Alexander the Great & the Bible

Key Words

• Epic: a story or event of great significance, often involving heroic deeds or memorable adventures

The novel is an epic tale of love and betrayal set in ancient Rome.

• Homage: a show of respect or honor, often through a tribute or gesture

The artist's latest painting pays homage to the works of the Renaissance masters.

• Immerse: to involve deeply in a particular activity or subject

She decided to immerse herself in learning a new language over the summer.

• Renowned: well-known and highly respected, famous for a particular quality or achievement

The chef is renowned for her innovative culinary creations.

• Idiomatically: in a way that contains or consists of an idiom

I'll tell you tomorrow could be translated idiomatically as "I'll sleep on it".

Read the article to find the answers

1. Where does the word 'Pharma' come from?
2. Where did the numerical system based on the number 60 (dividing hours into 60 minutes and minutes into 60 seconds) come from?
3. How many prophetic visions are there in the Book of Daniel?
4. Who were the Diadochi?

Ancient Greece

The country we know today as Greece didn't come into being until 1830. The vast majority of people are now Greek Orthodox Christians, but the ancient Greeks had a very different religion. Ancient Greece was a collection of nearly 1,500 independent city-states spread around the Mediterranean coast from Naples in Italy to Marseille in France and Izmir in Turkey. They did not have a single, unified religion. They worshipped and sometimes sacrificed humans to a variety of gods and goddesses associated with each city-state or region.

The ancient Greek gods influenced everything, from art and literature to the way people conducted politics and went to war. They can be traced back to the epic poems of Homer, particularly the Iliad and the Odyssey.

According to historical accounts, Alexander visited the legendary city of Troy, the setting of Homer's Iliad, before launching his war against the Persian Empire. He is said to have paid homage to the tomb of Achilles, seeing himself as the great warrior's successor.

In Greek mythology, Achilles' mother was Thetis, a goddess who tried to make her son immortal. She held Achilles by the heel and immersed him in a magical river, but because he was not fully submerged, his heel remained vulnerable. He died when an arrow struck him there during the Trojan War, but he became a legendary hero nevertheless, renowned for his extraordinary strength, courage and skill in battle.

The term "Achilles' heel" is now used idiomatically to refer to a weakness or vulnerability that a person or thing has despite its overall strength or power. For example: "The company's innovative technology was its strength, but its Achilles' heel was its dependence on a single supplier".

Goddesses such as Thetis, Athena and Artemis were worshipped by both men and women. In ancient Greek society, women played an important role in religion, often as priestesses and participants in religious rituals, but women and children were often enslaved after their homelands were invaded and their men killed in war. In Athens in particular, it is estimated that the city had as many as 80,000 slaves - half the total population - with many households owning an average of 3-4 slaves.

The famous fable writer Aesop was one of Greece's most famous slaves, granted his freedom by his second master as a reward for his wit and intelligence. Slaves were either born into slavery or acquired through war, kidnapping, and debt. They could be bought, sold and leased like property and were used in a variety of occupations, including agriculture, mining, construction, domestic service and prostitution. If they earned enough money, slaves could buy their freedom by selling themselves to a god, such as Apollo, with the money going to the temple.

Sexual violence against slaves was normal and even depicted in mythology and literature. A prominent example of rape in classical Greek mythology is the story of Zeus and Europa. In this myth, Zeus, the king of the gods, falls in love with Europa, a mortal woman, and kidnaps and rapes her. Europa bore Zeus three sons. This myth, like many others in Greek mythology, reflects a cultural context in which rape was often portrayed as an acceptable, even admirable, expression of male power and virility. Male rape was seen as a form of feminisation that robbed men of their masculine roles. In classical Athens, blaming the victim and excusing the perpetrator was widespread.

According to Greek mythology, the god of medicine and healing, Asclepius, saw snakes as sacred animals that could heal people and learned his healing powers from them. In one story, he watched a snake use herbs to revive another snake that Asclepius had killed. It then taught him how to revive the dead. The ancient Greeks sometimes let snakes roam freely in some of their temples. Patients would sleep in these temples in the hope that the snakes would cure them. This is the origin of the snake and staff symbol used today to represent the medical profession.

The word 'pharma' comes from the Greek word 'pharmakeia', which referred to the practice of using a plant or herb that could be used for both healing and poisoning. The term evolved over time to describe the art of preparing and dispensing medicines, leading to the modern concept of pharmacy.

The word pharmakos refers to a ritual that was believed to purify the whole city. An unfortunate person, chosen from among the poor and ugly members of society, became a human scapegoat and was ritually sacrificed or banished from the community in times of crisis, such as famine or plague.

Not all of Greeks culture was horrific. Greek thinkers such as Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle made important contributions to the sciences, including mathematics, astronomy, physics and biology. Their ideas and observations contributed to the development of modern scientific thought and helped to lay the foundations of Western science and philosophy.

