Are Jews originally Canaanites?

Did the twelve tribes of Israel originate in the nation of the Canaanites and it's seven tribes, as oppossed to the Biblical version of events? I was doing a little study on the Canaanite religion and it seems the Canaanites had many similarities with the Israelites, including their languages. The Hebrew and Canaanite language were very similar to one another, and yes, it turns out the Canaanites did call their deities Ba'als, according to the Canaanite reconstruction website anyway.

I would say yes.

The archaeological record concerning early Israelite Canaan is extremely sparse: what that period looked like is largely a matter of conjecture. The picture is, of course, complicated by the fact that many researchers are looking to validate their religious agenda, and many (if not more) researchers are just as set on disproving the Biblical accounts: both attitudes tend to bias published works in the field.

As far as I have been able to determine in my professional studies, it appears that the ancientest Israelites were actually a fusion people: some of them appear to have been wanderers by choice, from other places, who eventually settled in Canaan; others appear to have been seeking a better place to live following escapes from Egyptian captivity; some of both these last simply colonized Canaan, living side by side with the Canaanites, while some conquered and uprooted the Canaanitish peoples they encountered; but some of the Canaanites seem to have simply been absorbed into the Israelite populace, either in intentional shifts of culture, or in a de facto assimilation over time (as with either conquest or colonization, the timeframe involved seems to have certainly been longer than that indicated by the conquest narratives in the Books of Joshua and Judges). This is all quite, quite early, of course: I should judge it being sometime between 1500 and 1100 BCE, give or take maybe as much as a century in either direction.

We have archaeological evidence to suggest that Israelite identity was relatively established into a familiar form by around 1000 BCE, and certainly by 800 BCE or so, even monolatrous Israelites worshipping Canaanite gods in addition to YHVH seem to have been clear on the notion that YHVH was the proprietary God of Israel, but these other gods, being Canaanite gods, were worth worshipping because they were local, and had predated Israelite securing of the Land. In other words, there was some acknowledgement even by worshippers of Canaanite gods that they were "their" gods, and only "our" gods by virtue of territorial conquest (even if the historical truth might have been de facto conquest by colonization).

So, the answer to your question, as far as I have been able to tell, is both yes and no. I believe Canaanites were among the earliest Israelites, but that proto-Israelites also came from elsewhere.

Levite: I'm very interested in the Early Israelites. I've read a few books now, but are there any sources you would suggest covering in more detail what you've covered in your post?

Let me think about that and try to get back to you. To be honest, my eras of interest are much later (Talmudic period and medieval period), but let me see if I can go back and check some of my notes from rabbinical school.

Senedjem said:

Did the twelve tribes of Israel originate in the nation of the Canaanites and it's seven tribes, as oppossed to the Biblical version of events? I was doing a little study on the Canaanite religion and it seems the Canaanites had many similarities with the Israelites, including their languages. The Hebrew and Canaanite language were very similar to one another, and yes, it turns out the Canaanites did call their deities Ba'als, according to the Canaanite reconstruction website anyway.

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I have to laugh. A history provided by God is one million more times reliable than some archeologists fantasy.

The Bible lists Canaan as a resident of Mesopotamia around the time that languages were confused at the tower of Babel. A confused tongue could certainly bear a resemblance to the original. So the similarites are not because Israel had a Canaanite heritage but because Canaanites had a Mesopotamian heritage.

According to the Bible it was at the time of the confounding of languages that people were scattered into other lands. However there is no date reference. The only archeological refernce was that it was when buildings were made of fired bricks. That would give an early date.

The Israelites were indeed just one of the various Canaanite peoples it would seem. Either that, or they were a people who were 'Canaan-ised'. the Hebrew language is properly considered a "Canaanite dialect", and it is almost identical with other Canaanite dialects like Moabite and Ammonite and even Phoenician. It is almost impossible to tell which language many ancient inscriptions are from, since there are only very subtle differences between most of the Canaanite dialects.

Muffled said:

The Bible lists Canaan as a resident of Mesopotamia around the time that languages were confused at the tower of Babel. A confused tongue could certainly bear a resemblance to the original. So the similarites are not because Israel had a Canaanite heritage but because Canaanites had a Mesopotamian heritage.

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Do you honestly believe Hebrew to be the "original tongue"?? Are you aware that compared to other Semitic languages like Ugaritic and Arabic, Hebrew is a very "evolved" Semitic language, which has undergone radical changes to it's basic structure and phonemic repertoire? As an example, about 6-7 of the original Semitic sounds have completely merged with others and been lost in even ancient Biblical Hebrew, a further 3-4 are lost in modern Hebrew.

If Hebrew was the original language, then Arabic must be the pre-original, since it preserves many early Semitic features which Hebrew lost millenia ago.

