the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Dictionaries
Cnidus
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (Κνίδος)
Cnidus was a city of Caria, at the S.W. angle of Asia Minor, between the islands of Cos and Rhodes. It lay at the end of a long peninsula-Triopium-which juts into the aegean Sea and forms the southern shore of the Sinus Ceramicus. Strabo (XIV. ii. 15) accurately describes it: ‘Cnidus has two harbours, one of which is a close harbour, fit for receiving triremes, and a naval station for twenty ships. In front of the city is an island, seven stadia in circuit; it rises high, in the form of a theatre, and is joined by a mole to the mainland, making Cnidus in a manner two cities, for a great part of the inhabitants live on the island, which shelters both the harbours.’ In the lapse of time the mole has become a sandy isthmus. The situation of the city in the highway of the seas gave it much commercial importance. It was a free city of the Roman Empire. Jews were settled there in the Maccabaean period (1 Maccabees 15:23).
St. Paul’s ship of Alexandria sailed from Myra ‘slowly’ and ‘with difficulty,’ probably on account of adverse winds rather than of calms, taking ‘many days’ to come ‘over against Cnidus.’ The distance between the two ports was 130 miles, which with a fair wind could have been run in one day. After passing the point which divides the southern from the western coast, the ship was in a worse position than before, having no longer the advantage of a weather shore, and being exposed to the full force of the N.W. winds-called Etesian-which prevail in the aegean towards the end of summer. Instead of taking a straight course to the north of Crete-the wind not permitting this (μὴ προσεῶντος ἡμᾶς τοῦ ἀνέμον)-she had to run under the lee of the island. Some interpret St. Luke’s words as meaning that the crew made a vain attempt to reach Cnidus, ‘the wind not allowing’ them; but there was apparently no reason why they should not have entered the southern harbour, which was well sheltered from N.W. winds.
Literature.-C. T. Newton and R. P. Pullan, Hist. of Discoveries at Halicarnassus, Cnidus and Branchidae, 1863; T. Lewin, St. Paul, 1875, ii. 190; Conybeare-Howson, St. Paul, 1856, ii. 390ff.; W. Smith, Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Geog. i. [1856] 638ff.
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Cnidus'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/c/cnidus.html. 1906-1918.
