This book is only marginally concerned with whether Alexander the Great ever visited Jerusalem—an historical question that Ory Amitay ultimately leaves unanswered. Instead, it is mostly about stories describing a visit by Alexander to Jerusalem, which were composed at different times and in different places. Amitay examines four main versions of these stories: chapter 1—a version preserved in the epsilon recension of the Greek Alexander Romance; chapter 2—a story involving Gviha Ben-Psisa, which is preserved in rabbinic sources: the Babylonian Talmud (tractate Sanhedrin 91a), the midrashic collection Bereshit Rabbah (BR 61.7), and in the two scholia of the Megillat Ta`anit on the 25th of Sivan; chapter 3—a version involving Simon the Just, which is preserved in the two scholia of the Megillat Ta`anit on the 21st of Kislev and in the Babylonian Talmud (tractate Yoma 69a); and chapter 4—a story told by Flavius Josephus (Ant. 11.302–347). Chapter 5 considers the evidence (or lack thereof) of an actual visit by Alexander to Jerusalem. The volume ends with a brief conclusion.
Josephus’s version of the Alexander in Jerusalem story is the longest and has attracted the most attention. Scholars have assumed that Josephus’s account is the earliest version because it was written in the first century CE, whereas the rabbinic sources date from the later Roman period through late antiquity, and elements in the epsilon recension point to an eighth or ninth century Byzantine context and date. Based on fine-grained philological and contextual analyses of these texts, Amitay turns this sequence on its head, arguing that the epsilon recension preserves the earliest version of the Alexander in Jerusalem story, while Josephus’s is the latest. According to Amitay, Josephus’s story incorporates elements from two out of the three other versions. The following discussion reviews each of the versions in the order of Amitay’s chapters.
The version of the story in the epsilon recension of the Alexander Romance begins with Alexander marching against Egypt, where he demonstrates the might of the Macedonian army to Judean scouts by ordering some of his soldiers to die by leaping into a ravine. Realizing the futility of resistance, the Judeans, led by the priests in their priestly robes, come out to greet Alexander from an unnamed city (assumed to be Jerusalem). Awed by their appearance (“form” [σχῆμα]), Alexander acknowledges the greatness of their god (the “one god”), whom he adopts as his god. Alexander then refuses an offer of gold and silver from the Judeans, redirecting them instead as a gift to his new god. The story continues in Alexandria, where Alexander sets up statues of himself, Seleucus, Antiochus, and Philippus the physician.
Amitay argues that the prominent roles of Seleucus and Antiochus in the epsilon recension indicate that the Alexander in Jerusalem story originated in a Seleucid context. Furthermore, whereas the monotheistic tendencies expressed in it have been understood as reflecting Byzantine Christian authorship, Amitay views them as the product of a Judean author who lived in the Hellenistic diaspora, perhaps Antioch. This author composed the original story incorporated in the epsilon recension, which Amitay dubs the “Seleukid Romance.” He situates the composition of the story around the time of or shortly after the Fifth Syrian War (202-198 BCE), before the deterioration of Seleucid-Judean relations and following the marriage of Ptolemy V and Kleopatra I, when Seleucid dominance in Alexandria would have seemed likely (and makes sense in the light of a reference to the foundation of Alexandria in the story). Amitay proposes that in the Seleukid Romance, the fictional Alexander is a proxy for the Seleucid kingdom in general, and Antiochus III in particular. In an appendix to this chapter, Amitay discusses Alexander’s construction of gates between two mountains (the Breasts of the North) to exclude the impure nations to the north (called the “Bersiloi:”), including Gog and Magog. Bersiloi is thought to refer to the Khazars (who were called “Belsyroi” after their homeland, Bersilia/Berzilia), which is one reason the epsilon recension has been dated to the Byzantine period. Amitay, however, believes it is likely that the author of the epsilon recension inserted the name of the Bersiloi into an already existing story.
