Maronite Phoenician Heritage
From Maronite History
Contents |
The Phoenicians
By the eighth pre-Christian century Aramaic had displaced Canaanite as the language of Syria, Palestine and Lebanon. There it remained entrenched until the Moslem conquest of the seventh Christian century, after which it was replaced substantially by its Arabic cousin. Its triumph over Hebrew made Aramaic the one in which Christ communicated his message. Unfortunately the message survived only in its Greek translation. However, Lebanon (in its approximate modern-day boundaries) remained Canaanite. Those of its Canaanites who traded with the Greeks were given by them the name Phoenicians in the beginning of the 12th century BC, from Greek “phoinix” for purple red, after the colour of the cloth which they sold or bartered. Phoenicians became known throughout the world for their purple dyed cloth. Phoenician city coastal states flourished along the eastern Mediterranean from Latakia (today in Syria) to Acre (today in Israel) but mostly in modern-day Lebanon. Tyre and Sidon were the principal centres of the industry and trade in the cloth. Only the wealthy could afford the product. Helen of Troy, Cleopatra of Egypt, Jewish high priests and Roman emperors took pride in wearing purple garments. Oriental church patriarchs and Roman Catholic cardinals perpetuate the tradition. Around the 12th century Phoenicians started to colonise the Mediterranean and beyond including for example Malta, Sardinia and Gadis(today Cadiz in southwestern Spain on the Atlantic). About 750 BC the Phoenicians founded Carthage (near modern Tunis) as their imperial capital.In 538 the Persian Empire conquered geographical Syria including Lebanon and put an end to Phoenician independence.
The Phoenician alphabet
The oldest written records come from Mesopotamia around 3000 BC. The language is Sumerian and pre Semitic. Its script is called cuneiform (wedge shaped) because of the arrow headed characters produced by a stylus pressed on a soft clay tablet. Egyptian hieroglyphic came shortly after this using papyrus and a sort of ink. Both scripts indicate a beginning in picture drawing or pictographs and then ideograph. For example, a representation of a human body with uplifted arms conveyed the idea of prayer, with hand at the mouth the idea of eating. The Phoenicians developed the pictographs into syllables and were the first to invent a true alphabet, easy to write symbols called letters – “22 magic signs, rightly called the greatest invention of man, through which man has been able to record his ideas and emotions and transmit them to posterity”. This happened probably in the 15th century BC from a Byblos man. Phoenician traders passed the magic signs westward to the Greeks (ca 800BC) and eastward to the Aramaeans. The Greeks in turn transmitted them through Latin to other Europeans. The Aramaeans transmitted them to the Hebrews and the Arabs. Ironically these Phoenicians who perfected the earliest system of writing left us but little in the form of literature. Being primarily traders, they used their alphabet mainly for business transactions. The writing material was perishable, papayrus. The Phoenician script continued to be used in the Phoenician colonies in north Africa (the most famous of which was Carthage) until the early 3rd century AD. In addition to the formal script there was a cursive script employed for writing business and administrative documents. This script is described as Punic.
Mount Lebanon – ancient cedar trade
Mount Lebanon, or in ancient times known as Lebanon, was a great source of timber supply. This is clear evidence of its substantial occupation since ancient times as part of Canaan later known as Phoenicia. Egyptian Pharaoh Snerfu, circa 2650 BC, records a voyage by sea to Lebanon bringing back 40 ship loads of cedar logs and also reporting shipbuilding from cedar wood. The old Testament has numerous references to the cedar tree of Lebanon (Ps. 104:16,29:5; Jer. 22:14; 2 K.14:9, 2 K 19:23;Zech. 11:1-2; Is.14:14-15, 2:13, 35:2,60:13; Ezek 17:22). In 954 BC the construction of King Solomon's temple in Jerusalem was commenced and cedar trees from Lebanon were used in construction. The cedar also provided the early Lebanese (the Phoenicians) with the finest timber for constructing their seafaring ships.
Mount Lebanon – Maronite stronghold
“Mount Lebanon, the first Maronite converts” mentions Christian conversion in Mount Lebanon and northern Syria in the 4th and 5th centuries AD. It pointed to primary records indicating many people in the region of Syria and Lebanon up to this time still remained believers in ancient Canaanite/Phoenician religion. Pagan temples were built in prominent places such as Baalbek (up to 330 AD) and on many mountaintops devoting idol worship to the triad – El, Adon and Astarte. There is an extensive list of towns and villages in Lebanon containing these temples which are still standing today.
