Who were the Cainanites, as mentiuoned in the Bible? And who are they today? I used the search function of the SDMB, but…uh, well you know.:rolleyes:
The Canaanites were the inhabitants of the kingdom of Canaan, which the Israelites conquered after their exodus from Egypt.
I can’t find any information on who, if anyone, could be considered the modern decendants of the Canaanites…
Canaan was Noah’s grandson, Ham’s son. He was cursed because Ham saw Noah passed out drunk and naked in his tent. Why was this a cursable offense and why did Canaan get the curse when it was his father blundering into tents? There’s been speculation on this point, but nothing that’s ever made sense to me.
Who are they today? The implication was that the Canaanites became the African race.
I’ve heard that Ham’s “covering his father’s nakedness” was an idiomatic expression meaning that Ham had an incestuous encounter with his mother. This would seem to make the passage a lot more sensible–as opposed to Noah going ballistic simply because his son put a blanket on him.
The Canaanites were a Semitic-speaking people who once occupied all of Canaan. They were squeezed out of most of their territory between the Hebrews, Philistines, and Aramaeans around 1200 B.C., but they held on to several cities along the coast of Lebanon for a long time. They are essentially the same people as the ancient Phoenecians. “Canaanite” is the Semitic term and “Phoenician” is the Greek term.
The modern Lebanese people are descendants of the Phoenicians, but not exclusively. They are descended from Arabs, Armenians, and Greeks, as well as Phoenicians, and probably many other groups that have passed through the area.
I’ve heard similar about the reference to King Saul when he “covered his feet”. It’s said that it’s a euphemism for a bowel movement. My question is: When were these euphemisms introduced? When the King James version was introduced? Earlier? How do these passages translate in the earliest known copies of the OT?
I heard Noah cursed him because instead of just getting the blanket and covering him up right away, he went and told his brothers and they did the thing where they walked in backwards and put the blanket on him. This implies that Ham thought it was funny and went and made fun of him to his brothers.
The Canaanites were the people who lived in the region around modern Israel. Abraham was originally from this region, and his descendents (Isaac, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers) lived there until Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt. Joseph became popular with the Pharoah because of his honesty and his ability to interpret dreams. He rose to second in command in Egypt, and helped the country get through a famine. Other countries didn’t do so well, and had to buy food from Egypt. Jacob sent Jacob’s brothers down to Egypt to get food. Joseph was glad to see them, even though they screwed him over. He decided to play with them a little bit first, because they didn’t recognize him right away. It’s a long story, but eventually they all wound up in Egypt, and raised families there. In a few hundred years, there were a lot of Israerites living there. The pharoah then wasn’t as nice as the one when Joseph was alive, and he didn’t trust all these foriegners in his country, so he enslaved them. This went on until the exodus. God brought the Israelites out of Egypt and led them to Canaan, the Promised Land. With God’s help, the Israelites eventually conquered Canaan. God’s instruction’s were to destroy all of the Canaanites and their posessions so they wouldn’t be tempted to worship their idols, but they didn’t. They had problems with idolatry for a long time after that, leading to all those really detailed laws that everybody skips over when they try to read the Old Testement.
The Canannites worshipped a whole bunch of different gods, which was pretty common for everybody but the Israelites at the time. One of the most prominent was Baal, the god of the harvest. Baal was the god that caused the most temptation to the Israelites. There are a lot of stories about the problems caused by Baal-worshipping (Jezebel was a Baal-worshipper, and it was the prophets of Baal that were defeated by Elijah). Part of Baal-worshipping was temple prostitution, which was obviously not good for the Israelites. The reason for the prostitutes was because in the legend of Baal, the rains came when Baal and his wife had sex. Prostitution was supposed to somehow help him, and made it rain more, which brought better crops. Well, the Israelites wanted better crops, and had gotten a little complacent(sp?) about worshipping God, so they started worshipping Baal too.
That’s what I know about Canaan, most of which comes from the bible. I know the bible isn’t very popular around here, but I hope this helps a little.
I thought Abraham and the gang were from Ur in Mesopotamia, and migrated into canaan via the fertile cresent.
I have seen churches with names like Canaan Baptist Church, and have always wondered why that name was chosen.
Are they
- Randomly choosing a Biblical place name
- Missionaries among the heathen
- God’s chosen people, having kicked out the original Canaanites
- Of African descent, as Greg Charles suggests
?
Oh yeah, I forgot. He moved from Ur. But he didn’t become the guy from all the bible stories until he moved into the Canaan region.
I have a friend whose ex-husband is Lebanese. His surname is Kanaan. I asked her if the name was related in some way to the biblical Canaan. She’d never given it any thought. Her conversations with her ex tended to deal more with current economics than with ancient history, so I never got an answer.
