Canaanite Sentence Examples

His power was asserted in and from Canaanite soil.

Ilani here simply corresponds to the Canaanite Elohim.

For it involved a transition from the simple nomadic relations to those of the agricultural and more highly civilized Canaanite life.

The last and most characteristic festival of Canaanite life was that of Asiph or " ingathering " which after the Deuteronomic reformation (621 B.C.) had made a single sanctuary and therefore a considerable journey with a longer stay necessary, came to be called Succoth or booths.

Now when the Hebrews succeeded to these agricultural conditions and acquired possession of the Canaanite abodes, they naturally fell into the same cycle of religious ideas and tradition.

Accordingly, whenever His presence and power were displayed in places where the Canaanite Baal had been worshipped, they came to be attached to these spots.

For when Yahweh gradually became Israel's local Baal he became worshipped like the old Canaanite deity, and all the sensuous accompaniments of Kedeshoth,' as well as the presence of the asherah or sacred pole, became attached to his cult.

Similarly in the earlier pre-exilian period of Israel's occupation of Canaanite territory the Hebrews were always subject to this tendency to worship the old Baal or `Ashtoreth (the goddess who made the cattle and flocks prolific).3 A few years of drought or of bad seasons would make a Hebrew settler betake himself to the old Canaanite gods.

Even in the days of Hosea the rivalry between Yahweh and the old Canaanite Baal still continued.

Times of peace meant national disintegration and the lapse of Israel into the Canaanite local cults, which is interpreted by the redactor as the prophets of the 8th century would have interpreted it, viz.

It is probable that necromancy, like the worship of Asherah and `Ashtoreth, as well as the cult of graven images, was a Canaanite importation into Israel's religious practices.

Palestinian states on the other, and that they could scarcely have escaped the all-pervading Babylonian influences of 2000-1400 B.C. It is now becoming clearer every day, especially since the discovery of the laws of Khammurabi, that, if we are to think sanely about Hebrew history before as well as after the exile, we can only think of Israel as part of the great complex of Semitic and especially Canaanite humanity that lived its life in western Asia between 2060 and 600 B.C.; and that while the Hebrew race maintained by the aid of prophetism its own individual and exalted place, it was not less susceptible then, than it has been since, to the moulding influences of great adjacent civilizations and ideas.

Israel's faithlessness is shown in idolatry and the prevailing corruption of the high places in which the old Canaanite Baal was worshipped instead of Yahweh.

This is known as the Canaanite period, succeeded about loon B.C. by the Aramaean.

There is strong evidence at all events that many of the conceptions are contrary to historical fact, and the points of similarity between native Canaanite cult and Israelite worship are so striking that only the persistent traditions of Israel's origin and of the work of Moses compel the conclusion that the germs of specific Yahweh worship existed from his day.

That this was what actually happened may be inferred from the fact that the Canaanite and Phoenician name for a priest (kohen) is identical with the Arabic kahin, a " soothsayer."

The kahin, therefore, is not a degraded priest but such a soothsayer as is found in most primitive societies, and the Canaanite priests grew out of these early revealers.

But it is soon learned that a similar physical state can be produced artificially, and at the Canaanite sanctuaries this was done on a large scale.

The Hebrews, who made the language of Canaan their own, took also the Canaanite name for a priest.

But the earliest forms of Hebrew priesthocd are not Canaanite in character; the priest, as he appears in the older records of the time of the Judges, Eli at Shiloh, Jonathan in the private temple of Micah and at Dan, is much liker the sadin than the kahin.

The Canaanite influence on the later organization of the Temple is clearly seen in the association of Temple prophets with the Temple priests under the control of the chief priest, which is often referred to by Jeremiah; even the viler ministers of sensual worship, the male and female prostitutes of the Phoenician temples, had found a place on Mt Zion and were only removed by Josiah's reformation.'

To give a name to this new phenomenon the Israelites, it would seem, had to borrow a word from their Canaanite neighbours.

In fact the presence of an orgiastic character is as marked a feature in Canaanite religion as the absence of it is in the oldest religion of Israel; but the new Hebrew enthusiasts had at least an external resemblance to the devotees of the Canaanite sanctuaries and this would be enough to determine the choice of a name which in the first instance seems hardly to have been a name of honour.

In admitting that the name was borrowed, we are not by any means shut up to suppose that the Hebrew nebhiim simply copied their Canaanite neighbours.

Since the absorption of the aborigines in Israel Canaanite ideas had exercised great influence over the sanctuaries - so much so that the reforming prophets of the 8th century regarded the national religion as having become wholly heathenish; and this influence the ordinary prophets, whom a man like Micah regards as mere diviners, had certainly not escaped.

The Phoenicians were an early offshoot from the Semitic stock, and belonged to the Canaanite branch of it.

The former was probably the older word, and may be traced to 40tvos = " blood-red "; the Canaanite sailors were spoken of as the " red men " on account of their sunburnt skin; then the land from which they came was called after them; and then probably the original connexion between Ioivt and 40tvos was forgotten, and new forms and meanings were invented.

