Canaan, according to the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, was a son of Ham and grandson of Noah, and was the father of the Canaanites. He was the recipient of the so-called Curse of Ham.
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According to the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 (verses 15-19), Canaan was the ancestor of the tribes who originally occupied the ancient Land of Canaan: all the territory from Sidon or Hamath in the north to Gaza in the southwest and Lasha in the southeast. This territory is roughly the areas of modern day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, western Jordan, and western Syria. Canaan's firstborn son was Sidon, who shares his name with the Phoenician city of Sidon in present-day Lebanon.[1] His second son was Heth. Canaan's descendants, according to the Hebrew Bible, include:
According to traditional Ethiopian histories, Canaan's son Arwadi (= "the Arvadite") and his wife Entela crossed from Asia into Ethiopia in ca. 2100 BC, and the Qemant tribe were said to be descended from their son, Anayer. There is further an Ethiopian tradition that two other Canaanite tribes, viz. the Sinites and Zemarites, also entered Ethiopia at the time it was ruled by the Kingdom of Kush, and became the Shanqella and Weyto peoples, respectively.[4]
The Persian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (c. 915) recounted a tradition that the wife of Canaan was named Arsal, a daughter of Batawil son of Tiras, and that she bore him the "Blacks, Nubians, Fezzan, Zanj, Zaghawah, and all the peoples of the Sudan."[5]
The German historian Johannes Aventinus (fl. c. 1525) recorded a legend that Canaan's sons the "Arkite" and the "Hamathite" first settled in the area of Greece, and gave their names to the regions of Arcadia and Emathia.
According to Genesis 9:20-27, Noah became drunk then cursed his grandson Canaan, for the transgression of Canaan's father, Ham. This is the Curse of Canaan, to which the misnomer[6] "Curse of Ham" has been attached since Classical antiquity.[7]
Ham's transgression: And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. (Genesis 9:22)
Genesis 9:24-27
24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him.
25 And he said, Cursed [be] Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
26 And he said, Blessed [be] the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
(--Authorized King James Version)
Ibn Ezra suggests that Canaan was a participant in the offense against Noah.[8]
According to the Book of Jubilees, Canaan was cursed twice. It chronologically places the first incident involving Noah's drunkenness 13 years after the deluge, in 1321 A.M. Later (10:29-34), both the Israelite conquest of Canaan and the curse are also attributed to Canaan's steadfast refusal to join his elder brothers in Ham's allotment beyond the Nile, and to his "squatting" instead on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, within the inheritance delineated for Arpachshad and Shem.
Pseudo-Berossus, on the other hand, contains a statement that it was Noah, aka Janus, who sent Canaan to live "in Damascus as far as the edge of Palestine".
Source critics, who follow Julius Wellhausen, typically view the curse of Canaan in Genesis 9:20-27 as an early Hebrew rationalization for Israel's conquest of Canaan.[9] When Noah cursed Canaan in Genesis 9:25, he used the expression "Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants He shall be to his brethren."NKJV The expression "servant of servants", otherwise translated "slave of slaves",NIV emphasizes the extreme degree of servitude that Canaan will experience in relation to his "brothers".[10] In the subsequent passage, "of Shem... may Canaan be his servant,"[9:26] the narrator is foreshadowing Israel's conquest of the promised land.[11] Biblical scholar Philip R. Davies explains that the author of this narrative used Noah to curse Canaan, in order to provide justification for the later Israelites driving out and enslaving the Canaanites.[12]
From a different perspective, Umberto Cassuto connects Canaan serving Shem to mean the children of Canaan who served under Chedorlaomer, king of Elam,[Gen 14:4] a descendant of Shem.[13]
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