Phoenician Colony Found in Spain

"Spanish archaeologists have unearthed the site of the largest Phoenician settlement so far didcovered on the Iberian peninsula, dating to at least the 8th century B.C.. They say it was 'a teeming city' where perhaps a thousand people once lived.

"The site lies at Cerro del Villar, between Malaga and the Guadalhorce river. In their report of the find, The Times, London, 15th August, 1996, stated that the archaeologists have established that the settlement is too old, by at least a century, to have been anything but Phoenician.

"The Phoenicians, the article said, were among the first colonisers of the southern coast of 'Spania,' or 'hidden land' as they named the peninsula. Among their many achievements was the founding in 1100 B.C. of Gadir, later to become Cadiz.

"There was a most interesting leading article on the find in the same issue of the newspaper under the heading 'Far-flung Phoenicians -- Merchants with a neglected claim on our imagination.' The article went on to confirm the basis of what students of the migrations of the ancient Israelites have known for many years:

"'The Phoenicians were not only the most famous seafarers of ancient times, they also gave us our alphabet. They were not only once the Mediterranean's richest trading nation; they also gave us one of literature's greatest heroines. They and their offspring were dominant in southern Europe for a thousand years...The Phoenicians still keep many of their secrets...

"'Perhaps there will now come fresh curiosity about a civilization which was already so skilled by the 10th century B.C. that it was contracted to build the Temple of Solomon; a civilization th whose development of the North Semitic alphabet, adopted by the Greeks, we oew the origins of our own written language...

"'Merchants they were...the fearless navigators who, when others were still hugging the coastline, first discovered and used the Pole Star, and who guarded the secrets of their trade routes, knowledge of currents and winds...They framed the first known maritime laws and their great ships were the East Indiamen of the ancient world, credited by Herodotus with the first circumnavigation of Africa. Their borders, as Ezekiel wrote of Tyre, were figuratively as well as literally "in the midst of the seas." To a still greater extent than the Vikings, Dutch or Portuguese after them, they left little mark on land. Their claim is on the imagination.'

"The only real question that arises from all this is: who were the Phoenicians? Actually there can be no reasonable doubt that a large portion of those seafaring merchants, termed "Phoenicians" by the ancient Greeks, were Israelites of the tribes of Asher, Dan and Manasseh, whose territory developed and mingled with that of Tyre and Sidon.

"While Christians may be quite familiar with the military exploits of Israel in the Old Testament, few realize that some of these same Israelites also played an important part in the extensive maritime enterprizes of those far-off days. It is true, none the less, that Israelite merchant mariners had a substantial share of the seafaring trade between the western world and Palestine during what has been termed the Phoenician Golden Age.

"Along these western trade routes moved the great migratory waves of the Israelite tribes, as well as the...Throne [of Judah] on its way to the Britannic 'Isles of the Sea' and the Christian Gospel of the Kingdom. Yet, for all this simple logic of history from the ancient world, the majority of our [so-called] Christian people seem unable to go back beyond the 'Italian Mission' to England in A.D. 596-97, refusing even to consider the ancient heritage and inheritance of the powerful nations of the English-speaking and kindred peoples.

"It is a very curious situation, and has much to do with the rather large legacy of Roman dogma that still exists which relegates the Kingdom of God upon Earth to a spiritual -- not of this world -- position rather than to the spiritually oriented continuance of God's covenant promises to His servant people."