To begin with, there was no single group called the Canaanites; the term is a general designation for all of the various tribes who inhabited the highlands, valleys, and coastal regions of the land of Canaan (the southern Levant, comprising parts of modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel-Palestine). That has made it next to impossible to cleanly single out Israelite culture, however that is defined, from the larger umbrella of Canaanite culture. Many scholars now believe that the Israelites were of Canaanite stock, part of a hill-dwelling clan that had settled the highlands and then
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