Sanchuniathon (in greek Σαγχουνιαθων) is the purported
Phoenician author of three lost works originally in the
Phoenician language, surviving only in partial paraphrase and summary of a
Greek translation by
Philo of Byblos, according to the Christian bishop
Eusebius of Caesarea. These few fragments comprise the most extended literary source concerning Phoenician religion in either Greek or
Latin Phoenician sources, along with all of Phoenician literature, were lost with the parchment they were habitually written on.
The compilers of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica warned that Sanchuniathon "belongs more to legend than to history." All our knowledge of Sanchuniathon and his work comes from Eusebius's Praeparatio Evangelica, (I.chs ix-x)[1] which contains some information about him along with the only surviving excerpts from his writing, as summarized and quoted from his supposed translator, Philo of Byblos.
Eusebius also quotes the neo-Platonist writer Porphyry as stating that Sanchuniathon of Berytus (Beirut) wrote the truest history about the Jews because he obtained records from "Hierombalus" ("Jerubbaal"?) priest of the god Ieuo (Yahweh), that Sanchuniathon dedicated his history to Abibalus king of Berytus, and that it was approved by the king and other investigators, the date of this writing being before the Trojan war[2] approaching close to the time of Moses, "when Semiramis was queen of the Assyrians."[3] Thus Sanchuniathon is placed firmly in the mythic context of the pre-Homeric heroic age, an antiquity from which no other Greek or Phoenician writings are known to have survived to the time of Philo. Curiously, however, he is made to refer disparagingly to Hesiod at one point, who lived in Greece ca. 700 BC.
The supposed Sanchuniathon claimed to have based his work on "collections of secret writings of the Ammouneis[4] discovered in the shrines", sacred lore deciphered from mystic inscriptions on the pillars which stood in the Phoenician temples, lore which exposed the truth—later covered up by invented allegories and myths—that the gods were originally human beings who came to be worshipped after their deaths and that the Phoenicians had taken what were originally names of their kings and applied them to elements of the cosmos (compare euhemerism) as well as also worshipping forces of nature and the sun, moon, and stars. Eusebius' intent in mentioning Sanchuniathon is to discredit pagan religion based on such foundations.
