I’ve been thinking a lot over the past year about how absolutely fucked archaeology and history has been because of Israel’s project to prove its legitimacy. We use anachronistic terms like ‘Canaan’ because the narrative has to fit the zionist story. There are so many people who lived and thrived in Palestine and whether they are living there now or lived there three thousand years ago their stories are being erased for the colonial project
Your point more broadly is well taken, yes, but Canaan/Canaanite is actually a very well attested historical name that exists outside of the Hebrew Bible. The people commonly called “Phoenicians” called themselves Canaanites, and even as late as the 2nd century AD folks from North Africa around Carthage (which was originally a Phoenician colony from the city of Tyre in what is now Lebanon) called themselves “Canaanites” because they were descended from people in that region. Canaan isn’t anachronistic, they were a real people who self described as Canaanite.
I’ve been thinking a lot over the past year about how absolutely fucked archaeology and history has been because of Israel’s project to prove its legitimacy. We use anachronistic terms like ‘Canaan’ because the narrative has to fit the zionist story. There are so many people who lived and thrived in Palestine and whether they are living there now or lived there three thousand years ago their stories are being erased for the colonial project
Your point more broadly is well taken, yes, but Canaan/Canaanite is actually a very well attested historical name that exists outside of the Hebrew Bible. The people commonly called “Phoenicians” called themselves Canaanites, and even as late as the 2nd century AD folks from North Africa around Carthage (which was originally a Phoenician colony from the city of Tyre in what is now Lebanon) called themselves “Canaanites” because they were descended from people in that region. Canaan isn’t anachronistic, they were a real people who self described as Canaanite.