Asher and Phoenicia

The first mention of Tyre in The Bible is in Joshua 19:29 as a City in the Allotment of Asher.

There is a lot of overlap between what the Greeks and later Romans called Phoenicia and what was allotted to the Tribe of Asher in the days of Joshua.  Zidon/Sidon itself is listed in Joshua 19:28.  Dor was basically the southernmost city of what they called Phoenicia and Joshua 17:11 lists it as a City originally meant for Asher but that Manasseh wound up taking.  And Aphek/Aphik of Joshua 19:30  is Apheca up in the Jibel district of Lebanon east of Byblos and west of Baalbek.

I also have a hunch the name of the nearby Jezzine District of Lebanon comes from the Jesuite clan of Asher from Number 26:44.  Of course a few verses later there are a couple clans of Naphtali with arguably more similar names but I feel Jezzine is to far east to be Nephtali.

Of course many of these are cities the Canaanites weren’t chased out of, as we’re told of Dor in Judges 1:27 and five proper Asher allotted cities in Judges 1:31, and the five in that verse weren’t even made tributaries like the others, they were fully independent.  That verse lists Zidon, Acco/Acho (the city known today as Akka and to the Crusaders as Acre but in Acts was Potlemias), and Aphek.  The Asherites are also described different then the tribes preceding them in Judges 21, they dwell among the Canaanites rather then the Canaanites dwelling among them.

But it doesn’t mention Tyre, and that gets me to wondering, was Tyre an Asherite city for more of its ancient history than we usually think?

Hiram was the King of Tyre contemporary with David and at least the early reign of Solomon.  1 Chronicles 22:4 and 1 Kings 5:6 refers to Hiram and his kingdom as distinct from the Zidonians, not from Sidon as a city but from the Sidonians as a tribe.  It seems weird that he is merely allied with the House of David and not part of their Kingdom if he’s an Israelite, but maybe being surrounded by so many Canaanite cities cut them off.

Isaiah 23 refers to Tyre as the Daughter of Sidon, meaning the population of Tyre had become Sidonian by then.  And other Prophets like Joel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah constantly pair Tyre and Zidon together as practically twin cities, but all these are much later, so when did the change happen?

Ethbaal/Ithobaal the father of Jezebel you may have seen referred to as a King of Tyre, but The Bible in 1 Kings 16:31 calls him king of the Sidonians and never mentioned Tyre in its Ahab & Jezebel narrative at all.  The source for him being a King of Tyre is chiefly the Phoenician Historian Meander as quoted by Josephus in Against Apion.  These sources also tell us he did not descend from Tyre’s prior Kings but founded a new Dynasty, he was a Priest of Astarte who killed the previous king Phelles implying this was a Coup d'etat perhaps religiously motivated.  

But that also wasn’t the first time this happened, Phelles’s own dynasty gained power the same way decades earlier.  According to Meander Hiram/Hirom was succeeded by a Son then a Grandson but then his Dynasty ended.  Meander’s names for the Father, Son and Grandson of Hirom seem to imply Tyre was already worshiping Baal and Astarte even then, but those names could have been altered by the later Baalist record keepers.

When you study the Etymology of Phoenicia and why the Greeks gave that name to this region, you'll discover it's tied to a Greek word for Purple and to Phoenicia being a source of Dates and a rare Purple Dye, and that this is also tied to how Purple became a color associated with Royalty, this Purple is even specifically associated with Tyre being called Tyrian Purple.  

So Jacob's blessing for Asher in Genesis 49:20 is arguably fulfilled by Asher being Phoenicia, the Royal Dainties are the Dates and Tyrian Purple Dye.  Moses' blessing from Deuteronomy 33:24 can fit as well.

I also think the Rehob paired with Aphek in Joshua 19:30 and Judges 1:31 is probably the same as the Bethrehob in Judges 18:28, and I suspect that site is Yanouh north of modern Afik in the Byblos District.  The Asherites never drove out the Canaanites there but Dan after leaving their original allotment did.  This region is also where The Greeks believed the Adonis mythology happened, the Canaanites preferred Baal to Adonai as a word for Lord applied to the Divine, so I think the Adonis cult had its origins in Polytheistic Israelites.

1 Kings 15:18 in the Hebrew and Young's Literal Translation says Giblites (people of Byblos) were involved in building The Temple.  These were workers supplied by King Hiram of Tyre and led by the very similarly named half Danite Architect.  That architect's Danite mother was also a Widow of Naphtali.

Just as Asher was allotted Western Lebanon up to the Byblos region, Naphtali included Eastern Lebanon directly parallel.  I think the Bethshemesh allotted to Naphtali in Joshua 19:38-39 that they didn't drive the Canaanites out of in Judges 1:33 is Baalbek, because the Greeks called Baalbek Heliopolis like they did the Bethshemesh of Egypt, simply changing House of The Sun to City of The Sun.  As for the Bethanath of those verses, of the already proposed sites for Beth-Anath I favor Aynata or Safad El Battikh both in the Bint Jbeil District of the Nabatieh Governorate of Lebanon.

The Phoenicians had a major influence on the early Prehistory of Ancient Greece.  The Greek Alphabet is basically an adaptation of the Phoenician Alphabet, Aphrodite was basically just Astarte coming to Greece via Phoenician colonies on Cyprus.  This is reflected in Greek mythology in a number of ways but with the Aeolians specifically linking themselves to Tyre, Thebes was supposedly founded by Cadmus (credited with inventing the Alphabet) son of Agenor and brother of Phoenix King of Tyre, while the Heroes of Thesely descend from a woman named Tyro.  

Later in the Hellenistic era Zeno of Citium and Chrysippus of Cios were Hellenized Phoenicians who were core to founding the Stoic School of Philosophy which would be the dominant Theistic school of Greek Philosophy during the era of The New Testament.

I don’t believe in British Israelism so I don’t see this as evidence that the Ancient Greeks as a whole literally primarily genealogically descended from Asher or Dan.  But the cultural influence is interesting, and perhaps adds some poetic symmetry to how, if my theories are correct, the modern Descendants of Asher follow liturgically Greek Rites of Christianity.

As I discussed in my last Lost Tribes post, DNA research seems to show that the Christians of Lebanon are kin to The Jews.  My focus in that post was on arguing for the Maronites being Dan.  But I also think the Christians in the Tyre, Sidon, Jezzine and Nabatieh Districts of Lebanon, as well as the Haifa and Akko districts of Israel mostly descend from Asherites who converted to Christianity at some point in the first four centuries AD.  Those that follow Greek Rites from Asherites who were Hellenized by the First Century, and the Syriacs those who were not Hellenized.  The Melkite Greek Catholics are the largest Christian group in these districts followed by the Greek Orthodox as a somewhat close second.

Acts 11:19 tells us that one of the regions the Hellenized Jewish Christians we met in chapters 6-7 were scattered to during the persecution following the Martyrdom of Stephen was Phenice in the KJV which is a well known shortened form of Phoenicia, these Christians in Phenice are mentioned again in Acts 15:3, 21:3-7 and 27:3-12 where in this time Acco was called Ptolemais.