Alexander the Great and the Jews in Flavius ​​Josephus's *Antiquities of the Jews*: Coexistence or Resistance?

Abstract

 The historical accounts of Alexander’s territorial conquests, in their majority, do not bring information as to confirm whether or not this king has visited Jerusalem. One account however, authored by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in his work Jewish Antiquities places Alexander exactly in Jerusalem and, according to him, forging bonds of friendship and diplomacy with the high priest Jaddus and the Jews. In this article, we evaluate Josephus’s narrative of these events and how he assessed the figure of the great king. The subject studied here has been a topic discussed by other historians such as Shaye Cohen, who has concluded that in Josephus’ narrative both leaders were incapable of solving their conflicts and making diplomacy to the benefit of their own people. Nonetheless, the assessment made here intends to provide evidence that, Josephus, the sole historian to this narrative that we know of, made in general a positive evaluation of the figure of Alexander the Great.