Muffled said:

I have to laugh. A history provided by God is one million more times reliable than some archeologists fantasy.

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so "true"

I believe that website said that the Canaanites spoke Ugaritic, and that it was very similar to Hebrew. I remember that the Canaanite way of saying sacred was Qadish, and you guys know what that immediately made me think

Senedjem said:

I believe that website said that the Canaanites spoke Ugaritic, and that it was very similar to Hebrew. I remember that the Canaanite way of saying sacred was Qadish, and you guys know what that immediately made me think

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Ugaritic is a sister language to Canaanitish and Moabitish, which were among the chief languages spoken in the Land of Israel prior to Israelite dominion.

Hebrew is, to my knowledge, the oldest Semitic language currently in use, although there were certainly Semitic languages that predated it, including proto-Ugaritic, Akkadian, Chaldean, ancient Egyptian, Phoenician, and Sumerian. Semitic languages that were sister languages to Hebrew include Assyrian, Hittite, proto-Persian, proto-Arabic, Aramaic, Edomite, Philistine, and Mandaic.

My understanding concerning Aramaic, Arabic, and Farsi is that the forms of these languages spoken today are further removed from their original forms that is modern Hebrew from classical Hebrew. But I am certainly no expert in this area, and I may be wrong.

All of these languages (and some others) share syntactical, morphological, and pragmatic similarities-- some very close, others less so, but all clearly related.

Muffled said:

I have to laugh. A history provided by God is one million more times reliable than some archeologists fantasy.

The Bible lists Canaan as a resident of Mesopotamia around the time that languages were confused at the tower of Babel. A confused tongue could certainly bear a resemblance to the original. So the similarites are not because Israel had a Canaanite heritage but because Canaanites had a Mesopotamian heritage.

According to the Bible it was at the time of the confounding of languages that people were scattered into other lands. However there is no date reference. The only archeological refernce was that it was when buildings were made of fired bricks. That would give an early date.

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Would you suggest just ignoring all of the archeological data then? And at the same time, do you think we should ignore the other scientific fields that show that the Bible is not the most historically reliable book? And at the same time, ignore the other religious writings that explain what the Bible means?

Or should we accept the fact that the Bible is not 100% accurate? That it was written by men, many of which we have no idea who they truly were, and later edited by men and women hundreds if not thousands of times until we come with the version that we have today? I believe that would be much more accurate. Especially since the Bible contradicts itself anyways, showing that it is not, in fact, 100% accurate.

Since when do fundamentalists care about accuracy falling blood?

Senedjem said:

I believe that website said that the Canaanites spoke Ugaritic, and that it was very similar to Hebrew.

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Ugaritic is sometimes considered a Canaanite dialect also, but it is a very distinct & conservative one. Unlike the other Canaanite dialects, it did not undergo a lot of the "evolution" that most others did. Although it is similar in syntax and vocabulary to Hebrew and other Canaanite dialects, it is also very similar to the Arabian languages in phonology and grammar. It did not lose all of the sounds (phonemes) that the other Canaanite dialects did (same as the Arabian languages), it retained the dual number (which only the Arabian languages did), it retained much of the case system, which only Akkadian and the Arabian languages did.

Senedjem said:

I remember that the Canaanite way of saying sacred was Qadish, and you guys know what that immediately made me think

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That is the way to say sacred in pretty much every single Semitic language, from Akkadian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Ugaritic to Arabic, Aramaic, Ge'ez, Amharic & Sabaean.

Levite said:

Hebrew is, to my knowledge, the oldest Semitic language currently in use... My understanding concerning Aramaic, Arabic, and Farsi is that the forms of these languages spoken today are further removed from their original forms that is modern Hebrew from classical Hebrew. But I am certainly no expert in this area, and I may be wrong.

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Firstly Farsi is not a Semitic language, it's an Indo-European one.

Secondly, Arabic is the most conservative living Semitic language there is. Even the colloquial 'street' Arabic of today is far more conservative than the oldest attested Biblical Hebrew. Also the further back into the history of Hebrew we go, the more "Arabic-like" it becomes. In ancient times, it's known that Hebrew for instance distinguished between ayin and ghayin (eg. in the name of the city Ghaza, as transliterated into Greek in the oldest Bible translations), whereas today ghayin is completely lost and was so even in early Christian times. The same is true for about 5 or 6 other sounds. The discovery of Ugaritic was a very solid confirmation of this since it has almost all of the same repertoire of sounds as Arabic does (minus 1 or 2), and in all cognate roots it agreed completely with Arabic.

levite said:

Hebrew is, to my knowledge, the oldest Semitic language currently in use, although there were certainly Semitic languages that predated it, including proto-Ugaritic, Akkadian, Chaldean, ancient Egyptian, Phoenician, and Sumerian. Semitic languages that were sister languages to Hebrew include Assyrian, Hittite, proto-Persian, proto-Arabic, Aramaic, Edomite, Philistine, and Mandaic.

