What does the land of Canaan symbolize?

Answer 1

A:Wayne T. Pitard (The Oxford History of the Biblical World, Before Israel) says that during the second millennium BCE, Canaan was the name often used for Palestine (the area west of the Jordan River), whose northern boundary fluctuated between southern and central Lebanon.

However, modern scholars generally use the term in referring to the wider region in Syria-Palestine where a substantial cultural continuum defined as Canaanite can be discerned. Encompassing western Palestine, most of Lebanon, and coastal Syria as far north as Ugarit, this more extensive area was never considered a political or cultural unit by its ancient inhabitants.