JOHNSTON, JAMES STEPTOE: Protestant Episcopal bishop of Western Texas; b. at Church Hill, Miss., June 9, 1843. He was educated at Oakland College, Miss., and the University of Virginia, but left in 1861, before graduation, to enter the Confederate Army. He served throughout the Civil War, first as a private in the Eleventh Mississippi Regiment, and later as a second lieutenant in Stuart's cavalry. After the end of the war, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1868. He soon turned, however, from the law to the Church, and, after pursuing his theological studies privately, was ordered deacon in 1869 and priested two years later. He was successively minister and curate at St. James', Port Gibson, Miss., in 1870-1876, and rector of the Church of the Ascension, Mount Sterling, Ky., in 1866-50, and of Trinity, Mobile, Ala., in 1880-88. In the latter year he was consecrated missionary bishop of Western Texas. Within his diocese he has enlarged St. Mary's Hall, a girls' college, and has founded the West Texas Military Academy, both at San Antonio.

JOKTAN, jok'tan: According to Gen. x. 25 sqq. a son of Eber, the grandson of Shem, brother of Peleg, and father of thirteen sons (twelve according to the LXX). According to this chapter the Semitic stock divided into two branches, a northern and a southern, long before the migrations of the Abrahamic family; and the names of the thirteen sons of Joktan point to southern Arabia, while Genesis is right in distinguishing between the Joktan peoples and the later Ishmaelites. The Arabic ethnographers make the same distinction between the sons of Kahtan (pure Arabs) and Ishmaelites. The location of the Joktan peoples as given in Gen. x. 30 is disputed. Mesha is placed by Delitzsch on the northwestern corner of the Persian Gulf, and by Knobel about fifty miles southeast of Mecca. In the first case Sephar is placed in the Himyaritic Zaphar in Yemen and the "mountain of the east" is the range in the east of Hadramaut. In the other case, Joktan's possessions were a triangle in southwest Arabia. But neither situation furnishes good locations for Ophir (q.v.) and Havilah (verse 29). See TABLE OF THE NATIONS.

(E. KAUTZSCH.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The commentaries on Genesis and the literature under TABLE OF THE NATIONS; E. C. A. Riehm, Handwörterbuch des biblischen Altertums, pp. 763-764, Leipsic, 1893; DB, ii. 743-744; EB, 12564; JE, vii. 225.