Elijah the Canaanite: Elijah was not only Elisha’s mentor he was one of the greatest prophets that ever lived in biblical times. When reading the scriptures of Elijah, I believe you will be mesmerized that Elijah belonged to the bloodline of Canaan. This offspring of Canaan was the first seer to bring someone back to life, I King chapter 17, verses 21-22. YAH protected this offspring of Canaan from drought, death, and persecution. Elijah’s impetuous faith and loyalty earned him the status as the second man in the biblical pages to entre in the presence of YAH in heaven, II King chapter 2, verse 11. I decided to utilize “The New Jerusalem Bible,” instead of utilizing the King James Version to identify Elijah’s ethnic back ground, because the New Jerusalem Bible gives more details of Elijah and his place of birth. In I King chapter 17, verse 1 describes Elijah as a gentile: “Elijah the Tishbite of Tishbe in Gilead.” Tishbe was a city or a small region in Gilead, if Elijah was a Hebrew the scriptures would have describes him as, Elijah of Judah or Elijah of the levi priesthood. Utilizing the book of Joshua chapter 12, verses 1-2, will confirm Elijah’s ethnic identity. When Israel subjugated Canaan’s territories, Gilead was one of them, and most of the denizens of that territory were Amorites. Verse 1: “The king of the country, whom the Israelites conquered and whose territory they took, on the further, eastern side of the Jordan, from the Wadi Arnon to Mount Hermon, with the entire Arabah to the east, were as follows.” Verse 2: “Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon, ruled from Aroer which is on the edge of the Aronon Valley, including the bottom of the valley, half Gilead and as far as the jabbok, the river forming the frontier with the Ammonites.” In the Anchor Bible Dictionary, scholars describe Elijah as a gentile. Bibliography, by Jerome T. Walsh, page 578: “Other readings of the consonantal text have been proposed. The NT vocalizes the text min-tosabe, which is itself an anomaly. It is usually emended by scholars to min-tosebe, “One of the settlers.” This is also the reading of the Targum Jonathan (mtwtby). Elijah, then, would be not a native of Gilead, but a permanent settle there (as opposed to a ger, a temporary resident alien). Cohen (IDB4:653-54) agrees with this reading and proposes further that the gentilic tisbi (revocalized tosebi) specifies not a place of origin but “settler” (tosab) as a social class. He argues that the settlers from whom Elijah stemmed were the Kenites (the Kenites were Black). In the new Strong’s Concise, Concordance of the Bible, describes the Kenites as Canaanite, page 347. “Kenites: a member of a Canaanite tribe.” I disagree with Jerome that Elijah and his people were settlers, and Cohen hypothesis that Elijah was a Kenite. I believe that Elijah was Amorites, the book of Joshua confirm that the Amorites occupied Gilead. Elijah and the rest of the Canaanites ’residents, who lived in the city were called, Tishbite their city name, “Tishbe.” In the book of II Samuel chapter 3, verse 2, one of King David’s Canaanite wives is called, “Ahinoam the Jezreelitess.” Ahinoam and her people lived in a city called Jezreel. Jezreel was a Canaanite city that the tribes of Israel subjugated. The book of Joshua chapter 15, verses 56-57: Verse 56, “And Jezreel, and Jokdeam, and Zanoah.” Verse 57: “Cain, Gibeah, and Timnath, ten cities with their villages”. One thing that Jerome, Cohen and, me agree on, that Elijah was a Gentile. From the book entitled, “The Bloodline between the Canaanites and the Hebrews,” by Richard Poole (2008) pp.28-29.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 19:26:01 +0000