Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/841

Rh synonym for ^otvi/cr;, and the same identification is found in Halo s Sanchoniathon (Mailer s Fragmenta Hist. Grcec., vol. i. p. 17, vol. iii. p. 309). St Augustine, too, says that the Punic peasants, when asked what they were, replied in Tunic, Chanani (ed. Bened., vol. iii. col. 932), and on a coin of the date of Antiochus Epiphanes, Laodicea in the Lebanon district is called &quot; a mother, or metropolis, in Canaan&quot; (see inscription in Schroder, Die phbnizische Sprache, p. 275). It is remarkable that there is a trace, and no more, of the extended use of the word Canaan in Egyptian. The town nearest to Canaan, in the territory of the Shasu or Bedawin (lit. Brigands, cf. Heb. shdsdh), was called Pa-Kanana (Brugsch, Ilistoire d jGgypte, p. 145).

1em 1em  CANAANITES. Only two of the possible senses of the word Canaanite need be here referred to ; for the others, see and. And as one of these is included in the other, let us pass at once to the Canaanites in the larger sense, i.e., the whole group of nations conquered by the Israelites on the west side of the Jordan. The group is variously described. It is some times said to consist of five Canaanites, Hittites, Amo- rites, Hivites, Jebusites (Exod. xiii. 5) ; sometimes of six, the Perizzites, i.e., Pagani, being added (Exod. iii. 8, 17, xxiii. 23, xxxiii. 2, xxxiv. 11 ; Deut. xx. 17; Josh. ix. 1, xii. 8) ; sometimes of seven, by including the Girgashites (Deut. vii. 1; Josh. iii. 10, xxiv. 11); once of ten, omit ting the Hittites, and including the aboriginal Rephaim and three Arab tribes, the Kenites, Keuizzites, and Kadmonites (Gen. xv. 19-21). The latter, however, are clearly inserted by mistake, as they only became inhabitants of Palestine, so far as they did become such, as the reward of assist ance given to the Israelites. There are only two of these nations about whom we have any collateral information the Hittites and the Amorites. The former, however, seem also to have been included among the Canaanites by mistake. Historical evidence, both Biblical and extra- biblical, proves convincingly that they dwelt beyond the borders of Canaan ; and linguistic evidence tends on the whole to show that they did not even speak a Semitic language (see ). The latter, too, were not en tirely homogeneous with the other Canaanitish peoples, if the notices in Deut. iii. 11 (&quot;Og ... of the remnant of the Rephaim &quot;), ibid. 13; Josh. xii. 4, xiii. 12, may be taken as historical. Perhaps, as Ewald suggests, they were mixed with the aborigines. A Semitic basis seems probable, but has only one linguistic fact in its favour Senir, the Amorite name of Hermon (Deut. iii. 9), men tioned also in an inscription of Shalmaneser (Brit. Mus. Coll., vol. iii. p. 5. No. 6, 1. 45) ; personal names like Og and Sihon may easily have been Semiticized, and the name Amorite it self, being probably descriptive (see ), has no ethnological value. They are at all events un-Canaanitish in their political capacity, two con siderable states having been founded by them on the east of the Jordan (Deut. iii. 8 ; Josh. xii. 2 ; Judg. x. 8, xi. 22). It will therefore be better to exclude Hittites and Amorites from the present notice.

I. It is extremely difficult to draw any distinction between the remaining members of the Canaanitish group. As described in the early books of the Old Testament, they have a general family likeness. They are described as living in a state of political disintegration, the combined result of the Semitic love of independence and of the varied conformation of the soil. Thirty-one of their petty kings are mentioned in Josh. xii. 9-24, including the king of Hazor (afterwards reckoned to Naphtali), whose realm, in Judg. xi. 10, is called &quot;the chief of all those kingdoms.&quot; We find, indeed, a king of Bezek claiming to have enslaved &quot; seventy &quot; of the surrounding reguli (Judg. i. 7), but this is an altogether exceptional event, for which the loosening of authority produced by the guerilla warfare of the Israelites sufficiently accounts. Yet the isolation of the Canaanites can never have been complete. Like the Phoenicians, they will have had their federations, as appears to be implied by the title Baal-berith, or &quot; Baal of the Covenant &quot; (Judg. viii. 33) ; and hieroglyphic inscrip tions tell of their alliances with the Khita or Hittites against their Egyptian suzerains. Indeed, the rebellious tendencies of the Syrian states will partly explain the inaction of the Pharaohs during the Israeli tish conquest. The only injury Joshua could do to the latter would consist in blocking up the military coast-road to the north of Syria, but this was well secured by Egyptian garrisons, which Joshua did not venture to attack ; while to get the Canaanites humbled without any trouble was a clear gain. That the Israelites were not immediately and at all points successful is now universally recognized. The work of many years was con centrated by tradition on a single great name ; yet the Old Testament itself corrects by numberless indications the error of the more imaginative narrative. Thus the kingdom of Hazor, which had been utterly destroyed, according to Josh. xi. 10, 11, emerges again in the more accurate account of Judges (iv. 2, 3). And both Joshua and Judges (not to descend later see ) supply evidence for the continued Canaanitish occupation of many parts of the country (Josh. xiii. 13, xv. 63, xvi. 10, xvii. 12, 13; Judg. i. 19-36). The immediate result of the invasion was, not the extinction of the old, but the addition of a new (and yet not wholly new) element, of stronger stuff but less advanced culture.

II. No doubt the Israelites a* first put an end to much Results of of which they could not discern the value, or, to use their own phrase, made it a kherem, a thing consecrated to God by destruction. The origin of Hebrew literature would not be such a blank if the sacred archives of Kiryath- sdpher, or &quot; the Book-city,&quot; otherwise called Kiryath- sannah, or &quot;the Law-city (?) &quot; (Josh. xv. 15, 49), had been preserved. Still the attractions of culture were superior in the long run to the dictates of religious zeal. Goodly houses, vineyards, and oliveyards (Deut. vi. 10, 11) were agents more powerful even than chariots of iron. The secrets of agriculture had to be learned from the Canaanites ; intercourse naturally led to intermarriage, and so a new strife arose in the field of religion, in which half the Jewish nation perished utterly, and the other half was only saved by its voluntary submission to a spiritual despotism.

III. The pages of the book of Judges are full of complaints of Israelitish infidelity, which is rightly ascribed by the compiler to mixture of blood (Judg. iii. G). It is true that expressions like this of infidelity have only a limited accuracy. As Ewald and Kuenen have pointed out, the final editor of Judges lived in the age of the Exile, when the religion of Yahveh (miscalled Jehovah) had attained its full development. From his point of view, religious approximation to the Canaanites was wilful apostasy, be cause it involved the effacement of the distinction between physical and moral religion. But of this distinction the Israelites were hardly more conscious than the Canaanites. 