Who Is a Canaanite? A Review of the Textual Evidence

Abstract

In view of recent attempts to vaporize the Canaanites and to erase the land of Canaan from the map-principally in N. P. Lemche's 1991 volume, The Canaanites and their Land: The Tradition of the Canaanites-a review of the crucial evidence is in order. The present study will concentrate on documents from the Late Bronze Age in particular, with some allusions to evidence from other periods, to provide an understanding of the texts within the semantic framework in which they were composed-the simple, straightforward meaning of the passages as intended by the ancient scribes. THE PHANTOM CANAANITES L emche (1991: 50) contends that the ancient Egyptian and Levantine scribes of the second millennium B.C.E. used the terms "Canaan" and "Canaanite" in "imprecise ways." He believes that they have no understanding of any clear-cut social, political, or geographical meaning for such terms. On the other hand, those of us who do see definite significance to such terms are accused of reading our own understanding of nationalism and ethnicity into the ancient documents (Lemche 1991: 50-51). Instead, Lemche himself cites anthropological studies pertaining to an African group that modern ethnographers had denoted by a term current not among the members of the group, but rather among their neighboring groups (Lemche 1991: 51 with references). One could compare this with the use of the term "Indians" applied by the first Europeans to the natives they encountered in the Western Hemisphere. But in fact, his entire argument is irrelevant to the interpretation of the ancient documents. Elsewhere, Lemche says "all Egyptian references to 'the Canaan' are rather imprecise and leave many problems to be solved" (Lemche 1991: 48-49). What he might have said was that the sporadic references to Canaan in Egyptian documents do not provide sufficient information to define the exact geographical limits of Canaan. The haphazard nature of the materials available in no way prejudices the assumption that the Egyptians did have a good grasp of their geography. A glance at the famous "poetical Stela" of Thutmose III (Sethe 1909: 611; Wilson 1955: 373-75) should convince any objective reader that the scribes knew their world and had it organized. The same is true of that Pharaoh's long topographical lists (Sethe 1909: 779-94). The Onomasticon of Amenemope has many geographical entities (Gardiner 1947) and there can be no doubt that their inclusion in that "encyclopedic" list reflects a knowledge of geography. It should be obvious that the everyday administration of the Egyptian-controlled territories, with its profound concern with revenues, would have required an intimate knowledge of the social and geopolitical entities. It is purely a matter of chance that many inscriptional contexts simply take for granted that the writer and the recipient or user of the text knew the geographical and "ethnic" entities mentioned. There was no need for them to go into detailed definitions. The route descriptions in Papyrus Anastasi I (I, lines 18, 2-25, 2) demonstrate ...

Constructing imaginative geographies in Genesis

“…The territory of the Canaanites extended from Sidon, in the direction of Gerar, as far as Gaza, and in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lash. (Gn 10:19) The debate on the ethnic identity of the Canaanites and their relationship with the Israelites has taken up an intense discussion amongst archaeologists and historians (Lemche 1991;Na'aman 1994;Rainey 1996). It seems that the Canaanites as an ethnically different group was a literary creation of postexilic Judaism for the sake of his historiographical project of 'narrating the nation' (Bhabha 1990:1-7): the Canaanites occupy the land of Canaan (Gn 12:6; 13:7), the same geographic space that God has given as an inheritance to Israel (Gn 13:14-17; 17:8), and therefore they must be exterminated, which justifies the practice of herem in the conquest narratives (Nm 21:1-3; Dt 20:10-18; Jos 6:17-21; 8:20-29; 1 Sm 15:1-23).…”

Merneptah’s ‘Israel’ and the Absence of Origins in Biblical Scholarship

“…Here the work of Lemche (1991: 39-52), Rainey (1996a: vol. 2: 1-17, 65-75, 265-317; 1996b: 1-15), and Na’aman (1986: 167-201; 1994: 218-81) is of particular importance since their combined, and occasionally conflicting, theses serve to reinforce a primary view of Canaan as a geographic designation rather than a defined and controlled political entity within the Egyptian Empire. While prima facie such a conclusion may reveal little beyond a statement of the obvious (Sparks 1998: 104), the suggestion that Canaan is to be understood as a clearly defined geographic region along the coast of Palestine (Lemche 1991: 47-84) has in large measure served to furnish the landscape upon and within which efforts to diagnose the provenance of ‘Israel’ have been played out.…”

The antiquity of the nation? Critical reflections from the ancient Near East

“…Canaan and Canaanite were terms with geographic reference by the second millennium BC. The status of Canaan and Canaanite as self‐referential terms in the Bronze Age has been hotly debated in recent literature (Lemche 1991, 1996 and 1998; Na’aman 1994 and 1999; Rainey 1996), yet none would debate that regardless of the status of these terms, city affiliation was by far the dominant non‐kinship designation for residents of the Bronze Age Levant.…”