The Patriarch Canaan: Classical Armstrongism’s Stance against Racial Intermarriage

 

Canaanites in an Egyptian Wall Painting.  Canaanites are on the left and Egyptians are on the right wearing white aprons.

The Patriarch Canaan:

Classical Armstrongism’s Stance against Racial Intermarriage

By NeoDromos 

Consider what God specifically says about social fellowship and interracial marriage. Speaking to Israelites about the sons of Canaan, the son of Ham, God said: "Neither shalt thou make marriages with them: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son (Deut. 7:3).     – Herman Hoeh, “The Race Question”, 1957.

Intermarriage between the four primary races — white, yellow, brown, and black — is sin. God says so. And it is God who determines what sin is.     – Herman Hoeh, “The Race Question”, 1957.

“From North Africa the dark-skinned Canaanites migrated to West Africa and are called "Negroes" today.”      – Herman Hoeh, “The Origin of the Nations!”, 1957.

In the period between the Days of Unleavened Bread and Pentecost, God began to establish Israel in the land of promise. And the land of promise was already occupied by tribes of Canaanites. These people became highly important to policy formation in the Worldwide Church of God (WCG). The edifice of Armstrongism’s policy on racial intermarriage is built on a theological foundation of error involving the Canaanites. We only know what Deuteronomy 7:3, quoted above, really says when we know who the Canaanites are racially. If this pivotal scripture has been misunderstood and improperly founded then the edifice will collapse. The quotations above all come from documents published in 1957. They represent the view from the vantage point of Classical Armstrongism, the Armstrongism that Herbert W. Armstrong left intact at his death. Post-Classical Armstrongism, the praxis of modern denominations derived from the now-defunct WCG, may differ from this Classical view. This article centers on the Biblical and biological validity of the Classical Armstrongist dogma of racial intermarriage. 

Who are the Canaanites Racially?

The West African Blacks are not Canaanites. In fact, Canaanites were not Blacks at all. While there are a number of ways that one might arrive at this conclusion, modern genetic science provides an elegant and direct verdict. At the outset, it is important to recognize that Herman Hoeh did not have the genetics to rely on as he developed his understanding of anthropology. He relied on the creative interpretation of ancient historical sources – sources that were written to different and less reliable standards of fidelity than modern writing. And conclusions that are developed in this way cannot be tested in a laboratory as the results of genetic analysis can be. One can only speculate what direction Hoeh’s writing might have taken if he had had the results of the field of genetics available to him.

Dr. Spencer Wells was at one time a National Geographic Explorer in residence and is the geneticist that contributed to the video documentary “Quest for the Phoenicians” (National Geographic, 2004). Wells established that the ancient Canaanites were the Phoenicians of later history. And the Phoenicians became the modern-day Lebanese. Wells did not do this by sifting through soft, high-risk resources such as classical history or noting similarities in names – a Hoehist methodology. This was done by hard science – he traced actual molecular genetic connections – a scientific and deterministic methodology. (See The Quest For The Phoenicians).

Wells’ findings were recently corroborated by scientists at the Welcome Sanger Institute, a British genetics research institute. These scientists sequenced the genomes of four ancient Canaanites dating from around 4,000 years ago. From the Welcome Sanger website:

“The Bronze Age Canaanites, later known as the Phoenicians, introduced many aspects of society that we know today – they created the first alphabet, established colonies throughout the Mediterranean and were mentioned several times in the Bible….However, historical records of the Canaanites are limited…. Experts have long debated who the Canaanites were genetically, what happened to them, who their ancestors were and if they had any descendants today…. In the first study of its kind, scientists have uncovered the genetics of the Canaanite people and a firm link with people living in Lebanon today. The team discovered that more than 90 per cent of present-day Lebanese ancestry is likely to be from the Canaanites …”

The research was published in the journal of the American Society of Human Genetics, “Continuity and Admixture in the Last Five Millennia of Levantine History from Ancient Canaanite and Present-Day Lebanese Genome Sequences”, Volume 101, Issue 2, P274-282, August 03, 2017.

The ancient Canaanites and their modern-day descendants the Lebanese are closely related to the Jewish people. Both are principally Y chromosome haplogroup J. A study that supports this is cited on the website ScienceDaily:

“The study, published in the May 9 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that Jewish men shared a common set of genetic signatures with non-Jews from the Middle East, including Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese, and these signatures diverged significantly from non-Jewish men outside of this region.” 

 

The salient conclusion affecting Armstrongism is that when the OT forbids intermarriage with Canaanites, the theological backbone of the Armstrongist view on racial intermarriage, it is not speaking of interracial marriage but intercultural or interreligious marriage. The Canaanites and the Jews are not only of the same race but are closely related within that race. 

The Occupants of the Far-flung Lands Belonging to “Israel”

The Armstrongists believed that the descendants of Canaan encompassed many different peoples both in ancient times and the present. They were peoples who occupied lands that were colonized by the British. These people were all viewed as biological descendants of Canaan and their dispossession was viewed as advocated by the Old Testament. The chart below shows some of these people and their principal haplogroups. 

