Simeon the Righteous meets Alexander the Great

“A Great King like Yourself should Bow Down before this Jew?” 

In 332 BCE Alexander the Great conquered Tyre and Gaza, and, according to Josephus Flavius, Alexander also met the Jewish high priest Jaddua at that time. The rabbis tell a rather different version of this encounter. By focusing on some key differences between the parallel accounts, we hope to show how the rabbis enlisted a biblical literary model as they molded the legend of Alexander anew in line with a distinctive political ideology.