Biblical Phoenician

Phoenicians were ancient peoples that emerged in the Levant around the third millennium BC. Under the Hittite Empire, both Anatolia and the land that would later be Phoenicia were under the same flag, and enjoyed the same cultural influences. It goes without saying that they spoke the autochthonous Anatolian Hittite also known as Nesite (Ne?ite/Neshite, Nessite), an Indo-European language of Canaan.

The ne?- before these words comes from the name of a city called Ne?a, which was where the very early Hittite Dynasties who called themselves Ne?ili or Nesians because palpably originated from Ne?a, a center of influence in 17th Century BC.

Where the exonym Phoenicians came from before Lebanon isn’t known. They appear to have “sprung” directly from a Canaanite region of the Levant.

Phoenician belongs to the Canaanite languages, sometimes referred to as a Canaanite dialects, spoken in the region surrounding the cities of Tyre and Sidon, one of three subgroups of languages, the others being Aramaic and Amorite.

Extensive Tyro-Sidonian trade and commercial dominance famed as sea-faring merchants at the time led to Phoenician becoming a lingua franca of the maritime Mediterranean during the Iron Age. The Phoenician alphabet eventually spread to Greece, where it became the basis of most modern European scripts.

Phoenicians did not refer themselves as "Phoenicians" but rather are thought to have broadly referred to themselves as "Kena?ani", meaning 'Canaanites'.

During the period of the Biblical Monarchy Phoenician Royalty figures are represented in three major instances in (2 Samuel 5:11), (1 Kings 5, 7, & 9), and (2 Chronicles 2 & 8), in the Hebrew Bible. These add to the scarce historical literature mentioning these ancient people of the Levantine coasts.

The Bible shows that the Phoenicians were, for better or worse, one of Israel's longest and most steadfast allies.

Hebrew and Phoenician, both in part pertain to the same Semitic group and whose cradles were south Arabia, and the north eastern Mediterranean coast in Minor Asia respectively.

The Phoenicians had been living in the area for many centuries prior to the arrival and occupation of the southern part by the Hebrews. The first known Phoenician inscriptions belong to the 11th Century BC (cf. Lemaire 2006–2007; Rollston 2008, against Sass 2005). As such, Phoenician is attested slightly earlier than Hebrew, whose first inscriptions date to the 10th Century BC.

The oldest form of Biblical Hebrew, Archaic Hebrew, is found in poetic sections of the Bible and inscriptions dating to around 1000 BC, the early Monarchic Period. This stage is also known as?Old Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew, and is the oldest stratum of Biblical Hebrew.

Palaeo-Hebrew was practically but Canaanite-Phoenician in both language and script. Hence, the language and script of the original Bible could actually be called Biblical Phoenician…

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Food for Thought!