By Masada Zealot
Are Palestinians Canaanites?
The statement that todays Palestinians are descended from the ancient Canaanites and Palestinians is one I have heard the Palestinians adamantly claim often. The accusation itself is designed to give the Palestinians a method of nullifying the Jewish land rights claim to Israel by giving themselves a claim that predates the Jewish claim.
Jews have fought to regain Israel since it was taken by force by the Romans in 135CE and subsequently renamed "Palestine" inorder to insult Jews by naming it after their worst historical enemies. The Jewish battle to regain control over Israel is documented well enough that there is scarcely a century since 135 CE without at least one messianic attempt or revolt within Israel itself against occupying powers. This situation continued until Jews finally regained control of some of their historic homeland in 1948. The Palestinian claim by comparison suddenly appears in recent times. If the Palestinians are descended from the Philistines and Canaanites, I can find no post biblical historical documentation of Canaanite or Philistine attempts to regain control of Canaan.
The lack of documentation of any continuous Canaanite or Philistine people after the bible however, is not sufficient proof to discount the Palestinian claims. To refute these claims properly, we need to see first just who is a Palestinian, who is a Jew, who were the Canaanites and who were the Philistines and what happened to them?
Palestinians
The Palestinians also claim to be arabs and to the best of my knowlege, no one disputes this fact. So who are the arabs? Where did the arabs come from?
Arabs
Arabs, name given to the ancient and present-day inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and often applied to the peoples closely allied to them in ancestry, language, religion, and culture. Presently more than 200 million Arabs are living mainly in 21 countries; they constitute the overwhelming majority of the population in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and the nations of North Africa. The Arabic language is the main symbol of cultural unity among these people, but the religion of Islam provides another common bond for the majority of Arabs. 1 The derivation of the term Arab is unclear, and the meaning of the word has changed several times through history. Some Arab scholars have equated Joktan (Gen. 10.25) with the ancient Arab patriarch Qahtan whose tribe is thought to have originated in Saudi Arabia.2
Jews
[from Judah], traditionally, descendants of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob, whose tribe, with that of his half brother Benjamin, made up the kingdom of Judah; historically, members of the worldwide community of adherents to Judaism.3
Judea, also Judaea or Judah, territory in southwest Asia and a region of historic Palestine. The name Judea is a Romanized version of the Hebrew Yehuda; the English word Jew comes from the Latin Judaeus, meaning an inhabitant of Judea. The size of Judea has varied with the fortunes of its rulers, but rough boundaries include Jerusalem in the north, the Jordan River and the Dead Sea in the east, the coast of the Mediteranean Sea near Tel Aviv - Yafo (Tel Aviv-Jaffa) in the west, and a southern border located between the middle and the southern end of the Negev Desert. Within Judea there are three geographically distinct areas: the eastern valley, called the Judean Wilderness, which slopes down to the Dead Sea; Har Yehuda, or the Judean Hills, in the center of the region; and the Coastal Plain, which extends west to the Mediterranean. Judea covers parts of modern-day Israel and the West Bank. The three major religions in the Middle East—Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—all have important or sacred sites in Judea, including Jerusalem, Hebron, and Bethlehem.
The Bible chronicles the history of Judea. The region was part of the Kingdom of Israel until about 922 BC, when Israel split into two parts. Judea then became an independent kingdom, called the Kingdom of Judah, which included Jerusalem and territory to the south; the Kingdom of Judah was occupied by the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. The other ten tribes of Israel occupied the northern territory, which kept the name of the Kingdom of Israel. The ten northern tribes were eventually dispersed and came to be known as the Lost Tribes. After the Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians in the 6th century BC, Judea was ruled by various powers. During its history, Judea often served as an administrative unit. It became a province of Alexander the Great's empire in the 4th century BC. Alexander's successors, the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria, controlled the region until the Jews revolted, beginning in 168 BC. The Jews finally succeeded in creating an independent Jewish state, called Judea. When the Romans conquered the Jews in 63 BC, they divided the territory of Palestine into three units—Judea, Samaria, and Galilee. Muslim Arab armies invaded Palestine in the 7th century AD.3
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Jews were the inhabitants of Judea
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Judea was part of Israel
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Judea is where Palestine was
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Arabs invaded Palestine in the 7th Century CE
Canaanites
Canaan itself was a "Bronze Age culture and country in what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, and the southern portions of Syria and Lebanon; first occupied about 3300 BC, evidence shows occupation of the vicinity up to 550 BC, including a 300 year period of Egyptian rule." 3
Canaanites, in the Old Testament, original inhabitants of the land of Canaan. According to the Book of Judges, the Israelites, during the 2nd millennium BC or earlier, gradually subjugated the Canaanite cities. By the end of the reign of Solomon, king of Israel, the Canaanites had virtually been assimilated into the Hebrew people, among whom they appear to have exerted a reactionary religious influence.5
Philistines
Pronounced As: filistnz, filis- , inhabitants of Philistia, a non-Semitic people who came to Palestine from the Aegean (probably Crete), in the 12th cent. B.C. Their control of iron supplies and their tight political organization of cities made them a rival of the people of Israel for centuries.6
Conclusions
The Palestinian claim to being descended from the Philistines is not possible because the Philistines were not Semites. Palestinians are arabs, and like Jews, both peoples are Semites.
The Palestinian claim to being Canaanites is also not possible because the Canaanites assimilated with the Jews. The Arabs invaded the area after the 7th Century CE from Arabia, which is 1600 years after the Canaanites assimilated with the Jews.
References
4.http://www.encarta.msn.com