Of the four versions of the Gviha Ben-Psisa story, the fullest is the Megillat Ta`anit version preserved in the Oxford manuscript (O˳), where the story is used to explain why the demosionai (tax collectors) were removed from Jerusalem on the 25th of Sivan. It involves Alexander, who, spurred on by the Samaritans (called by the derogatory term “Kutim”), sought to enter the Jerusalem temple. A hunchbacked warden of the Jerusalem temple named Gviha Ben-Psisa presents Alexander with golden slippers to prevent him from slipping on the pavement. The story ends with one of them being bitten by a snake. Amitay identifies Alexander in this story (many elements of which are obscure) as a stand-in for Pompey “the Great,” who entered the Jerusalem temple and annexed the Hasmonean kingdom to Rome. This would provide a terminus post quem of 63 BCE for the composition of parts (but not necessarily all) of the story.
Like the Gviha Ben-Psisa story, the third version of Alexander in Jerusalem is preserved in rabbinic literature——the two scholia to the Megillat Ta`anit on the 21st of Kislev and in the BT——but in different variations. Amitay proposes a reconstruction of the original story based on an identification of elements found in all three. According to this story, the Samaritans (Kutim) request and receive the Jerusalem temple from Alexander. The high priest Simon the Just (an historical figure who officiated in the Jerusalem temple in the third century BCE) leads a procession with torches to meet Alexander at the coastal town of Antipatris. Upon seeing Simon, Alexander prostrates himself, reporting that he had seen a vision of the high priest’s likeness leading him to victory in war. The Judeans then pierce the ankles of the Samaritans and drag them behind horses, and plow and sow the ground of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim.
Amitay places this story’s origin after Herod the Great founded Antipatris and before the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE. He sees the blatant hostility of the Judeans toward the Samaritans as a response to an incident that occurred during the Passover celebration in 8/9 CE, when a group of Samaritans defiled the temple courts and porticoes by strewing them with human bones. Amitay therefore understands Alexander in this story as representing the preference of foreign powers (in this case, Rome) for the Judeans over the Samaritans and the power of the God of Israel and his earthly representative, the high priest. Not only that, but the God of Israel is the source of revelation of Alexander’s future greatness, similar to the divine plan presented in the book of Daniel.
According to Amitay’s analysis, these three versions of the Alexander in Jerusalem story predate Josephus and therefore must have been available to him in some form. Furthermore, Amitay notes that modern scholarship has failed to take into account oral traditions, which presumably circulated and influenced the written versions of the story. Josephus’s version begins with the marriage of Nikaso, the daughter of the Persian-appointed satrap of Samaria, Sanballat (Sanaballetes) to Manasses, the brother of the Jerusalem high priest Jaddua (Iaddous). The elders in Jerusalem are angered by this intermarriage between two peoples and demand that Manasses divorce Nikaso. However, Sanballat dissuades Manasses by promising to build a temple of his own on Mount Gerizim, for which he secures permission by supporting Alexander on his campaign. After Jaddua refuses to switch allegiance, Alexander marches on Jerusalem, where he is greeted by the high priest in his special regalia and other priests wearing their white vestments. Awed by their appearance and reporting that he had seen a vision of the high priest leading him to victory, Alexander enters Jerusalem and offers a sacrifice to the God of Israel. After the high priest shows Alexander the prophecy of his victory written in the book of Daniel, Alexander grants the Judeans special accommodations to follow their ancestral laws. Following Alexander’s departure from Jerusalem, the Samaritans request similar accommodations, but Alexander leaves for Egypt before issuing a response.
