4 - Syria, Phoenicia, Judaea, Egypt, Cyrene

Summary

We have seen something of the life of Jews both in the east and in the west during the period with which we are concerned. We have now to follow the Fertile Crescent southwards in order to include the first three countries in Philo's list (p. 5); but we take them in their north-south order - Syria, Phoenicia, Egypt - and before the last of these we must pause to include the all-important Judaea.

SYRIA AND PHOENICIA

Syria

As a recent writer has summarized, ‘In the last quarter of the second millennium bc a west-Semitic people, speaking various Aramaic dialects, spread out from the fringes of the Syro-Arabian desert … fanning out over the Fertile Crescent, from the Persian Gulf to the Amanus mountains, the Lebanon, and Transjordan.’ (A. Malamat, ‘The Aramaeans’ in D. J. Wiseman (ed.), Peoples of Old Testament Times.)

The westward expansion was into the country which constitutes the eastern boundary of the Mediterranean and stretches from Cilicia and Mesopotamia in the north to the Sinai Desert and Egypt in the south. It is the land often called Palestine and includes the ancient lands of Israel and Judah. It is the country which many ancient writers, Herodotus among them, called Syria; the word was often replaced by Coele-Syria to distinguish this country from the Syria of Mesopotamia (Coele-, ‘hollow’, refers to its being the country between mountains, Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon).