Alexandria

ALEXANDRIA was founded (332 BC) by Alexander the Great after his conquest of Egypt. Recognizing the inconvenience caused by the want of a harbour for 600 miles along the shore, he selected as the site of a new port the village of Rhacotis, lying in the extreme west of the Nile delta on a strip of land between Lake Mareotis and the sea. This he united to the little island of Pharos by a huge mole about a mile long, and thus he formed two splendid havens, which speedily became the commercial meeting-place of Africa, Asia, and Europe. The city was laid out in shape like the outspread cloak of a Macedonian soldier; in circumference about 15 miles; and it was divided into quarters by a magnificent street nearly 5 miles long and 100 feet wide, running from E. to W., and crossed by another of somewhat lesser dimensions from N. to S. In the great palace area the corpse of Alexander was given a tomb by Ptolemy, after he took it from Perdiccas. The Ptolemies, who succeeded to the Egyptian portion of Alexander's divided empire, made Alexandria their capital, and by their extensive building operations rendered the city famous for the magnificence and beauty of its public edifices. The city had five quarters named after the first five letters of the alphabet. The Jews lived in the quarter of the Macedonians ('Delta') in Josephus' time. Beside the Royal Palace the Royal Mausoleum, the Temple of Neptune, the Great Theatre, the Gymnasium, the Hippodrome (3 Mac 4.11, 5.46), and the vast Necropolis, Alexandria possessed three other structures for which it was celebrated.
(1) The Museum, which was not a place where collections were laid out for instruction, but a spot where the fine arts, science, and literature were studied. The Museum of Alexandria became in course of time practically the centre of the intellectual life of the world. It answered very largely to what we associate with the idea of a great modern university. It had its staff of State-paid professors, its professorial dining-hall, its shaded cloisters, where eager students from all parts of the world walked about, listening to lectures from men like Euclid, Eratosthenes, and Hipparchus.
(2) The Library, which was the greatest treasure of the city, was founded by the first Ptolemy. His successors increased the number of volumes till the collection embraced upwards of 700,000 MSS, in which were inscribed the intellectual efforts of Greece, Rome, Asia Minor, Palestine, and even India. The value of this unrivalled collection was immense. The Library was in two portions ; and, in the siege of Alexandria by Julius Caesar, the part stored in the Museum was burned, a loss, however, which was largely made up by the presentation to Cleopatra, by Mark Antony, of the Royal Library of Pergamum. The other portion was stored in the Serapeum, which in 1895 was discovered to have been situated where 'Pompey's Pillar' now stands.Historians are uncertain whether this celebrated Library was destroyed in AD 391 by Bishop Theophilus or in AD 641 by the Caliph Omar.
(3) The third structure which attracted the attention of the world to Alexandria was the Pharos (Lighthouse), erected by Ptolemy II. Philadelphus, on the island which had been joined to the mainland by Alexander. Rising in storeys of decreasing dimensions to a height of 450-490 feet, adorned with white marble columns, balustrades, and statues, it was justly reckoned one of the 'Seven Wonders of the World.' Though it was destroyed by an earthquake in AD 1303, it has nevertheless exercised a permanent influence on mankind. The idea of humanity to the mariner which it embodied was accepted by almost every civilized nation, and the thousands of lighthouses throughout the world to-day can all be traced to the erection of this first Pharos.

In its times of greatest prosperity, Alexandria had a population of between 800,000 and 1,000,000. Trade, amusement, and learning attracted to it inhabitants from every quarter. It was an amalgam of East and West. The alertness and versatility of the Greeks were here united with the gravity, conservatism, and dreaminess of the Orientals. Alexandria became, next to Rome,the largest and most splendid city in the world. Amongst its polyglot community, the Jews formed no inconsiderable portion. Jewish colonists had settled in Egypt in large numbers after the destruction of Jerusalem (Jer.42.14), and during the Persian period their numbers greatly increased. The Ptolemies, with one exception, favoured them, and assigned a special quarter of the city to them. More than an eighth of the population of Egypt was Jewish. Their business instincts brought to them thebulk of the trade of the country. They practically controlled the vast export of wheat. Some had great ships with which they traded over all the Mediterranean. St. Paul twice sailed in a ship of Alexandria (Ac.27.6, 28.11). The Jews were under their own ethnarch, who was called 'Alabarch,' and observed their own domestic and religious customs. Their great central synagogue was an immense and most imposing structure, where all the trade guilds sat together, and the seventy elders were accommodated in seventy splendidly jewelled chairs of state.

