Somehow, I managed to drag it all the way to Lebanon, and I finally started it last night.
"The alphabet was a Middle Eastern invention, a vast improvement on the various systems of signs and pictures which preceded it, and which still prevail in some parts of the world. The Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets are all derived from the first alphabet devised by the mercantile people of the Levant coast" (9).
Nowhere does he say Phoenician.
Having lived in Lebanon for the past four years, I am inundated with "Phoenician-ness." It seems that any world history text or any information source attributes the creation of the alphabet to the Phoenicians--"the mercantile people of the Levant coast" that Lewis refers to.
So why doesn't he say Phoenician? Is it because it sounds a lot like Palestinian???
In the first nine pages, Jews are mentioned four times. The first two show the similarities with Muslim religious beliefs and practices, concerning dress and prayer. The third makes a claim that Hebrew is the only ancient Middle Eastern language to be preserved. In the fourth, he writes that the Jewish refugees from Spain introduced the printing press to the Middle East.
So Bernard Lewis proudly hails the Jewish contributions to civilization, but can't seem to mention the Phoenician/Palestinian??? one.
3 comments:
Hey Jane! Glad to see you writing again. But three question marks in a row is strictly for internet crackpots.
Help me out. Who are the modern-day descendants of the Phoenicians?
This is such the million dollar question in Lebanon. It's totally political. The Christians (in the sectarian/tribal sense of the term, not having anything to do with personal religous belief) say that they are descended from Phoenicians. So they can think they are not Arabs. Because Arabs would translate as Muslims. And historically Lebanese Christians like to think that they're different and better than the "native" Arabs.
Kamal Salibi in A House of Many Mansions makes it a point that the Maronite Christians are Arabs from Syria.
But as for the descendents of the Phoenicians, it would be anyone who lived in those Mediterranean coastal places where they had their major cities, which would be in the islands, and along the coast of what is today Lebanon and Palestine. So that could include Palestinians, but as we know from the book of Judges, there were many Canaanite tribes-Jebusites, Hebusites, other-ites. I'm sure it's all too complicated to know who really came from where.
National Geographic did a story several years back where they used DNA to trace back the Phoenicians. The conclusion was that everyone in the area had some evidence to tie their decendance to the Phoenicians.
It makes sense that the Chrisitans do not want to be grouped with the Arabs- Arab tends to be synonymous with Islam.
The biggest thing though is that we are all human and all decend from the same species. There should not be entitlement or ethnocentricity on either end.
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