the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Dictionaries
Syria
American Tract Society Bible Dictionary
or In Hebrew ARAM , a large district of Asia, lying, in the widest acceptation of the name, between the Mediterranean, Mount Taurus, and the Tigris, and thus including Mesopotamia, that is, in Hebrew, Syria of the two rivers. See ARAM 2. Excepting the Lebanon range, it is for the most part a level country. In the New Testament, Syria may be considered as bounded west and north-west by the Mediterranean and by Mount Taurus, which separates it from Cilicia and Cataonia in Asia Minor, east by the Euphrates, and south by Arabia Deserta and Palestine, or rather Judea, for the name Syria included also the northern part of Palestine.
The valley between the ridges of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon was called Coele-Syria and Phoenicia were subject to the king of Babylon, and they afterwards were tributary to the Persian monarchs. After the country fell into the hands of the Romans, Syria was made the province of a proconsul; to which Judea, although governed by its own procurators, was annexed in such a way, that in some cases an appeal might be made to the proconsul of Syria, who had at least the power of removing the procurators from office. Syria is now in the possession of the Turks. Its better portions have been thickly populated from a very early period, and travellers find traces of numerous cities wholly unknown to history.
These files are public domain and are a derivative of the topics are from American Tract Society Bible Dictionary published in 1859.
Rand, W. W. Entry for 'Syria'. American Tract Society Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/ats/s/syria.html. 1859.
