Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Phoenicians part 1

The Phoenicians are complicated , interesting , and important . History has a strange way of repeating itself , the Phoenician system of commerce is very similar to the current world system . The Phoenicians with the best naval in the world at the time ,  had colonies with Carthage (their most important colony) ultimately becoming more powerful than the Phoenician mainland (sound familar?) . The best way to study the Phoenicians through the Bible would be to look at what the scriptures say about Tyre , it's chief city.  In Isaiah 23 Tyre is called both the daughter of Sidon ( verse 12) and daughter of Tarshish (verse 10) :

Pass through thy land as a river, O daughter of Tarshish: there is no more strength.
He stretched out his hand over the sea, he shook the kingdoms: the LORD hath given a commandment against the merchant city, to destroy the strong holds thereof.
And he said, Thou shalt no more rejoice, O thou oppressed virgin, daughter of Zidon: arise, pass over to Chittim; there also shalt thou have no rest. 
                                                                                                Isaiah 23 : 10 -12

This is really a major clue as to why Tyre and the ships of Tarshish are often linked together in the Bible , when looking at secular sources you come across this :

The Phoenicians called themselves Canaanites, and modern researchers tell us they were the descendants of two groups, the early Canaanites who inhabited the coast of Lebanon, and the Sea People who invaded Lebanon about l200 B.C. The early Canaanites had a limited ship building technology, sailing only flat bottomed barges that hugged the shore. The invading Sea People, some of whom stayed on, introduced among other things, a much more sophisticated maritime technology. Thus their descendants, the Phoenicians, appeared on the scene with an established maritime tradition, and the technology to build ships with a keeled hull. This allowed them to sail the open seas, and as a result, the Phoenicians developed a flourishing sea trade. They settled along the coast of Lebanon, in a loose federation of city states that were built on islands of rocky promontories which provided natural harbors for ship building and trade. The cities, Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, Arqad, studded the seacoast like jewels, and their wealth became legendary. At the height of their trading empire, they imported copper from Cyprus; linen from Egypt; ivory from India; tin from Spain; horses from Anatolla; and peacocks from Africa. They became famous for their highly prized purple dye extracted from the murex snail, and for the fine timber cut from their forests. - Pat Remler.


How interesting how this sounds identical to Isaiah 23 : the daughter of Sidon (Canaanite) and the daughter of Tarshish (sea peoples). Thomas Jefferson's YDNA group is Haplogroup T (formerly K2) , this would best be described as Tarshish , and than E-V22 would best be described at Sidon . Here is a map of the Phoenician colonies , the yellow is Phoenician : 


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