Since Josephus’s version incorporates significant elements of the Alexander in Jerusalem story in the Seleukid Romance and in the Simon the Just story, Amitay concludes that “these two earlier versions [either in oral or written form] must have served Josephus as the basis for his own story about Alexander in Jerusalem” (p. 141). However, in Josephus’s version the high priest is not Simon the Just but Jaddua, who is named as the high priest in the biblical book of Nehemiah——reflecting, according to Amitay, Josephus’s condensed (but inaccurate) chronology of Persian period Judea. Amitay understands Josephus’s Alexander in Jerusalem story as presenting an idealized model for Roman-Judean relations while excluding the Samaritans. Noting Josephus’s expansion on biblical stories involving other foreign rulers —(specifically, Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus)—Amitay views Josephus’s Alexander as providing a precedent for Roman hegemony while suggesting a more benevolent attitude toward the Judeans and the God of Israel, with the aim of rebuilding the Jerusalem temple.
In chapter 5 (“From Myth to History”), Amitay asks if it is possible that Alexander indeed visited Jerusalem, despite the “mythistorical” nature of the different versions of the Alexander in Jerusalem story. He notes that the silence of Curtius, Arrian, and other historians does not negate this possibility, but instead could simply indicate that the transition was peaceful and therefore unremarkable. In contrast, the Samaritans are mentioned by Curtius because they burned alive Alexander’s newly appointed governor Andromachos. Amitay argues that Alexander’s journey back from Egypt would have allowed enough time for a visit to Jerusalem. According to Amitay, the possibility that Alexander visited Jerusalem is bolstered by Pliny the Elder’s reference to the amount of opobalsam harvested during the summer at the time of Alexander’s campaign, since this plant was cultivated only in Jericho and Ein Gedi. Although Amitay seems to favor the possibility that Alexander visited Jerusalem, he acknowledges that there is no conclusive evidence to support this, and, therefore, “The surest answer to the question […] is that we do not know” (p. 180). Accordingly, he concludes that even if Alexander did visit Jerusalem, it was a “mundane and unremarkable” event that did not merit mention in the surviving historical accounts. Thus, “the contribution of the Alexander in Jerusalem tradition to the actual history of Alexander is negligible” (p. 180). In contrast, Amitay believes that the four versions of the Alexander in Jerusalem story shed light on the Judean view of their relations with foreign powers from the Seleucids to the Romans, with Alexander representing different figures at key points of transition.
As is clear from the above summary, Amitay interrogates an impressively wide array of sources ranging from biblical books to Greek and Roman authors to rabbinic literature to Byzantine Christian works. The result is a paradigm-shifting study that upends the usual understanding of the Alexander in Jerusalem story. Amitay’s reversal of the sequence of the four versions involves accepting his understanding of Alexander as a proxy for other historical figures and his association of these figures with specific events in the history of Judea. Some of his proposals are less convincing than others, such as his identification of the hostility of the Judeans toward the Samaritans in the Simon the Just version of the story as a response to the strewing of human bones in the temple courts in 8/9 CE. Furthermore, late antique interest in the Seleucid period means that the epsilon recension of the Alexander in Jerusalem could indeed have originated in a Byzantine context.[1] And despite the confusion surrounding Josephus’s chronology of the Persian period, an analysis of the published finds from Mount Gerizim indicates that they do not support the excavator’s claimed mid-fifth century BCE construction date for the first Samaritan temple, and therefore cannot be cited as evidence disproving Josephus’s testimony that it was constructed around the time of Alexander’s conquest (pace Amitay, pp. 147; 177 nn. 32, 33).[2] Nevertheless, even scholars who are unconvinced by Amitay will want to reevaluate their understanding of the Alexander in Jerusalem story. This book is therefore an important addition to studies of the traditions surrounding Alexander as well as the history of Judea under Greek and Roman rule, and will surely generate a great deal of discussion.
Notes
[1] See, e.g., R. Boustan and K. Britt, “Historical Scenes in Mosaics from Late Roman Syria and Palestine: Building on the Seleucid Past in Late Antiquity”, Journal of Late Antiquity 14.2( 2021): 335–74.
[2] See J. Magness, “When Was the First Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim Built?”, Journal of Ancient Judaism 16.3 (2025): 1–10.