DNA Study Shows Bible is Fiction

Researchers sequenced whole genomes from five Canaanites skeletons found in Sidon, Lebanon.

Photo Credit: Ali Hashisho/Reuters/Newscom

Ancient DNA counters biblical account of the mysterious Canaanites | Science | AAAS.

We've known for a long time that the supposed 'history' in the Old Testament is mostly, if not completely, fiction, and I'm not just talking about the frankly ludicrous creation myths in the opening chapters.

As Silberman and Finkelstein showed in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, not only did the events described in Exodus never happen but nor did the destruction of the cities and the Canaanite genocide. Indeed, the Bible contains evidence of its own inaccuracy, being clearly written by people who did not know the history of the times in which they set their tales. Briefly, and by no means exhaustively:

• In Genesis 14:14 we read "And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan." However, 'Dan' was not called Dan in those times, it was called Laish, as we can read in Judges 18:27-29 "And they built a city, and dwelled therein. And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born unto Israel: howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first."
• In Genesis 37:25 we read "And they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt."
  
  Only two little problems here:
  
  • Camels had not been introduced to the area at that time.
  • There was no spice trade; it was introduced during the time of the Syrian Empire much later on.
• Genesis 26:1 "And there was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines unto Gerar."
  
  Just two small problems here too:
  
  • The Philistines had not established themselves in the area at that time.
  • Gerar was a small settlement and not a Philistine stronghold. It was built by the Syrians who replaced the Philistines.

Now we have further evidence that there was no replacement of the Canaanites as related in the reported Genocide on God's orders. This might come as a relief to the many decent Christians who are embarrassed by this casual genocide and infanticide supposedly ordered by their god and carried out on it's behalf, related in a book that they claims is the source of their morals. If only it didn't undermine their claim some sort of divine authority behind the Bible.

This analysis of the DNA from five individual 3,700 year-old skeletons excavated from the city of Sidon, and comparing it to the DNA of 99 modern Lebanese shows that the Canaanites were never exterminated and their descendants still live in the area.

Summary
The Canaanites inhabited the Levant region during the Bronze Age and established a culture that became influential in the Near East and beyond. However, the Canaanites, unlike most other ancient Near Easterners of this period, left few surviving textual records and thus their origin and relationship to ancient and present-day populations remain unclear. In this study, we sequenced five whole genomes from ∼3,700-year-old individuals from the city of Sidon, a major Canaanite city-state on the Eastern Mediterranean coast. We also sequenced the genomes of 99 individuals from present-day Lebanon to catalog modern Levantine genetic diversity. We find that a Bronze Age Canaanite-related ancestry was widespread in the region, shared among urban populations inhabiting the coast (Sidon) and inland populations (Jordan) who likely lived in farming societies or were pastoral nomads. This Canaanite-related ancestry derived from mixture between local Neolithic populations and eastern migrants genetically related to Chalcolithic Iranians. We estimate, using linkage-disequilibrium decay patterns, that admixture occurred 6,600–3,550 years ago, coinciding with recorded massive population movements in Mesopotamia during the mid-Holocene. We show that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age. In addition, we find Eurasian ancestry in the Lebanese not present in Bronze Age or earlier Levantines. We estimate that this Eurasian ancestry arrived in the Levant around 3,750–2,170 years ago during a period of successive conquests by distant populations.

Marc Haber, Claude Doumet-Serhal, Christiana Scheib, Yali Xue, Petr Danecek, Massimo Mezzavilla, Sonia Youhanna, Rui Martiniano, Javier Prado-Martinez, Michał Szpak, Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith, Holger Schutkowski, Richard Mikulski, Pierre Zalloua, Toomas Kivisild, Chris Tyler-Smith
Continuity and Admixture in the Last Five Millennia of Levantine History from Ancient Canaanite and Present-Day Lebanese Genome Sequences
The American Journal of Human Genetics , Volume 0 , Issue 0 DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2017.06.013

© 2017 The Authors.
Published open access
Reprinted under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0)

This finding confirms the findings of an earlier study based on the analysis of ancient DNA recovered from skeletons excavated in Jordan.

The team conclude that the Canaanites were a mixture of local Neolithic people and Chalcolithic people who migrated from Iran at a time of known large-scale population movements in Mesopotamia between 6,600 and 3,550 years ago. There was a further mixing with Eurasian people about 3,750 and 2,170 years ago.

So, unless the Hebrews were genetically indistinguishable from the Bronze Age Canaanites, in other words a schismatic tribe and not some massive migration of people coming into a 'Promised Land' and exterminating the locals, the only way this finding can be accounted for is if the whole 'Promised Land' and Canaanite genocide is fiction. And of course even if it was a local war between rival factions, there is the archaeological evidence that the Canaanite cities were never destroyed but remained fully functional, populated cities throughout the period and even up to the present; populated by the descendants of those Bronze Age inhabitants.

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