Are Judaism and Christianity henotheistic?
In both the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the Old Testament, deities like Baal, Asherah, Molech, and others are mentioned, especially in relation to the neighboring cultures of Israel, such as the Canaanites and Phoenicians.
Mount Zaphon
It was one of the most significant holy sites for the ancient Canaanites, Phoenicians, and later cultures of the Levant.
The Phoenicians, who inherited much of the Canaanite religious tradition, also held Mount Zaphon in high regard.
The Phoenician city-states, famous for their maritime trade, particularly venerated Baal Zaphon as a protector of sailors.
The association of Mount Zaphon with maritime gods underlined its importance as a religious center for Phoenician sailors.
Mount Hermon
In Phoenician belief systems, the significance of high mountains like Hermon was related to their use as places of ascent.
The Phoenicians often venerated deities such as Baal, and high places like Hermon were dedicated to various deities for ritual observances, including sacrifices and oracular rites.
The Phoenicians and Canaanites associated Hermon with Baal, a major deity in their pantheon.
Popular History of America 1881
Atlantis may have been a fabulous land, but the Phoenicians or Canaanites had a knowledge of a country beyond the sea.
The Phoenician sailors began to strike out beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
The Origin of Our Alphabet
yet been obtained: we can trace it back from nation to nation, and form to form, until we reach the Egyptians, and the archaic forms of the Phœnicians, Hebrews, and Cushites, but.
"According to the Phœnicians, the art of writing was invented by Taautus, or Taut, 'whom the Egyptians call Thouth,' and the Egyptians said it was invented by Thouth, or Thoth, otherwise called 'the first Hermes,' in which we clearly see that both the Phœnicians and Egyptians referred the invention to a period older than their own separate political existence, and to an older nation, from which both peoples received it." (Baldwin's "Prehistoric Nations," p.
The Greeks added to the ancient alphabet the upsilon, shaped like our V or Y, the two forms being used at first indifferently: they added the X sign; they converted the t of the Phœnicians into th, or theta; z and s into signs for double consonants; they turned the Phœnician y (yod) into i (iota).
The letters, then, which we owe to the Phœnicians, are A, B, C, D, E, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, Z.
When the emblems--which were probably first intended for religious inscriptions, where they could be slowly and carefully elaborated--were placed in the hands of a busy, active, commercial people, such as were the Atlanteans, and afterward the Phœnicians, men with whom time was valuable, the natural tendency would be to simplify and condense them; and when the original meaning of the picture was lost, they would naturally slur it, as we find in the letters pp and x of the Maya alphabet, where the figure of the human face remains only in rude lines.
Now it is known that the Phœnicians wrote from right to left, and just as we in writing from left to right slope our letters to the right, so did the Phœnicians slope their letters to the left.
We have seen in the table of alphabets that in every language, from our own day to the time of the Phœnicians, o has been represented by a circle or a circle within a circle.
Now where did the Phœnicians get it?
The Samaritan makes it ; the old Hebrew ; the Moab stone inscription gives it ; the later Phœnicians simplified the archaic form still further, until it became ; then it passed into : the archaic Greek form is ; the later Greeks made , from which it passed into the present form, N.
The Carthaginian Phœnicians gave it more of a rounded form, thus, .
It would, therefore, appear that after the Maya alphabet passed to the Phœnicians they added two new signs for the letters d and r; and it is a singular fact that their poverty of invention seems to have been such that they used to express both d and r, the same sign, with very little modification, which they had already obtained from the Maya alphabet as the symbol for b.
It would appear as if both the Phœnicians and Egyptians drew their alphabet from a common source, of which the Maya is a survival, but did not borrow from one another.
All this proves that the similarities in question did not come from Phœnicians having accidentally visited the shores of America, but that we have before us the origin, the source, the very matrix in which the Phœnician alphabet was formed.
Genesis contains a history of Atlantis
The Hebrews are a branch of the great family of which that powerful commercial race, the Phœnicians, who were the merchants of the world fifteen hundred years before the time of Christ, were a part.
The Question of Complexion
The name of the Phœnicians signified red. Himyar, the prefix of the Himyaritic Arabians, also means red, and the Arabs were painted red on the Egyptian monuments.
