Sanchuniathon (SANCHONIATHON, SOUNIATHON), the supposed author of a Phœnician history of Phœnicia and Egypt, called Phoinikiku. He is supposed to have been a native of Berytus; and the accounts which speak of him as born at Sidon or Tyre probably take these cities in their wider sense for Phœnicia itself. Our principal information about him is derived from Philo of Byblus, a Greek writer of the beginning of the 2d century A.D., who translated Sanchuniathon's history into his own tongue; but both the original and the translation are lost, save a few small portions of the latter, preserved by Eusebius, who uses them as arguments in a theological dispute against Porphyry. According to Philo, Sanchuniathon lived during the reign of Semiramis, queen of Assyria, and dedicated his book to Abibalus, king of Berytus. Athenæus, Porphyry, and Suidas speak of him as an ancient Phœnician, who lived 'before the Trojan war.' There is also a discrepancy between the various ancient writers respecting the number of books contained in the Phoinikika. Orelli (1826), and after him C. Müller (1849), published the remaining fragments of Sanchuniathon, and the discussion raised on their genuineness and value can hardly be said to be yet at rest. Several critics went so far as to deny the fact of the existence of a Sanchuniathon point blank. According to some (Lobeck, Aglaothamus, &c.) it was Eusebius, according to others (Movers, &c.) Philo, who fathered his own speculations upon an ancient authority. The latter was actuated, Movers thinks, partly by the desire of proving that the whole Hellenistic worship and religion was simply a faint imitation of the Phœnician; partly by the desire of lowering the value of the Old Testament, by showing the higher authority of the Phœnician writer; and partly, as was the fashion among the unbelieving philosophers of his age, to bring the popular creed into a bad reputation, by proclaiming his own views under the guise of an ancient sage. Yet even those who deny the authenticity of Sanchuniathon agree in allowing the fragments current under his name a certain intrinsic value, they being founded on real ancient myths. This, in fact, is now, with more or less modification on the part of the different investigators, Ewald, Bunsen, Renan, &c., the prevalent opinion. Ewald contends for the real existence of a Sanchuniathon, in which he is supported by Renan. Even if there never was a Sanchuniathon it was not Philo who forged him. There seems no doubt that we have but a very dim and confused reproduction of what, after many modifications, misunderstandings, and corruptions, finally passed the hands of Philo and Eusebius, and was by the Church Father, as has been said, quoted in a theological disputation. Yet, even assuming the person of a Sanchuniathon, his age—and Eusebius insists upon a very remote one indeed—must be placed much lower: into the last centuries before Christ, at the earliest. He would then, it seems, have endeavoured to stem the tide of Greek superiority in all things, by collecting, grouping, and remodelling the ancient and important traditions of his own country, and thus proving to both his countrymen and the Greeks their high importance, in comparison with the Greek productions, in the field of religion and philosophy.
The Phoinikika was not only a cosmogony, it would appear, but a history of his own and the surrounding nations; and, like similar ancient histories, it probably began with the creation of the world, and contained an account of the Jews. All the historical parts, however, are lost, and nothing remains but a fragmentary cosmogony, or rather two or three different systems of cosmogony, or, according to Movers, merely an Egyptian and Phœnician patchwork. One of the chief difficulties for us consists in the Phœnician words of Sanchuniathon, which Philo either translated too freely or merely transcribed so faultily in Greek characters as to leave them a puzzle.
Eusebius further contains a fragment of a treatise by Sanchuniathon, Peri Ioudaion, but it is doubtful whether this is the work of Philo of Byblus or of Sanchuniathon; and if it be that of the latter, whether it is a separate work, or merely a separate chapter out of his larger work. A forgery, said to contain the whole nine books of Sanchuniathon, and to have been found by a Portuguese, Colonel Pereira, at the convent of St Maria de Merinhão, and to have been by him entrusted to a German corporal in Portuguese service, named Christoph Meyer, was published by Wagenfeld (Bremen, 1837), and translated into German (Lübeck, 1837), but was very soon consigned to disgrace and oblivion by Movers, K. O. Müller, and Grotefend, the last of whom at first believed and even wrote a preface to the editio princeps. There never was such a convent, nor such a colonel; but the facsimile taken by 'Pereira' in the convent in Portugal was found to have been written on paper showing the water marks of an Osnabrück paper-mill.
See Ewald, Abhandlungen d. Göttinger Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (vol. v. 1851); Renan, Mémoire sur Sanchoniathon (1858); and Baudissin, Studien zur Semitischen Religionsgeschichte (vol. i. 1876); also chap. 6, vol. i. (1877) of Abbott's trans. of Duncker's History of Antiquity.