It was in Alexandria that one of the most important events in the history of religion took place, when the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into the Greek tongue. The Letter of Aristeas, written 130-100 BC, gives a legendary account of this undertaking. But it is undisputed that during the reigns of the earlier Lagidae (somewhere between 250 and 132 BC) the 'Septuagint' made its appearance. It is certainly not the product of a syndicate of translators working harmoniously, as Jewish tradition asserted. The work is of very unequal merit, the Pentateuch (qv) being the best done, while some ofthe later books are wretchedly translated. The translation was regarded by the Jews with mingled feelings ? execrated by one section as a desecration of the holy oracles, extolled by another section as the means by which the truth and beauty of the Law and the Prophets could be appreciated for the first time by the Greek-speaking Gentile world. The LXX became a mostvaluable preparation for Christianity. It familiarized the heathen nations with the God of righteousness as He had been revealed to the Jews. It diluted some Semitic ideas with more acceptable Greek ones. It formed the Bible of the early Church. In the Eastern Church to-day it is the only orthodox text of the OT.

The wars of the Ptolemies with the Seleucids at Antioch are described in Dn 11. Ptolemy II. Philadelphus left his mark on Palestine in the cities of Philadelphia (=Rabbath-ammon, Dt.3.11), Ptolemais (Ac.21.7.=Acco, Jg.1.31), Philoteria, etc. Under Ptolemy in. Euergetes I (247-222 BC) the famous 'stele of Canopus' was inscribed. With Ptolemy IV Philopator the dynasty began to decline, and his alleged oppressions of the Jews are narrated in 3 Maccabees. Under Ptolemy V Epiphanes the Alexandrian supremacy over Palestine was exchanged 198 BC for that of Antiochus III the Great (Dn.11.14-17). The ten succeeding Ptolemies were distinguished for almost nothing but their effeminacy, folly, luxury, and cruelty. The city increased in wealth, but sank more and more in political power. Julius Caesar stormed Alexandria in 47 BC, and after a brief spell of false splendour under Cleopatra, it fell after the battle of Actium (31 BC) into the hands of the Romans, and its fortunes were henceforth merged with those of the Empire. Egypt as a whole became the private possession of the emperor.

But while its political power was thus passing away, it was developing an intellectual greatness destined to exercise a profound influence through succeeding centuries. Among its Jewish population there had arisen a new school which sought to amalgamate Hebrew tradition and Greek philosophy, and to make the OT yield up Platonic and Stoic doctrines. This attempted fusion of Hebraism and Hellenism was begun by Aristobulus, and reached its climax in Philo, a contemporary of JesusChrist. The Jews found in the Gentile writings many beautiful and inspiring thoughts. They could logically defend their own proud claim to be the sole depositaries and custodians of Divine truth only by asserting that every rich and luminous Greek expression was borrowed from their Scriptures. Plato and Pythagoras, they declared, were deeply in debt to Moses. The Greekswere merely reproducers of Hebrew ethics, of Hebrew religious and moral conceptions. The next step was to re-write their own Scriptures in terms of Greek philosophy, and the most simple way of doing this was by an elaborate system of allegory. Philo carried the allegorizing of the OT to such an extent that he was able to read philosophy into the most matter-of-fact narratives of the patriarchs and their wives. This allegorical method of interpretation was destined to have a large influence in Christian Church history. We read of a 'synagogue of the Alexandrians' in Jerusalem, furiously hostile to St. Stephen with his plain declaration of facts (Ac.6.9). Apollos of Alexandria (Ac.18.24-28) needed to be 'more accurately instructed' in Christian doctrine, though we have no direct evidence that he was a disciple of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews shows traces of Alexandrian influence, and there are evidences that St Paul was not unfamiliar with Alexandrian hermeneutics and terminology (cf. Gal.4.24-31). But there is no proof that St. Paul ever visited Alexandria. He seems to have refrained from going thither because the gospel had already reached the city (cf. Ro.15.20). Eusebius credits St Mark with the introduction of Christianity into Egypt ? a legend which survived for centuries. In the 2nd and 3rd cents. Alexandria was the intellectual capital of Christendom. The Alexandrian school of theology was made lustrous by the names of Pantaenus, Clement, and especially Origen, who, while continuing the allegorical tradition, strove to show that Christian doctrine enshrined and realized the dreams and yearnings of Greek philosophy. The Gnostics (qv), Basilides, and Valentinus also flourished here. Alexandria became more and more the stronghold of the Christian faith. Here Athanasius defended contra mundum the true Divinity of Christ in the Nicene controversy, and the city's influence on Christian theology has been profound. In AD 641, Alexandria was occupied by the Caliph Omar's general Amr ibn el-Asi. Omar did not permit it to be a seat of government any longer, but established a more easily controlled one at Fostat (Old Cairo). Alexandria now began to decline, and the discovery in 1497 of the new route to the East via the Cape of Good Hope almost destroyed its trade. At the beginning of the 19th cent. Alexandria was a mere village. To-day it is again a large and flourishing city, with a population of 928,237 (1956), and its port is one of the busiest on the Mediterranean shore.
[Article: Dictionary of the Bible, J.Hastings, 2nd Ed., T&T.Clark, 1963. - G.A.F.K.?E.G.K.]
[Map: Atlas of the Bible. L H Grollenberg O.P. © Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd. 1956.]