residence of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all their children save Benjamin. (Gen. xi. 31.) It was astonishingly populous, containing, according to Ptolemy, seventy important cities. Christianity, in a mutilated form, still exists here. The region is still fertile, and is now called Diarbekir.
Phœnice. (Acts xxvii. 12.) A winter harbor on the southern shore of Crete.
Phœnicia. (Acts xxi. 2.) A province of Syria, and, in the largest extent of the term, embracing a strip of land adjoining the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, eighty miles long and twelve broad. Properly, however, it included only the territories of Tyre and Sidon. The Phœnicians were descendants of the Canaanites, and a Syro-phœnician was a Phoenician of Syria. Phœnicia was also subject to the Greek government in the time of our Savior, and hence Tyre and Sidon might be regarded as Greek cities. (Comp. Matt. xv. 22; Mark vii. 26.) The Jews regarded all the rest of the world as Greeks. Phœnicia is considered as the birth-place of commerce, if not of letters. The soil is still fertile, producing a rich variety of grains and fruits; but all the enterprise and prosperity of the people is blasted by the despotism of the government. Carthage was established by a colony of Phœnicians; and Cadiz, in Spain, is also supposed to have been settled by the same people about one thousand years before Christ. It is thought the Phœninicians pushed their trade as far as Britain, and they probably had settlements on the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. Sir Isaac Newton thinks that vast numbers of Edomites fled hither in the days of David, and carried their arts along with them. The chief city of this region, and sometimes the region itself, is now called Tripoli.
Tob. (Judg. xi. 3, 5.) A district in the south-east of Syria, whither Jephthah fled, and whence he was called to lead the army of Israel.
The great and splendid city of Syria—Palmyra. This city was situated about fifteen miles east from Damascus, and one hundred and twenty from Tarabolas or Tripoli. It was the metropolis of Palmyrene, a fertile province of Syria. Surrounded on all sides by
