The inhabitants of Canaan were never ethnically or politically unified as a single nation. They did, however, share sufficient similarities in language and culture to be described together as "Canaanites. Israel refers to both a people within Canaan and later to the political entity formed by those people. The answer is simple: strategy. Missiologists have long pointed to the strategic importance of that narrow piece of real estate which Christians today often call The Holy Land.
The Promised Land of Canaan -- now frequently called Palestine -- is only 60 miles wide in places. At its western edge is the Mediterranean Sea. To the east is impassable desert. Its location makes it a land bridge between three continents.
Africa's only land link to Europe and to Asia runs through what is today modern Israel. If God wanted to make Himself known throughout the ancient world, this would have been the ideal place to do it from. To establish and maintain a nation on this busy bridge would be a superhuman feat. But this is exactly what the seemingly-puny little nation of Israel did with some brief gaps for nearly 1, years. Was it a a mere coincidence that God placed His people on this bridge between continents?
Some of the most detailed surviving records come from the site of Amarna, in Egypt , and from the Hebrew Bible. Additional information comes from excavations of archaeological sites that the Canaanites are thought to have lived in. Scholars doubt that the Canaanites were ever politically united into a single kingdom. In fact, archaeological excavations indicate that the "Canaanites" were actually made up of different ethnic groups. During the Late Bronze Age B. The earliest undisputed mention of the Canaanites comes from fragments of a letter found at the site of Mari, a city located in modern-day Syria.
Dating back about 3, years the letter is addressed to "Yasmah-Adad," a king of Mari, and says that "thieves and Canaanites" are in a town called "Rahisum. Another early text that talks of the people who lived in Canaan dates back about 3, years and was written on a statue of Idrimi, a king who ruled a city named "Alalakh" in modern-day Turkey. Idrimi says that at one point he was forced to flee to a city in "Canaan" called "Amiya" — possibly located in modern-day Lebanon.
Idrimi doesn't call the people at Amiya "Caananites" but instead names a variety of different lands that they are from, such as "Halab," "Nihi," "Amae" and "Mukish. However, this doesn't mean that the different people in Canaan were not always grouped together. Administrative texts found at Alalakh, and at another city named Ugarit located in modern-day Syria show that "the designation 'the land of Canaan' was employed to specify the identity of an individual or group of individuals in the same way that others were defined by their city or land of origin," wrote Brendon Benz, a professor at William Jewell College in Missouri, in his book "The Land Before the Kingdom of Israel" Eisenbrauns, For instance a male from a city in Canaan who was living at Alalakh or Ugarit could be identified in records as being a "man of Canaan" or being a "son of Canaan," wrote Benz.
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