People	Principal Haplogroup
Lebanese (the actual descendants of Canaan)	J
Jews (closely related to Canaanites)	J
Afro-Americans	E
Native Americans	Q, rarely P
Australian Aborigines	C, K
Maori	C, Others

 

If the pre-occupation concept is true, one gets plausible conformity to the events of the Old Testament and confirmation of Anglo-Israelism. But that is genetically impossible. Within a limited number of generations over a few thousand years as required by the so-called “Table of Nations” (A literary flair of the KJV translators - Biblically termed the families or ‘clans of the sons of Noah”) and Biblical chronology, the kind of diversity shown in the table above cannot be achieved based on the computed rate of mutation. This “clan of the sons of Noah” genealogy in Genesis may be Bronze Age allegory but it seems likely that it is a clan chart of the descendants of a single man just as the Genesis 10 states. Further, the hierarchy of haplogroups imprinted on the human genome has a fixed logical design and haplogroup J (Canaan) could never give rise to haplogroup E (African Blacks) because E occurs logically earlier in the human genomic hierarchy than J. 

 
It is clear that occupying land colonized by the British was not a criterion for being racially descended from Canaan. In fact, the British never displaced the actual Canaanites, the Lebanese. Although the idea of the British dispossessing the modern-day descendants of Canaan would be a nice proof of Anglo-Israelism, it simply does not fit history or biological reality.

 

Not Destined to be Slaves 

The Genesis statement attributed to Noah that Canaan would be a servant of servants is not racially relevant to African Blacks. It also does not seem to be empirically relevant to the Lebanese. How the statement relates to any people is not clear. And the view that somehow God is approving of the enslavement of Blacks and that there is a sense of righteousness one can feel in the slave economy of the Old South is a grave error. It is a viewpoint that is uncharitable and unchristian. It is in no way rooted in theology. Rather, it is rooted in greed. Southerners with means sought to consolidate lands into large plantations that were then operated using slave labor. The purpose was solely acquisitive. And concomitant to this was the oppression of poor White Southerners who were landless and jobless because of the slave economy. Not only did the Confederacy fight for the preservation of the slave economy, it inevitably fought for the continued exclusion of poor White Southerners from participation in economic well-being. Apologists for Anglo-Israelism may seek to transform the unethical institution of slavery into Godliness by invoking the account of Canaan in Genesis but that has no place in Christianity. 

The Implementation of Policy Forbidding Racial Intermarriage

By this time it is undeniable that Deuteronomy 7:3 and similar scriptures are not talking about racial intermarriage. These admonitions are speaking of interreligious marriage. This is true also of the intermarriage statements made in Ezra and Nehemiah. The Jews had been intermarrying with the people of the land and on the list were the people of Ashdod, Moab, and Ammon. All three groups are closely related to the Jews and of the same race. The people of Moab and Ammon are actually Hebrews and David was part Moabite.

Racial intermarriage may be forbidden by various organizations for a variety of reasons. What the organizations cannot do is use the Bible to justify such a policy. The Bible focuses on the issue of religion, not human breeding.

Racial purity is the goal of forbidding interracial marriage. Foundational to this idea is the definition of the concept of race. And there is no really deterministic boundary to this definition and, hence, no real ability for anyone to form a criterion for racial category. Haplogroup does not seem to aid in this quest. 

Haplogroup I in Scandinavia and Haplogroup R in Britain are genetically quite distant from each other but most would regard these people to be of the White race because of the simple criterion of appearance. So it is unlikely that Europeans can be thought of as racially pure by the haplogroup standard. For some race is about appearance and geographic residence. My hypothesis is that most people think tribally instead of racially. Race is a far more locally bounded concept than the broad idea of haplogroup.

Racial purity is a myth. Europeans are a combination of haplogroups R, G, I, and a little E and J. I, G and R represent three separate invasions of Europe. “I” people are the early Hunter/Gatherers. “G” people are the later Agriculturalists and “R” people are Steppe Pastoralists. The genetic distance is great between some of these haplogroups. In any case, the idea that Gerald Waterhouse promoted that Herbert W. Armstrong was pure in his generations like Noah (this is a misunderstanding of the intent of the Hebrew) is untenable. At a minimum, HWA had Neanderthal ancestry like other Europeans.

Epilogue

Canaan was a very important patriarch for the Worldwide Church of God. He could arguably be said to rival Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Nimrod in importance. The full weight of the WCG policy on racial intermarriage rested on the racial identity of Canaan and his descendants. Herman Hoeh, interpreting ancient and suspect historical sources, misidentified the Canaanites principally as West African Blacks. From this error burgeoned policies, attitudes, ethics, anthropology, manners, and customs within the WCG. The modern science of genetics has pulled the keystone from this edifice.

This article is not an advocacy for racial intermarriage. Marriage is a difficult relationship to enter into and sustain. A fallen man and a fallen woman in a fallen society attempt to form a nuclear family. The prospects are not good. Everything that can be done should be done to give such a relationship a chance for success – this may include racial comparability. And ultimately it is the grace of God that leads to a successful marriage. This article does advocate the view that the Bible is not a breeding manual for humans. To assert that it is, is to engage in eisegesis. And inevitably it is accompanied by unChristian ideas about what races are superior and inferior.