I've come across mentions of phoenixes four times in books recently. Three were references to the mythologicial rebirth of the phoenix, and the other one spent several pages on the history of Tyrian purple dye--Tyre being the chief city of the ancient Phoenicians--and how the origins of the words phoenix and Phoenicia were closely connected with the idea of the dye.
Tyrian purple, from murex shells, was typically a reddish purple, but could range from very pale tints to very dark purples. The dye was more valuable by weight than gold.
I also read 2 Chronicles 2, where Huram (Hiram) of Tyre assisted Solomon with the building of the Temple. In 2 Chronicles 2:12, Huram acknowledges that the God of Israel is creator of heaven and earth.
Other sources say that the chief Phoenician god was Melqart, which has some correspondence with Biblical accounts of Moloch and Baal worship. Greeks tended to see Melqart as Hercules. The Phoenicians practiced child sacrifice.
This was in something like 960 B.C. Israel was at its peak, and Tyre was approaching a peak of its own.
A boomer apologizes, albeit without much clarity.
"It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs," Jesus said; Matthew 15:26.
I recently understood that I am spending my life in rebuilding spiritual and practical foundations that had been foolishly undermined by previous generations.
Several months ago I was reading a nonfiction book by Christian author Paul Tournier, and made it about three-quarters of the way through before being drawn away to other things.
When I picked it up this last week and finished reading it, I found references to about a dozen Bible passages that had come up in my daily Bible readings in the interim, mostly obscure Old Testament personages with a variety of afflictions; Tournier was a Swiss doctor famous for connecting his Christianity with his medical practice.
I also read a Christian fiction book this last week: Deadline, by Randy Alcorn. One day, what I read in the book mirrored my morning Bible reading on that same day.
"A work of creation was three-fold, an earthly trinity to match the heavenly; the Creative Idea, timeless and passionate, which is the image of the Father; the Creative Energy, begotten of the idea and working in time, which is the image of the Word; the Creative Power, the meaning of the work and its response in the individual soul, which is the image of the indwelling Spirit."
-- P. D. James, summarizing Dorothy L. Sayers' description
