Rediscovering the Bible’s “Bad Guys”

• Event Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2003
• Time: 7:00 pm (CST)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Talk

Archaeology and Literature of the Ancient Canaanites
Wayne Pitard, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Illinois

Reception following.

Until the rise of modern archaeology, the only major source of information about the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the southern Levant before the rise of ancient Israel, was the Bible. In its pages the Canaanites were portrayed as a wicked people with a perverse religion diametrically opposed to that of Israel. The Israelites were portrayed as a completely distinct cultural group, unrelated to the Canaanites, but often tempted to join their religious activities. Over the past seventy-five years, we have come to see that the Bible’s portrayal is an artificial construct, and that in fact Israel was very closely related culturally to the Canaanites.

This lecture will look at the major discoveries that have illuminated Canaanite culture, focusing on the spectacular and continuing discovery of the only surviving library of Canaanite religious and literary texts at the site of Ugarit, Syria. These texts have revolutionized our understanding of Canaanite religion and also the origins of Israelite religious beliefs.