Ancient Canaan Research Paper

“Canaan was the name of a large and prosperous country which corresponds roughly to the present day Lebanon, Syria, Jordon, and Israel and was also known as Phoenicia” (www.ancient.eu). According to the Bible the land was named after a man known as Canaan, the grandson of Noah (Genesis 10). The Canaanites developed the first alphabetic writing system and were known for their ship building and navigating the sea (www.ancient.eu). According to the Bible in the Book of Exodus, Moses led his people out of slavery in Egypt and toward the “promised land” of Cannon where God had promised them they would live in peace. The Book of Joshua tells the story of the Israelite Joshua in the land of Canaan with command from God destroying the city of Jericho, …show more content…
The ruins however, do not always match the descriptions given in the Book of Joshua (www.ancient.eu). It took about six years for the tribes of Israel to conquer the land of Canaan and to overcome the military of the ancient Canaanites (Joshua 14). It was at this time Joshua divided the land among the tribes according to the size of the tribe and by casting lots. The term Canaanites is by far the most frequently used ethnic term in the Bible, in which they are described as a people who had been annihilated by the Israelites. The name Canaan is used in the Bible with in Genesis 10 as well as Numbers 34, where the “Land of Canaan’ extends from Lebanon to the “Brook of Egypt” and eastward to the Jordan River Valley. References to Canaan in the Bible are usually referring to a region that had become something else. Canaan and Canaanites are mentioned some 160 times in the Bible, mostly in the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Bible and the books of Joshua and Judges (Killebrew 2005, p.96). Canaan is only used three times in the New Testament, twice in Acts, and once in the Exorcism of the Syrophenician woman’s daughter (Acts 7:11 and