CANAAN, LANGUAGE or, Op p ntv, zip of Canaan). This expression occurs Is. xix. 18, where it undoubtedly designates the language spoken by the Jews dwelling in Palestine. The use of such an expression, however, suggests the ques tion as to the relation of the Hebrew to the lan guage spoken by the inhabitants of Canaan at the time of the immigration of Abraham. Was that language the Hebrew ? and if so, how is this to be accounted for ? That the language spoken by the Canaanites was substantially identical with Hebrew, appears—I. From the fact that the proper names of Canaan itish persons and places are Hebrew, and can be ac counted for etymologically from the Hebrew as readily as Hebrew proper names themselves. Thus we have Int.fi, i etc. ; 2. Close as was the intercourse of the Hebrews with the Canaanites, there is no hint of their need ing any interpreter to mediate between them ; which renders it probable that their respective lan guages were so nearly allied to each other as to be substantially the same ; 3. The remains of the Phoenician language, which was undoubtedly Canaanitish, bear the closest analogy to the He brew, and are best explained from it ; which proves them to be substantially the same language (Bo chart, Geogr. Sac. ii. col, 699 ff., ed. 1682). Other reasons might be adduced, but these are of the most weight (see Gcsenius, Gesch. d. Ileb. Sp: p. t 6).
To account for this some have supposed that the Canaanites and the Hebrews were of the same ori ginal stock, and that the account in Genesis of their being descended from different branches of the Noachic family is a fiction to be put to the account of national bigotry on the part of the writer. But this is a hypothesis utterly without foundation, and which carries its own confutation in itself ; for had national bigotry directed the writer, he would have excluded the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, from the Shemitic family, as well as the Canaanites, nay, would hardly have allowed the Canaanites to claim descent from the righteous Noah. The list of the nations in Gen. xi. is
accepted by some of the most learned and unfet tered scholars of Germany as a valuable and trust worthy document (Knobel, Volkertafel der Genesis, 185o, Bertheau Beitrage, p. 174, 179). But if these were different races, how came they to have the same language? Knobel thinks that the country was first occupied by a Semitic race, the descen dants of Lud, and that the Hamites were immi grants who adopted the language of the country into which they came (p. 204 ff.) Grotius, on the other hand, Le Clerc and others, are of opinion that Abraham acquired the language of the country into which he came, and that Hebrew is conse quently a Hamitic and not a Shemitic language (Grotius, Dirsert. de Ling. Heb., prefixed to his Commentary ; Le Clerc, De Ling. Heb. ; Beke, Origins p. 23o; Winning, Manual of Com par. p. 275) ; by later writers Abraham's native tongue is supposed to have been Indo-ger manic or Aryan. On the other hand, some main tain that Abraham retained the use of the primeval language, and brought it with him to Canaan; con tending that, had he borrowed the language of the country into which he came, the result would have been a less pure language than the Hebrew, and we should have found in it traces of idolatrous notions and usages (Havernick, Einleit. Iv, E. T. p. 133 ; Pareau, Inst. Inter p. 25, E. T., i. p. 27). This last is the oldest opinion, and there is much to be urged in its favour. It, however, leaves the close affinity of the language of Abraham and that of the Canaanitcs unaccounted for. The hy pothesis that Abraham acquired the language of the Canaanites, and that this remained in his family is certainly the one least burdened with diffi culties, and accounts not only for the affinity of the Hebrew and Phoenician tongues, but for the ease with which Abraham and his son made themselves understood in Egypt, and for the affinity of the ancient Egyptian and several modern African lan guages with the Hebrew. (See Bleek, Einleit. ins A. T., p. 61 ff. ; J. G. Muller. in Herzog's Real. Enc., Bd. vii., p. 240.)—W. L. A.