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Bible Dictionaries
Tyre (2)
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or TYRE (for many common features, see Sidon).—The most noted district and city of Phœnicia, the city being 40 miles N.W. of Capernaum in Galilee. Its name is simply the ‘Rock,’ from two rocks in the sea—a larger and a smaller—a mile distant from the shore, lying parallel therewith, about 3000 feet in length, and containing some 150 acres. This ‘Rock,’ as a breakwater, early invited mariners, and ultimately furnished the elements of two harbours,—the Sidonian, north; and to the south the Egyptian, now long filled with sand. It served also as a fortress, as well as a treasure-house for the merchandise that there was stored for transshipment between East and West. Old Tyre was the residential portion, extending at times for 5 miles along the shore.
As early as the monuments of Egypt and the Amarna tablets, Tyre is mentioned with Sidon as a locality of note. Its daring sailors had mastered the art of sailing the open sea by the stars, thus outdoing rivals who as yet had to steer by sight of land, and anchor at night. In the height of their power Tyrian merchantmen frequented every Mediterranean port, sailing the Atlantic to the tin mines of Britain, and even perhaps circumnavigating Africa.
In the middle of the 7th cent. B.C. Ashurbanipal laid siege to Tyre and practically destroyed the land city. Alexander the Great [Note: reat Cranmer’s ‘Great’ Bible 1539.] besieged Tyre for seven months, at the end of which he completely subdued it. Under the Romans it was in a state of decay, morally as well as otherwise. To-day it clings to the rock, a community of some 4000, a stagnant Arab village of fisher-folk.
As the conflict between the authorities and Jesus waxed to the murder-point, the masses of the people flocked to Him all the more. St. Mark (Mark 3:8) paints the mixed throng on the banks of Gennesaret as coming from all points of the compass, including a curious Gentile multitude from ‘about Tyre and Sidon.’ St. Luke’s specification (Luke 6:17) is not so extensive, but, true to his breadth of interest, portrays ‘a great multitude of the people from … the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon,’ while St. Matthew (Matthew 4:25) is oblivious to such. Compared with the disbelief of Jesus’ hearers and kin in Galilee, Tyre should stand immeasurably above those of greater light and opportunities, but of less susceptibility and response to the same (Matthew 11:21 f.). Guilt and condemnation are relative. When Jesus had had to break with the carnally-minded populace that desired only an insurrectionary leader and temporal king, He retired for intensive instruction of the Twelve to the parts of Tyre (Matthew 15:21 ||); and there it was that there was found and shown to them a rudimentary, but for all that a potent, faith in an apparently pagan heart. See Syrophœnician Woman.
Wilbur Fletcher Steele.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Tyre (2)'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/t/tyre-2.html. 1906-1918.
