Greek word · G4949
Συροφοίνισσα
syrophoinissa
Syrophoenician
A Phoenician woman from 'Syria', meaning the Roman province of Syria, whose coastal strip included Tyre and Sidon. Writers used 'Syrophoenician' to separate these Phoenicians from the Libyphoenicians, the Phoenician people of North Africa around Carthage.
Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·
What it means
Συροφοινίκισσα (Rec. -φοίνισσα), -ης, ἡ
a Syropænician woman: Mark 7:26, WH, txt., RV (cf. ἡ Φοινίκη Συρία, Diod., 19, 93).†
(AS)
From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
A Phoenician woman from 'Syria', meaning the Roman province of Syria, whose coastal strip included Tyre and Sidon. Writers used 'Syrophoenician' to separate these Phoenicians from the Libyphoenicians, the Phoenician people of North Africa around Carthage.
- Against the English
Most versions keep 'Syrophoenician'. NIV and NLT unpack it as 'born in Syrian Phoenicia', which helps a modern reader place her but drops the sense of an ethnic label.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The masculine Syrophoinix appears in Lucian (The Parliament of the Gods 4) and in the Latin poets Lucilius and Juvenal (Satires 8.159-160), sometimes with a sneer. Matthew's version of the story (15:22) calls her instead a 'Canaanite woman', the old biblical name for Israel's ancient rivals in the land.
Where it appears
Mark · 1
-
Mark 7:26 Συροφοινίκισσα Syrophoenician
Now she was a Greek woman of Syrophoenician origin, and she kept asking Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
Here: A Phoenician from the Roman province of Syria, the coast around Tyre and Sidon. The label tells her apart from the 'Libyan Phoenicians' of Carthage in North Africa.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.