has the short sound. The modern commentators, Baentsch and Holzinger, accordingly change the ר (d) into a ר (r), and read "Rodanim."

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