Historians appreciate that early modern nationhood was inextricably bound up with confessional identity. By contrast, however, the parallel connection between theology and ethnicity has largely escaped the attention of mainstream historiography. Yet this was a profound relationship whose central importance within the realm of Christian apologetic has long been recognised by students of historical theology. For the peopling of the world was a familiar part of sacred history and a topic which occupied a crucial place in the Bible. The first five verses of Genesis 10 constituted the fundamental text which associated the peopling of Europe with the Japhetan descendants of Noah, and described the basic relationships of the various tributaries of the Japhetan lineage:

A few other passages of Scripture also dealt with ethnological matters: the story of the confounding of languages at the Tower of Babel in chapter 11 of Genesis, and some later references to the descendants of Noah in chapter 38 of Ezekiel.