certain points, where earlier sources fail him, he employs popular romances and late traditions.  The result is that the different parts of his history are of widely varying values.  All must be carefully tested by the canons of historical criticism.  After due allowance has been made for his apologetic purpose and his well-known tendencies, a large and valuable body of historical facts remain with which it is possible at many otherwise obscure points to reconstruct the course of Israel’s history.

II.  Alexander’s Conquests.  In many ways Alexander’s conquest was the most significant and far-reaching event in the history of Asia.  The causes of this great movement were, first, the fact that the limited territory of Greece and Macedonia gave to the powerful Hellenic civilization little opportunity for local expansion.  Compelled, therefore, to break these narrow bonds, it naturally spread in the direction of least resistance.  In the second place the decadent Persian Empire, with its fabulous riches and almost limitless plains, was a loadstone that lured on Greek adventurers to attempt feats that seemed incredible.  The third reason was Alexander’s inherited lust for conquest.  His father, Philip of Macedon, had long been accumulating the resources which made it possible for his son to realize his ambitious dreams.  The fourth reason was Alexander’s desire to make the world more glorious by the diffusion of Hellenic culture, ideas, and institutions and by binding all races together into one great, harmonious family.  His brilliant conquests are a familiar chapter in the world’s history.  At Issus, at the northeastern end of the Mediterranean, he won, in 333 B.C., the decisive battle which left him in possession of the western part of the huge Persian Empire.  By 332 he was master of Palestine.  Tyre, the commercial mistress of the eastern Mediterranean, and Gaza, the key to Egypt, alone offered resistance.  The Persian kings by their onerous taxation and cruel policy had completely destroyed the loyalty of their western subjects.  In the symbolic pictures of the book of Daniel Alexander is regarded as the “fourth beast, terrible and fearful and exceedingly strong.  And it had great iron teeth.  It devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the rest with its feet” (7:17,23, 8:5-8).  Josephus has preserved a popular tradition regarding the meeting between Alexander and the white-robed Jerusalem priests and the homage paid by the conqueror to the God of the Jews.  It bears on its face evidence of its unhistorical character.  As a matter of fact, the first goal of Alexander’s conquest was the rich land of Egypt.  Not being possessed of a navy, he entered it through its one vulnerable point, the Wady Tumilat, that ran from the Isthmus of Suez to the Nile Delta.  By 331 B.C. he was master of the Nile Valley, and thence turned eastward, conquering in succession the different provinces of the great empire, until before his death in 323 B.C. his empire extended from the Mediterranean to the Indus, and in the northeast far up toward central Asia.