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From what I understand of the history of languages, Sumerian is not a Semitic language. Egyptian is also not a Semitic language.

Assyrian and Babylonian languages were both derived from the older Akkadian language of the 3rd millennium BCE, and Akkadian became a predominate language in the 2nd half of the 3rd millennium BCE, made popular by Sargon the Great, founder of the Akkad dynasty and empire. However, Akkadian made use of the Sumerian writing system.

Babylonian, particularly Old Babylonian, began around 19th or 18th century BCE.

Persian, including Farsi, is language belonging to an Indo-European family, not the Semitic family, as are the Hittite language.

gnostic said:

From what I understand of the history of languages, Sumerian is not a Semitic language. Egyptian is also not a Semitic language.

Assyrian and Babylonian languages were both derived from the older Akkadian language of the 3rd millennium BCE, and Akkadian became a predominate language in the 2nd half of the 3rd millennium BCE, made popular by Sargon the Great, founder of the Akkad dynasty and empire. However, Akkadian made use of the Sumerian writing system.

Babylonian, particularly Old Babylonian, began around 19th or 18th century BCE.

Persian, including Farsi, is language belonging to an Indo-European family, not the Semitic family, as are the Hittite language.

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Yes, I realized after I posted that I had accidentally included Persian incorrectly. Sumerian and ancient Egyptian are, as far as I know, proto-Semitics, although I will certainly check my sources again.

Egyptian is a semetic language? Wait I minute! I'll have to ask my Nisut and get back to you on this.

Levite said:

Yes, I realized after I posted that I had accidentally included Persian incorrectly. Sumerian and ancient Egyptian are, as far as I know, proto-Semitics, although I will certainly check my sources again.

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Hello,

Farsi is an indo-European language

Egyptian is an afroasiatic language. Afroasiatic is a larger linguistic tree (covering tongues across Northern Africa and the Middle East) where Egyptian is one branch and Semitic is another, as is say Berber. Egyptian is not a Semitic language.

Akkadian is an ancient Semitic language that adopted Sumerian cuneiform. Sumerian itself was not Semitic. It was a linguistic isolate (which interesting enough resonates in their texts as Sumerians referred to themselves as the black heads not original to what is now known as Sumeria, but as having come from somewhere else).

This is what I believe the origins of the Jewish people are. in the 14th century, Egypt had its king Akenaten who got rid of the old religion and brought in a new monolatrist (the belief in multiple gods but the worship of only one god) religion called Atenism. After his death, Egypt brought back its old religious beliefs, but a minority of people were still Atenists so they fled Egypt. This is probably where the story of Exodus comes from. Exodus is the oldest jewish religious text and the oldest copy found was written some time in the 13th century so the times converge.

After they fled Egypt they ran into other semitic tribes such as the Caananites and the Mesopotamians and the Babylonians and etc. and adopted the cultures, traditions, languages, religious stories, and names.

But Judaism didn't become what is recognizable today until about the 7th century BC when the Babylonians invaded Israel and kicked the Jews out. Persians sheltered the exiled Jews and it just so happen around this time that Zoroastrianism became the state religion of Persia and this is where Judaism got its monotheism from, its escatology from, it's messianic beliefs from, and it's dualistic theology from (good God and evil counter-part).

haltensie said:

This is what I believe the origins of the Jewish people are. in the 14th century, Egypt had its king Akenaten who got rid of the old religion and brought in a new monolatrist (the belief in multiple gods but the worship of only one god) religion called Atenism. After his death, Egypt brought back its old religious beliefs, but a minority of people were still Atenists so they fled Egypt. This is probably where the story of Exodus comes from. Exodus is the oldest jewish religious text and the oldest copy found was written some time in the 13th century so the times converge.

After they fled Egypt they ran into other semitic tribes such as the Caananites and the Mesopotamians and the Babylonians and etc. and adopted the cultures, traditions, languages, religious stories, and names.

But Judaism didn't become what is recognizable today until about the 7th century BC when the Babylonians invaded Israel and kicked the Jews out. Persians sheltered the exiled Jews and it just so happen around this time that Zoroastrianism became the state religion of Persia and this is where Judaism got its monotheism from, its escatology from, it's messianic beliefs from, and it's dualistic theology from (good God and evil counter-part).

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Do you have any sources? I'm not trying to debate you here, or suggest you are wrong, I would just be interested in reading more about what you are saying and seeing the evidence behind it. I am very interested in the origins of Judaism and the Hebrew people.