Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature."[5]: 13–14 [6][7]
The name "Canaanites" is attested, many centuries later, as the
Late Antiquity
.
Etymology
Canaan
The English term "Canaan" (pronounced /ˈkeɪnən/ since c. 1500, due to the Great Vowel Shift) comes from the Hebrew כנען (Kənaʿan), via the Koine GreekΧαναανKhanaan and the LatinCanaan. It appears as Kinâḫna (Akkadian: 𒆳𒆠𒈾𒄴𒈾, KURki-na-aḫ-na) in the Amarna letters (14th century BC) and several other ancient Egyptian texts.[9] In Greek, it first occurs in the writings of Hecataeus (c. 550–476 BC) as "Khna" (Χνᾶ).[10] It is attested in Phoenician on coins from Berytus dated to the 2nd century BC.[11]
The etymology is uncertain. An early explanation derives the term from the
Aram, which would then mean "highlands",[13] whereas others have suggested it meant "the subjugated" as the name of Egypt's province in the Levant, and evolved into the proper name in a similar fashion to Provincia Nostra (the first Roman colony north of the Alps, which became Provence).[14]
An alternative suggestion, put forward by
Tyre in Phoenicia was well known far and wide and was associated by the Romans with nobility and royalty. However, according to Robert Drews, Speiser's proposal has generally been abandoned.[15][16]
The Ghassulian starGhassulian dolmen, Kueijiyeh hill near Madaba, Jordan
The first wave of migration, called Ghassulian culture, entered Canaan circa 4500 BC.[22] This is the start of the Chalcolithic in Canaan. From their unknown homeland they brought an already complete craft tradition of metal work. They were expert coppersmiths; in fact, their work was the most advanced metal technology in the ancient world.[citation needed] Their work is similar to artifacts from the later Maykop culture, leading some scholars to believe they represent two branches of an original metalworking tradition. Their main copper mine was at Wadi Feynan. The copper was mined from the Cambrian Burj Dolomite Shale Unit in the form of the mineral malachite. All of the copper was smelted at sites in Beersheba culture. They produced violin-shaped figurines similar to those in Cycladic culture and at Bark in North Mesopotamia.[citation needed]
Genetic analysis has shown that the Ghassulians belonged to the
The end of the Chalcolithic period saw the rise of the urban settlement of 'En Esur on the southern Mediterranean coast.[24]
Early Bronze Age (3500–2000 BC)
Violin-shaped female cycladic figurines
By the
Early Bronze Age other sites had developed, such as Ebla (where an East Semitic language, Eblaite, was spoken), which by c. 2300 BC was incorporated into the Mesopotamia-based Akkadian Empire of Sargon the Great and Naram-Sin of Akkad (biblical Accad). Sumerian references to the Mar.tu ("tent dwellers", later Amurru, i.e. Amorite) country west of the Euphrates River date from even earlier than Sargon, at least to the reign of the Sumerian king, Enshakushanna of Uruk, and one tablet credits the early Sumerian king Lugal-Anne-Mundu with holding sway in the region, although this tablet is considered less credible because it was produced centuries later.[citation needed
]
Amorites at Hazor, Kadesh (Qadesh-on-the-Orontes), and elsewhere in Amurru (Syria) bordered Canaan in the north and northeast. (Ugarit may be included among these Amoritic entities.)[25] The collapse of the Akkadian Empire in 2154 BC saw the arrival of peoples using Khirbet Kerak ware (pottery),[26] coming originally from the Zagros Mountains (in modern Iran) east of the Tigris. In addition, DNA analysis revealed that between 2500–1000 BC, populations from the Chalcolithic Zagros and Bronze Age Caucasus migrated to the Southern Levant.[27]
The first cities in the southern Levant arose during this period. The major sites were
A disputed reference to a "Lord of ga-na-na" in the Semitic
Ebla-Biblical controversy
for further details.
