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ALEXANDER THE GREAT
In the year 334 Alexander of Macedon entered upon that campaign of conquest against Persia which speedily brought about the fall of the great empire. After the battle of Issus (November 333) Syria and Phœnicia were subjugated, Tyre alone offered a stubborn resistance, and was not taken until August 332, after a seven months’ siege. It is said that at the beginning of the siege Alexander called upon the high priest of Jerusalem to rebel against Darius. But, unlike the Samaritans, who promptly brought an auxiliary army to Alexander’s assistance, the Jews refused to renounce the allegiance they owed to the king of Persia. In order to punish this disobedience, Alexander marched upon Jerusalem after the fall of Tyre, which was soon followed by that of Gaza. The high priest came to meet him at the head of the assembled priesthood, marching in solemn procession in their sacred vestments. At this spectacle Alexander dismounted and bowed reverently[135] before the venerable high priest, because—as he declared to the astonished Parmenio—just such an august figure had once appeared to him in a dream. He made a peaceful entry into Jerusalem, caused sacrifices to be offered for him in the temple, and permitted the Jews to live according to their laws, granting them, among other privileges, exemption from taxation during the Sabbath year. Many Jews thereupon determined to enter his army.
The authenticity of this story of Alexander’s march to Jerusalem, which is told by Josephus and the Talmud but by no Greek historian, has been impugned with good reason.[5]The high priest in question is called Jadus (Jaddua) by Josephus, and Simon the Just by the Talmud. Later amplifications of these stories declare that, as a token of gratitude for Alexander’s favour, the high priest promised him that all sons born to high priests that year should be called Alexander. Although certain books of the Bible are later than the dissolution of the Persian Empire, Alexander’s name is not mentioned in any; he is only referred to under various figures in the dreams and visions of the book of Daniel. Thus the great figure which Nebuchadrezzar beholds in a dream, the iron thighs (Daniel ii. 32-40), the fourth terrible beast in Daniel’s dream (vii. 7, 19), the goat coming from the west in the following vision (viii. 5 seq.), and, lastly, the great king (xi. 3), stand for the Macedonian kingdom or Alexander the Great.
The dissolution of the Persian Empire at first brought about no substantial change in the political and religious condition of the Jews, and the influences bred of the diffusion of Greek civilisation in Anterior Asia were not felt by them till much later. But, generally speaking, the state of the Jewish commonwealth during this period and down to the wars of the Maccabees is wrapped in a certain amount of obscurity, since the lack of Biblical records throws us back almost entirely on the narrative of Josephus, who himself drew from somewhat turbid sources and did not sift his material with sufficient care. After the rapid decline of the Macedonian kingdom and during the conflict of Alexander’s generals among themselves, Palestine, together with Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria, became the apple of discord between the rulers of the Syrian and Egyptian kingdoms. Ptolemy I (Lagi or Soter reigned until 283) seized Jerusalem in the year 320 by a sudden attack on the Sabbath (on which day no resistance was offered) and carried away a large number of Jews to Egypt, where some of them were sold as slaves and some enrolled in the royal army. Ptolemy, however, did not gain permanent possession of the country until the battle of Gaza, in 312, after which he again marched into Jerusalem, but acted with great clemency, so much so that many Jews of consequence migrated with him to Egypt, one of them being a learned man of the name of Ezekias (Hizkiah). The high priests at the time were Onias I, in 330, and his son Simon I, in 310.
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