As can be seen from the primary sources (for example by Theodoret), the first Maronites were from northern Syria from a region not far from the furthest northern Phoenician coastal city of Latakia. However, Mount Lebanon later became the stronghold for the majority of Maronites. This was a fusion substantially of those of Phoenician/Canaanite heritage including the Lebanon mountain natives, those from closer to the coast of Lebanon and migrants from mainly Syria. The Maronite migrants who fled to the mountains of Lebanon did so for various reasons the most prominent of which was to escape persecution from Islamic rule. It is uncertain what percentage of Maronites migrated to Lebanon from northern Syria. But those that did must have included a substantial number of Canaanite/ Phoenician origin. Some historians have asserted that the Maronites are Arab Christian tribes who migrated from Arabia either directly to the mountains of Lebanon or to Syria and later to Lebanon. These historians seek to deny any Maronite association with Phoenician ancestry.
They refer to examples such as the Christian Arab tribe of Ghassan who with the authority of the Byzantine Emperor ruled around Damascus in the sixth century. It is stated that these Arab Christian tribes predate the birth of Islam in the early 7th century. Other examples given are the Maronite Houses of Shehaab and Bilemma.We know that the Syrian Christian monks between the 4th and 6th centuries were spreading the good news far and abroad including in Arabia. However, we do not know which Christian denomination in Syria and Lebanon these Arab Christians later became aligned with. There is no evidence one way or the other that they were aligned with the leading monastery of St Maroun in Syria and later the Maronites. We also do not know how many of these Arab Christians migrated from their original homeland and how many remained and converted to Islam. Since ancient times after the Canaanites first settled as the official natives, there is no doubt that because of the cedar trade, fertile land, abundant water and its rugged terrain providing places of refuge, Lebanon and Mount Lebanon has accepted migrants of various ethnic backgrounds including of course Arabs - much like many western countries today have accepted Arab migrants. In the North Lebanon mountain village of Niha legend points to the "grave of the Arabs" as well as the "grave of the Jews". So too can be said of northern Syria in ancient times which was also fertile and was at a strategic location for trade routes. Naturally, the Maronites then must have some ethnic mix other than Canaanite.
Conclusion
We can state the following. There was a substantial native Phoenician population in the mountains of Lebanon which converted to Christianity. Since the Arab conquest of Syria and Lebanon around 640 AD up to about the time of the crusades, the mountains of Lebanon accepted Maronite refugees from Syria a substantial portion of which must have been of Phoenician heritage. During the course of this time up to the present Mount Lebanon became a Maronite stronghold with substantial Phoenician ancestry blended to an extent unknown with other racial origins. The following is an apt concluding statement from the book “History of Eastern Christianity” by a Coptic Aziz Atiya at page 392:
“THE MARONITES ARE ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING MINORITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. AS THE DESCENDANTS OF THE PHOENICIANS, THEY HAVE PRESERVED THE BASIC TRAITS OF THEIR GREAT ANCESTORS.”
Also an abstract taken from a recent article on the Phoenicians the following was said By Daniel Plat of IBM's Computational Biology Center: "The results are important because they show that the Phoenician settlement sites are marked by a genetic signature distinct from any that might have been left by other trading and settlement expansions through history, or which may have emerged by chance. This proves that these settlements, some of which lasted hundreds of years, left a genetic legacy that persists to modern times. Lebanese christians in the study(mainly Maronites) have the highest level (25.9%) of J2*,J2a,J2e*,J2*/fa* which are considered to be the phoenician gene.
Sources
Atiya, History of Eastern Christianity Brock, The Hidden Pearl, the ancient Aramaic heritage Butler, Early Churches in Syria Churchill, Mount Lebanon, A ten years residence from 1842 to 1852 Dib, History of the Maronite Church Hitti, Lebanon in History Hitti, The near East in History Hitti, A Short History of the near East Khoury Harb, The Maronites, History and Constants Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: the History of Lebanon Reconsidered Syriac MS160 about St Simon Stylite Theodoret, A history of the monks of Syria Voobus, A History of asceticism in the Syrian orient. National geography article.
