Is Your Name Alexander?
The unusual Jewish legacy of Alexander the Great
From time to time Jewish newspapers and websites publish lists of the most popular names given to babies born that year. If you look down the list, the great majority of the names are Hebrew in origin, often based on biblical figures or characters who crop up in later Jewish literature. Yet one of the boys’ names that invariably appears in the top 30 or so is Alexander, a Greek name with no obvious connection to Hebrew or Jewish literature.
Jews have been naming their sons Alexander since the days of Alexander the Great, the Greek conqueror who rampaged his way across the Middle East in the 4th century BCE. The Greek historians who chronicled Alexander’s conquests make no mention of him having any contact with Jews, other than a few whom he conscripted into his armies as he conquered territories. But Jewish tradition is replete with stories of Alexander and his apparent benevolence towards Jews and Israel. Even the Hasmonean kings of ancient Israel, who came to power after defeating an invasion by Syrian Greeks, heirs to Alexander’s own kingdom, named their children after him. The name Alexander crops up 22 times in Hasmonean genealogy, and there are at least four references to Alexanders in the Christian Bible (written, as we know, by Jews).
The ancient Jewish world first heard of Alexander the Great in November, 333 BCE. That was when he defeated the Persian ruler, Darius III, at the battle of Issus in Cilicia, on the modern boundary between Turkey and Syria. Two years later he defeated Darius again, this time decisively, putting an end to the Persian Empire and establishing himself as the undisputed ruler of the East. His victory was relevant to the Jews of Israel because for the previous 200 years they had been under Persian rule, ever since Persia had conquered Babylon, liberating the Jewish exiles and allowing them to return to Jerusalem in order to rebuild the Temple. Israel had remained an outpost of the Persian Empire ever since.
The Persians had left the Jews of Israel more or less alone. As long as they paid their tributes and supported the Empire militarily, they were free to practise their religion and live their lives securely. Life under the Persians was as good as it could be under any foreign regime; Alexander’s victory over Darius should not have been a particular cause of rejoicing for the Jews.
In fact, little changed for the Jews when the Greeks replaced the Persians as their overlords. Alexander ignored them; Israel was a small and politically insignificant territory, and he had bigger things on his mind, like the conquest of Egypt and trying not to be poisoned by his generals (he failed). But if the Jews had no great reason to either regret or celebrate Alexander’s arrival, that is not how they told the story.
During Alexander’s long and difficult siege of the city of Tyre, he ordered Jerusalem, like other cities in the area, to assist him by supplying soldiers and resources. The Persians used to make similar demands when they fought battles, so for the Jews, the situation was not unusual; they fulfilled Alexander’s request. But when the historian Josephus recounted the episode 400 years later, he believed that the Jews had refused to help with the siege and that, in a rage, Alexander had descended on Jerusalem.
According to this story (which historians today regard as nonsense), as Alexander approached Jerusalem, the High Priest, dressed in his elaborate priestly garments, came out to meet him, hoping to assuage his anger. Years earlier, before he set off on his military adventures, Alexander had been visited in a dream by a holy man wearing strange robes, who told him to go and conquer Persia. As the High Priest approached him at the entrance to Jerusalem, Alexander recognised him as the man he’d seen in his dream. He fell to his knees, begged forgiveness for even thinking of punishing Jerusalem, granted privileges to the Jews and offered up sacrifices in the Temple.
The reason why this story is considered nonsense is because it is not original. Other similar tales circulated in the ancient world, especially in Greek folklore, about situations in which people were suddenly transformed because they’d seen someone in real life who had formerly appeared to them in a dream.
The story of Alexander and the High Priest is a Jewishly themed legend that seems to have been borrowed from the Greeks. It is not the only one. The Alexander Romance is a Greek compendium of myths and legends composed sometime after the conqueror’s death. Several of its stories found their way into the Talmud and the Midrash, the rabbinic texts in which folklore is often used to illustrate spiritual and religious ideas. These stories became popular and were often expanded into lengthy narratives. By the Middle Ages, stories about Alexander were circulating widely in Jewish circles, being included in anthologies of tales that we recognise as fables, but which were once believed to be true.
Sometimes the stories discuss Alexander’s admiration for Israel, contrasting the way it was administered with his own rule. In one, he travelled ‘behind the dark mountains’ to see how the (presumably Jewish) king of those lands administered justice. He observed one case in which the plaintiff was complaining that he had sold a building in which the buyer had found treasure. The buyer insisted he had the right to keep the treasure, the seller argued that he had only sold the building not what was in it. The king asked one if he had a son, and the other whether he had a daughter. When they both replied in the affirmative, the king told them to marry the children to each other so they could share the treasure. Seeing that Alexander was amazed, the king asked him what he would have done. ‘I would have put them both to death’ he replied, ‘and kept the treasure for the royal throne’. The judge was appalled. ‘Does rain fall in your land?’ he asked. ‘Does the sun shine? If so, the rain only falls and the sun only shines for the animals in your kingdom, not for you.’
The popularity of the Alexander stories goes some way towards explaining why his name, or its Yiddish derivative, Sender, became so popular in Jewish circles. But this does not explain why so many stories were told about Alexander in the first place. The answer probably lies in the biblical book of Daniel. For, although life for the Jewish nation under Alexander the Great was no better or worse than it had been under the Persians, his arrival seemed to be the fulfilment of a prediction made by Daniel.
Daniel had predicted that the ultimate redemption, the messianic age, would not occur until four successive empires had ruled over Israel and been destroyed. In Daniel’s understanding of history, these empires were Assyria, Babylon, Media and Persia. So, when Alexander defeated Persia, it appeared that Daniel’s prophecy was about to come true, that Alexander was the longed-for redeemer whose arrival on the scene would herald the coming of a messiah. In one story, Alexander himself is treated as a messianic figure. When asked why Alexander was always depicted as holding an orb in his hand, Rabbi Yona in the Talmud explained that he had the power to ascend to the heavens, from where he could look down and see the globe of the earth as if it was an orb.
Of course, Alexander the Great did not turn out to be the redeemer, indeed he probably wasn’t a very nice person at all. The optimism among the Jews that greeted his arrival soon faded, plenty more empires would rise and fall before the coming of the ultimate redemption. But though the optimism faded, the stories remained, and in the popular imagination, Alexander the Great was regarded as a great friend and admirer of the Jews. And, since it is a Jewish tradition to name children after departed relatives, and the name Alexander has been popular for so long, the chances are it will remain popular for generations to come.
Shlomtzion never caught on as a name.
Sexist! What about Alexandra?