passed on their invention to the old Canaanites.

After the Hebrews came it was not long before ambitious Hebrew boys
and girls were staring at the queer marks in the inscriptions which
they found here and there, over the gates of Canaanite cities or on
the tombs of Canaanite kings. Gradually they learned to spell out
syllables, words, and sentences, and then they learned to copy these
same letters, so that in time the Hebrews were making inscriptions and
books of their own. Among the earliest of these books was one
containing the stories of the creation and the flood. They had been
handed down by word of mouth from one generation to another, until
finally they were gathered into a book. This became a part of the book
of Genesis in our Bible.


NEW TENDENCIES TO SELFISHNESS IN CANAAN

Another and different kind of temptation which the Hebrews met in
Canaan was the tendency to forget their own tribal brothers as they
scattered here and there and settled down, each family with its own
little farm. There were some, naturally, who were more successful as
farmers than others. And those who were unfortunate were not always
the lazy or thriftless. Sickness or accident or some pest which
attacked the grain or the cattle would sometimes wipe out the entire
property of one of those little peasant farmers and leave him and his
children face to face with starvation and death. Now, in the old days
in the desert, as long as the tribe had a crust of bread or a drop of
water, the weakest and poorest could count on a share. But here in
Canaan the poor, the widow, the orphan, did not always feel so surely
the sheltering arms of kindness and brotherhood.