That article says Procopius of Caesarea was 6th century: "a Greek historian...who was assessor and counsellor of Belisarius, the great general of the eastern emperor Justinian".1
The article also says
FWIW, Frendo noted:
it should be remembered that in his time there was no way whereby the distinction between Phoenician, Punic, and Neo-Punic (with all its modern chronological implications) could be made. Indeed, modern scholarship itself views such a distinction as...being inadequate and largely a matter of convention, especially since both Phoenician and Punic were basically written in the same idiom, namely Canaanite, which is how the Phoenicians themselves would very probably have labelled their own tongue (Lipinski I992a, 254-55). Thus Procopius would have used the term 'Phoenician tongue' to indicate the Canaanite language irrespective of whether it was written down in Phoenician proper or in its Punic or Neo-Punic dialect.
The upshot of the foregoing observations is that we do not know when the columns which Procopius saw were inscribed, but that we do know that they must have been obviously ready at the latest slightly before he saw them, namely during the sixth century A.D. However, the foregoing observations also indicate that even if the two columns were inscribed late (say slightly before Procopius saw them), they could still be echoing an age-old tradition, for (as it will be shown below) by 234 B.C. there was already an extra-biblical
source which mentioned that the Balearic islands were inhabited by Canaanites who [were said to have] fled from Joshua.
And
And
The Phoenician alphabet spread to Greece during [the Iron Age], where it became the source of all modern European scripts ...
History
The Phoenicians were the first state-level society to make extensive use of the Semitic alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is one of the oldest verified consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It has become conventional to refer to the script as "Proto-Canaanite" until the mid-11th century BC, when it is first attested on inscribed bronze arrowheads, and as "Phoenician" only after 1050 BC. The Phoenician phonetic alphabet is generally believed to be at least the partial ancestor of almost all modern alphabets ...
it [is] unclear whether Phoenician formed a separate and united dialect or was merely a superficially defined part of a broader language continuum. Through their maritime trade, the Phoenicians spread the use of the alphabet to the Maghreb and Europe, where it was adopted by the Greeks. Later, the Etruscans adopted a modified version for their own use, which, in turn, was modified and adopted by the Romans and became the Latin alphabet. In the east of the Mediterranean region, the language was in use as late as the 1st century BC, when it seems to have gone extinct there.
Punic colonisation spread Phoenician to the western Mediterranean, where the distinct Punic language developed. Punic...seems to have survived far longer than Phoenician, until the sixth century, perhaps even into the ninth century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_language
Though Khorenatsi's work may be all about Armenia, so maybe there's been a mix-up; though apparently there's a "Mosis Chorenensis Historiae Armenicae libri III: accedit ejusdem scriptoris epitome Geographiae," by Gulielmus Whiston & Georgius Whiston, 1736, London: ex officina Caroli Ackers typographi https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mi ... edir_esc=y
The article also says
According to Anthony Frendo, Procopius said the two columns inscribed in the Phoenician language, so it would be interesting to know how "Joshua, the robber, the son of Nun" was actually written.In addition to Procopius, Moses of Khoren,a an earlier Armenian historian (AD 370-86),a also mentions the two inscriptions on the Phoenician columns.2 as well as an anonymous Greek historians (AD 630) in the Chronicon Paschale. “The inhabitants of these [islands, i.e., the Balearic Islands north of Algeria and east of Spain] were Canaanites fleeing from the face of Joshua the son of Nun”.3 As Wood points out: “It is highly unlikely that the Phoenicians of North Africa would have invented such a demeaning tradition to explain how they came to be in North Africa”.4
https://biblicalarchaeologygraves.blogs ... n.html?m=1
1 Anthony J. Frendo, “Two Long-Lost Phoenician Inscriptions and The Emergence of Ancient Israel,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 134, no. 1 (January 2002): 37. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... 2.134.1.37