Middle Bronze Age (2000–1550 BC)
Map of the Near East by Robert de Vaugondy (1762), indicating "Canaan" as limited to the Holy Land, to the exclusion of Lebanon and Syria
Urbanism returned and the region was divided among small city-states, the most important of which seems to have been Hazor.[34] Many aspects of Canaanite material culture now reflected a Mesopotamian influence, and the entire region became more tightly integrated into a vast international trading network.[34]
As early as
First Babylonian Empire, which lasted only as long as his lifetime. Upon his death the Amorites were driven from Assyria but remained masters of Babylonia until 1595 BC, when they were ejected by the Hittites.[citation needed
]
The semi-fictional Story of Sinuhe describes an Egyptian officer, Sinuhe, conducting military activities in the area of "Upper Retjenu" and "Fenekhu" during the reign of Senusret I (c. 1950 BC). The earliest bona fide Egyptian report of a campaign to "Mentu", "Retjenu" and "Sekmem" (Shechem) is the Sebek-khu Stele, dated to the reign of Senusret III (c. 1862 BC).[citation needed]
A letter from
Old Assyrian Empire (2025–1750 BC) has been translated: "It is in Rahisum that the brigands (habbatum) and the Canaanites (Kinahnum) are situated". It was found in 1973 in the ruins of Mari, an Assyrian outpost at that time in Syria.[5][35] Additional unpublished references to Kinahnum in the Mari letters refer to the same episode.[36] Whether the term Kinahnum refers to people from a specific region or rather people of "foreign origin" has been disputed,[37][38] such that Robert Drews states that the "first certain cuneiform reference" to Canaan is found on the Alalakh statue of King Idrimi (below).[39]
A reference to Ammiya being "in the land of Canaan" is found on the
Archaeological excavations of a number of sites, later identified as Canaanite, show that prosperity of the region reached its apogee during this Middle
hegemons of important confederacies, and it would appear that biblical Hazor was the chief city of another important coalition in the south.[citation needed
]
Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BC)
In the early Late Bronze Age, Canaanite confederacies centered on
Table of Peoples (Book of Genesis 10:16–18a). Evidently, the Amorites played a significant role in the early history of Canaan. In Book of Genesis 14:7 f., Book of Joshua 10:5 f., Book of Deuteronomy 1:19 f., 27, 44, we find them located in the southern mountain country, while verses such as Book of Numbers 21:13, Book of Joshua 9:10, 24:8, 12, etc., tell of two great Amorite kings residing at Heshbon and Ashteroth, east of the Jordan. Other passages, including Book of Genesis 15:16, 48:22, Book of Joshua 24:15, Book of Judges 1:34, regard the name Amorite as synonymous with "Canaanite". The name Amorite is, however, never used for the population on the coast.[45]
In the centuries preceding the appearance of the biblical Hebrews, parts of Canaan and southwestern Syria became tributary to the Egyptian pharaohs, although domination by the Egyptians remained sporadic, and not strong enough to prevent frequent local rebellions and inter-city struggles. Other areas such as northern Canaan and northern Syria came to be ruled by the Assyrians during this period.[citation needed]
Under
Habiru or (in Egyptian) 'Apiru, are reported for the first time. These seem to have been mercenaries, brigands, or outlaws, who may have at one time led a settled life, but with bad luck or due to the force of circumstances, contributed a rootless element to the population, prepared to hire themselves to whichever local mayor, king, or princeling would pay for their support.[citation needed
]
Although Habiru SA-GAZ (a
Ur III, their appearance in Canaan appears to have been due to the arrival of a new state based in Asia Minor to the north of Assyria and based upon a Maryannu aristocracy of horse-drawn charioteers, associated with the Indo-Aryan rulers of the Hurrians, known as Mitanni.[citation needed
]
Orthostat Temple of Hazor (c. 1500–1300 BC)[46] Hazor was violently destroyed during the Bronze Age collapse.[47]
The Habiru seem to have been more a social class than an ethnic group.[
Egyptian power in Canaan thus suffered a major setback when the Hittites (or Hat.ti) advanced into Syria in the reign of Amenhotep III, and when they became even more threatening in that of his successor, displacing the Amorites and prompting a resumption of Semitic migration. Abdi-Ashirta and his son Aziru, at first afraid of the Hittites, afterwards made a treaty with their king, and joining with the Hittites, attacked and conquered the districts remaining loyal to Egypt. In vain did Rib-Hadda send touching appeals for aid to the distant Pharaoh, who was far too engaged in his religious innovations to attend to such messages.[45]
The Amarna letters tell of the Habiri in northern Syria. Etakkama wrote thus to the Pharaoh:
Behold, Namyawaza has surrendered all the cities of the king, my lord to the SA-GAZ in the land of Kadesh and in Ubi. But I will go, and if thy gods and thy sun go before me, I will bring back the cities to the king, my lord, from the Habiri, to show myself subject to him; and I will expel the SA-GAZ.
Zimrida, king of Sidon (named 'Siduna'), declared, "All my cities which the king has given into my hand, have come into the hand of the Habiri." The king of Jerusalem, Abdi-Heba
, reported to the Pharaoh:
If (Egyptian) troops come this year, lands and princes will remain to the king, my lord; but if troops come not, these lands and princes will not remain to the king, my lord.
