Canaanites, in the Old Testament, original inhabitants of the land of Canaan. According to the Book of Judges, the Israelites, during the 2nd millennium bc or earlier, gradually subjugated the Canaanite cities. By the end of the reign of Solomon, king of Israel, the Canaanites had virtually been assimilated into the Hebrew people, among whom they appear to have exerted a reactionary religious influence. The Canaanite religion itself was based on the worship of the divinities Baal and Ashtoreth. Biblical scholars now believe that the Hebrew language was derived from Canaanite sources and that the Phoenician language was an early form of Hebrew. Recent discoveries indicate that, before the Hebrew conquest of the south of Canaan, the Canaanites and the Phoenicians constituted a single nation, and that the people now known as the Phoenicians subsequently developed as a separate nation.