The Phoenician City-states of Tyre and Sidon in Ancient Jewish Texts

Abstract

Interpreted against the historical situation in the Levant of the first millennium BCE, ancient Jewish texts reflect the historical situation of the time in which they were written. Based on this assumption, we propose in this article that ancient Jewish materials speak of the city-states of Tyre and Sidon in three divergent ways that reflect three distinct socio-historical situations. The first grouping, represented primarily by the books of Amos and Hosea, reflects the pre-Persian or late Persian historical situation. These books speak of Tyre as the dominant economic polity in the Levant, whereas an economically weaker Sidon receives little coverage, if any. The second large grouping, represented primarily by the DtrH, addresses the Persian-period historical situation. We propose the DtrH materials coincide with the Persian-period compositional date when placed against the historical situation of the mid-6th4th centuries BCE. The third category of ancient Jewish texts does not differentiate between the cities of Tyre and Sidon. Reflecting the post-Achaemenid period, when the city-states of Tyre and Sidon were no longer able to maintain their independent economic and political positions, these texts refer to Tyre and Sidon as the collective “Tyrians and Sidonians.” * The present article has been adapted from a chapter from an unpublished dissertation “Towards a Social History of the Phoenician City-States in the Achaemenid Empire” (2006) completed at the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.