Talk:Canaanite languages/Archive 2

Objection
I would like to object to the openning comment which basically states that Phoenicians spoke Canaanite. In fact all we know is that the languages of the ports which were under Phoenician control were Canaanite. The Phoenicians themselves may have originally had another language and simply adopted the language at the ports which they occupied. Could someone re-phrase it please so as not to unwittingly promote a political agenda. ThankyouZestauferov 09:14, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Whoa, political agenda not intended! But I will comb through the wording and see what I can do. - Gilgamesh 09:44, 18 July 2004 (UTC)
 * Just finished looking over, and I'm puzzled. Out of curiosity, what's the exact dispute?  I've always been taught (academically and theologically) that the Phoenicians were northern Canaanites.  I mean, Tyre and Sidon were Phoenician cities, and wasn't Jezebel from Sidon and identified as a Canaanite?  Additionally, the Phoenicians themselves called their land Canaan, and themselves Canaanites, and "Phoenician" is actually a Greek name for them.  As far as I ever knew, Greeks called all Canaanites "Phoenicians" until Christian times.  ...Never in my dreams did I think something like this would be disputed.  Could you please elaborate on your dispute?  I'm not trying to be trouble or anything. - Gilgamesh 09:53, 18 July 2004 (UTC)

Certainly, no trouble at all. The dispute is the kind which surrounds all empires established by a military elite. Like for example the Huns. There are books and books describing the Huns as a germanic or slavonic ethnic group because the peoples they conquered and who later made up their armies were Germanic & Slavonic. The Phoenicians are further back and like the Hun military elite themselves left us no first-hand documents. Just as germanic & slavonic runes have sometimes been called Hunnish, so too the Canaanites and their inscriptions have been called Phoenician. But despite all the assumption the fact that all of this is based only upon a hypothetical assumption without any sound proof yet is often overlooked. No-one realy knows who the Phoenicians were or where they came from. All we can really say (besides describing their material culture if we are careful to discern what actually belonged to the conquering elite and what belonged to the subject nations) is that they conquered the Zidonian coasts and many ports throughout the mediterranean, and that in time their ethnicity came to be described as Punic. Zestauferov 13:20, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Alright, seems simple enough. I never thought of it that way before.  I'll change the text. - Gilgamesh 13:49, 18 July 2004 (UTC)

Hebrew naming conventions
Urgent: see Naming conventions (Hebrew) to add your opinions about this important matter. Thank you. IZAK 17:31, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

IZAK's Message
Because of its importance this is reproduced for those interested in the subject: See Is Hebrew a "Cananite Language" on User talk:IZAK

The term Canaanite languages has a precise linguistic meaning. The ancient Hebrews may not have been "Canaanites", but their language belongs to the Canaanite subfamily of Northwest Semitic. This linguistic classification is not in any way controversial, and has no bearing on the ethnic classification of the Jews. - Mustafaa 04:53, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The Hebrew wikipedia agrees, by the way. - Mustafaa 04:57, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Mustafaa, having studies a course in Semetic linguistics, the term 'Canaanite' - in the linguistic jargon - is the name of a cluster of north-semitic dialects - found in inscriptions dug around 'historical cnaan' (syria, israel/palestine, jordan) - by definition.

Historically several inscriptions were found - describing the languages of Moab, Cidon, etc, after some comparative study - they were all found to be very close to Biblical Hebrew - to a degree were they're all very close and most proboably mutually comprehenciable with biblical-hebrew. Thereby, biblical-hebrew, being a dialect of the same language as other canaanite dialects, is canaanite. As Mustafaa states, this has no (direct, or automatic) implications of ethnic classification, and is linguisticly non-controversial.

As of 'modern' or 'israeli' hebrew - this is a different language, and a different matter. - for sure - a direct descendant of biblical-hebrew. 80.178.221.213 02:30, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Could someone explain _in_brief_ what's the controversy's about? what or who's problem is it labeling Hebrew canaanite?


 * The citation you quote from the "Hebrew" wikipedia is way off. It has almost no information and is accepting a FALSE categorization, as Hebrew is the language of the Torah, Tanakh, and Mishnah which go back for two to four thousand years. No-one knows what Ammonite, Edomite or Cananite is, as today all there is, is almost only Arabic in those areas, and Arabic is a Hebrew derivative. Hebrew is a uniquely defined language that has survived in all its fullness, whereas nothing or very little is known about Canaanites and their languages barring what the Torah (Bible) records. IZAK 05:27, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Edomite, Moabite, and Ammonite are all known from several inscriptions, the most important of which I have linked to in their respective articles. These reveal - unsurprisingly - that these languages were extremely similar to Hebrew and to Phoenician.  Because of the common geographical location of these languages in Canaan, linguists have chosen to call them "Canaanite languages".  This in no way implies categorizing the Hebrews as ethnically Canaanite, any more than calling languages "Semitic" implies accepting that their speakers actually descend from Shem. - Mustafaa 05:33, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * IZAK - Arabic is most definetly _not_ a 'Hebrew derivative' whatsoever, at least not in any lisguistic sense. It's true that we do not know alot about Edomite or Moabit, and that our biggest and most fruitful record of Canaanite - is the hebrew bible. Sadly - hebrew - meaning biblical hebrew - has not survived "in its fullness" we have only one book containing 8,000 unique words, with gramatical stuctures which are still not completely clear to anyone. The study of Canaanite dialect sheds alot of new light both on our understanding of the bible, and on the theory of general Semitic linguistics. Please state what bothers you about this classification.

A citation, from ''Les Langues Chamito-Sémitiques" (ed. D. Cohen), Paris 1988:


 * [Kena`an...] est à l'origine du terme cananéen par lequel on désigne l'ensemble des langues sémitiques qui ont été en usage dans la région, soit essentiellement l'hébreu et le phénicien (avec son extension punique) et, pour ceux qui y reconnaissent une langue autonome, le moabite. (although he later includes brief entries on the less well attested languages, including that of El Amarna, Edomite, and Ammonite).


 * [Kena`an]... is the origin of the term "Canaanite" by which one designates the group of Semitic languages which were in use in the region, mainly Hebrew, Phoenician (including Punic), and, for those who consider it a separate language, Moabite. - Mustafaa 05:39, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

And finally, a source more familiar to non-linguists: the Encyclopedia Britannica. - Mustafaa 05:41, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Ah, yes, the key phrase you use is "linguists have chosen to call them "Canaanite languages"...So now the question is, what if one rejects the notions of these "linguists" and abides instead by the notions of say, "THEOLOGIANS" or more specifically HEBREW Theologians, who would utterly reject the speculations and hypothesis of these "Linguists"? To go just by the views of "linguists" would be to violate NPOV on Wikipedia as one needs to constantly present the views of the classical HEBREWS (aka as Jews) who abide by the classical teachings of Judaism, which teach that Hebrew was the language of Creation and of all humanity at one point. It was at the Tower of Babel that all the people were dispersed and were divided by (newly) conflicting tongues, or is this too much for you to "swallow"? IZAK 05:49, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This has been a lot of exercise today. IZAK, you need to understand, and please read because I will say this once because I am not very comfortable with long essays and paragraphs. - Linguistics is a very well-established science of comparing languages and how they split from each other, a process that never stops. I personally do not dispute the history of the Book of Genesis; I personally (by POV) believe that Terah was a descendant of Eber (founder of the Hebrews), and Abraham was Terah's son, and Lot was Terah's grandson. Ben-ammi and Moab were Lot's sons, and Esau and Jacob were Abraham's grandsons. Ishmael too, is an Eberite in a such a context. However, these distinctions do not translate into parallel linguistic splits. That does not deny that these people existed, but it's far more likely (and scholarly-accepted) that the languages that became associated with them were languages they adopted from other peoples. In the case of Abraham and his children in Canaan, they adopted the local Canaanite language for local communication. Samples of all four Canaanite languages adopted by Hebrew peoples are attested, written in early scripts related to Hebrew. Phoenician and Punic are also well-attested Canaanite languages, closely related to Hebrew, but the Phoenicians actually were Canaanites, and not Hebrews. (The Punic language survived until well into the Roman Empire, and was a favorite literary language of Augustine of Hippo. Now, the Canaanite dialects adopted by Abraham's family and Lot's family in Canaan only became "Hebrew" because they didn't stop speaking it for a very very long time, and it became the language associated with them, and the prophets of the Bible wrote in it.  As for what language Abraham spoke before he settled in Canaan (the pre-Abrahamic Hebrew language), we can't say; that's why there are theories at Hebrew language.  This is all well-established in the pages of the Torah and the Bible, as linguistic relations between the four Hebrew peoples and the Phoenicians and Carthaginians are well-attested in the scientific world.  The truth is, people of the biblical Hebrew family adopted different languages where they settled.  Canaanite languages by the children of Isaac and Lot, Arabian languages by the children of Ishmael, and later, old dialects of Aramaic, Arabic, Spanish and German by the Jewish diaspora for their daily discourse. But scientifically, the interrelated languages of Hebrews in Canaan are all Canaanite languages no more or less related to each other than the languages spoken by the ethnic Canaanites themselves, and are only also called "Hebrew languages" because they were biblical peoples in the Holy Land who spoke the same language. Since the Torah is theology, we can present it as a POV belief, but not as NPOV fact without concrete scientific proof. As such, we can't actually (yet) prove the historicity of Terah or Abraham (though we can still keep trying), and the distinction "Hebrew" remains an unscientific one. (That's why the Hebrew language articles were both in "Category:Canaanite languages" and "Category:Hebrew language", because one is scientific and the other is religious.) Now please, I understand and appreciate your religious passions, but keep in mind we can only mention theology as a POV, and that the only fact allowed in Wikipedia is NPOV science. - Gilgamesh - 05:53, 7 July 2004 (UTC)


 * Gilgamesh: I appreciate your time and efforts. But really this is all "theology" as were it not for the Bible this discussion and the mere names "Ammonite", "Edomite", "Cananite" would not even be known today. The so-called POV theology has been around for thousands of years. A few years ago some academics with nothing better to do commnenced the process of chopping up anything too "religious" that came into their line of fire and proceeded to impose their arbitrary POV so-called "categories" which are just sheer nonsense and make a mockery of well-estblished religiously reliable facts. Now, there are also sometimes fellow-travelers to the anti-religious academics who latch onto the teachings of the "linguists" (in this case), and whilst having their own agenda (of promoting Jesus or Allah or whatever) claim to share the views of the secular scholars when all they really want to do is to diminish the UNIQUE role and history of the Hebrew people and their language, and in this case "Hebrew" has ALWAYS been synonymous with "Jew"...now you are coming along and telling the world in effect that "Not all Hebrews are the Jews and not all Jews come from Hebrews", which is a patent lie and attempt at distortion of the contination of Jewish=Hebrew identity which so frustrates the anti-Semites and anti-Zionists that they will do ANYTHINg to cast aspersions on the cherished traditions of the teachings of the Torah and Judaism that tell us that the Hebrews are the Jews and that the Jews are the Hebrews and that they alone spoke what we call today the Hebrew language, which they preserved for 2,000 years in the their Talmudic and scholarly texts and which they revived as a spoken language in Israel BECAUSE the Hebrew that was part of them never ceased to exist at all. IZAK 06:21, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * I think Gilgamesh's point is that, since `Ivri comes from Eber, it shoudl refer to all descendants of Eber, and thus that "Not all Hebrews are the Jews" (although all Jews are Hebrews) is exactly what the Torah implies. Is your point that Ivri does not mean "descendants of Eber"? If so, could you expand on it? - Mustafaa 06:34, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Mustafaa: Also not too complicated: See: Why are the Jews called "Hebrews"?: "The word "Hebrew" comes from the Hebrew word "Ivri." Jews are called Hebrews because their ancestor and founder, Abraham, is called (Genesis 14:13) "Abraham the Ivri." The word Ivri means "from the [other] side," and Abraham came to the Land of Canaan from Mesopotamia which was "on the other side" of the Euphrates. Additionally, Abraham, with his monotheistic beliefs, was on one side while the rest of the world was on the other (pagan) side." IZAK 06:46, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * IZAK, I don't dispute that you believe what you believe, and I never disputed that the Jews were Hebrews. But even the Tanakh says that not all Hebrews were Jews (but all Jews were Hebrews, which I never contested).  But at some point religious belief is inadmissible in Wikipedia.  Wikipedia is a medium of the scientific method.  You're allowed not to like that, and you're allowed to speak your mind to other people and tell them how much you don't like it.  I encourage it.  But the rules are made by Wikipedia, not me, and facts are only admissible if the scientific method attests to them; otherwise, it's just belief and can only be mentioned as such.  And even if Wikipedia were a religious discussion center, there's still the matter that nearly all religions disagree on certain points, and they would still have to compromise and cooperate in maintaining a single archive.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for everyone, not merely an encyclopedia for Rabbinical Jews, nor for fundamentalist Christians, nor for conservative Islamists, nor even for militant Atheists.  It's for everyone, and everyone is welcome to make NPOV edits at Wikipedia. - Gilgamesh 06:41, 7 July 2004 (UTC)

