re: #156 wheat-dogg

It was just one village of Canaanites, probably, and oral legends expanded it to mean all Canaanites everywhere.

There was no invasion of the “Promised Land” by Israelites coming from Egypt.

Archeology informs us that the upland Semitic inhabitants didn’t like pigs, while those on the coast did. This was one of the differentiators that passed down through time. The coastal lowland folk ate shellfish, so of course the highland people used that too to differentiate themselves.
This is how culture works to separate people.

The upland people eventually become known as the Judahites, while the lowland folk by the sea became known as the Canaanites. After the late Assyrians wiped out a lot of people in the region, the neo-Babylonian empire came in and conquered the land. The deported ones (to Babylonian cities) finally came back to the hill country of Levant and wrote their “history” (most of the OT) to fill in what was needed to justify the ruling parties. This is what the real history books will tell you, while the rabidly religious keep to their myths.

It’s really hard to convince fundamentalists of this, of course.