Greek version of the skme Chaldeean my the, hapless Obpavós, Ccelus, had infinitely more
serious reasons for swearing at his unnatural son Kpóvos, Salwrnus; while, as Cahen
has duly noted on the Noaohian curse, “ this is the fourth malediction that one
encounters in Genesis: the first being against a snake, the second against the earth,
and the third against Cain.”
Setting forth thence with'a moral non-sequitur, commentators next attempt to justify
a supposititious extermination of the guiltless grandson’s innocent posterity, recorded
by “ writer 2d ” — “ but of the cities of these people (the Canaanites), which IeHOuaH
thy God gives thee for heritage, thou shalt spare nothing alive that breathes ” (Deut.
xx. 16). Yet, despite this and similar omnipotent injunctions to obliterate poor
KNA&N, we find “ writer 3d ” (Jósh. xv. 63) attesting how “ the children of Judah
could not drive out” the Canaanites from Israel’s holiest abode, Jerusalem, even “ unto
this day!” A fact explained by “ writer 4th” (Jud. i. 19, 21), “ because (the Canaanites)
had chariots of iron” ; at the same time that “ writer 5th” (2 Sam. v. 7, 8, 9) bears
_ witness that one band of Canaanites maintained the stronghold of Mt. Zion, Jehus,
down to the reign of David. Even then, unscrupulously heroic as that monarch was,
he was constrained, through political exigencies, chronicled by “ writer 6th ” (2 Sam.
xxiv. 18, 24), to buy from a Canaanitish land-holder, “ Aravna, the Jebusite,” the
identical “ threshing floor” on the site of which Solomon, according to “ writer 7th”
(2 Chron. iii. 1, 3), erected a little paganish temple (smaller than its duplicate at
Hierapolis) that, although only 90 feet long by 30 front, is estimated to have cost
about 4000 millions of dollars — United States’ currency.
Other sticklers for plenary inspiration who, in direct contravention of the plain
words of Genesis IXth (favoring the notion that Ham, and not his son Canaan, was
accursed), contend that, in consequence of such malediction, Ham became the progenitor
of black (Negro) races, may be set aside as entirely ignorant' of Scripture.
Followers of the learned Dr. Cartwright’s “ Canaan identified with the Ethiopian ” may
be pleased to refer to the fac-simile portrait [supra, p. 127, Fig. 19] for confirmation
of a doctrine which has the double misfortune of being physiologically and
historically impossible, as well as wholly anti-biblicah
We appeal to the sober author of Xth Genesis for relief from such mental aberrations.
His chorography (constructed some time after Joshua the son of Nun, or Nan,
had expelled such Canaanitish tribes as survived massacre, or tolerated under the. conqueror’s
yoke, along Israel’s roads of march from Moupt Sinai to Palestine) attests,
ex post facto, that already in his time “ the families of the KNA&NI (had been) dispersed”
. (Gen. x. 18.) Large bodies of thes^people emigrated to Libya, where their
names, traditions, and tongues, exist to this day. Procopius, in the sixth century a. c.,
mentions an inscription wherein Phoenicians recorded their flight into Africa, “ from
before the face of the brigand Joshua son of Naue: ” and in the fourth century, St.
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, relates how, in his diocese, “ Our rustics, being asked
whence they were, responded, Punically, Chanani.” Now, it is a fact as certain as
any in history, that the Punic-Carthaginians, their parents the Phoenicians, the Canaanites
and the Hebrews, spoke one and the same tongue, but with slight idiomatic
provincialisms of difference. “ The term ‘Hebrew language’ does no&occur in the Old
Testament,” says Gesenius, “ though it must have been common when part of it was
written. Instead of this name, the language.is usually termed the language of Canaan
(Isa. xix. 18).” So far, indeed,, from Hebrew, as philological science nowadays understands
the term, deserving honors, owing to its supposititious antiquity, as the “ lingua
sancta” of Paradise (according to Usher, exactly b . o. 4002-3!), it is positive that
Abraham, grandfather of Israel, when he emigrated from “ Ur of the Chaldees,” spoke,
not in Hebrew, but, like his Mesopotamian tribe, in an Aramaean dialect. Israel’s descendants,
forgetting their mother-tongue, adopted afterwards, in Palestine, the speech
of KNAáN; and, calling it “ Hebrew,” unwittingly sanctified the language of the
“ slave of slaves,” instead of that of the true Abrahamidae! During the Captivity, the
Jews again forgot Kanaaniiish “ Hebrew.” Retempered by some seventy years’ sojourn
in the Euphratic regions of their primitive origin, they brought back with them a later
idiom of that Chaldeean language which, modified by about 1500 years of time, was a
lineal descendant of the pristine speech of Abraham, son of Terah, son of Nahor, son
of Serag, son of Ren, son of Peleg; son (that is, affiliation) of Eber— not a man, but
the geographical personification symbolized in Xth Genesis (21) by EBR, eber; a
name which, like its Greek form, vnip, and its Latinized equivalent, Iberian, originally
meant simply ■ “ the yonder land; ” that is to say, Palestine; a country west of and
beyond the river Euphrates ! “ Hebrews," as the foreign corruption of EBR, signifies
nothing more than men from or of the'other side — the Yohder&rs.