Gilagamesh: I do not dispute what you say. When FACTS are misrepresented then it is is only right to correct them. And to accept only an "assertion" that something is so, is no subsitute for intellectual honesty. We have before us ancient TORAH texts, not "rabbinical" texts, but classical well-preserved and reliable texts revered by hundreds of millions of people, not just Jews and not just by "fundamentalists" as being reliable. This is as scientific and NPOV as a scientist looking into a petri dish which he should stick to doing as he is out of his depth when he applies "petrie dish" methods and theories to black-and white texts that say what they mean and mean what they say. A lawyer in law school would be expected to read, study and explain the statutes and laws, we would not care how well he conducted experiments with his legal ideas because that's not what you do with legal ideas and the language of law. Similarly, to chop up and insert speculations about the language of the Torah and what the words mean is not meant as a "Sunday afternoon stroll" in the hocus-pocus world of anti-religious secular academics and their cohorts. IZAK 06:59, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm frankly at a loss for words. This is like claiming that every biology article we write should include a Creationism section, or that every cosmology article should include a disclaimer stating that the world was created in six days - except that those doctrines are specifically claimed by the Bible, whereas Bereshit does not say which language was spoken before Babel. - Mustafaa 05:59, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Darling:Just LOOK at the language of the original Torah! What is it? And of course it is HEBREW. Does it have to say "By the way, we are now speaking Hebrew" when it is obvious that ONLY Hebrew is being spoken. And yes, when touching upon Biblically related "hot-potato" subjects like the oririgins of languages and the origin of life (which NO "scientist" can "know" as there were no scientists to take notes). We can only work with the primary texts and in this case the Torah and the Tanakh are the most reliable texts we have, unless we want to look at the Rosetta stone forever.... IZAK 06:21, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Um, I don't know what you think I meant, but of course the language of the Torah is Hebrew. Who was arguing about that? - Mustafaa 06:26, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * This is the point:The language ALL humanity spoke prior to the Tower of Babel was the Hebrew of the Torah, it's not that complicated. That why all languages have TRACES of Hebrew in them. Linguists agree that all languages are derived from one ancient "unkown" "core language". In Judaism, this is NOT a "mystery", that one core language was the ancient Hebrew of the Torah, which subsequently becomes reserved for the Hebrew people only commencing with Abraham, as a devotee of the HEBREW God who spoke with him and it is Abraham who brought it to Canaan and NOT the other way around. Now, is that not a beauty of reason and logic, and not mere "theology" :-) IZAK 06:38, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Yeah... The language of the Torah is Hebrew.  I don't know how that can be disputable.  I mean, there's a possibility other parts of it were written in other languages originally and then translated to Hebrew, but the texts as they were issued by Moses and later in written form by Ezra were in the Biblical Israelite Hebrew dialect. - Gilgamesh 06:30, 7 July 2004 (UTC)


 * Saying that all languages are derived from ancient Hebrew, you've just pushed back the science of linguistics centuries back. The bible isn't and shouldn't be used as a source of scientific facts. By the way, the ancient languages of Moab and Edom are also attested in ancient inscriptions of the region. The bible isn't the sole source that tells us of these ancient people.--Xevorim (talk) 19:15, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Gilagamesh:Kindly restrain yourself from making up "theories", just stick to the facts as they are presented to us in the "primary documents" of the Torah, otherwise you will start to believe in Science fiction that we come from space aliens and that Steven Spielberg is writing the scripts as we speak ...IZAK 06:38, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Mustafaa's calling it a day from this discussion and so am I. But I am afraid I must be blunt here and now: If you continue to flout the rules of Wikipedia, you'll invite trouble, probably at the administration level. You need to adhere to the editing rules the rest of us adhere to, or you'll find yourself not being able to edit here anymore. - Gilgamesh 06:45, 7 July 2004 (UTC)