FWIW, I believe the African Descent theory was originally espoused by those attempting to justify slavery. Part of the curse was dark skin. I have heard this theory offered seriously – but it was from ultra-fundamentalists. It would be interesting to know if this theory goes farther back than, say, 1600 AD. For me, this theory is obviously false since we have major portions of the Bible talking about canaanites in what is approximately modern day Israel. There is no reason to tie Canaan with Africa.
In any case, IMHO, it is most plausible that the curse was that the Canaanites would eventually be wiped out.
Tinker
Well, the curse of Ham is “The lowest of slaves will [Canaan] be to his brothers.” The closest reason to tie Ham with Africa is because he’s listed as the father of various African nations.
“The sons of Ham: Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan.”
Mizraim is Egypt, and Put is the area that’s now Libya. Actually, Canaan can be associated with Africa too, come to think of it, because the Phonecians created the Republic of Carthage. However, it’s pretty clear that the curse was originally a justification for the conquest and enslavement of the Canaanites.
It’s been theorized that Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, were each the ancestors of different civilizations. Shem was the father of the Hebrews, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Persians, and Syrians. Japheth was the father of the Greeks, Thracians, and Scythians. Ham was the father of the Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Hittites, and Amorites. Ham’s descendents settled in Canaan, Egypt, and the rest of Africa.
The curse was not on all of Ham’s descendents. It was specifically on Canaan and his descendents. Genesis 9:25-27 says, “(25)…Cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. (26)He also said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. (27)May God extend the territory of Japheth, may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave.”
If you’ll notice, Ham’s descendents were the nations that gave the Israelites the most trouble, in wars and everything. These verses have been used to support racism, which is wrong. They don’t say the African descendents of Ham are destined for slavery, they said the Canaanites were destined for slavery.
I should point out that the theory that Ham’s descendants are black Africans is a relatively recent idea, probably less than two centuries old, and has little supporting evidence, either in the Bible or in science. The traditional view of Bible scholars was that Ham’s descendants were North Africans (Berbers and Egyptians).
Some of the confusion stems from using “Semitic” and “Hamitic” as linguistic terms. There is no doubt that the Canaanites were a Semitic-speaking people, even though they are said in the Bible to have descent through Ham and not Shem.
There is no evidence that the Exodus took place the way it is written, it is undoubtedly a confounding of the Hyksos expulsion from Egypt around 1570BC and/or possibly the invasion and defeat of the Sea Peoples around 1240BC.
By 2000BC, the Mesopotamian borderland was encircled by proto-civilizations, Semitic-speaking Elamites in the East in what would become Persia, originally Indo-European-speaking Kassites to the NE in the Zagros Mtns, Semitic-speaking Assyrians to the north, Hurrians from the steppes (their language is described as variously related to Sumerian or Turkish (?)) farther north, and Semitic-speaking Canaanites in what would become Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. That would make the Canaanites the original Semitic-speaking inhabitants of that area. The Canaanites proper were villagers, practicing agriculture. They had relatives out in the desert who were herders.
Canaanites’ gods were agicultural with names variations on El or Il or Elyon like the Biblical Elohim and the historic Ba’al. Their desert cousins had a stern desert (probably war)God called Yahweh. With the subsequent raids/invasions of the Canaanite territory and the eventual conquest of Canaan by the proto-Hebrews of the desert (I bet this occured as a result of the Hyksos invasion), the worship of Yahweh moved out of the desert and into the Promised Land. But the worship of the agricultural Ba’als lingered on, as evidenced in the Bible, but probably more so than Christian or Jewish fundamentalists would like to believe, until probably around the “Reformation” of the prophets which I believe is the eighth century BC. (After the Assyrian (721BC) and Babylonian (586BC) conquests, I would not be surprised if Ba’alism was reintroduced.)
The Canaanites were the original Semitic inhabitants or the region. One group, tough desert nomads, unified/inspired by a tribal God, took over (an event repeated over and over across Mesopotamia). But the persistence of the original Canaanite religion indicates that they were assimilated not extirpated by the proto-Hebrews. The descendants of the Canaanites are the Jews, the Syrians, the Jordanians, the Lebanese and the Palestinians.
Shortest answer to the ‘who are they today’ questions: nobody. The last culturally distinct element of the Biblical ‘Canaanites’ was destroyed by the Roman Empire at the end of the Punic Wars. What few Canaanites (Phoenicians/Carthaginians) were left at that time were assimilated into other cultures (Greek, Egyptian, Persian, etc.) of the Mediterranean region.
Is there a website and/or book that this is all based on?
You are responding to a post from 2001, and the person you are responding to was last here over three years ago.
Doesn’t help at all. What would be the one or two best sources to get the gist of this theory?