See of Tyre

The See of Tyre was one of the most ancient dioceses in Christianity. The existence of a Christian community there in the time of Saint Paul is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. Seated at Tyre, which was the capital of the Roman province of Phoenicia Prima, the bishopric was a metropolitan see. Its position was briefly challenged by the see of Berytus in the mid-5th century; but after 480/1 the metropolitan of Tyre established himself as the first (protothronos) of all those subject to the Patriarch of Antioch.

In the summer of 2017 a Greek mosaic, five-metres long, naming Irenaeus as bishop of Tyre, was found west of the Sea of Galilee, in an excavation co-directed by historian Jacob Ashkenazi and archaeologist Mordechai Aviam. Since the inscription provides the date of the church's completion as 445, it gives credence to a date as early as 444 CE for his ordination.