Dictionaries :: Syrophoenician

International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia

Syrophoenician:

si'-ro-fe-nish'-an, sir-o- (Surophoinissa, Surophoinikissa; Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek has variant Sura Phoinikissa; the King James Version Syrophenician): The woman from the borders of Tyre and Sidon whose daughter Jesus healed is described as "a Greek, a Syrophoenician by race" (Mr 7:26), and again as "a Canaanitish woman" (Mt 15:22). This seems to mean that she was of Canaanite descent, a native of the Phoenician seaboard, Greek in religion, and probably also in speech. The names Syria and Phoenicia are both applied to the same region in Ac 21:2,3. Syrophoenician may therefore denote simply an inhabitant of these parts. According to Strabo (xvii.3), this district was called Syrophoenicia to distinguish it from the North African Lybophoenicia.

Written by W. Ewing

Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words

Syrophoenician:

occurs in Mar 7:26 as the national name of a woman called "a Canaanitish woman" in Mat 15:22, i.e., not a Jewess but a descendant of the early inhabitants of the coastland of Phoenicia. The word probably denoted a Syrian residing in Phoenicia proper. There is a tradition that the woman's name was Justa and her daughter Bernice (Clementine Homilies, ii:19; iii:73). In Act 21:2, 3, the two parts of the term are used interchangeably.

Smith's Bible Dictionary

Syrophoenician:

occurs only in Mark 7:26. The word denoted perhaps a mixed race, half Phoenicians and half Syrians; (or the Phoenicians in this region may have been called Syro‐phoenicians because they belonged to the Roman province of Syria, and were thus distinguished from the Phoenicians who lived in Africa, or the Carthaginians.-ED.)