Ancient Greece and the Persian Empire

Babylon was one of the first great empires, predating the Greek city-states by hundreds of years. Babylon had the largest city in the world and was a marvel of architecture and engineering. Its unique numerical system, based on the number 60, explains why we divide hours into 60 minutes and minutes into 60 seconds. It's also infamous for fulfilling biblical prophecy by destroying Jerusalem and taking the Judeans into captivity. The prophet Jeremiah said,

The Lord says: "The king of Judah will be handed over to the king of Babylon, and they will die there. No descendant of his will ever again sit on the throne of David or rule in Judah."

The Lord says he will send the families of the north, including Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the servant of the Lord. He will bring them against this land, its inhabitants and the surrounding nations. The Lord will destroy them completely. The land will be desolate and will serve Babylon for 70 years. Then Babylon will be punished and her land will be left in ruins.

As prophesied, the Babylonian Exile lasted 70 years until Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon and left it in ruins. He allowed the Jewish exiles to return home and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, but they did not have a king.

The Medes were an important power in the Ancient Near East, but they were not as dominant or influential as the Babylonian Empire. Both the Median and Babylonian empires eventually fell, and the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great emerged, incorporating their lands and rapidly expanding to become the largest ancient empire in the world before clashing with the Greek city-states.

The conflict began with the Ionian Revolt, when the Greek city-states of Ionia revolted against Persian rule. The first Persian invasion of mainland Greece was defeated by the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon. The second Persian invasion reached Athens and destroyed the Acropolis, a sacred site dedicated to the goddess Athena.

The Athenians sent officials to Delphi, the main religious centre of the Greeks. They asked their god Apollo how they should protect themselves from Persian attack and were told that they would be safe behind a wooden wall, which they interpreted to mean a fleet of ships.

The Greeks narrowly escaped becoming part of the Persian Empire after the Athenian navy defeated the Persians at sea, and the armies of the Greek city-states fought side by side to defeat the Persians on land, forcing them to return to Asia.

The Rise of Alexander

Macedonia was ruled by a royal family who believed they were related to the king of the gods, Zeus, and wanted to be even more Greek. Alexander's father Philip became king and took over the lands to the east of Macedonia, which were rich in gold. With this gold he was able to pay for a full-time professional army, giving him a huge advantage over the part-time armies of the Greek city-states to his south. It was a well-trained, well-organised army, and it soon defeated all of Macedonia's neighbours.

It was common practice to sacrifice animals to the gods. But when Alexander's mother, Olympias, known for her wild behaviour, organised religious festivals, thousands of animals were killed as offerings to Dionysus, the god of wine, feasting, ecstasy, insanity and ritual madness. Olympias and her friends would then drink the blood of the animals and play with poisonous snakes. It was rumoured that Olympias even slept with one in her bed.

As Philip grew richer and more powerful, he hired artists, musicians and engineers from all over the Greek world. He even brought in philosophers, including Aristotle, a student of the great philosopher Plato. Macedonia was now well connected to the wider world, and Alexander gained an invaluable education.

By the time he was eighteen, Alexander had already demonstrated his abilities as a military leader by suppressing rebellions and persuading Greek cities to accept his father as their ruler. After his father's death, Alexander became king of Macedonia and made a pilgrimage to the ruins of Troy, where he made offerings to the gods at the Temple of Athene and exchanged his own armour for a shield that, according to legend, had been used in the Trojan War. He then went to war against Persia.

Alexander the Great & the Prophet Daniel

Hundreds of years before the rise of Alexander, a man whose name translates as 'God is my judge' had visions and prophesied about a future king of Greece. Daniel was a well-educated, highly respected, pious Jew who was one of the people taken into captivity from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.

The king of Babylon had a dream in which a huge statue of gold, silver, bronze and iron was crushed by a stone from heaven. Daniel interpreted the dream as a vision of a series of empires, each rising and falling in power until God finally established His eternal kingdom.

Today, Christians look back and identify the gold head as representing the Babylonian Empire, the silver chest and arms as representing the Median Empire, the bronze stomach and thighs as representing the Persian Empire, and the iron legs as representing the Greek Empire under Alexander the Great, which fragmented and finally collapsed just before the first appearance of Jesus Christ.

Soon after, Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered the city of Babylon and established the Persian Empire. Cyrus allowed the Jewish exiles in Babylon to return home and rebuild their temple, but Daniel stayed on and was appointed to a high position in the government.

In one of Daniel's own visions, he saw a ram with two horns that went everywhere and ruled everything in its path. No one could stand against it, and it grew strong and did what it wanted. Then a goat with a prominent horn between its eyes came from the west, moving swiftly without touching the ground. The goat rushed at the ram, struck him and broke his horns. Daniel didn't understand the vision, so an angel explained it to him and said,

"The ram you saw with two horns represents the kings of Media and Persia. The goat is the king of Greece, and the great horn between his eyes is the first king".