Josephus on Alexander's visit to Jerusalem

Most scholars agree that the following story, told by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in his Jewish antiquities 11.317-345, is not true. One argument is that Alexander is shown a book that was not yet written. Another argument is that the story is a bit too good to be true: the Samarians, the eternal rivals of the Jews, blacken the Jews and get permission to build a temple of their own, Alexander visits Jerusalem, understands that he owes everything to the God of the Jews, allows them the privilege to live according to their ancestral customs and behaves rather unkind towards the Samarians. If a Jew in the second century BCE were to invent a story, he would write something along these lines.

On closer inspection, however, we may notice some odd details. In the first place, the Samaritans are allowed to keep their temple: not exactly something a Jew would invent, and in fact a plausible punishment for the Jewish refusal to send soldiers. In the second place, in fact, Alexander gives the Jews no privileges at all: everything he grants the Jews, had already been granted to them by the Persian kings. This was Alexander's usual policy.

In the third place, the idea that Alexander had had a vision in which the God of the Jews played an important role is just too incredible to be invented: everyone knew that Alexander claimed to be the son of the Egyptian god Ammon. Nobody would invent a special link to the Jewish God. The easiest explanation is that Alexander did indeed sacrifice to the God of the Jews.

Another aspect that deserves to be mentioned is Alexander's demand for auxiliaries and the presents the Jews formerly had sent to the Persian government. This matches the demand made by Alexander to Darius that he would address him as the master of the Persian possessions.

The following translation was made by William Whiston.