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Bible Dictionaries
Sidon (2)
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or SIDON (for much of common reference, see Tyre).—A narrow, rocky district as well as a once famous city in Phœnicia, the city being 30 miles S. of Beirût and 26 miles slightly N. by E. of Tyre, and 60 miles N. of Capernaum. Like nearly all settlements on the east coast of the Mediterranean, Sidon owed its location to certain prominent rocks in the sea, which at first served as a breakwater, and then, through gradual connexion with the land, produced a northern and a southern harbour, the latter now filled with sand.
Sidon is so ancient that all certainty as to the origin of its name has vanished. Some have deemed it ‘fishing’-town, others the seat of the worship of a deity Sid. Sidon and the Sidonians are heard of earlier and more influentially than Tyre, which finally distanced its northern rival. All the Phœnician cities seem to have known little but rivalry down to the appearance of such world-powers as Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome, which made them all, sooner or later, subject and abject. Each had its ‘king,’ its ‘god,’ its colonies, its coinage. Each sent its trading vessels seaward to the Mediterranean world; landward, each was in touch with the markets of Damascus and the East by means of those caravans of ‘ships of the desert’; each sat as queen over a semicircular domain with a radius of some 15 to 20 miles. Through faction in the 8th cent. b.c. Sidon lost many of her merchants, chiefly to Tyre. At length her limited territory, her merely commercial aim, her being sapped by colonization and dissension, her final surrender of leadership to Tyre, combined with her conquests by the world-powers, left her under the Romans in the days of Christ a merely provincial capital, richer in the vices of ancient paganism than in its virtues. Some from Sidon were in the multitude that thronged Jesus at the Sea of Galilee (Mark 3:8), and Sidon was pronounced more excusable in the day of judgment than the more favoured cities of Jesus’ own country and race (Matthew 11:21 f.). The present Saida has about 10,000 inhabitants, and is surrounded by delightful orange groves, beneath which lie archaeological treasures. Beirût, with its Damascus railway and improved harbour, has robbed Sidon of its last vestiges of commerce.
In a sense Sidon was, and in another sense was not, within the limits of the Holy Land. In the ideal distribution of Canaan recorded in Joshua the lot of Asher would seem to have included about all of Phœnicia, extending ‘even unto great Sidon’ (Joshua 19:28). The coast cities and their daughter villages, however, remained utterly unconscious of their assignment, while Asher became so assimilated thereto as to retain in Israelitish history little more than a name.
The Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 declares that Jesus ‘came through Sidon,’ a distinct and exact statement unknown to the Authorized Version ; and thereon depends our conception whether or not Jesus Himself, from choice, ever went into the way of the Gentiles. Many points as to the primariness, structure, and transmission of the Gospels are illustrated by this case.
| Matthew 15:21 ff. Authorized Version | Mark 7:24 ff. Authorized Version |
| Matthew 15:21 Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. Matthew 15:22 And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, etc. | Mark 7:24 And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid. For a certain woman, etc. [A Greek]. |
| Matthew 15:29 And Jesus departed from thence, and came nigh unto the sea of Galilee; and went up into a mountain, and sat down there. | Mark 7:31 And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. [East of the Jordan]. |
After the Revisers’ most conscientious work, with their better evidence, this is the form in which we read the same:
| And Jesus went out thence, and withdrew into the parts of Tyre and Sidon. And, behold, a Canaanitish woman came out from those borders, etc. | And from thence he arose, and went away into the borders of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered into an house, and would have no man know it: and he could not be hid. But straightway a woman, etc. [A Greek]. |
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| Marg. ‘Some ancient authorities omit and Sidon.’ |
| And Jesus departed thence, and came nigh unto the sea of Galilee; and he went up into the mountain, and sat there. | And again he went out from the borders of Tyre, and came through Sidon unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the borders of Decapolis. |
B. Weiss sides completely with the ‘some ancient authorities’ of (Revised Version margin) , and reads: Jesus ‘went away into the borders of Tyre.… And again he went out from the borders of Tyre, and came through Sidon unto the sea of Galilee,’ etc. Thus the primary Gospel of Mark, the more ancient Sinaitic and Vatican Manuscripts , Professor Weiss, and the Revisers do not hesitate to depict Jesus as entering Gentile territory (twice), entering a (probably) heathen house, and dispensing blessings upon a pagan woman, going then yet farther ‘through Sidon’ and Decapolis. The more theological First Evangelist, however, and the judicious transcribers disliked so to state the case. So Edersheim: the ‘house in which Jesus sought shelter and privacy would, of course, be a Jewish home’; and ‘by “through Sidon” I do not understand the town of that name, which would have been quite outside the Saviour’s route, but the territory of Sidon’ (Life and Times, ii. 38, 44).
Anything like a direct ‘route’ from the Israelitish borders of Tyre, or of Tyre and Sidon,—for Edersheim emphasizes Matthew’s indication that the woman came from her territory to that of Jesus,—would take one in a south-easterly direction, and therefore away from Sidon. Accordingly, Jesus’ choice to go in a northerly direction, ‘through Sidon,’ shows that He was not taking any near and direct and usual ‘route,’ but for a reason was seeking travel into heathen territory. Mk.’s connexion indicates that Jesus journeyed into the Gentile land with His disciples, on the occasion of the abolition of the Levitical distinctions as to the ceremonially clean and unclean, so as to give to His followers an example and object lesson as to the same. Sidon on the far north was for this reason included, as was the hog-herding Decapolis. It was at Caesarea, a similar Gentile city almost 100 miles nearer Jerusalem, that St. Peter received his fuller lesson on the same subject.
Wilbur Fletcher Steele.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Sidon (2)'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/s/sidon--2.html. 1906-1918.
