Hannibal -- The Phoeno-Canaanite

HANNIBAL’S EXPLOITS with elephant chargers have thrilled schoolboys of many generations. His stand against the empire of Rome and his incredible invasion of its vast heartland are familiar enough to all. But comparatively few people realize that this remarkable military genius and his compatriots were, most of them, Old Testament Canaanites -- a carry-over from the days when Joshua and his Israelites disputed with their ancestors for possession of their Promised Land.

In The Life and Death of Carthage, Professor Gilbert Picard explains that, despite its ancient glories, Carthage is now nothing but a ruinous heap in the suburbs of Tunis. It first became known as a refuge for Canaanites driven out of Palestine by Joshua. There is secular testimony of this exodus from Procopius of Caesarea, a reliable fifth-century historian who recorded that, in his day, there was at Tigisis, near modern Tangiers, a column bearing the inscription: “We are they who fled before the face of Joshua, the robber, the son of Nun.” The book describes Carthage as a Phoenician colony. On this, it is important to remember that there were Phoeno-Canaanites and Phoeno-Israelites, for the Mediterranean coastlands of Palestine were inhabited in part by each of these peoples. By the twelfth century B.C. It had become a trading centre, operated chiefly by the merchants of the trafficking city of Canaanite Tyre. The Phoenician inhabitants of Carthage were, in fact, Canaanites. Carthaginian domination developed over most of North Africa and across to Europe, Spain being particularly involved. By 146 B.C., however, its power had been broken and its capital destroyed.

This up-to-date account of Canaanite Carthage is particularly important as showing the westward trend of migration from Bible lands. As has happened so often in more recent centuries, the Canaanite and subsequent treks followed trading routes which had long been traveled. The trails blazed not only by the ships of Tyre but also by the “navy of ships” inaugurated in Israel by the wise and mighty Solomon provided the guide and the “know-how” for those who were westward bound in the following formative centuries of European civilization.

Canaanites in quite considerable numbers reached western regions of the Isles of Britain in the centuries B.C. by way of Spain. We may be sure that their being here brought no comfort to God’s incoming people of Israel. The factor of prime importance is that their wanderings supply incontestable secular proof of migrations from the Holy Land to the Isles of the West. Moreover, the researchers have shown that many of the Phoeno-Canaanites who fled before Joshua had a “western” appearance. From the sculptured portraits of Hannibal it is manifest that he was a man of Hellenic physiognomy, i.e. similar to many northern Europeans of today.

For a correct appraisal of the early colonizers of the Isles of the West -- Motherland of the new nations who proceeded to inaugurate new nations to the West and far South -- it is necessary to realize that the sprinkling of Canaanites, of whom Hannibal was an example, are now part and parcel of the major core of Celto-Saxondom.