Phoenicians

You probably have heard about or read about or talked to people about the ancient Phoenicians. In this blog, I simply want to encourage you to learn more about the Phoenicians. I plan to go more in depth in future blogs on the Phoenicians, but right now, here are a few highlights to get you started.

Go to Wikipedia under "Phoenicia," and you will get a lot of good introductory information.

Go to the entries under "Phoenicia" in The New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible and The Anchor Bible Dictionary. These articles include a lot to introductory information with maps and pictures.

For a good history of the Phoenicians, two contemporary authors are: Sabatani Moscati, The Phoenicians, London, 1968. Glenn E. Markoe, Phoenicians, 2000.

Here are a few highlights which I think will be of interest to you.

1. Phoenicia is a land along the coast of North Israel. The Phoenicians were the great navigators and sailors of the ancient world. Their main cities were Tyre and Sidon. The Old Testament has much to say about these cities. See, for example, Isaiah 23; Ezekiel 26-28.

2. Phoenicia was renowned in antiquity for the production of fabrics in PURPLE extracted from the Murex gastropods, and whelk were crushed together in an alkaline solution. When decanted and used for dyeing, this solution was practically colorless in the container. But when textiles like wool, silk, or cotton were taken out of the bath, they began to become purple in contact with oxygen in the air. By the way, PURPLE and WHITE is ACU's color.

3. Among famous characters in the Old Testament are:
a. Hiram, king of Tyre, who worked with David and Solomon in preparing and building the Jerusalem temple in the tenth century B. C. 2 Samuel 5:11-12; 1 Kings 5:8-12; 1 Chronicles 14:1; 22:4.
b. Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of Sidon. She married Ahab, king of North Israel. 1 Kings 16:29-34; 18; 21.

4. The main deity of the Phoenicians was Baal, but there are others.

5. Archaeologically, and for biblical interest, scholars have discovered a huge amount of Canaanite myths and legends and other types of materials from Ras Shamra-Ugarit. Numerous scholarly books and articles have been published on the language we now call Ugaritic.

This is just a "bare beginning." I hope this will interest you. An article appeared in the National Geographic in October 2004 on the Phoenicians. You might want to read that article with the maps and pictures.

Let me hear from YOU. Are you interested in things like THE PHOENICIANS? They are of great interest to me. I will plug in a blog every now and then on the Phoenicians. Let me know what you would like to discuss.

John Willis