DNA from the Bible's Canaanites lives on in Arabs and Jews

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Surely for people who believe the bible they're all related a distance anyway. There's pages and pages of genelogies. I guess everyone just skips those bits because they look boring.

This person had children called x, y and z, who had children who moved to x place and became this group who live here and grew as a nation.

It's not even in one of the long lists:

I didn't realise that there was a belief that absolutely no Cananites survived at all. That's why I didn't understand the main point of your post. I must admit I don't completely understand Zionism. I've learned something new today.

Rahab (from Jericho) was a Cananite and an ancestor in the lineage of the kings of Israel for example, so there's going to be some DNA mixing going on.

There's even this mention of the Canaanites still living in the area in later years and intermarrying and co-existing with the Isrealites.

Maybe it's because I live in Germany, but this determining by ancestry of who gets evicted and put in a concentration camp and who gets to own the property makes me a bit uncomfortable.

I would say that it would be hard to track all human beings from the beginning of time.
Perhaps the parts of the Bible refers to certain people being destroyed in terms of their civilisations rather than literally every person on the planet that had any inherited DNA were extinct.

Out of interest, I read some years a go a book by an ex-nun named Karen Armstrong, a Bible Scholar and excellent author who wrote a book on the life of the Prophet Muhammad.

Interesting book, in which she explains how the Prophet Muhammad included aspects of Judaism in order to include the nearing Jewish people who had settled near them, in hope of converting them to his cause so as to give the then new religion more numbers, especially important when considering how the Arab tribes lived during their time, which apparently involved a great deal of raping and pillaging.

What I found interesting, is that a great deal of aspects of Islam culture that the Prophet Muhammad introduced that we now find out of date and terrible, where originally designed to protect rather than persecute or abuse woman.

For example, before Islam developed, woman didn't really play an important role in society apart from to be used for sex and work.

The Prophet Muhammad changed all that, however, many of the practices which were innovated and controversial during their time are to us in modern society may be considered out out date and abuse in our perception.

Zionist are right that the book Joshua is all about genocide. The Jews exterminated Canaanites because the Canaanites were the folks living in the "promised land".

But as Hurtloam says, the Bible still talks about Canaanites being around centuries later. Some even being appointed to government posts by Jewish kings. So the Jews laid waste to their cities they didnt kill off every single Canaanite even according to the Bible. So the Bible doesnt support that pillar of Zionism.

The modern state of Israel (including the occupied territories) is only about the same size as New Jersey. So the notion various peoples living in that small an area could remain genetically distinct even in ancient times is nonsense. And then thinking that groups could maintain any distinctness down to modern times, after thousands of years of intermixing, and of invasions by outsiders, is doubly ridiculous.

DNA suggests that all speakers of Arabic and Jewish languages in the region around Israel have a similar genetic lineage. Jesus spoke Aramaic which belongs to the Northwest Semitic group of the Afroasiatic language family, which also includes the Canaanite languages, such as Hebrew, Edomite, Moabite, and Phoenician, as well as Amorite and Ugaritic. The Aramaic alphabet was widely adopted for other languages and is ancestral to the Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic alphabets.

It's hardly earth shattering that jews and arabs are literally cousins.

Zionism is based upon two notions.

1)That modern of Jews of the Diaspora (dispersed throughout the globe) are descended from the Jews of the Bible who lived in the "Holy Land" (now called "Israel/Palestine").

2)That modern and ancient Jews are identifiably distinct from other middle eastern peoples.

Since the Eighties DNA tests actually do kinda support the first notion: that Jews in, say, Russia are indeed genetically distinct from their Gentile Slavic Russian neighbors. And further that Jews of the diaspora are related to each other, and further they seem to have a common origin. And that origin is in "the Levant" (the eastern Mediterranean coastline between Turkey and Egypt). DNA seems to show the Jews really ARA "Jews", and came from ancient Judea.



But DNA doesnt support the second part:that Jews are distinct from other modern Levantine folks in Arab countries. Jews are genetically quit similar to Arabs, and especially similar to Palestinian Arabs. One Italian scientist-author even stated that "the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the genetic equivalent of a civil war". Brother against brother.

It does seem like Jews and Arabs can both claim the Levant as their “homeland.”

The way I understood it is that Israelites and Cananites are mutually exclusive. Israelites came from Shem, Cananites came from Ham. Shem was blessed, Ham was cursed. Its true that Shem and Ham were brothers. But keep in mind: nobody survived the flood except for Noah and his three sons (Shem, Japheth, and Ham). So that means that everyone on earth are cousins in this sense. But if you were looking for cousins in any sense that is more closer than any two people on Earth, then the only cousins of Israelites would be some other descendants of Shem, which Canaan is certainly not.

However, the status of Cananites is irrelevant to the status of Arabs because Arabs aren't Cananites, just like Jews aren't. As far as Arabs and Jews, yes Arabs and Jews are brothers. That is because Arabs are descendants of Ishmael and Jews are descendants Isaac, both of these are the sons of Abraham which, in turn, is a descendant of Shem. Therefore, Jews and Arabs are both descendants of Shem, which makes them brothers. But this, in turn, implies that neither of them are Cananites.

Since Cananites are not of Shem and the Cananite line was cursed, claiming that anyone is a Cananite would basically disqualify that group from the holy land.

But since neither Arabs nor Jews are Cananites, and since they are both of Shem, then yes, they both inherit the holy land. Of course there is a discussion as to whether or not Ishmael got to keep the blessing that he originally got and thats where Bible and Koran disagree. But that is an entirely different topic. Both Bible and Koran agree that Ishmael's ancestry was blessed -- in sharp contrast to Cananites.