He groups the Assyrians, Phœnicians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Andalusians, Bretons, dark Welshmen, and people of the Caucasus into one body, and designates them as "dark whites." The Himyarite Arabs, as I have shown, derived their name originally from their red color, and they were constantly depicted on the Egyptian monuments as red or light
Corroborating Circumstances
The Barbarians who are alluded to by Homer and Thucydides were a race of ancient navigators and pirates called Cares, or Carians, who occupied the isles of Greece before the Pelasgi, and antedated the Phœnicians in the control of the sea.
The Indentity of the Civilizations of the Old World and the New
The Phœnicians worshipped Baal and Moloch; the one represented the beneficent, and the other the injurious powers of the sun.
The Peruvians, Mexicans, Central Americans, Egyptians, Phœnicians, and Hebrews each had a powerful hereditary priesthood.
The Phœnicians believed in an evil spirit called Zebub; the Peruvians had a devil called Cupay.
The Phœnicians,
Some Consideration of the Deluge Legends
The legends of the Phœnicians, preserved by Sanchoniathon, tell us that Taautos, or Taut, was the inventor of the alphabet and of the art of writing.
The Deluge of the Bible
We will see hereafter that the Hebrews and their Flood legend are closely connected with the Phœnicians, whose connection with Atlantis is established in many ways.
It refers altogether to the Mediterranean races, the Aryans, the Cushites, the Phœnicians, the Hebrews, and the Egyptians.
The Destruction of Atlantis described in the deluge legends
And hence, whether we turn to the Hebrews, the Aryans, the Phœnicians, the Greeks, the Cushites, or the inhabitants of America, we find everywhere traditions of the Deluge;
The Story of Atlantis
The Phœnicians apparently were the first nation in the Eastern Hemisphere to use a phonetic alphabet, the characters being regarded as mere signs for sounds.
It would be natural to assume that the Egyptians were an early colony from Atlantis (as they actually were) and that they carried away with them the primitive type of writing which has thus left its traces on both[8] hemispheres, while the Phœnicians, who were a sea-going people, obtained and assimilated the later form of alphabet during their trading voyages with the people of the west.
Diodorus Siculus relates that the Phœnicians discovered "a large island in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules several days' sail from the coast of Africa."
The early Etruscans, the Phœnicians, including the Carthaginians and the Shumero-Akkads, were branches of this race, while the Basques of to-day have probably more of the Akkadian than of any other blood which flows in their veins.
The Atlantean-Amazon War
The Atlanteans are either an indigenous people dwelling about Mount Atlas in North Africa or are based on the Phoenician colonies of the region.
The Oera Linda Book
Is it more difficult to believe that the early Frisians, being hardy and intrepid marine adventurers, sailed to the Mediterranean, and even proceeded farther, than that the Phœnicians sailed to England for tin, and to the Baltic for amber?
They attribute the introduction of it to Kadmus, a Phenician.
The names of their oldest letters, from Alpha to Tau, agree so exactly with the names of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, with which the Phenician will have been nearly connected, that we cannot doubt that the Hebrew was the origin of the Phenician.
But the form of their letters differs so entirely from that of the Phenician and Hebrew writing, that in that particular no connection can be thought of between them.
The name Kadmus comes too near the word Kadhemar for us not to believe that Kadmus simply meant a Phenician.
His name was Teunis, called familiarly by his followers Neef Teunis, or Cousin Teunis, who had chosen the Mediterranean as the destination of his expeditions, and must have been deified by the Tyrians at the time when the Phenician navigators began to extend their voyages so remarkably, sailing to Friesland in order to obtain British tin, northern iron, and amber from the Baltic, about 2000 years before Christ.
The voyage came to an end without any advantage, because the Joniers and the Phœnicians were always quarrelling, so that Nearchus himself could not keep them in order.
When we were at a cable and a half distance from them the Phœnicians began to shoot, but Friso did not reply till the first arrow fell six fathoms from his ship.
The Phœnicians (Puniers or Carthaginians) are a bastard race of the blood of Frya, Finda, and Lyda.
The Romans, moreover, live at enmity with the Phœnicians; and their priests, who wish to assume the sole government of the world, cannot bear the sight of the Gauls.
First they took from the Phoenicians Marseilles—then all the countries lying to the south, the west, and the north, as well as the southern part of Britain—and they have always driven away the Phœnician priests, that is the Gauls, of whom thousands have sought refuge in North Britain.
