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It is difficult to give an unqualified answer to the size of biblical Canaan, for a number of reasons.

Today, we generally think of nation-states, with defined borders and several major population centres. However, prior to the tenth century, there were no territorial states in the Levant. The Canaanites occupied a number of city-states, each consisting of one city and its surrounding villages and countryside.

Almost all the peoples of the Levant were semitic and it is a matter of judgement as to whether the people of one region or another should be included with the Canaanites. Most scholars tend to avoid this judgement by simply referring to the West Semitic people, a term which includes the Hebrew people. If, as most scholars say, the Hebrew people were West Semitic people, when did they cease to be Canaanites and become Israelites?

The borders tended to change over time, due to incursions from other areas. These incursions not only came from the north and east, but from the west, as Philistines and other Sea People settled the land. Around 1250 BCE, the Philistines arrived and settled the fertile coastal plain and foothills from the Egyptian border north to near the present-day Tel Aviv. Other Sea People occupied parts of the coastal plain north from Philistia.

The biblical Canaanites can be considered to have occupied most of Palestine, apart from Philistia and the Negev Desert, which remained uninhabited until the arrival of the Nabataeans, as well as Lebanon, where their descendants became known as the Phoenicians, and western Syria. Western Semites occupied perts of the trans-Jordan region, although the biblical authors did not seem to regard them as Canaanites. The Palestinian hinterland can be considered as part of Canaanite territory, although it was largely unoccupied until the arrival of the Hebrew people around 1250 BCE.

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13y ago

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