Jerusalem. The Biography

SACKING
     
    The tournament to find the strongest was a twenty-year war between Alexander’s generals. Jerusalem was tossed between these Macedonian warlords who ‘multiplied the evils in the earth’. In the duel between the two leading contenders, Jerusalem changed hands six times. She was ruled for fifteen years by One-Eyed Antigonos, until in 301 he was killed in battle and the victor, Ptolemy, arrived outside the walls to claim Jerusalem.
    Ptolemy was Alexander’s cousin, a veteran general who had fought his way from Greece to Pakistan, where he had commanded the Macedonian fleet on the Indus. Just after Alexander’s death, he was granted Egypt. When he heard that Alexander the Great’s cortège was on its way back to Greece, he rushed up through Palestine to seize it and carried it back to rest in his capital, Alexandria. The guardian of the ultimate Greek talisman, Alexander’s body, became the keeper of his flame. Ptolemy was not just a warlord: the soldier’s strong chin and blunt nose on his coins belied his subtlety and common sense.
    Now Ptolemy told the Jerusalemites that he wished to enter the city on the Sabbath to sacrifice to the Jewish God. The resting Jews believed this ruse and Ptolemy seized the city, thus revealing the fanaticism of Jewish observance. But when the sun set on the Sabbath, the Jews fought back. Ptolemy’s troops then rampaged through Jerusalem – ‘the houses rifled, the women ravished; and half the city go forth into captivity’. Ptolemy probably posted Macedonian garrisons in the Baris Fortress, built by Nehemiah just north of the Temple, and he deported thousands of Jews to Egypt. These founded the Greek-speaking Jewish community in Ptolemy’s splendid capital Alexandria. In Egypt, Ptolemy and hissuccessors became pharaohs; in Alexandria and the Mediterranean they were Greek kings. Ptolemy Soter – the ‘Saviour’ as he was known – adopted the local gods, Isis and Osiris, and Egyptian traditions of kingship, promoting his dynasty as both Egyptian god-kings and semi-divine Greek monarchs. He and his sons conquered Cyprus, Cyrenaica and then swathes of Anatolia and the Greek Islands. He understood that not just magnificence but also culture would give him legitimacy and greatness. So he made Alexandria the world’s paramount Greek city, opulent and sophisticated, founding its Museum and the Library, recruiting Greek scholars and commissioning the Pharos lighthouse, one of the Wonders of the World. His empire endured for three centuries down to the last of his family – Cleopatra.
    Ptolemy lived into his eighties, and wrote a history of Alexander. 26 Ptolemy II Philadelphos favoured the Jews, freeing 120,000 Jewish slaves and sending gold to embellish the Temple. He understood the power of pageantry and spectacle. In 275 he held a parade for a small number of special guests in the name of Dionysus, god of wine and abundance, in which a vast wineskin made of leopard pelts held 200,000 gallons of wine and a phallos 180 feet long and 9 feet wide was paraded along with elephants and subjects from every corner of his empire. He was also an avid book collector. When the high priest sent the twenty or so books of the Jewish Tanakh * to Alexandria, the king ordered it to be translated into Greek. He respected the scholarship of his Alexandrian Jews and invited them to a dinner to discuss the translation: ‘everything’, promised the king, ‘will be served in compliance with your habits and for me also.’ It was said that in seventy days the seventy scholars each produced an identical translation. The Septuagint Bible changed the history of Jerusalem and later made possible the spread of Christianity. Thanks to Alexander, Greek was the international language; now, for the first time, the Bible could be read by virtually everyone. 27
    JOSEPH THE TOBIAD
     
    Jerusalem remained a semi-independent statelet within Ptolemy’s empire, and Judah issued its own coins, inscribed ‘Yehud’. She was not just a political entity but God’s own city ruled by the high priests. These scions of the Oniad family, claiming descent from the biblical priestZadok, enjoyed the opportunity to amass fortunes and power, provided they paid tribute to the Ptolemies. In the 240s, High Priest Onias II tried to hold back the 20 silver talents he owed Ptolemy III Euergetes. This created an opportunity for a well-connected young Jew who decided to outbid the high priest not just for Jerusalem but