The Titans – Non-Terrestrials Mating with Terrestrials
Europa, a Phoenician princess, was abducted by Zeus, and their son, Minos, became the progenitor of the Minoan civilization.
The Sea Peoples and the Philistines
The speaker highlights the linguistic and cultural adaptations that took place as the Philistines settled in Canaan, likely adopting the local language of Phoenician.
These peoples, including the Philistines, likely had interactions with the Phoenicians, Mycenaeans, and other Mediterranean civilizations, suggesting that their arrival in Canaan was part of a broader network of trade and cultural exchange.
The Azores Plateau
He suggests that a maritime culture, potentially similar to the Minoans or Phoenicians, could have navigated between Europe and these islands, making the hypothesis of Atlantis plausible within the bounds of Plato's description.
Historical Ages
Phoenicians in the Levant [coordinates n="33.270" e="35.203" z="6"]
The Phoenicians
The Phoenicians are often thought to be a somewhat mysterious people, long held to be a lost civilization due to the lack of Phoenician written sources.
The Phoenicians are primarily placed in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.
Bronze Age (circa 3000–1200 BCE): The Phoenicians first became prominent during the late Bronze Age.
Iron Age (circa 1200–539 BCE): The Phoenician civilization reached its height during the early to mid-Iron Age.
Usually noted for their theocratic state—a state with a primarily maritime empire—the Phoenicians built an expansive and complex trading network that stretched the length of the Mediterranean Sea.
However, there is far more to the Phoenicians than their mercantile ability.
Phoenician craftsmen produced outstanding works, including exemplary glass products and the prestigious dye known as Tyrian purple, worn by elites throughout the ancient world.
Perhaps most impressive of all is the Phoenician alphabet—the oldest known consonantal alphabet in the world.
The Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets all owe their existence to the Phoenicians, as their convenient and easily adapted alphabet was spread around the Mediterranean through their trading empire.
There is so much more to the Phoenicians than you might think.
Despite the relative lack of sources, their influence was enormous, their rise to power rapid and impressive, and the echoes of Phoenician civilization can even be seen today.
Hopefully, you will get some sense of this in today's video as we try to answer the question: Who were the Phoenicians?
The Phoenicians were Canaanites—the name given to a collection of Semitic-speaking civilizations clustered on the Mediterranean shores of the southern Levant during the second millennium BC.
The Phoenicians were most likely the successors of the Bronze Age Canaanites who dwelt in what is now southern Lebanon.
However, some historians believe that the Phoenicians may have immigrated to their lands in the Levant.
Herodotus, writing in the 4th century BC, asserted that the Phoenicians originated from the region of the Arabian Sea in the early third millennium BC.
Most scholars tend to the view that the Phoenicians were the result of millennia of population continuity in the Levant.
Phoenician culture most likely developed from the Ghassulian culture—a people typified by small settlements of agricultural peoples who migrated into the southern Levant from further north.
It is during the 15th century BC that the Phoenicians first truly enter the historical record.
During the reign of the conquering Pharaoh Thutmose III, the Phoenician cities of the Levant were brought under Egyptian control, along with all of Syria.
The Phoenician cities, the most important of which were Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, and Byblos, came under Egyptian rule but were largely autonomous.
Phoenician cities grew wealthy from their constant trade with Egypt.
By 1200 BC, the Phoenicians had developed sophisticated shipbuilding techniques, producing large merchant vessels with robust mortise-and-tenon joints.
The Phoenician trading empire emerged in the 12th century BC after the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, a period of political and social upheaval that saw the fall of major Mediterranean and Near Eastern powers.
With these empires weakening, the Phoenicians expanded their influence across the Mediterranean.
Phoenician society was organized around city-states, autonomous urban centers that controlled their surrounding territories.
Over time, councils and assemblies developed, leading some to consider Phoenician city-states as proto-democratic in nature.
The Phoenician economy was centered on trade.
The Phoenicians exported timber, glass, textiles, and, most famously, Tyrian purple—a luxury dye obtained from sea snails.
Phoenician religion was polytheistic and varied by city-state, with each city having its own chief deity and accompanying pantheon.
The Phoenicians practiced ritual sacrifices and offerings, but there is debate over whether they engaged in human sacrifice.
