[258] I cannot agree with Weiss (u. s., p. 122) that the great object of the fourth Gospel was to oppose the rising Gnostic movement, This may have been present to the Apostle's mind, as evidenced in his Epistle, but the object in view could not have been mainly, nor even primarily, negative and controversial.
[259] Acts xviii 24-28 __________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER V. ALEXANDRIA AND ROME - THE JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN THE CAPITALS OF WESTERN CIVILISATION.
We have spoken of Alexandria as the capital of the Jewish world in the West. Antioch was, indeed, nearer to Palestine, and its Jewish population - including the floating part of it - as numerous as that of Alexandria. But the wealth, the thought, and the influence of Western Judaism centred in the modern capital of the land of the Pharaohs. In those days Greece was the land of the past, to which the student might resort as the home of beauty and of art, the time hallowed temple of thought and of poetry. But it was also the land of desolateness and of ruins, where fields of corn waved over the remains of classic antiquity. The ancient Greeks had in great measure sunk to a nation of traders, in keen competition with the Jews. Indeed, Roman sway had levelled the ancient world, and buried its national characteristics. It was otherwise in the far East; it was otherwise also in Egypt. Egypt was not a land to be largely inhabited, or to be civilised' in the then sense of the term: soil, climate, history, nature forbade it. Still, as now, and even more than now, was it the dream-land of untold attractions to the traveller. The ancient, mysterious Nile still rolled its healing waters out into the blue sea, where (so it was supposed) they changed its taste within a radius farther than the eye could reach. To be gently borne in bark or ship on its waters, to watch the strange vegetation and fauna of its banks; to gaze beyond, where they merged into the trackless desert; to wander under the shade of its gigantic monuments, or within the wierd avenues of its colossal temples, to see the scroll of mysterious hieroglyphics; to note the sameness of manner and of people as of old, and to watch the unique rites of its ancient religion - this was indeed to be again in the old far-away world, and that amidst a dreaminess bewitching the senses, and a gorgeousness dazzling the imagination. [260]
We are still far out at sea, making for the port of Alexandria - the only safe shelter all along the coast of Asia and Africa. Quite thirty miles out the silver sheen of the lighthouse on the island of Pharos [261] - connected by a mole with Alexandria - is burning like a star on the edge of the horizon. Now we catch sight of the palmgroves of Pharos; presently the anchor rattles and grates on the sand, and we are ashore. What crowd of vessels of all sizes, shapes and nationalities; what a multitude of busy people; what a very Babel of languages; what a commingling of old and new world civilisation; and what a variety of wares piled up, loading or unloading!
Alexandria itself was not an old Egyptian, but a comparatively modern, city; in Egypt and yet not of Egypt. Everything was in character - the city, its inhabitants, public life, art, literature, study, amusements, the very aspect of the place. Nothing original anywhere, but combination of all that had been in the ancient world, or that was at the time - most fitting place therefore to be the capital of Jewish Hellenism.
As its name indicates, the city was founded by Alexander the Great. It was built in the form of an open fan, or rather, of the outspread cloak of a Macedonian horseman. Altogether, it measured (16,360 paces) 3,160 paces more than Rome; but its houses were neither so crowded nor so many-storied. It had been a large city when Rome was still inconsiderable, and to the last held the second place in the Empire. One of the five quarters into which the city was divided, and which were named according to the first letters of the alphabet, was wholly covered by the royal palaces, with their gardens, and similar buildings, including the royal mausoleum, where the body of Alexander the Great, preserved in honey, was kept in a glass coffin. But these, and its three miles of colonnades along the principal highway, were only some of the magnificent architectural adornments of a city full of palaces. The population amounted, probably, to nearly a million, drawn from the East and West by trade, the attractions of wealth, the facilities for study, or the amusements of a singularly frivolous city. A strange mixture of elements among the people, combining the quickness and versatility of the Greek with the gravity, the conservatism, the dream-grandeur, and the luxury of the Eastern.