RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Camp-Meetings Canaan
the deity, there was also a temple or a house and a priest. The customs of worship were in the closest connection with the work of daily life, the offerings were of the products of field, garden, vineyard, or pasture. In the cities more developed forms took their place. The myth was everywhere employed, at first in local form, later in philosophical and poetical development in which origins, destinies, beginnings of human customs, and the beginnings of cities and holy localities had their place. In some places prostitution for religious purposes was practised, also self-mutilation and infant-sacrifice. There were also numerous practises which were survivals from primitive worship, from animism, totemism, and fetishism. The culture of the people had in general a common stamp. Babylonian influence had advanced by the third millennium b.c. at least as far south as central Syria. Egypt's influence was first felt about 1500 b.c. While northern Syria immediately bordered on the Euphrates, a desert stretched between southern Syria and Egypt. The fact that the Amarna tablets, which are classed as Egyptian documents, are in the cuneiform shows that Babylonian ideas were dominant, though some admixture of Egyptian ideas must be allowed.
The middle position of Syria, between the east and the west, between the desert and the sea, introduces another occupation besides those mentioned in which the inhabitants engaged, commerce. Before the sea was traversed by ships, the roads from the Euphrates to
3. Com- Egypt passed through north and south merce. Syria. Sea-travel later opened up routes which included the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The products of Canaan proper were small in proportion to those resulting from commercial operations. These became, therefore, the favorite employment of the Canaanites, and their name became synonymous with merchant (Ezek xvi. 29, R. V. margin).
There were no great states built up in Canaan (the Hebrews are not here under discussion) except that of the Hittites (q.v.), who possessed a great kingdom in northern Syria. Apart from this only small states are mentioned. The Amarna tablets make known a number of these as at war with each other and as accused of unfaithfulness to the Pharaohs Amenophis III. and IV. Egyptian overlordship was maintained more or less completely 1500-1200 b.c. The sons of the local kings were sent to Egypt for their 4. Political education, and their enthronement Relations, when they succeeded to power was the deed of the Pharaoh. The topography of the country, cut up by mountain ranges with intervening valleys and wadis, is not favorable to the formation and maintaining of great states; even those of Damascus and of Israel were not long-lived.
According to the representation in Gen. x. 18b, the Canaanites had spread from the central part toward the south. This can not be proved, but the course of subsequent historical movements makes it probable. The custom of E in using " Amorites " to connote the inhabitants of the
land and the known course of the progress of this people is one of these indications. Only faint recollections of the primitive dwellers 5. The are preserved in the Old Testament, Earlier in such passages as Deut. ii. 10-11; Inhabitants. II Sam. xxi. 16, 18, 20, 22, where they appear as " giants," a mythical term (cf. Amos ii. 9). From them the Plain of Rephaim west of Jerusalem received its name. In the passages from Samuel quoted above Raphah, " the Giant," is named as their ancestor. Deut. ii. 11 reckons the Anakim as belonging to them, and Num. xiii. 33 is an expression of their physical stature; their chief town is named as Kirjath-arba, the latter part of which name is explained as the name of the ancestor and the greatest of the Anakim (Josh. xiv. 15, xv. 13).
The Old Testament employs the term Canaanites not only in the sense explained in the foregoing as the common name of the inhabitants of Canaan, but also in an ethnographical sense of one of the stocks included. But from the preceding discussion the doubt is raised whether this usage is original or has ethnological worth. For decision of this question it is important to note that the Canaanites are mentioned among other peoples of Canaan when the author wishes to 6. Peoples note a great number of peoples whom Mentioned the Hebrews had subdued. In this in the case a settled form was employed Bible. with an alternative form. The common form was " Canaanite, Hittite, Amorite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite " (in eleven passages), in which the intention is clear to place the more important peoples first in the arrangement. The alternative form is " Amorite, Perizzite, Canaanite, Hittite, Girgashite, Hivite, and Jebusite " (Josh. xxiv. 11). This last is varied by the insertion of Kenites, Kenizzites, and Kadmonites (Gen. xv. 19-21), or by the omission of one or more from the list (for Kenites see Cain, Kenites; for Kenizzites see Caleb, Calebites, and see also Amorites and Jebus, Jebusites).
The Hittites have become more familiar through the decipherment of the hieroglyphs and cuneiform inscriptions than through the Old Testament. Thothmes III. (c. 1500 b.c.) first came into contact with them in the district later known as Commagene on the northern boundary of Syria. A hundred years later they were in possession of a kingdom which stretched from the Euphrates to the middle Orontes, including Hamath within its bounds. Rameses II. (c. 1300-1230 b.c.) waged a long war with them, and in the twenty-first year of his reign made a treaty in which a demarcation of the boundaries of their respective realms was agreed upon. About 1200 b.c. this kingdom fell apart into a number of small states. In the ninth and eighth centuries the Assyrians mention a small Hittite kingdom encountered in their campaigns, that of Carchemish on the Euphrates. They also use the phrase " land of the Hittites " to denote the region between the Euphrates and the Taurus range and south as far as Palestine. But this can not be held to prove that the Hittite power extended so far. They left numerous inscriptions,
Canaan
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