Alexander in Egypt: The Founding of Alexandria

The event

Weary of Persian rule, Egypt welcomed Alexander without resistance. He was crowned Pharaoh at Memphis and, along the Mediterranean coast, founded a new city bearing his own name — Alexandria — intended from the start as a great center of Greek learning, culture, and trade.

Alexandria's importance for biblical history is difficult to overstate. Within a few generations it became home to the largest Jewish community outside the land of Israel, and it was there that Jewish scholars produced the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that the earliest Christians — including the apostles themselves — would read and quote throughout the New Testament. A conqueror's personal ambition became, in God's providence, a vehicle for preparing the world to receive His Word in its most widely read language.