2 Ibid. 40.
3 Ibid. 40.
4 Bryant G. Wood, “Extra-Biblical Evidence for the Conquest,” Bible and Spade 18, no. 4 (2005): 98.
FWIW, Frendo noted:
it should be remembered that in his time there was no way whereby the distinction between Phoenician, Punic, and Neo-Punic (with all its modern chronological implications) could be made. Indeed, modern scholarship itself views such a distinction as...being inadequate and largely a matter of convention, especially since both Phoenician and Punic were basically written in the same idiom, namely Canaanite, which is how the Phoenicians themselves would very probably have labelled their own tongue (Lipinski I992a, 254-55). Thus Procopius would have used the term 'Phoenician tongue' to indicate the Canaanite language irrespective of whether it was written down in Phoenician proper or in its Punic or Neo-Punic dialect.
The upshot of the foregoing observations is that we do not know when the columns which Procopius saw were inscribed, but that we do know that they must have been obviously ready at the latest slightly before he saw them, namely during the sixth century A.D. However, the foregoing observations also indicate that even if the two columns were inscribed late (say slightly before Procopius saw them), they could still be echoing an age-old tradition, for (as it will be shown below) by 234 B.C. there was already an extra-biblical
source which mentioned that the Balearic islands were inhabited by Canaanites who [were said to have] fled from Joshua.
And
The Phoenician language was a member of the Canaanite branch of the Northwest Semitic languages. Its descendant language spoken in the Carthaginian Empire is termed Punic. Punic was still spoken in the fifth century AD and known to St. Augustine of Hippo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia#Language
And
The Phoenician alphabet spread to Greece during [the Iron Age], where it became the source of all modern European scripts ...
History
The Phoenicians were the first state-level society to make extensive use of the Semitic alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is one of the oldest verified consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It has become conventional to refer to the script as "Proto-Canaanite" until the mid-11th century BC, when it is first attested on inscribed bronze arrowheads, and as "Phoenician" only after 1050 BC. The Phoenician phonetic alphabet is generally believed to be at least the partial ancestor of almost all modern alphabets ...
it [is] unclear whether Phoenician formed a separate and united dialect or was merely a superficially defined part of a broader language continuum. Through their maritime trade, the Phoenicians spread the use of the alphabet to the Maghreb and Europe, where it was adopted by the Greeks. Later, the Etruscans adopted a modified version for their own use, which, in turn, was modified and adopted by the Romans and became the Latin alphabet. In the east of the Mediterranean region, the language was in use as late as the 1st century BC, when it seems to have gone extinct there.
Punic colonisation spread Phoenician to the western Mediterranean, where the distinct Punic language developed. Punic...seems to have survived far longer than Phoenician, until the sixth century, perhaps even into the ninth century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_language
The Phoenician alphabet was used to write Canaanite languages spoken during the Early Iron Age, sub-categorized by historians as Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite, Ammonite and Edomite, as well as Old Aramaic. It was widely disseminated outside of the Canaanite sphere by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean, where it was adopted and adapted by other cultures. The Phoenician alphabet proper was used in Ancient Carthage until the 2nd century BC, where it was used to write the Punic language. Its direct descendant scripts include the Aramaic and Samaritan alphabets, several Alphabets of Asia Minor, and the Archaic Greek alphabets ... cursive forms increased in use over time, culminating in the Neo-Punic alphabet used in Roman North Africa.
The Phoenician alphabet proper uses 22 consonant letters—as an abjad used to write a Semitic language, the vowel sounds were left implicit—though late varieties sometimes used matres lectionis to denote some vowels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet
.
The traditional 5th-century dating of [his] work of Armenian literature has elicited much discussion and a recent, plausible proposal places the final version after 775. Khorenatsi's History, then, predates the end of the 8th century.
Though Khorenatsi's work may be all about Armenia, so maybe there's been a mix-up; though apparently there's a "Mosis Chorenensis Historiae Armenicae libri III: accedit ejusdem scriptoris epitome Geographiae," by Gulielmus Whiston & Georgius Whiston, 1736, London: ex officina Caroli Ackers typographi https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mi ... edir_esc=y
Statistics: Posted by MrMacSon — Tue Jan 21, 2025 2:34 pm