Abstract
There is a widespread idea that the people we call ‘Phoenician’ called themselves ‘Canaanite’. This article argues that the only positive evidence for this hypothesis, a single line in the standard editions of Augustine's unfinished commentary on Paul's letter to the Romans, where he claims that ‘if you ask our local peasants what they are, they answer ‘Canaanite’', is prima facie highly unreliable as historical evidence, and on closer inspection in fact is almost certainly an editorial error: our examination of all the manuscripts — the first to have been carried out — established that what the peasants were really asked in the archetype was not quid sint — ‘what they are’ — but quid sit — ‘what is it’, a phrase that would most obviously refer to their language. While this new reconstruction of the archetype does not necessarily mean that quid sit was what Augustine originally wrote, this passage cannot be used as positive evidence for Canaanite identity in late antique North Africa, or anywhere else.
Published Version
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