 * Oh I see, now you are resorting to scare tactics. I am not "flouting" the rules of Wikipedia and I never have! You have inserted your own POV and grow impatient when your categorization is changed in spite of its erroneous nature. My edit record is excellent. It's your bias that is determining your reaction as you refuse to see or consider a broader more rounded approach to the subject at hand and hence to the truth. What can you do. IZAK 07:08, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Proposal for Mediation

These conflicts have been difficult for us to discuss. I suggest we go by procedure and request a mediator to help us iron out the disputes and clarify the edit rules for everyone, you and I included. Requests for mediation - I will ask first, I invite you to ask as well. - Gilgamesh 08:16, 7 July 2004 (UTC)

Ok, Gilgamesh go ahead, not a bad idea (I hope)... hopefully something good will come out it. Let me know when I should put in my two-cents worth. IZAK 08:21, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Alright, it is ready. 08:26, 7 July 2004 (UTC)

This subject is now in Mediation, see:

Request for assistance in a conflict between users regarding Canaanite and Hebrew linguistics articles. Thank you. IZAK 10:15, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I've removed "The prefix of the third-person plural in the Perfective aspect, is t- rather than Aramiac y-" because it's not; I'm guessing you meant to say something slightly different, but I'm not sure what. - Mustafaa 01:36, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Phoenician
In a pure objective point of view, aren't Hebrew and Phoenician just the dialects of a same language? — Preceding unsigned comment added by (talk) 13:29, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Canaanite languages go hand-in-hand with origin of alphabet?
Somewhere in the article it should be mentioned that these languages, Canaanite/Phoenician, were also the first languages to be written in an alphabet: Proto-Canaanite alphabet.Jimhoward72 (talk) 10:53, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

old IP statement
note - the philistine language was not a canaanite language - the whole origin of the philistine was from the surronding of greece and turkey. all of the languges but the hebrew language became extinct after the babilonin empire (6th century bc) as the hebrew language started to disappear as a spoken language after the bar chocva rebelion - 2nd century AD. I THINK YOU SHOULD CORRECT IT. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.230.203.40 (talk) 06:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Proto-Canaanite
Has a Proto-Canaanite language been reconstructed? Anonymous173.57.44.147 (talk) 04:27, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Origin
Quote a book which is quoting another book, The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (edited by G. A. Buttrick, 1962, Vol. 1, p. 495) that “the Amarna Letters contain evidence for the opinion that non-Semitic ethnic elements settled in Palestine and Syria at a rather early date, for a number of these letters show a remarkable influence of non-Semitic tongues.” (Italics ours.) The facts are that there is still uncertainty as to the original language spoken by the first inhabitants of Canaan. Canaanite were Hamitic, as were there language.

The Canaanites' Semitic lanugage was adopted it came about was because the nations around spoke Arabic, Aramiac, Urgatic, Akkadian, Non-Israelite Hebrew, and they spoken languages were increasing in number as were there people, also they gaining more and more power. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.38.144.241 (talk) 19:49, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * In linguistics, "Semitic" is a descendant of "Hamitic". СЛУЖБА (talk) 00:14, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

incomplete
There is no reference here to the Canaanite language found in glosses on the Tell elAmarna tablets. Bezold's book on the tablets is available online. Start with that. 108.18.136.147 (talk) 12:47, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Inappropriate page edit - political issues
Dear Editors,

You may wish to reverse what I assume is the inappropriate edit shown here,

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Canaanite_languages&diff=816978611&oldid=806420994

made earlier today in the second sentence of the first paragraph - "Israel" to "Israel(Occupied Palestine PS)".

Yours truly,

141.226.177.204 (talk) 20:47, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

David Cheifetz

Hebrew was used continuously
I appreciate the various links to the substrata of Hebrew but there is an opinion here, repeated thrice, that is in my view is incorrect.

Just because Hebrew has had a rich life doesn't mean that it requiref any revival from the dead.

It has been in continuous use. Period. It is a Canaanite language THAT NEVER WENT OUT OF USE.

Has it been used slightly differently in various times and places. Sure. But these are less different than is the English in Shakespeare, the English of The American Constitution and the English of Modern Manchester.

It is the same Hebrew and WAS ALWAYS in use as a written language, a read language, and in many times and many places and to various degrees a spoken language.