The tablets which reveal this state of affairs are written in the language and script of Babylonia, and thus show indirectly the extent to which Babylonian culture had penetrated Palestine and Phoenicia; at the same time they illustrate the closeness of the relations between the Canaanite towns and the dominant power of Egypt.

Nevertheless Baal submitted in the end, along with the princes of Gebal and Arvad, Manasseh of Judah, and the other Canaanite chiefs; in the island of Cyprus the Assyrians carried all before them ii.

In its earliest form it was no doubt most closely allied to the Canaanite or Phoenician stock, to the language of Moab, as revealed by the stele of Mesha (c. 850 B.C.), and to Edomite.

The vocalization of Canaanite, as far as it is known to us, e.g.

The Vandal now dwelt at Carthage instead of the Canaanite.

Thus in 138 years the Arab did what the Canaanite had never done.

In the earlier time marriages between Jewish men and Canaanite women seem to have been not uncommon; whether (outside of Herod's family) there were marriages with foreigners in the Greek period we have no means of determining.

Although cuneiform was used, the Palestinian letters show that the native language, as in the case of earlier proper-names, was most nearly akin to the later " Canaanite " (Hebrew, Moabite and Phoenician).

And this becomes more instructive when comparison is made between cuneiform or Egyptian sources extending over many centuries and particular groups of evidence (Amarna letters, Canaanite and Aramaean inscriptions, the Old Testament and later Jewish literature to the Talmud), and pursued to the customs and beliefs of the same area to-day.

The type is very closely related to the oldest European (Etruscan) forms, and, in a less degree, to the " South Semitic " (old Minaean and Sabaean); and since it at once begins (c. 700) to develop along separate paths (Canaanite and Aramaean), it may be inferred that the common ancestor was not of long derivation.

Some of the personal names are foreign and find analogues in Asia Minor; but even as the Philistines appear in biblical history as a " Semitic " people, so inscriptions from north Syria (c. 800-700) are in Canaanite and early Aramaean dialects, and are in entire agreement with " Semitic thought and ideas.

No images of Yahweh or of earlier Canaanite deities have been unearthed; but images belong to a relatively advanced stage in the development of religion, and the aniconic stage may be represented by the sacred pillars and posts, by the small models of heads of bulls, and by the evidence for calf-cults in the Old Testament.

This has been the origin of the long succession of Semitic waves - Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Hebrew, Nabataean, Moslem - that have flowed over Mesopotamia and Palestine; there is every reason to suppose that they will be followed by others, and that the Arab will remain master at the end, as he was in the beginning.

The possibility that Hebrew traditions were subject to Babylonian influence from the period of the Canaanite conquest has long been recognized, and to the Exilic and post-Exilic Jew the mythology of Babylon may well have presented many familiar features.

Anathoth the home of Abiathar and Jeremiah, Gibeon the old Canaanite sanctuary, the royal sanctuary at Bethel, its associations with Samuel and the prophetic gilds of the times of Elijah and Elisha, and finally Jerusalem itself, the centre of worship, give "the least of all the tribes" a unique value in the history of Old Testament religion.

These circular hearths persisted into the Canaanite period, but were ultimately superseded by the Semitic developments.

Dagon was in all probability an old Canaanite deity; it appears in the name of the Canaanite Dagantakala as early as the 15th century, and is possibly to be identified with the Babylonian god Dagan.

The agricultural character of this feast clearly reveals its Canaanite origin (see Hebrew Religion).

Nor are scholars more unanimous with regard to the region where the terms " Canaanite " and " Canaan " arose.

But this does not prove that the terms " Canaanite " and " Canaan " arose in that region, for they are presumably much older than the Amarna tablets.

The first of the Canaanite immigrants were driven seawards by the masses which followed them.

In a genuine record of extreme antiquity the union of king and priest in one person, the worship of El as the supreme deity by a Canaanite,' and the widespread practice of the consecration of a tithe of booty can present no difficulty; but, if the historical character of the narrative is denied, the date of the conception must be placed as late as the rise of the temporal authority of the high priests after the exile.

Moreover, the definitely ethical character of the religion of Yahweh established by Moses is exhibited in the strict exclusion of all sexual impurity in His worship. Unlike the Canaanite Baal, Yahweh hasnofemale consort, and this remained throughouta distinguishing trait of the original and unadulterated Hebrew religion (see Bathgen, Beitreige, p. 265).

It is easy to discern from varied allusions in the Old Testament that the Canaanite impress of sensuous life clung to the autumnal vintage festivals.

His strongest denunciation is directed against the religious practices of the time in Judea - the worship of the Canaanite local deities (the Baals), the Phoenician Tammuz, and the sun and other Babylonian and Assyrian gods (vi., viii., xvi., xxiii.); he maintained vigorously the prophetic struggle for the sole worship of Yahweh.

This was the first Canaanite city to be attacked and reduced by the victorious Israelites.

The mound of Tell es-Sultan, near "Elisha's Fountain," north of the modern village, no doubt covers the Canaanite town.

In 1907-8 the Canaanite Jericho was excavated under the direction of Prof. Sellin of Vienna.

The Tell el-Amarna despatches are crowded with evidences of Canaanite forms and idioms impressed on the Babylonian language of these cuneiform documents.