Abdi-heba's principal trouble arose from persons called Iilkili and the sons of Labaya, who are said to have entered into a treasonable league with the Habiri. Apparently this restless warrior found his death at the siege of Gina. All these princes, however, maligned each other in their letters to the Pharaoh, and protested their own innocence of traitorous intentions. Namyawaza, for instance, whom Etakkama (see above) accused of disloyalty, wrote thus to the Pharaoh,[45]
Behold, I and my warriors and my chariots, together with my brethren and my SA-GAZ, and my
Suti ?9 are at the disposal of the (royal) troops to go whithersoever the king, my lord, commands."[49]
Merneptah Stele (JE 31408) from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo
Around the beginning of the
Ramses II was able to maintain control over it in the stalemated battle against the Hittites at Kadesh in 1275 BC, but soon thereafter, the Hittites successfully took over the northern Levant (Syria and Amurru). Ramses II, obsessed with his own building projects while neglecting Asiatic contacts, allowed control over the region to continue dwindling. During the reign of his successor Merneptah, the Merneptah Stele was issued which claimed to have destroyed various sites in the southern Levant, including a people known as "Israel". However, archaeological findings show no destruction at any of the sites mentioned in the Merneptah Stele and so it is considered to be an exercise in propaganda, and the campaign most likely avoided the central highlands in the southern Levant. Egypt's withdrawal from the southern Levant was a protracted process lasting some one hundred years beginning in the late 13th century BC and ending close to the end of the 12th century BC. The reason for the Egypt's withdrawal was most likely a product of the political turmoil in Egypt proper rather than the invasion by the Sea Peoples as there is little evidence that the Sea Peoples caused much destruction ca. 1200 BC. Many Egyptian garrisons or sites with an “Egyptian governor's residence” in the southern Levant were abandoned without destruction including Deir al-Balah, Ascalon, Tel Mor, Tell el-Far'ah (South), Tel Gerisa, Tell Jemmeh, Tel Masos, and Qubur el-Walaydah.[50] Not all Egyptian sites in the southern Levant were abandoned without destruction. The Egyptian garrison at Aphek was destroyed, likely in an act of warfare at the end of the 13th century.[51] The Egyptian gate complex uncovered at Jaffa was destroyed at the end of the 12th century between 1134-1115 based on C14 dates,[52] while Beth-Shean was partially though not completely destroyed, possibly by an earthquake, in the mid-12th century.[50]
Amarna letters
Amarna tablet EA 9
References to Canaanites are also found throughout the Amarna letters of Pharaoh
EA 8: Letter from Burna-Buriash II to Akhenaten, explaining that his merchants "were detained in Canaan for business matters", robbed and killed "in Hinnatuna of the land of Canaan" by the rulers of Acre and Shamhuna, and asks for compensation because "Canaan is your country"
EA 9: Letter from Burna-Buriash II to Tutankhamun, "all the Canaanites wrote to Kurigalzu saying 'come to the border of the country so we can revolt and be allied with you'"
EA 30: Letter from Tushratta: "To the kings of Canaan... Provide [my messenger] with safe entry into Egypt"
EA 109: Letter of Rib-Hadda: "Previously, on seeing a man from Egypt, the kings of Canaan fled before him, but now the sons of Abdi-Ashirta make men from Egypt prowl about like dogs"
EA 110: Letter of Rib-Hadda: "No ship of the army is to leave Canaan"
EA 131: Letter of Rib-Hadda: "If he does not send archers, they will take [Byblos] and all the other cities, and the lands of Canaan will not belong to the king. May the king ask Yanhamu about these matters."
EA 137: Letter of Rib-Hadda: "If the king neglects Byblos, of all the cities of Canaan not one will be his"
EA 367: "Hani son (of) Mairēya, "chief of the stable" of the king in Canaan"
EA 162: Letter to Aziru: "You yourself know that the king does not want to go against all of Canaan when he rages"
EA 148: Letter from
Abimilku
to the Pharaoh: "[The king] has taken over the land of the king for the 'Apiru. May the king ask his commissioner, who is familiar with Canaan"
EA 151: Letter from
Abimilku to the Pharaoh: "The king, my lord wrote to me: 'write to me what you have heard from Canaan'." Abimilku describes in response what has happened in eastern Cilicia (Danuna), the northern coast of Syria (Ugarit), in Syria (Qadesh, Amurru, and Damascus) as well as in Sidon
.
Other Late Bronze Age mentions
Text RS 20.182 from Ugarit is a copy of a letter of the king of Ugarit to Ramesses II concerning money paid by "the sons of the land of Ugarit" to the "foreman of the sons of the land of Canaan (*kn'ny)" According to Jonathan Tubb, this suggests that the people of Ugarit, contrary to much modern opinion, considered themselves to be non-Canaanite.[5]: 16 The other Ugarit reference, KTU 4.96, shows a list of traders assigned to royal estates, one of the estates having three Ugaritans, an Ashdadite, an Egyptian and a Canaanite.[36]
Ashur tablets
A Middle Assyrian letter during the reign of Shalmaneser I includes a reference to the "travel to Canaan" of an Assyrian official.[36]
Ann Killebrew has shown that cities such as Jerusalem were large and important walled settlements in the pre-Israelite
Late Bronze (LB) and Iron Age I and IIA/B Ages sites like Jerusalem were small and relatively insignificant and unfortified towns.[54]
Just after the Amarna period, a new problem arose which was to trouble the Egyptian control of southern Canaan (the rest of the region now being under Assyrian control). Pharaoh Horemhab campaigned against
Rameses II had to campaign vigorously in Canaan to maintain Egyptian power. Egyptian forces penetrated into Moab and Ammon
, where a permanent fortress garrison (called simply "Rameses") was established.
