12 HEBREW IN CANAAN

In the Land of Canaan

The word Hebrew  has been associated with the word Hiberu and Apiru, names that Sumerians, Hittites, Egyptians and others gave to people variously described as nomadic, semi-nomadic, rebels, outlaws, raiders, mercenaries, servants, migrant laborers, and slaves.

The Hebrews described in the Old Testament have also been called Israelites. They appear to have been semi-nomadic herders of sheep and goats and occasional farmers, without knowledge of metal working, without sophisticated craftsmanship and, as scholars claim, without a written language (an alphabet) until maybe around 1000 BCE. ^note8  Like other nomadic herders, they were tent dwellers – as Abraham is described in the Book of Genesis 13:3.

The ancient Hebrews have been described as organizing themselves around their extended families and Hebrew families as combined into kinship groups governed by a council of elders that left the head of a family with a sense of self-rule. These heads of families were males said to have absolute authority over their wives and children, and they were the priests for their families, each family having its own sacred images.

Canaan in the 1200s was a thinly populated land with Phoenicians and Amorites, both of whom have been called Canaanites. The Amorites lived primarily in the hilly regions west of the Dead Sea and east of the Jordan River. Israelites were settled in the less fertile hills east of the coastal plains,

Mark S. Smith, a scholar in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, begins Chapter One of his book The Early History of God claiming,

Early Israelite culture cannot be separated easily from the culture of "Canaan." The highlands of Israel in the Iron Age (ca. 1200-587) reflect continuity with the "Canaanite" (or better, West Semitic) culture during the preceding period both in the highlands and in the contemporary cities on the coast and in the valleys.

Israelites have been described as living in tight communities led by priests or military chieftains, and others as living in Canaanite towns, including a town that was to be known as Jerusalem – described in the Old Testament as inhabited by Jebusites, a people the Old Testament describes as living also in the mountainous area around Jerusalem

Some of these Hebrews are said to have worked at agriculture, and some had become tradesmen and involved with the caravans that carried spices, ointments and resin across Canaan. Others have been described as herders who wandered with their flocks to and from desert watering places. They have been described as migrating during dry seasons to the greener pastures of Egypt's Nile delta and then returning to Canaan when pastures near home turned green again. According to the Old Testament, some Hebrews wandered into Egypt and stayed, and there they were despised by the Egyptians for their foreign ways.