Alexander Epiphanes, I Mac 10' = A. Bala-i.
R. W. MO.SS.
ALEXANDRIA (4 'KMivipua.), the Hellenic capital of Egypt, was founded by Alexander the Creat, B.C. 33'2. Under the early Ptolemies it
62
ALEXANDRIA
ALEXANDRIA
rose to importance, and became the emporium of the commerce of the East and of the West. Oblong in shape and rounded at the extremities, — Strabo compared it to the chlamys or cloak of the Macedonian cavalry, — it occupied the narrow strip of land which lay between the sea and the Lake Mareotis. An artificial mole connected it with the island of Pharos, and on either side of the mole were commodious harbours which received the ships of Europe and Asia. The Lake Mareotis, which was joined by a canal to the Canopic mouth of the Nile, brought to it the commerce of the East. The beauty of the city was proverbial. One-third of its e.xtent was occupied with royal palaces and open public grounds ; and it had a system of wide regular streets with noble colonnades. Its popula- tion, which amounted to about 800,000 souls in its flourishing period, consisted chiefly of Egyptians, Greeks, and Jews, who occupied separate quarters. The Regio Judivorum, whichlay in the north-eastern portion of the city, was surrounded by walls. A special governor, called the Alabarch, presided over it, and the .Jews were permitted to live according to their own laws. The Jews— the mercenary race as they were called— were not popular with their fellow-citizens, but they were protected by the rulers, Greek and Roman, who recognised the value of their services to the commercial prosperity of the city. When A. became part of the Roman Empire, B.C. 30, and a p'anary of Rome, the im- portant corn trade with Italy fell into the hands of Jewish merchants.
The Lagidie were munificent patrons of learning, and it was their ambition to make their capital a place of intellectual renown. They collected within its walls the largest library of antiquity, part of which was housed in the temple of Serapis in the Egyptian quarter, and another part in the museum which was situated in the Bruchium or Greek quarter. To the museum was attached a staff of professors, who were salaried by the State. It had a banqueting-hall in which the professors dined, corridors for peripatetic lectures, and a theatre for public disputations. The chief subjects of study were grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and geogTaphy. The school of philosophical thought which ultimately arose was eclectic, a patchwork of earlier systems, and it closed its career by dethroning philosophy in favour of religious tradition.
For the student of Christian theology, A. occupies an important place in the history of religious development as the cradle of a school of thought in which the earliest attempt was made to brin^ the teaching of the OT into relation with Hellenic ideas. It was in A. that the Heb. Scriptures were first translated into Greek. This translation, although it afterwards became ' the first apostle to the nations,' was not made with a missionary purpose, being intended to afl'ord a knowledge of the law to the numerous Jews who hatl grown up in ignorance of the Heb. language. But having opened up their treasures to the curious Greeks, it bec^ime necessary for the Jews to explain and to defend them. It was the claim of the Jew thatthe Scriptures are the sole source of a tnie knowledge of God and of human duty ; but when he became familiar with Greek literature, it was imi>ossible to deny that there also were found noble doctrines and excellent counsels. The Alex- andrian Jew offered an Apologia for his exclusive claim, whieh was repeated iw the Christian Fathers, lived through the entire Middle Ages, and almost to our own time. I'lato and Pythagoras, he said, and even Homer, borrowed all their wisdom from the OT Scriptures. Aristobulus, a Jewish courtier, who lived about the middle of the second century B.C., writes: 'Plato took our legislation as his
model, and it is certain that he knew ih<t whole of it ; the same is true of Pythagoni.-. In order to gain venerated authoritv foi tlii- assertion, the Jews composed verses in tlienameol the mystic poets of antiquity, in praise of Moses and of Judaism. In his commentary on the Pentateuch, Aristobulus introduces Orpheus, and makes him say that he cannot reveal tht God whom clouds coaceal ; that the water-born Moses alone of mortals received knowledge from on high on two tables. Another writer of Egypt who was a contemporary of Aristobulus, the autlioi of the third of the Sibylline Books, introduces tin Sibyl of Cunia?, who speaks of the Jews as a nation api)ointed by God to be the guide of all mortals : and she offers the coming Alessianic salvation tc all nations if they will turn from their idols to serve the living God.
Having thus established to their own satisfaction that Gentile wisdom comes from the Scriptures, the Jews next proceeded to place it there by the help oi the magic wand of allegorical interpretation. Tliu> interpreted, the narratives of Scripture easily yielded up Platonic and Stoic dogmas. The Jewish Alexandrian philosophy, which began with Aristobulus and cuJmrnated in Philo, was an elaborate attempt to clothe Greek philosophical ideas in Scripture language, and thus to confer upon them the authority of divine revelation. It was to Platonism and Stoicism that the Jewish scholars most naturally turned ; for in the lofty monotheism of the former, and in the moral earnestness of the latter, they seemed to hear echoes of Isaiah and Solomon. It was through the influence of Platonic and Stoic conceptions that the Sophia and the Lo";os assumed such importance in the Jewish Alexandrian philosophy. In the Heb. Scriptures they had been personified, but they were now hypostatized, and became intermediaries be tween the creature and the Most High God.