But the Amalekites were not Canaanites. They were Arabians who were moving to invade Egypt, which had been devastated by the natural catastrophe that precipitated the Exodus led by Moses. The followers of Moses (Israelite clans plus a "mixed multitude" of displaced Egyptians, organized into tribes by Moses) met the Amalekites and fought an inconclusive battle before resuming their oppositely-directed migrations. The Amalekites then conquered Egypt (remembered by the Egyptians as "Hyksos"--shepherd kings, from the semitic root "malek", meaning "king") and became "first among the nations" (prophecy of Balaam in Judges). When the Egyptians finally destroyed the Hyksos power, the Israelites under Saul conquered the Hyksos city closest to Palestine. But it was clearly not genocide--Saul refused to kill the Amalekite leader "Agag" and for this reason Samuel broke off all relations with him; moreover, shortly thereafter David had to fight off Amalekite raiders near Sharuhen.
>Watch out trying to take anything before King Solomon as based in any solid
>factual history.
>
>Present theories, as far as I understand, hold that it is more likely that
>the 'Hebrews' were a local Cananite tribe who usurped political control
>rather than tribes from further East in Iraq as the Abraham story would tell
>you.
"Present theories," based on a vastly overstretched Egyptian chronology and rooted in contempt for oral traditions like those recorded in the Bible, offer nothing but incoherent confusion. Reconstruction of an accurate chronology of those times is very much an ongoing process--the main variant lines are represented by David Rohl "Pharaohs and Kings," Peter James et. al. "Centuries of Darkness," and Immanuel Velikovsky "Ages in Chaos."
In any case, Abraham and Irak have nothing to do with it. The Mosaic Israelites came from Egypt under catastrophic conditions.
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64