Some believe the "
judges", who sought to appropriate the fertile region for themselves.[55] However, the term was rarely used to describe the Shasu. Whether the term may also include other related ancient Semitic-speaking peoples such as the Moabites, Ammonites and Edomites is uncertain.[56]
There is little evidence that any major city or settlement in the southern Levant was destroyed around 1200 BC.
Lachish, The Fosse Temple III was ritually terminated while a house in Area S appears to have burned in a house fire as the most severe evidence of burning was next to two ovens while no other part of the city had evidence of burning. After this though the city was rebuilt in a grander fashion than before.[58] For Megiddo, most parts of the city did not have any signs of damage and it is only possible that the palace in Area AA might have been destroyed though this is not certain.[57] While the monumental structures at Hazor were indeed destroyed, this destruction was in the mid-13th century BC long before the end of the Late Bronze Age began.[59] However, many sites were not burned to the ground around 1200 BC including: Asqaluna, Asdudu, Tell es-Safi, Tel Batash, Tel Burna, Tel Dor, Tel Gerisa, Tell Jemmeh, Khirbet Rabud, Tel Zeror, and Tell Abu Hawam among others.[50][51][57]
Despite many theories which claim that trade relations broke down after 1200 BC in the southern Levant, there is ample evidence that trade with other regions continued after the end of the Late Bronze Age in the Southern Levant.
Cypriot pottery actually largely came to an end at 1300, while for Mycenaean pottery, this trade ended at 1250 BC, and destruction around 1200 BC could not have affected either pattern of international trade since it ended before the end of the Late Bronze Age.[62] He has also demonstrated that trade with Egypt continued after 1200 BC.[63] Archaeometallurgical studies performed by various teams have also shown that trade in tin, a non-local metal necessary to make bronze, did not stop or decrease after 1200 BC, even though the closest source of the metal were modern Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, or perhaps even Cornwall, England.[64][65]Lead from Sardinia was still being imported to the southern Levant after 1200 BC during the early Iron Age.[66]
Jordan Valley, and to the south by a line extended from the Dead Sea to around Gaza. Nevertheless, the Egyptian and Hebrew uses of the term are not identical: the Egyptian texts also identify the coastal city of Qadesh in north west Syria near Turkey as part of the "Land of Canaan", so that the Egyptian usage seems to refer to the entire Levantine coast of the Mediterranean Sea, making it a synonym of another Egyptian term for this coastland, Retjenu.[citation needed
]
Lebanon, in northern Canaan, bordered by the
Djahi was used to refer to the watershed of the Jordan river. Many earlier Egyptian sources also mention numerous military campaigns conducted in Ka-na-na, just inside Asia.[69]
Archaeological attestation of the name "Canaan" in Ancient Near Eastern sources relates almost exclusively to the period in which the region operated as a colony of the New Kingdom of Egypt (16th–11th centuries BC), with usage of the name almost disappearing following the Late Bronze Age collapse (c. 1206–1150 BC).[70] The references suggest that during this period the term was familiar to the region's neighbors on all sides, although scholars have disputed to what extent such references provide a coherent description of its location and boundaries, and regarding whether the inhabitants used the term to describe themselves.[71]
Peoples of the Sea" Ramesses III (c. 1194 BC) is said to have built a temple to the god Amen to receive tribute from the southern Levant. This was described as being built in Pa-Canaan, a geographical reference whose meaning is disputed, with suggestions that it may refer to the city of Gaza or to the entire Egyptian-occupied territory in the south west corner of the Near East.[73]
Saint Augustine also mentions that one of the terms the seafaring Phoenicians called their homeland was "Canaan". Augustine also records that the rustic people of Hippo in North Africa retained the Punic self-designation Chanani.[76][77] Since 'punic' in Latin also meant 'non-Roman', some scholars however argue that the language referred to as Punic in Augustine may have been Libyan.[78]
The Greeks also popularized the term Palestine, named after the Philistines or the Aegean
Bar Kochba revolt, the province of Iudaea was joined with Galilee to form new province of Syria Palaestina. There is circumstantial evidence linking Hadrian with the name change,[81] although the precise date is not certain,[81] and the interpretation of some scholars that the name change may have been intended "to complete the dissociation with Judaea"[82][83] is disputed.[84]
Later sources
Padiiset's Statue is the last known Egyptian reference to Canaan, a small statuette labelled "Envoy of the Canaan and of Peleset, Pa-di-Eset, the son of Apy". The inscription is dated to 900–850 BC, more than 300 years after the preceding known inscription.[85]
The Canaanites were the inhabitants of ancient Canaan, a region that roughly corresponds to present-day Israel and the Palestinian Territories, western Jordan, southern and coastal Syria, Lebanon, and continued up to the southern border of Turkey. They are believed to have been one of the oldest civilizations in human history.[87]
History
