Phenice (Phoenicia)

Phenice here is the King James rendering of Phoenicia, the narrow coastal strip north of Israel that was home to the trading cities of Tyre and Sidon. Believers scattered by persecution after Stephen's death carried the gospel there (Acts 11:19), and Paul passed through the region on his way to and from Jerusalem on later journeys (Acts 15:3; 21:2). This is a different place from the harbor called Phoenix on Crete's south coast mentioned in Acts 27:12, a separate Greek word that older reference works sometimes conflated with this one under the same English spelling.