Israeli Hebrew is not a son of a 1000 BCE Canaanite language. It IS one and all of its ancient writings now discovered would have been easily understood by thousands of Jews at any point over the past 3,000 years.


 * No, that is not true and you must provide proof of that if you want to make that change. It is a known fact the the Ashkenazi Jews of Germany soke Yiddish, those of Russia spoke Russian and Poland, Polish, or Russian. The Sephardic Jews of Spain, Italy and North Africa spoke Spanish, Italian and other languages. Then there was a revival of Hebrew which happened after that.--105.12.5.239 (talk) 19:23, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Hebrew NOT a Canaanite language
It is NOT true that Hebrew is a Canaanite language. It was spoken in Canaan by Hebrews who lived there geographically, but linguistically it is a language that decended from Hebrew Chaldee (a Chaldean language). Any Bible dictionary, or Concordance details the fact that the Pentateuch of the Hebrew Bible is written in Hebrew Chaldee and not plain Hebrew like the books that follow. Aramaic is the language spoken by the Israelites as well as Hebrew, but Hebrew became less of a spoken language and more of a written language, until it was no longer in use and only Aramaic was spoken by everyone except maybe some priests. Aramaic was the language of the Syrians which was almost identical to the Aramaic spoken at later stages by the Israelites.--105.12.5.239 (talk) 19:37, 14 January 2018 (UTC)


 * The term seems to be a description for a group of languages including Hebrew that centered around the Levant. The language spoken by the Canaanites of the bible isn't included among them as far as I can see, I'm not sure if we even know any of that language, or if it even exists.2601:140:8980:106F:E039:CC54:F294:84EB (talk) 13:26, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Descendants
I'd like to point out that all these Hebrew "descendants" except Mishnaic Hebrew and Modern Hebrew are just reading traditions and not languages. Since this article describes a language family, it does not seem quite fitting. Glennznl (talk) 23:11, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Is "descendants" really the right term to describe a language? Descendant is usually used for genetic relation. A better section title would be "Modern Usage" or something similar. I feel like the choice of that word was a very political POV. If nobody has a logical problem, I will change it from "descendants" to "modern usage".--Crazyketchupguy (talk) 18:38, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Philistine
I added a (?) after Philistine. Its genetic relationship to other languages is far from certain. Imperial78


 * The one who added Philistine here had with no doubt a very bad reason for doing so. There are people with POV who try to make fictional historical connection between Philistinians and present days Arabic Palestinians. Almost all of the articles that connected to this isuue are stricken by this POV and it goes well as there is no one to harshly supervise these aritcles quality. The origins of Philistine and Philistinians were European, not Semitic. There is no difference in counting Philistine as Canaanite than in counting French or English as ones.
 * — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.138.36.244 (talk) 15:02, 2009 September 21 (UTC)


 * The Philistines were Greeks fleeing the end of Mycenean civilization. They were absorbed into Canaanite populations and disappeared from the record. The Palestinians come largely from Canaanite populations and whatever migration in and out of the region occurred after the destruction of the second temple. The Jews area also Canaanite descended, this is frequently denied because the biblical record falsely claims that they came from Egypt and killed off the Canaanites, but this was a later construction. The early Israelite religious tradition was more or less similar to other Canaanite groups including the Phoenicians and Carthagians, including Baal worship. Baal and Yahweh were initially the same deity but merged together during the second temple reforms, with the name Baal consigned to a demon made up for the purpose to discourage the polytheism that was being suppressed during the reforms. The Palestinians may in part descend from Jews, but also neighboring related Canaanites who were also Arabized. The association with Canaanites is often suppressed because of the biblical narrative which claims the Jews were not Canaanites and that the Canaanites were wiped out by the Jews, but again, both are completely false constructed narratives invented to support the monotheistic identity constructed in the second temple reforms. The name Palestine is related to Phillistine, but it is just the Greek name for the general area. When the British divided Syria after the first world War, the southern region was called Palestine on reference to old Roman usage. The identity of what was largely Arabized Canaanites therein, had more or less completely merged with surrounding Arab groups such that they did not consider themselves distinct from them.2601:140:8900:61D0:65F3:7E09:D472:EC12 (talk) 18:41, 4 March 2021 (UTC)