It was the Canaanites—to use the general name —whom the Hebrews, upon entering Palestine, found in possession, and the wars with them con- tinued for many generations, until finally the Hebrews obtained the upper hand. This contact with the Canaanites forms a most important factor in Hebrew history. By that power of attraction which the higher culture possesses for those of an inferior grade, the Hebrews were
* “Rephaim’ in this verse is an explanatory gloss.
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prompted to make the attempt to secure for them- selves the towns and cultivated lands to the west of the Jordan. The success of their efforts is followed by the permanent abandonment of no- madic habits, and instead of sheep raisers they become and remain for subsequent centuries tillers of the soil. From a religious point of view, the contact with the Canaanites was also fraught, with Important consequences. The national deity, Jahweh, originally associated with the sojourn of the people in the wilderness,—the nomadic period of their existence,—becomes the protecting deit of the fields, and the people do not hesitate to call Jahweh by the name which the Canaanites applied to their tield deities—Baal. For a time the amalgamation of the Jahweh and the Canaanitish Baal cult seemed imminent, when a ‘national’ reaction takes place, and, under the lead of jealous Jahweh-worshippers, the attempt is made to drive the Baal priests with the Baal rites out of the country, just as the worshippers of Baal had been forced out of their possessions. For all that, Jahweh absorbs some of the traits of Baal, and it is not until several centuries later—when Jahweh Himself was on the point of becoming a deity singled out from all others by the ethical character attributed to Him—that the last traces of the old Canaanitish cults also disappear.
How far back the arrival of the Canaanites in Palestine is to be dated is a question which cannot be answered with any degree of certainty. It is safe to assume an interval of several centuries between this event and the movement of Hebrew tribes from the Euphrates Valley towards western lands. The earliest occurrence of the name is in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, dating from c. 1400 B.c., in which we find the name Canaan under the form Kinahi, but limited in its application to the sea- coast, and more properly the northern seacoast, i.¢. Phoenicia. But, at whatever date we fix the entrance of the Canaanites, even they do not appear to have been the first Semitic group that settled in Palestine. Of the groups mentioned so frequently with the Canaanites in the OT—the Perizzites, Hittites, Hivvites, Amorites, Girgash- ites, and Jebusites—we know unfortunately very little, with the exception of the Hittites and the Amorites. The Perizzites and the Girgashites, it has been pointed out, may have been subdivisions of Canaanites, and yet from the way in which, in two places (Gn 137 34%), Canaanites and Perizzites are put side by side as comprising all Palestine, one might be tempted to conclude that the Perizzites represented an independent group, which was at one time coequal in importance with the Canaan- ites. It seems even morecertain that the Jebusites and Hivvites had no direct connexion with the Canaanites. Taking this in connexion with the circumstance that in the Tel el-Amarna tablets the term Canaan does not include Palestine proper, it is more than probable that some of the groups mentioned with the Canaanites represent still other settlers. In a notable passage (Gn 15’) three additional groups—Kenites, Kenizzites, and Kadmonites—are spoken of as occupying the terri- tory later claimed by the Hebrews. That these groups are Semitic is sufficiently indicated by their names, the last mentioned of which, the ‘ Kaster- ners,’ still contains a trace of the district whence they came.
At the period of the Hebrew conquest of Pales- tine we no longer hear of these groups. They appear ere this to have been driven to the south by the all-powerful Canaanites, and subsequently to the west by the Hebrews. It is quite natural that the traditions regarding these earlier movements should be dimmed. There was no reason why the Hebrews or the Hebrew writers should have been
sufficiently interested to preserve any distinct re- collection. Their relations were primarily with the Canaanites. The importance of the latter in the eyes of the Hebrews is revealed in the earlier form of the story of the distribution of mankind as furnished in Gn 9-7, which makes Canaan, Shem, and Japheth the progenitors of the human race ; and, on the other hand, the hatred of these rivals of the Hebrews crops out in this same chapter which connects Canaan with Ham — the ‘accursed’ son of Noah (y.”*).
ii. RACES OF DOUBTFUL ORIGIN. —A peculiar position is occupied by the Amorites and the Hittites. The AMOoRITES are found throughout northern Palestine as early at least as the 12th century B.C., when we encounter the name Amurru (or Amurra) in cuneiform inscriptions. So pro- minent do they become that they furnish to the Babylonian and Assyrian chroniclers the name for the entire district of northern and southern Pales- tine, and there are indications that the Hebrews, too, at one time gave to the term Amorite an extensive application. In the so-called Elohistic document, ‘land of the Amorite’ is used in this way.* These Amorites must accordingly have turned to the south, and, indeed, when the He- brews entered Palestine, they found their way | blocked by a large powerful kingdom on the east of the Jordan (see AMORITES in vol. i.). The re- markable statement of Ezekiel (16% *), that the ‘mother’ of Jerusalem was a Hittite, and the ‘father’ an Amorite, points also to the early presence of Amorites on the west of Jordan. To assume, however, that ‘Canaanites’ and ‘ Amor- ites’ are synonymous terms representing one and the same population, is not justified. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets the ‘Amurru’ land is frequently mentioned and always designates the interior of Palestine, though more particularly the northern section; but the name may be carried back still farther. In Babylonian legal documents of the period, c. 2300 B.C., a town Amurru occurs, situated in Babylonia. If we are to conclude from this that the Amorites also came from the Euphrates Valley, we should have still another instance of the move- ment which brought such various groups of Semites to the west. A more important conclusion that appears to be warranted, is that the Amorites would thus turn out to be settlers in Palestine earlier than the Canaanites, and that the latter represent the group which finally obtains the ascendency and retains it until the appearance of the Hebrews. That with the conquest of the land by the Canaanites, the Amorites do not disappear, any more than the Hivvites, Jebusites, and other groups, is quite natural, seeing that when the He- brews conquered the Canaanites the old inhabitants were dispossessed, but, by the express testimony of OT writers, not driven out (Ex 237% 9, Jo 121. 27-86),