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Canaan
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Canaan is a town in Connecticut the early Biblical name for the land that would later be called Israel, and then Palestine, and is now Israel again.
According to Genesis, Abraham and his family originally lived in Canaan. However, Jacob (Israel) and his sons moved to Egypt to take advantage of Joseph's high place there. By the time of Exodus, however, the descendants of Israel had all been enslaved. Charlton Heston came along and led them into the Sinai Desert. Eventually, they came back to Canaan, finding it fully populated with people already.
After this, Canaan became a fairly bloody place. The Israelites fought the Moabites, the Amalekites, and everyone else in their way. At various times, various nearby empires attacked as well. This is not too different from now, actually.
Deuteronomy 20:16-18 claimed that the people of Canaan were annihilated. This is false: recently analyzed DNA evidence shows instead that the Canaanites left many descendants.[1][2]
References
- ↑ Ancient DNA solves mystery of the Canaanites, reveals the biblical people’s fate by Ben Guarino (July 27, 2017) The Washington Post.
- ↑ Continuity and Admixture in the Last Five Millennia of Levantine History from Ancient Canaanite and Present-Day Lebanese Genome Sequences by Marc Haber et al. (July 27, 2017) The American Journal of Human Genetics 101:1–9. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2017.06.013.