Canaan#Biblical Canaanites

The Canaanites (also Canaanites ) are the oldest known inhabitants of the Syrian- Palestinian area, the biblical land of Canaan, mainly before the occurrence of the Israelites in the 13th century BC v.

The Canaanites were organized into numerous city-states; whose city kings acted mostly independent of each other against and alongside each other. The Canaanites are so far identical with the Phoenicians, the Phoenicians, the Greek name and the Canaanites, the Hebrew for the east of the Mediterranean Sea on the coast and settled inland Semitic Great Clans. Heb. קנע Qana is called " trade ", and Canaanites may also be translated as traders, because the in the hill country settled, semi-nomadic Hebrews perceived the Canaanites as merchants. Since the Greeks in historical times had more encounters with the sea-faring " Phoenician " trading cities of the coast, the terms " Phoenicians " and " Canaan " or " Canaanites ", not used interchangeably, although they are one and the same ethnic group.

After the settlement of the land of Canaan by the Israelites and Canaanites Israelites lived in the same country and even existed a few hundred years by religion (YHWH and Baal - worship cults ) separated from each other side by side. By " land grab " of the Hebrews and the at least partially conquered by military power cities of the territorial possession of the Canaanites, as time went to the Hebrews about, including Jerusalem, but there were the boundaries of the peoples for a long time by the distinction in faith.

In the times of the two states of Israel and Judah, especially after the unification efforts of David and Solomon was the mixing of the two cultures - the kanaannäischen and the Israelite - unstoppable. In northern Palestine, among the Phoenicians, was the Bronze Age, matriarchal particular culture of the Canaanites included into the Iron Age.

According to recent archaeological research ( among other things, the Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein ) the difference between the Israelites and Canaanites, not by affiliation to different peoples, but through different ways of life is ( urban center in the plane with intensive agriculture versus semi-nomadic village lifestyles in the hills ) due. This is in line with the already previously observed close linguistic relationship early Canaanite and Hebrew inscriptions. For those not as late in the writings of the Bible postulated strict separation into two different peoples (the Canaanites are banned by YHWH and must be destroyed ), but a single nation in the original two distinctly different ways of life speak

• The material archaeological legacy from the early Iron Age, especially in the Judeo- Galilean hills (which shows no signs of conquest, but a significant increase in population density at the beginning of the Iron Age, parallel to mainly related due to the disappearance of the former protector Egypt economic and political collapse of the once- powerful city-states in the plane ),

• Comparable major gods in Israel and Ugarit ( which YHWH as a tribal god semi-nomadic tribes from Seir, that is, the fields of Edom and Midian to come shining and respect spell like the god Chemosh the Moabite Mesha Stele speaks ) with different elsewhere in the Bible comparable attributes and symbols of YHWH, as they have already been attributed to earlier in Ugarit the gods El and Baal,

• Various narratives of the Bible itself (eg appearance of YHWH as El Shaddai before Abraham, Psalm 82 with the assembly of the gods presiding God ʾ el ʿ Elyon and until well into the period of the kings of Israel and Judah usual worship of the fertility god Baal and the wife of El Asherah ).

In particular, under King Josiah and the later prophets seems to have done a strict centralization of the cult in Jerusalem. All yet revered, or at least in the sense of monolatry tolerated other gods were displaced by the now all-powerful promise of YHWH.

Due to the after destruction of the northern kingdom by the Assyrians in the Kingdom of Judah remaining authority to interpret the history of the whole of Canaan also the chronologically earlier stories were restated, amended and reinterpreted. " Canaanites " was so negative for a general term for all non -residents in Canaan ( like the Philistines ) YHWH groups of people.