By R.E. Olsen
My brothers and sisters, please read this article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/science/ancient-canaanites-bible-lebanon.html
New York Times science reporter Nicholas St. Fluer claims that a study of DNA recovered from remains found in Lebanon contradicts a Biblical story that an ancient war wiped out the group.
St. Fluer writes, “There is a story in the Hebrew Bible that tells of God’s call for the annihilation of the Canaanites, a people who lived in what are now Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and the Palestinian territories thousands of years ago.”
He quotes Deuteronomy Chapter 20, Verse 17: “You shall not leave alive anything that breathes,” God said in the passage. “But you shall utterly destroy them.” (I invite you to read the entire chapter.)
After quoting the Holy Scripture, St. Fluer continues on as follows:
“But a genetic analysis published on Thursday has found that the ancient population survived that divine call for their extinction, and their descendants live in modern Lebanon.”
St. Fluer then quotes Chris Tyler-Smith, a geneticist with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute: “We can see the present-day Lebanese can trace most of their ancestry to the Canaanites… They derive just over 90 percent of their ancestry from the Canaanites.”
Has this demonstrated that the Bible said something that is false?
Has this shown that scientific prowess, DNA analysis, debunks the Word of God?
On the contrary, St. Fluer conveniently leaves out the following verse, written after Deuteronomy…
“The tribe of Ephraim failed to drive out the Canaanites living in Gezer, so the Canaanites continued to live there among them” (Judges 1:29).
Over 1,000 years later we find in Matthew 15:21-28…
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.”
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”
“Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.
Then Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
So the descendants of the Canaanites do indeed dwell among us. Again and forever more, the Word of God shows itself to be true, corroborated by the NY Times.
Timothy exhorts us to study the Bible “to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15 KJV).
Study your Bible, and you won’t be fooled by those who seek to mislead you.