(burning), a Christian at Rome whom St. Paul salutes. (Romans 16:14) (A.D.55.)
Pseudo-Hippolytus makes him one of the seventy disciples and bishop of Marathon.
Phoebe
(radiant) the first and one of the most important of the Christian persons the detailed mention
of whom nearly all the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. (A.D.55.) What is said of her,
(Romans 16:1,2) is worthy of special notice because of its bearing on the question of the deaconesses
of the apostolic Church.
Phoenice, Phoenicia
(land of palm trees) a tract of country, of which Tyre and Sidon were the principal cities, to the
north of Palestine, along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea bounded by that sea on the west, and
by the mountain range of Lebanon on the east. The name was not the one by which its native
inhabitants called it, but was given to it by the Greeks, from the Greek word for the palm tree. The
native name of Phoenicia was Kenaan (Canaan) or Kna, signifying lowland, so named in contrast
to the ad joining Aram, i.e. highland, the Hebrew name of Syria. The length of coast to which the
name of Phoenicia was applied varied at different times.
•What may be termed Phoenicia proper was a narrow undulating plain, extending from the pass of
Ras el-Beyad or Abyad, the Promontorium Album of the ancients, about six miles south of Tyre,
to the Nahr el-Auly, the ancient Bostrenus, two miles north of Sidon. The plain is only 28 miles
in length. Its average breadth is about a mile; but near Sidon the mountains retreat to a distance
of two miles, and near Tyre to a distance of five miles.
•A longer district, which afterward became entitled to the name of Phoenicia, extended up the coast
to a point marked by the island of Aradus, and by Antaradus toward the north; the southern
boundary remaining the same as in Phoenicia proper. Phoenicia, thus defined is estimated to have
been about 120 miles in length; while its breadth, between Lebanon and the sea, never exceeded
20 miles, and was generally much less. The whole of Phoenicia proper is well watered by various
streams from the adjoining hills. The havens of Tyre and Sidon afforded water of sufficient depth
for all the requirements of ancient navigation, and the neighboring range of the Lebanon, in its
extensive forests, furnished what then seemed a nearly inexhaustible supply of timber for
ship-building. Language and race .—The Phoenicians spoke a branch of the Semitic language so
closely allied to Hebrew that Phoenician and Hebrew, though different dialects, may practically
be regarded as the same language. Concerning the original race to which the Phoenicians belonged,
nothing can be known with certainty, because they are found already established along the
Mediterranean Sea at the earliest dawn of authentic history, and for centuries afterward there is
no record of their origin. According to Herodotus, vii. 89, they said of themselves in his time that
they came in days of old from the shores of the Red Sea and in this there would be nothing in the
slightest degree improbable as they spoke a language cognate to that of the Arabians, who inhabited
the east coast of that sea. Still neither the truth nor the falsehood of the tradition can now be proved.
But there is one point respecting their race which can be proved to be in the highest degree probable,
and which has peculiar interest as bearing on the Jews, viz., that the Phoenicians were of the same
race as the Canaanites. Commerce, etc .—In regard to Phoenician trade, connected with the
Israelites, it must be recollected that up to the time of David not one of the twelve tribes seems to
have possessed a single harbor on the seacoast; it was impossible there fore that they could become
a commercial people. But from the time that David had conquered Edom, an opening for trade
was afforded to the Israelites. Solomon continued this trade with its king, obtained timber from
frankie
(Frankie)
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