The Levant was inhabited by people who referred to the land as ka-na-na-um as early as the mid-third millennium BC.[88] The Akkadian word "kinahhu" referred to the purple-coloured wool, dyed from the Murex molluscs of the coast—which was a key export of the region. When the ancient Greeks later traded with the Canaanites, this meaning of the word seems to have predominated, as they referred to the Canaanites as Phoenikes (Φοίνικες; Phoenicians), which may derive from the Greek-language word "phoenix" (φοίνιξ; transl. "crimson" or "purple"), and also described the cloth for which the Greeks traded. The word "phoenix" was transcribed by the Romans to "poenus"; the descendants of the Canaanite settlers in Carthage were likewise referred to as Punic.[citation needed]
Thus, while "Phoenician" and "Canaanite" refer to the same culture, archaeologists and historians commonly refer to the Bronze Age pre-1200 BC Levantine peoples as Canaanites, while their Iron Age descendants, particularly those living on the coast, are referred to as Phoenicians. More recently, the term "Canaanite" has been used for the secondary Iron Age states of the Levantine interior that were not ruled by Aramean peoples, that is, that were ruled by a separate and closely related ethnic group which included the Philistines and the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah.[89]
Enthroned deity; 14–13th century BC; bronze and gold foil; height: 12.7 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)
According to archaeologist Jonathan N. Tubb, "
Moabites, Israelites, and Phoenicians undoubtedly achieved their own cultural identities, and yet ethnically they were all Canaanites", "the same people who settled in farming villages in the region in the 8th millennium BC."[5]
: 13–14
There is uncertainty about whether the name "Canaan" refers to a specific Semitic-speaking ethnic group wherever they live, the homeland of this ethnic group, a region under the control of this ethnic group, or perhaps any combination of the three.
Canaanite civilization was a response to long periods of stable climate interrupted by short periods of
nomadism was practiced—shepherds staying with their flocks during the wet season and returning to graze them on the harvested stubble, closer to water supplies in the summer. Evidence of this cycle of agriculture is found in the Gezer calendar
and in the biblical cycle of the year.
Periods of rapid climate change generally saw a collapse of this mixed Mediterranean farming system; commercial production was replaced with
subsistence agricultural foodstuffs; and transhumance pastoralism became a year-round nomadic pastoral activity, whilst tribal groups wandered in a circular pattern north to the Euphrates, or south to the Egyptian delta with their flocks. Occasionally, tribal chieftains would emerge, raiding enemy settlements and rewarding loyal followers from the spoils or by tariffs levied on merchants. Should the cities band together and retaliate, a neighbouring state intervene or should the chieftain suffer a reversal of fortune, allies would fall away or intertribal feuding would return. It has been suggested that the Patriarchal tales of the Bible reflect such social forms.[90]
Since 3100 BC, most Canaanites, particularly those that lived in Palestine, lived in walled settlements in the plains and coastal regions. These settlements were surrounded by mud-brick fortifications and agricultural hamlets, which the inhabitants relied on for food.[91][i] In 2nd millennium BC, urban Canaanite elites ruled over rural and pastoral areas. The material culture of the city-states was relatively uniform.[92] New burial customs were implicitly influenced by a belief in the afterlife.[91][93]
During the periods of the collapse of
Tyrians in the case of Judah and Samaria, for the second route, and Judah and Israel for the third route) tried generally unsuccessfully to control the interior trade.[94]
Eventually, the prosperity of this trade would attract more powerful regional neighbours, such as
Eastern Aramaic is still spoken by the existing Assyrians of Iraq, Iran, northeast Syria, and southeast Turkey
.
Tel Kabri contains the remains of a Canaanite city from the Middle Bronze Age (2000–1550 BC). The city, the most important of the cities in the Western Galilee during that period, had a palace at its center. Tel Kabri is the only Canaanite city that can be excavated in its entirety because after the city was abandoned, no other city was built over its remains. It is notable because the predominant extra-Canaanite cultural influence is Minoan; Minoan-style frescoes decorate the palace.[95]
Agranat-Tamir et al. (2020) stated that Canaanites from the Intermediate Bronze Age (c. 2500- 2000 BC) to late Iron Age I (c. 1000 BC) were genetically similar to each other. They lived in modern Israel, Jordan and Lebanon and could be modeled as "a mixture of local earlier
Somalis, from a north-south and south-north gradient respectively. The majority of modern Jewish and Levantine Arabic-speaking groups have 50% or more ancestry from peoples who were related to Bronze Age Levantines and Chalcolithic Zagros groups. But they have other ancestries that cannot be modeled by the available ancient DNA data.[97]
Lazaridis et al. (2022) clarified that ancient Levantines and their descendants exhibit a decrease of ~8% local Neolithic ancestry, which is mostly
Medieval period. It was replaced by Caucasus-related and Anatolian-related ancestries, from the north and west respectively. [98]
Map of Canaan, with the border defined by Numbers 34:1–12 shown in red.
