Alexander the Great: Impressed the Jews Greatly

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                   

 Victory came at a great price: the Persians, led by Darius,  were now in Greece for the first time, and up until then, Greece had been impenetrable.  The Persians also made a great mistake, because they were now in a place people came to resent them. The resulting hatred toward the Persians created a common enemy and thereby laid the groundwork for a great leader to step in and do what no one before him was able to do: unite the powerful and industrious Greek peoples.  Alexander the Great had not forgotten about him.  Alexander the Great did all these things at a very young age.                                                             

Alexander the Great, born in 356 BCE and died in 323 BCE, King of Macedonia, killed King Darius III of Persia, also a great friend of the Jews.  These great kings were fighting for whole world dominance.  Alexander needed to prove to Greece how important Macedonia was.  Macedonia is in the northwest corner of Greece. It is basically a Balkan country, and the Macedonians were part of the general Greek nation. However, they were looked down upon and despised by the Athenians and Spartans because they were boorish and uncultured. That both Darius of Persia and Alexander had paid homage to Jews was immaterial to him. It was a fight to the finish.  Alexander's personality had made a deep impression on the Jews.  Josephus described his visit to Jerusalem, the honor which he paid to the high priest, Jaddus, and the privileges accorded to the Jews of Palestine and the Diaspora.                                                                            

During the course of Alexander the Great’s march through the Persian Empire, he traveled to Egypt in 332 B.C. While there, he took two significant actions that would contribute to his legacy: He founded a new city on the coast, Alexandria, named after himself, and he visited an oracular shrine dedicated to the god Zeus Ammon in the Siwa Oasis.                                     

The Judeans were now under Alexander’s rule. However, Greek historians do not mention Jerusalem or the Jews in connection with Alexander’s conquest, which is not surprising because Judea was the home of an obscure people and an insignifi- cant tribe. In fact, no contemporary Jewish sources refer to Alexander either.

 In order to reach Egypt from the north, Alexander would have traveled along the coast. It is unlikely that he would have taken the mountainous roads into the interior of the country, which would have led to Judea and Jerusalem.  The Judeans submitted peacefully to Alexander as he marched through Palestine on his way to Egypt.  When Alexander took the coastal road to Egypt, he had to make arrangements to administer the country. It is significant that he maintained the religious and political privileges that the Jews had enjoyed under the Persians. Basically, he left the governing system intact and replaced the Persian officials and administrators with his own officials.

                                                          

Antipatris is mentioned in the Christian New Testament, but as Aphek in the Tanakh.  Aphek's king was one of thirty-one rulers defeated by Joshua and the Israelites during their battles to take the Promised Land. Later, it became the staging place for the Philistines, in the days of Samuel the prophet (11th century BCE) , to plan an attack against Israel.  It is beyond doubt, however, that Alexander never visited Jerusalem, although the Talmud's traditions of a meeting between him and the Jews at Antipatris may well be historical. 

                                                           

 The traditions may have grown up on the background of his suppression of a Samaritan revolt which gave the Jews of Jerusalem the occasion to stress their own loyalty.  What happened with the Samaritans under Alexander provides an interesting contrast with the legend of Alexander among the Jews. While the Jews submitted peacefully to Alexander, the Samaritans did not. At first, the Samaritan governor, Sanballat III, supported Alexander and was even given permission by him to build the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim. However, after Sanballat III died, the Samaritans, for reasons that are not clear, rebelled against Alexander and burned his governor alive. In punishment, Alexander destroyed the city of Samaria and banished the Samaritans from the city. The Samaritans went to live at the foot of Mount Gerizim, their sacred mountain. From that point on, the district of Samaria had two religious and political centers: the Samaritan, or Yahwist, population that was concentrated in the area of Mount Gerizim, and Samaria itself, which became a Greek city.

                                                          

Alexander figures prominently in talmudic, midrashic, and medieval Jewish legend.  Perhaps the best known of these stories is Daniel’s vision, which is told in Daniel 8:1–27. In this passage, Daniel is shown a vision that involves a ram and a he-goat. The passage explicitly identifies the ram, which has two horns, with the king of Media and Persia—hence, the two horns. The he-goat, coming from the west, is Alexander the Great, who conquers the ram; in other words, Alexander conquers the Persian Empire.  Daniel’s vision relates to the coming end of days, embedding Alexander in Jewish eschatological thought.

                                                            

Another celebrated legend involving the Jews and Alexander is preserved by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.  According to Josephus, in visiting Jerusalem, Alexander was greeted by the Jewish high priest, Jaddua, who presented the king with the Jewish community’s capitulation; then, Alexander offered a sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple.  In this story, not only did Alexander make a detour in order to meet with the Jews and go to Jerusalem, but when he saw the high priest and the name of God, he was so awed that he bowed down. Alexander, according to this legend, recognized the greatness of the God of Israel.

                                                      

Alexander died at the age of 32, accomplishing so much in his dream to unite all the peoples of the world.  A note, he seemed to hate his mother.  (I gather this on the Netflix take on it in Alexander). The death of Alexander the Great and subsequent related events have been the subjects of debates. According to a Babylonian astronomical diary, Alexander died between the evening of June 10 and the evening of June 11, 323 BC, at the age of thirty-two. This happened in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon . 

Alexander was already a key figure in Jewish eschatological thought, that is, Jewish thinking and expectations about what would happen at the end of days. In Jewish eschatological thought, Alexander is situated at the beginning of a new era that is perceived as the last stage of history before the end of days— the eschaton. In other words, Alexander was understood as a necessary step on the road to the advent of the messiah.                         

Jews did not use surnames until countries they lived in required them.  The surname of Alexander has been used by Jews in England, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Palestine, Australia and the USA.  it's also used by Jews as a 1st name as well.  

Resource:

https://www.netflixmovies.com/alexander-the-great-1956

The New Standard Jewish encyclopedia

Finding Our Fathers-a guidebook to Jewish Genealogy by Dan Rottenberg

https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/alexander-greats-impact-jews/

https://www.jewishhistory.org/alexander-the-great/