Phoenicia

E3 on the Map.

Region. (Phoenix, plur. Phoenices, in Greek means 'purple'). The name Phoenicia also appears as Phenice and Phenicia. These people were Canaanites, and in the 9th century B.C. the Greeks gave the new appellation Phoenicians to those Canaanites who lived on the seacoast and traded with the Greeks. Phoenicia was a narrow coastal territory from Mount Carmel, or from Acco, north to Acco or Nahr el-Kebir (Eleutherus), in some periods reaching 200 miles in length. At some points the territory was included from Mount Carmel to the Orontes River.

By 1250 B.C. the Phoenicians were well established as the navigators and traders of the Mediterranean world, enjoying the commerce that had once been in the hands of the Aegeans. Their communities were organized into city-states; the greatest of these were Tyre and Sidon; others were Tripoli, Aradus, and Byblos. These were the home cities, but wherever the Phoenicians journeyed across the Mediterrean they founded posts and colonies that later became independent states. Of these the most important were Utica and Carthage (founded in the 9th century B.C.).

In NT times Phoenicia extended as far S as Dor, sixteen miles S of Tyre. Its main cities were Tyre and Sidon. In Roman times the cities continued to exist, but Hellenistic culture had absorbed the last traces of Phoenician civilization.

At the present time it consists of the Republic of Lebanon and South Latakia.

Obad. 1:20; Acts 11:19; 15:3; 21:2.

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