Land of CANAAN, the country so named from Canaan the son of Ham. It lies between the Mediterranean sea and the mountains of Arabia, and extends from Egypt to Phœnicia. It is bounded to the east by the mountains of Arabia; to the south by the wilderness of Paran, Idumea, and Egypt; to the west by the Mediterranean, called in Hebrew the Great Sea; to the north by the mountains of Libanus. Its length from the city of Dan (since called Cæsarea Philippi, or Panadis, which stands at the foot of these mountains) to Beersheba, is about 70 leagues; and its breadth from the Mediterranean sea to the eastern borders, is in some places 30. This country, which was first called Canaan, from Canaan the son of Ham, whose posterity possessed it, was afterwards called Palestine, from the people which the Hebrews call Philistines, and the Greeks and Romans corruptly Pales-tines, who inhabited the sea coasts, and were first known to them. It likewise had the name of the Land of Promise, from the promise God made to Abraham of giving it to him; that of the Land of Israel, from the Israelites having made themselves masters of it; that of Judah, from the tribe of Judah, which was the most considerable of the twelve; and lastly, the happiness it had of being sanctified by the presence, actions, miracles, and death of Jesus Christ, has given it the name of the Holy Land, which it retains to this day.
The first inhabitants of this land therefore were the Canaanites, who were descended from Canaan, and the eleven sons of that patriarch. Here they multiplied extremely: trade and war were their first occupations; these gave rise to their riches, and the several colonies scattered by them over almost all the islands and maritime provinces of the Mediterranean. The measure of their idolatry and abominations was completed, when God delivered their country into the hands of the Israelites. In St Athanasius's time, the Africans still said they were descended from the Canaanites; and it is said, that the Punic tongue was almost entirely the same with the Canaanitish and Hebrew language. The colonies which Cadmus carried into Thebes in Bœotia, and his brother Cilix into Cilicia, came from the stock of Canaan. The isles of Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, Cyprus, Corfu, Majorca and Minorca, Gades and Ebusus, are thought to have been peopled by the Canaanites. Bochart, in his large work entitled Canaan, has set all this matter in a good light.
Many of the old inhabitants of the north-west of the land of Canaan, however, particularly on the coast or territories of Tyre and Sidon, were not driven out by the children of Israel, whence this tract seems to have retained the name of Canaan a great while after those
those other parts of the country, which were better inhabited by the Israelites, had lost the said name. The Greeks called this tract, inhabited by the old Canaanites along the Mediterranean sea, Phœnicia; the more inland parts, as being inhabited partly by Canaanites, and partly by Syrians, Syrophœnicia: and hence the woman said by St. Matthew (xv. 22.) to be a woman of Canaan, whose daughter Jesus cured, is said by St. Mark (vii. 26.) to be a Syrophœnician by nation as she was a Greek by religion and language.