Literature.— R. J. Knowling, EGT, ' Acts," 1900, p. 404 ; W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, 1893, p. I.'i2, .S(. Pavl the Traveller and the Komnn Citizen, 1895, p. 270 f., art. 'Tvrannus' in UDB; A. C. McGiffert, History oj Christianity in the Apostolic Ane, 1897, p. 285 ; F. J. A. Hort, Judaistie Christianity, 1894, p. 93. W. F. BoYD.
TYRE (Tvpos). — Tyre, the ancient mother of colonies and mistress of the seas, ' the merchant of the peoples unto many isles' (Ezk 27'), ceased to be politically important under the Greeks and
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Romans. But, alon;; with tlie sister-city of Siiloii, it still retained its commercial prosperity, tliou^'li they had now a very formidable rivalin Alex- andria. 'Both,' says Strabo (xvi. ii. 22), 'were formerly, and are at present, illustrious and 8i)lcn- did cities, but wliich of the two should he called the capital of I'luenicia is a matter of dispute amon^' the inhaljitants. ' Conlined to an island- rock with a surface area of only 140 acres, in which room had to be found not only for dwelling-houses but for factories, dockyards, a canal, and a great temple, Tyre solved the problem of space in an un-Uriental manner by running up buildings of many stories, 'of more even than at Kome' (ib.). Since the time of a memorable siege by Alexander the (ircat (332 B.C.), the island had been connected with the mainland by a mole half a mile long, which was gradually widened by the accretion of sand — it is now Jj of a mile broad. In the Koman period, when 'the gre.at number of dyeing works' rendered the city ' unpleasant as a place of residence' (ib.), suburbs began to rise along the coast, on or near the site of Old Tyre, I'ala;- Tyrus.
The Tyrians were devoted to the worship of Melkart {'king of the city'), w^hom the Greeks identitied with Hercules (as in CIG 122, c. 180 B.C. ). The coming of Christianity to Tyre was fore- shadowed when many of its inhabitants journeyed to Galilee to see the Prophet of Nazareth, and when He returned their visit (Mk 3^, Lk 6", Mk 7*", Mt 15-'). Luke relates that the dispersion of Christians from Jerusalem, consequent upon Stephen's death, sent preachers to Phoenicia, who confined their message to the Jews (Ac 11'") ; and, further, that the story of Paul's first missionary journey and of 'the conversion of the Gentiles' was told to 'all the brethren' of Phoenicia before it was heard by the Council of Jerusalem (Ac 15").
Ac 21'-', which is a ' wesection,' gives an indication of the measure of progress made Ijy the new faith in Tyre by a.d. 56 (C. H. Turner in HUB i. 423"), when Paul and Luko landed there at the end of the third missionary journey. They ' found the disciples,' but the verb (d>'ei'/)ii>'T«s) imiilies that they had to 'look them up' — quatrendo rrprrirc (F. Dlass, Artd Apvstolorinn, Giittingen, 18U5, p. '225) — evidently because the Christians were still numerically a feeble folk in the great heathen city. They are not called a church, yet among them were some who spoke 'through the Spirit,' willi the rapt utterance of NT luophets. At the end of a week of fellowship, ' tfiey all, with wives and children,' — the language stili suits a small company of converts — escorted Paul and his comrades out- side the city. On the beach there was enacted a sacrod and pathetic scene very similar to the one at Miletus (20'"'-™), and with this the story of nascent Christianity in Tyre suddenly ends.
The Elder Pliny refers to the prosperity of T5're, in the middle of the 1st cent., and indicates its staple trade in the words: 'Nunc onmis ejus nobilitas conchylio atque purpura constat' (ff A v. 17). Jerome, at the end of the 4th cent., calls it still the lirst commercial city of the East, ' an emporium for the commerce of the whole world ' [Com. ad Ezk on 26' 2"-). Septimius Severus made it a Roman colony, and among its illustrious citizens were Origen and Porphyrj'. From 1124 to 1201 it was an impregnable stronghold of the Crusaders. Deserted by the Christians after the fall of Acre, it was destroyed by the Muslims. It is now an unimportant town among scattered fragments of ruins (see Phojnicia).
LiTERATrRE.— A. P. Stanley. Sinai and Palestine, new ed., London, 1S77, p. 270; W. M. Thomson. The Land and the Book, do., 1910, pp. 155-172 J C. Baedeker, Palestine and Si/ria*, do., 1906, pp. 207-269. JaMES STRAHAN.
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UNBELIEF.— One of the great problems of the Apostolic Age was to account for the unbelief of the Jews. Unhappily, it was only too clear that the Jews not only had brought Jesus Christ to the Cross through their representative leaders, but also after Pentecost had refused to listen to the gospel preached by the apostles, and had become the main opponents of the Christian faith. To those whose eyes had been opened to see the glorj- of God in Christ Je.sus, it seemed the strangest of all experiences that those whom God had taken to be His peculiar people, and to whom He had granted so manj' privileges, sliould have turne<l away in unbelieving .scorn from the Lord who bad come to be their Redeemer. Hence the poign.ancy of the confes.sion : ' He came unto his own, and they that were his own received him not' (Jn 1"). In the apostolic history that experience was sadly repeated (Ac 13").