Phoenician art was influenced by neighboring cultures, including Egyptian, Assyrian, and Northern Syrian styles.
Phoenician glassmaking was highly prized, and their purple dye was the pinnacle of their textile production.
The decline of the Phoenicians began in the 9th century BC when the Assyrian Empire forced them into vassalage.
The Phoenician cities continued to pay tribute to the Assyrians and, later, the Babylonians, but their autonomy gradually diminished.
Phoenician independence ended completely in the 4th century BC when Alexander the Great besieged and destroyed Tyre.
Despite a brief resurgence of Phoenician influence in the west through Carthage, the Phoenician city-states in the Levant were absorbed into the Roman Empire by the 1st century BC.
Canaanites
Phoenician Coins: Attested on 2nd century BC Phoenician coins from Berytus.
Destroyed cities
Description: The city of Tyre, a major Phoenician port, is prophesied in the Bible to be destroyed and sunk into the sea.
Chronological Nations and Tribes
Summary: The Phoenicians were master seafarers and traders, spreading their alphabet and culture across the Mediterranean.
Sidonians: Inhabitants of Sidon, a principal Phoenician city, contemporaneous with the Israelites.
Sinites, Arvadites, Zemarites: Phoenician tribes, contemporaneous with the Phoenicians and Israelites.
City Tyre
Tyre was a major Phoenician city-state and played a crucial role in the spread of Phoenician culture and commerce across the Mediterranean.
Phoenician Powerhouse: Tyre was one of the most powerful and influential city-states of the Phoenician civilization.
Its position made it a significant player in regional trade and a major center of the Phoenician civilization.
The Phoenician history
The Phoenician cosmogony describes the universe's origin from chaotic gas, leading to the birth of gods and the creation of the sun, moon, and stars.
Fragment 2: Phoenician History Book 1 PE 1.9.30-10.42)
After setting out these definitions in his preface, Philo next begins his interpretation of Sanchuniathon and he presents the Phoenician theology roughly as follows:
“For,” he says, “they considered him, the lord of heaven, to be the only god and called him Beelsamen, which is ‘Lord of Heaven’ in Phoenician, Zeus in Greek.”
The Phoenicians say that Astarte is Aphrodite."
The Phoenicians call him Death and Pluto.
"When Thabion, the very first hierophant of the Phoenicians since the beginning of time, had interpreted all these things allegorically and had combined them with natural and cosmic phenomena, he transmitted them to the priests and to the prophets who led the rites.
Now Kronos, whom the Phoenicians call El, who was in their land and who was later divinized after his death as the star of Kronos, had an only son by a local bride named Anobret, and therefore they called him Ieoud.—Even now among the Phoenicians the only son is given this name.—When war’s gravest dangers gripped the land, Kronos dressed his son in royal attire, prepared an altar and sacrificed him.”
The same author, again dealing with the letters of the Phoenicians, translating from the works of Sanchuniathon, says such wondrous things about the creeping and venomous beasts, which certainly perform nothing beneficial for humans, but rather effect ruin and destruction for whomever they strike with deadly and cruel venom.
“So Taautos himself regarded as divine the nature of the serpent and snakes, as did the Phoenicians and Egyptians after him; for this animal, according to the tradition established by him, was fiery and the most filled with breath of all crawling things.
The Phoenicians call it Good Demon.
"Pherecydes too, took his materials from the Phoenicians and dealt with the divine attributes of the god he called Ophioneus (Snake-like) and with Ophionides, about whom we will have more to say.
The theology of the Phoenicians has this character.
The trustworthiness of these accounts is deduced from the gods’ appellations, even now prevalent in the cities and villages settled by the Phoenicians, and from the account of the rites performed among each of these cities and villages.
Such, then, is the theology of the Phoenicians.
The Phoenicians understand Kronos according to the interpretation of a similar name or according to some allegory, as one may gather from the second book of the work on Phoenicia by Herennius Philo.
There has been and is much disagreement among theologians about the god honored among the Hebrews… The Roman Varro says, in discussing him, that among the Chaldaeans in their mysteries he is called Iao, which stands for “intelligible light” in the Phoenician language, as Herennius says.
Appendix IIOther Phoenician Cosmogonies
Apart from that of Eudemus we find the Phoenician mythology according to Mochos.