Researchers from the UK’s Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute sequenced the genomes of five 4,000-year-old Canaanites, as well as 99 people now residing in Lebanon and have provided convincing evidence that the Biblical account of the annihilation of the ancient Canaanite people at the hands of the invading Israelite hordes may have been an exaggeration.
The research, published on July 27, 2017, in the American Journal of Human Genetics, shows that 93 percent of the ancestry of modern-day Lebanese comes from the ancient Canaanites. Study co-author Chris Tyler-Smith calls that percentage “quite surprising,” given the “enormously complex history of this region,” reports ScienceDaily.
The Book of Deuteronomy
The Book of Deuteronomy 20:16-18 New International Version (NIV) says: “16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.”
However, if the Israelites had slaughtered every single Canaanite, it would have been a form of patricide. Patricide is defined as the killing of one’s father by a son or daughter. So why would the killing of the Canaanites have been patricide? According to the study, the Canaanites were the common ancestor for several ancient peoples who inhabited the Levant during the Bronze Age, including the Ammonites, Moabites, and Israelites.
The Levant is a historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Levant has been described as the “crossroads of western Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, and northeast Africa,” and the “northwest of the Arabian plate,” according to National Geographic Magazine.
There are very few surviving texts available that tell us about the Canaanites relationships to other cultures in that period, so the research has been an important key to unlocking the genetic commonalities that we didn’t know existed. We do know that the Canaanites lived in a part of the world now known as Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.
The culture they created made them very influential in the Middle East and beyond, and it was the Canaanites who created the first alphabet and established colonies throughout the Mediterranean region. “Each achieved their own cultural identities but all shared a common genetic and ethnic root with Canaanites,” according to the authors of the study.
The facts tell us a different story
The findings do not support the Bible’s suggestion that the Canaanites were utterly destroyed. The researchers write that genomic sequencing instead, shows that Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population and there has been a substantial genetic continuity in the region since at least the Bronze Age.
The conclusion of the new study is also supported by archaeological evidence. As an example, coastal cities such as Sidon and Tyre “show the continuity of occupation until the present day.” The researchers conclude that “In the future, it will be important to examine samples from the Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age Near East to understand the events leading to admixture between local populations and the eastern migrants.”
