ALEXANDER'S INFLUENCE

In the last century it was academically fashionable to denigrate the influence of Alexander The Great upon western culture. The moral shift away from empire as a beneficial civilizing influence happily, put an end to the 19th century empire builder’s scholarly canonization of Alexander, but this simply replaced one myopic view with another. Post modern deconstructionism requires the jettisoning of contemporary moral absolutism and therefor allows a clearer view of the facts unadorned by the subconscious societal values which burden each scholar’s unexamined attitudes. Fortunately, the wiser Alexander scholars among us have begun to re assess the long term effects of the campaigns of Alexander upon our civilization.

What emerges most prominently is the rapid spread of the Greek language throughout the ancient world caused by the juxtaposition of Macedonian culture upon what had been the Persian empire. After Alexander all governance and most scholarship employed the Greek language making the actions, thoughts and beliefs of the myriad of cultures of the ancient world directly available to all.

It was in Alexander’s city of Alexandria By Egypt on the offshore island of Pharos, that the first translation of the old testament was made from Hebrew to Greek. Although this translation called, The Septuagint, was made for Jews who had so long resided in foreign land that they could no longer read Hebrew, it made Jewish theology, the basis of Christianity, at once available to the entire world and promulgated the idea of monotheism which had been on the fringe of Greek philosophy since Anaxagoras in the 5th century BCE.

It is due to this shift from Aramaic to Greek as the lingua franca of the Middle East that the documentation of Christianity, The New Testament, and The Epistles were easily available to all of the ancient world and it is due to Alexander that this situation occurred.

It was these ideas written down in Greek which effected early Rabbinic Jewish thought, early Christianity, and early Islam, and it is from them that the three great religions of the book evolved. If this might have occurred without Alexander is a moot point and after the fact. It was a direct effect of the life of Alexander. This effect was most certainly unintentional and yet an effect of the language change introduced by Alexander none the less.

The eminent classical scholar, Guy MacLean Rogers, states unequivocally in his book, “Alexander, The Ambiguity Of Greatness”;

“It was largely as a long term result of Alexander’s conquests that Greek Became the primary language through which Christianity was spread throughout the Mediterranean world.”

This is not to say that these monotheistic ideas would not have spread without Alexander’s imposition of a common language, but it would have been slower and have occurred in a different manner. It would be 300 years until the Roman’s piecemeal conquests would introduce Latin to Asia Minor and even then it was not as widely used as Greek in what was to become the Greco Roman world.

Directly or indirectly, the results of Alexander’s life upon our lives is so great as to be inestimable. There are factors other than the introduction of Koine (the common Greek language), such as the effects upon the economy of the Mediterranean basin which resulted in social and economic changes directly effecting history, but the introduction of Koine and the resultant diffusion of monotheistic ideas by far overshadows all else. No social or cultural change has ever had so great an effect upon western civilization as has monotheism. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thought is at the very heart of our diverse cultures and the dissemination of these thoughts was facilitated as a direct result of the life and actions of one man, Alexander The Great. Directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally his life was the catalyst which provided the changes which resulted in the end of paganism and the beginning of Christianity and Islam.

No mortal life has ever had greater effect.