Hebrew Bible
Canaan and the Canaanites are mentioned some 160 times in the Hebrew Bible, mostly in the Torah and the books of Joshua and Judges.[99]
They descended from Canaan, who was the grandson of Noah. Canaan was cursed with perpetual slavery because his father Ham had "looked upon" the drunk and naked Noah. The expression "look upon" at times has sexual overtones in the Bible, as in Leviticus 20:11, "The man who lies with his father's wife has uncovered his father's nakedness..." As a result, interpreters have proposed a variety of possibilities as to what kind of transgression has been committed by Ham, including the possibility of castration, homosexual rape or maternal incest.[100][101] However, some believe that Canaan was the perpetrator of the crime, based on the surrounding verses.[102]
According to the
Table of Nations
, Canaan was also the ancestor of other nations, which were collectively considered to be Canaanite:
The biblical ethnogenesis of Canaan is increasingly problematic because there is archaeological and linguistic evidence that suggests the Israelites were Canaanites themselves. In particular, they were a sub-set of Canaanite culture.[99][5][6] Mark G. Brett believes the Hamitic origin myth was created so that Israelites could distance themselves from other Canaanites. Alternatively, it could be a reference to Canaan's colonization by the Egyptians in the Late Bronze Age, who were Hamites according to the Hebrew Bible.[103]
Brian R. Doak argues that "Canaanite" does not necessarily refer to the direct blood descendants of Canaan. Instead, it refers to all ancient peoples that settled in the geographic region of Canaan, including the Israelites. In fact, only five nations overlap in Genesis 10:15–19 and Genesis 15:18–21.
Ezra-Nehemiah narratives, "Canaanite" is not necessarily an ethnonym but a descriptor of non-Israelite Canaanites who embody the "symbol(s) of the religious practices Israel should avoid" or all idolaters in Canaan, including Israelites. A similar approach is taken by later Judeo-Christian literature.[105]
In addition, some biblical narratives tenuously indicate the historical reality of Israel's ethnogenesis. For example, the
John N. Oswalt observes that "Canaan consists of the land west of the Jordan and is distinguished from the area east of the Jordan." Oswalt then goes on to say that in Scripture, Canaan "takes on a theological character" as "the land which is God's gift" and "the place of abundance".[113]
Whilst the inhabitants of Canaan are called Canaanites, they are also called Amorites, similar to the citizens of the multi-ethnic Soviet Union being called Russian, and Hethites/Hittites.[104]Abraham, the ancestor of the Israelites, was most likely an Amorite-Aramean, according to some early theories.[114]
Neo-Assyrian empire conquered the Kingdom of Israel. In 586 BC, the Kingdom of Judah was annexed into the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The city of Jerusalem fell after a siege which lasted either eighteen or thirty months.[120] By 586 BC, much of Judah was devastated, and the former kingdom suffered a steep decline of both economy and population.[121]
New Testament
"Canaan" (
romanized: Khanáan)[2] is used only twice in the New Testament: both times in Acts of the Apostles when paraphrasing Old Testament stories.[122] Additionally, the derivative "Khananaia" (Χαναναία, "Canaanite woman") is used in Matthew's version of the exorcism of the Syrophoenician woman's daughter, while the Gospel of Mark uses the term "Syrophoenician" (Συροφοινίκισσα). It is implied that the New Testament authors considered all non-Jewish inhabitants in the northern coastlines of Canaan to be Canaanite.[105]
The Septuagint (3rd and 2nd century BC) mostly renders Canaan as Χαναάν (Khanaan), but on two occasions as "Phoenicia" (Exod 16:35 and Josh 5:12).[124]
In the 1930s and 1940s, some Revisionist Zionist intellectuals in Mandatory Palestine founded the ideology of Canaanism, which sought to create a unique Hebrew identity, rooted in ancient Canaanite culture, rather than a Jewish one.[126]
Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion observed the contradictions between the secular and biblical records of Jewish indigeneity to Canaan, which was nonetheless affirmed in the Declaration of Independence. Whilst he used secular arguments to justify Jewish indigeneity, he argued that the biblical narrative of Abraham migrating to Canaan was a "renuion with indigenous Hebrews who shared his theological belief". He also argued that not all Hebrews joined Jacob's family when they migrated to Egypt and later, birthed the generation of the Hebrews that endured the Exodus.[127] Some professors find this view tenable, based on 1 Chronicles 7:20–24, which preserved heterodox traditions of Jewish indigeneity.[106][127]
^The independent Canaanite city-states of the early Bronze age (3000–2200 BC) were situated mostly in plains or coastal regions, surrounded by defensive walls built of mud brick and guarded by watchtowers. Most of the cities were surrounded by agricultural hamlets, which supplied their food needs (Shahin 2005, p. 4).
. Canaanite is by far the most common ethnic term in the Hebrew Bible. The pattern of polemics suggests that most Israelites knew that they had a shared common remote ancestry and once common culture.
