Alexander the Great in Jerusalem and the Origins of the Alexander RomanceFollow the link for more details.The ACE [Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology] department is thrilled to announce an Ancient History Seminar titled 'Alexander the Great in Jerusalem and the Origins of the Alexander Romance' delivered by Ory Amitay, (University of Haifa) on the 6 May 2025, Rendall Building, Lecture Theatre 7.
Tuesday 6 May 5pm (UK) | Rendall, Lecture Theatre 7 or online | Open to the public, and University of Liverpool staff and students
This is a hybrid event, we encourage in-person attendance which facilitates discussion. To join on zoom please click here.Abstract
The topics presented in this talk come from a comprehensive study of the tradition concerning the meeting between Alexander the Great and the Judeans of Jerusalem. Historically, even if Alexander did visit Jerusalem, it was essentially a non-event, nothing to write home about. The historical void provided an opportunity for consecutive Judean storytellers to fill it with political myths of their own creation.
The overall purpose of these myths—so I argue in my new book Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History (OUP, 2025) —was on the one hand to negotiate the installation of successive forms of foreign rule over Judea, and on the other to find room for these foreign rules within Judean sacred history. The earliest of these stories, scarcely discussed in previous scholarship, is preserved in the epsilon recension of the Alexander Romance (AR).
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The abovementioned New Book just came out:
Alexander the Great in JerusalemFor many PaleoJudaica posts on Alexander the Great and his connection with ancient Jewish traditions, notably in the Alexander Romance, see here and links. There are lots of links there too to posts on books about Alexander and the Alexander tradition published in recent yearsMyth and History
Ory Amitay
£84.00
Hardback
Published: 18 April 2025 (Estimated)
220 Pages
234x156mm
ISBN: 9780198929529Also Available As:
E-bookDescription
Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History discusses four different stories told in antiquity about the meeting between Alexander the Great and the Judeans of Jerusalem. In history, this meeting passed without noticeable events. Into the historical void stepped various Judean storytellers, who wrote not what was, but what could (or even should) have been.
The tradition as a whole deals with an issue that resurfaced time and again in ancient Judean history: conquest and regime installment by new foreign rulers. It does so by using Alexander as a cipher for a current Hellenistic and Roman foreign rule. The earliest version can be traced to the context of the Seleukid monarch Antiochos III "the Great", and postulates a Judean text from that time that has been hitherto unknown, and which survived in a Byzantine recension (epsilon) of the Alexander Romance. The second and third chapters turn to rabbinic sources, and deal with the Judean approaches and attitudes towards Roman occupation and rule, first at the advent of Pompey and then at the institution of Provincia ludaea at the expense of the Herodian dynasty. The final story is the most famous, previously considered the earliest, rather than the latest; that of Josephus.
Alexander the Great in Jerusalem demonstrates how the historical tradition consistently maintained the moral and sacral superiority of the Jerusalem temple and of Judaism, making Alexander either embrace monotheism or prostrate himself before the Judean high priest. This not only bolstered Judean self-confidence under conditions of military and political inferiority, but also brought the changing foreign rulers into the fold of Judean sacred history.
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