Every effort, therefore, made by orthodox Rabbis, Doctors, or Mool&hs, Jewish,
Christian, or Muslim, to enhance the antiquity and holiness of the tongue they caH
Hebrew, only renders more venerable “ the language of KNAaN” : and thus, by exalting
as theologians do, unintentionally, but positively, the “ slave of slaves ” above the
chosen master, they enable the retributive justice of science to make inhumanity and
superstition vindicate, in our nineteenth century, the memory of a much-injured
people, who called themselves KNASNI from ante-historical times down to a period
far more modern than the Christian era.
The unceasing proclivity of the Israelites to adopt Canaanitish customs and worship,
to intermarry with Canaanitish females, to dwell in peace with or among them— despite
denunciations attributed to Moses and the Prophets — no less than the existence of
Canaanites everywhere in Palestine after the Christian era: these facts (evident to
every possessor of a “ Concordance of the Old and New Testaments”) merely prove
the strong natural affinities of language and of physical organism common to both
families. Nay, apart from supernaturalistic caprice, the only satisfactory mode of
justifying such vehement declamations of hatred towards KNAdN, found in the writings
of Hebrew reformers, is to acknowledge frankly, that human nature, rebelling against
these homicidal proscriptions, often rendered them nugatory in practice.
Of the eleven affiliations of KNAdN, only five, the Hethites, Yebousites, Emorites, Guir-
gasites, and Hivites, were established within the petty territory of Palestine. Add to
these the Canaanites (possibly descendants of another KNAdN) and the Pherizites, who
were merely peasants; and we have the seven peoples which the Hebrews were
enjoined to expel. (fDeut. vii. 1; Josh. iii. 10.) The desire was stronger than the
deed, for the Jews never entirely drove the Canaanites out, even of Jerusalem.
By classical historians, the KNA6NI were known under the general name of iohises,
Phtenicians; and the LXX often substitute the latter name where the Hebrew Text
reads Eanaanites. Herodotus and later authors assure us, that the Phoenicians came
originally from the Persian Gulf; and the Kanaani, therefore, would not be indigenous
to Palestine; but, nevertheless, they were “ already in the land ” (Gen. xii. 5) at the
advent of the Abrahamidae, and we regard them as autocthones.
Eusebius quotes Sanconiathon and his translator, Philo Byblius, for the fact that the
Phoenicians called their country Xva, a contraction of KNAdN. On Phoenician coins
the city of Laodicea is called mother of Kanaan. Older than numismatic record, more
ancient than Hebrew annalists (Moses not excepted), more positively authentic than
any source to which archeology can appeal, are the Egyptian monuments of Sethei-
Meneptha I. and Ramses I I .; whereupon KANANA-Zcmd is frequently mentioned among
conquered Asiatic nations, from the seventeenth — sixteenth century b. c. downwards.
And it may assuage pruriency in those who fancy the KNA&Nl to have been African
“ ^Ethiopians,” (though as “ sun-burned-faces ” they were certainly Asiatic,) to take another
look at our portrait of a Canaanite, copied from sculptures anterior to the century
in which the Mosaic Lawgiver is erroneously believed to have written the b.ook called
Genesis—a portrait, wherein the features establish that (apart from Canaan’s priority of
speech in the Hebraical “ lingua sancta,” as, eventually, “ beatorum in coelis”) the inex