. Retrieved 9 October 2018. Despite the long regnant model that the Canaanites and Israelites were people of fundamentally different culture, archaeological data now casts doubt on this view. The material culture of the region exhibits numerous common points between Israelites and Canaanites in the Iron I period (c. 1200–1000 BC). The record would suggest that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature. Given the information available, one cannot maintain a radical cultural separation between Canaanites and Israelites for the Iron I period.
^ abDrews 1998, pp. 48–49: "The name 'Canaan' did not entirely drop out of usage in the Iron Age. Throughout the area that we—with the Greek speakers—prefer to call 'Phoenicia', the inhabitants in the first millennium BC called themselves 'Canaanites'. For the area south of Mt. Carmel, however, after the Bronze Age ended references to 'Canaan' as a present phenomenon dwindle almost to nothing (the Hebrew Bible of course makes frequent mention of 'Canaan' and 'Canaanites', but regularly as a land that had become something else, and as a people who had been annihilated)."
^Shmuel Ahituv (1984). Canaanite Toponyms in Ancient Egyptian Documents. The Magnes Press, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. pp. 83–84.
^Katell Berthelot (2014). "Where May Canaanites Be Found? Canaanites, Phoenicians and Others in Jewish Texts from the Hellenistic and Roman Period". In K. Berthelot, J. David and M. Hirshman (ed.). The Gift of the Land and the Fate of the Canaanites. Oxford University Press.
^Drews 1998, pp. 47–49:"From the Egyptian texts it appears that the whole of Egypt's province in the Levant was called 'Canaan', and it would perhaps not be incorrect to understand the term as the name of that province...It may be that the term began as a Northwest Semitic common noun, 'the subdued, the subjugated', and that it then evolved into the proper name of the Asiaticland that had fallen under Egypt's dominion (just as the first Roman province in Gaul eventually became Provence)"
^Drews 1998, p. 48: "Until E.A. Speiser proposed that the name 'Canaan' was derived from the (unattested) word kinahhu, which Speiser supposed must have been an Akkadian term for reddish-blue or purple, Semiticists regularly explained 'Canaan' (Hebrew këna‘an; elsewhere in Northwest Semitic kn‘n) as related to the Aramaic verb kn‘: 'to bend down, be low'. That etymology is perhaps correct after all. Speiser's alternative explanation has been generally abandoned, as has the proposal that 'Canaan' meant 'the land of merchants'."
^Lemche 1991, pp. 27–28: "However, all but one of the references belong to the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, the one exception being the mention of some Canaanites in a document from Marl from the 18th century BC. In this document we find a reference to LUhabbatum u LUKi-na-ah-num. The wording of this passage creates some problems as to the identity of these 'Canaanites', because of the parallelism between LUKh-na-ah-num and LUhabbatum, which is unexpected. The Akkadian word habbatum, the meaning of which is actually 'brigands', is sometimes used to translate the Sumerian expression SA.GAZ, which is normally thought to be a logogram for habiru, 'Hebrews'. Thus there is some reason to question the identity of the 'Canaanites' who appear in this text from Marl We may ask whether these people were called 'Canaanites' because they were ethnically of another stock than the ordinary population of Mari, or whether it was because they came from a specific geographical area, the land of Canaan. However, because of the parallelism in this text between LUhabbatum and LUKi-na-ah-num, we cannot exclude the possibility that the expression 'Canaanites' was used here with a sociological meaning. It could be that the word 'Canaanites' was in this case understood as a sociological designation of some sort which shared at least some connotations with the sociological term habiru. Should this be the case, the Canaanites of Marl may well have been refugees or outlaws rather than ordinary foreigners from a certain country (from Canaan). Worth considering is also Manfred Weippert's interpretation of the passage LUhabbatum u LUKi-na-ah-num—literally 'Canaanites and brigands'—as 'Canaanite brigands', which may welt mean 'highwaymen of foreign origin', whether or not they were actually Canaanites coming from Phoenicia."
^Drews 1998, p. 46: "An eighteenth-century letter from Mari may refer to Canaan, but the first certain cuneiform reference appears on a statue base of Idrimi, king of Alalakh c. 1500 BC."
. Retrieved 9 October 2018. Berytos, being part of Phoenicia, was under Ptolemaic control until 200 BC. After the battle of Panion Phoenicia and southern Syria passed to the Seleucids. In the second century BC, Laodikeia issued both autonomous as well as quasi-autonomous coins. The autonomous bronze coins had a Tyche on the obverse. The reverse often had Poseidon or Astarte standing on the prow of a ship, the letters BH or [lambda alpha] and the monogram [phi], that is, the initials of Berytos/Laodikeia and Phoenicia, and, on a few coins, the Phoenician legend LL'DK' 'S BKN 'N or LL'DK' 'M BKN 'N, which has been read as "Of Laodikcia which is in Canaan" or "Of Laodikcia Mother in Canaan." The quasi-municipal coins—issued under Antiochos IV Epiphanes (175–164 BC) and continuing with Alexander I Balas (150–145 BC), Demetrios II Nikator (146–138 BC), and Alexander II Zabinas (128–123 n.c.)—contained the king's head on the obverse, and on the reverse the name of the king in Greek, the city name in Phoenician (LL'DK' 'S BKN 'N or LL'DK' 'M BKN 'N), the Greek letters [lambda alpha], and the monogram [phi]. After c. 123 BC, the Phoenician "Of Laodikcia which is in Canaan" / "Of Laodikcia Mother in Canaan" is no longer attested
^Epistulae ad Romanos expositio inchoate expositio, 13 (Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol.35 p.2096):'Interrogati rustici nostri quid sint, punice respondents chanani.'
. Retrieved 9 October 2018. "In both the Idumaean and the Ituraean alliances, and in the annexation of Samaria, the Judaeans had taken the leading role. They retained it. The whole political–military–religious league that now united the hill country of Palestine from Dan to Beersheba, whatever it called itself, was directed by, and soon came to be called by others, 'the Ioudaioi'"
^Lehmann, Clayton Miles (Summer 1998). "Palestine: History". The On-line Encyclopedia of the Roman Provinces. University of South Dakota. Archived from the original on 11 August 2009. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
Judaea
", the Roman authorities (General Hadrian) renamed it Palaestina or Syria Palaestina.
^Drews 1998, p. 49a:"In the Papyrus Harris, from the middle of the twelfth century, the late Ramesses III claims to have built for Amon a temple in 'the Canaan' of Djahi. More than three centuries later comes the next—and very last—Egyptian reference to 'Canaan' or 'the Canaan': a basalt statuette, usually assigned to the Twenty-Second Dynasty, is labeled, 'Envoy of the Canaan and of Palestine, Pa-di-Eset, the son of Apy'."
^Drews 1998, p. 49b:"Although New Assyrian inscriptions frequently refer to the Levant, they make no mention of 'Canaan'. Nor do Persian and Greek sources refer to it."
^Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History, 6th ed., London 2002, p. 17
^Maria E. Aubet, The Phoenicians and the West, Cambridge 1987, p. 9
^Jonathan Tubb, The Canaanites, London 1998, pp. 13–16
^Hajjej et al. 2018. Quote:"Using genetic distances, correspondence analysis and NJ trees, we showed earlier [61, 62] and in this study that Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese and Jordanians are closely related to each other."
^Munk, Salomon (1845). Palestine: Description géographique, historique et archéologique (in French). F. Didot. pp. 2–3. Sous le nom de Palestine, nous comprenons le petit pays habité autrefois par les Israélites, et qui aujourd'hui fait partie des pachalics d'Acre et de Damas. Il s'étendait entre le 31 et 33° degré latitude N. et entre le 32 et 35° degré longitude E., sur une superficie d'environ 1300 lieues carrées. Quelques écrivains jaloux de donner au pays des Hébreux une certaine importance politique, ont exagéré l'étendue de la Palestine; mais nous avons pour nous une autorité que l'on ne saurait récuser. Saint Jérôme, qui avait longtemps voyagé dans cette contrée, dit dans sa lettre à Dardanus (ep. 129) que de la limite du nord jusqu'à celle du midi il n'y avait qu'une distance de 160 milles romains, ce qui fait environ 55 lieues. Il rend cet hommage à la vérité bien qu'il craigne, comme il le dit lui-même de livrer par la terre promise aux sarcasmes païens. (Pudet dicere latitudinem terrae repromissionis, ne ethnicis occasionem blasphemandi dedisse uideamur)
^The Making of the Old Testament Canon. by Lou H. Silberman, The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible. Abingdon Press – Nashville 1971–1991, p1209
. ... let us begin by examining the kinds of assertions about the land of Israel that we encounter in persuing [sic] the books of the Bible. ... A third kind of assertion deals with the history of the Land of Israel. Before its settlement by the Israelite tribes, it is called The Land of Canaan
. The discrepancy between the length of the siege according to the regnal years of Zedekiah (years 9-11), on the one hand, and its length according to Jehoiachin's exile (years 9–12), on the other, can be cancelled out only by supposing the former to have been reckoned on a Tishri basis, and the latter on a Nisan basis. The difference of one year between the two is accounted for by the fact that the termination of the siege fell in the summer, between Nisan and Tishri, already in the 12th year according to the reckoning in Ezekiel, but still in Zedekiah's 11th year which was to end only in Tishri.
Goldenberg, David M. (2005). "What did Ham do to Noah?". In Stemberger, Günter; Perani, Mauro (eds.). The Words of a Wise Man's Mouth Are Gracious. Walter de Gruyter.
Canaan & Ancient Israel, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Explores their identities (land-time, daily life, economy & religion) in pre-historical times through the material remains that they have left behind.
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