(3.) A sacerdotal city of Benjamin (1 Chronicles 6:60), called also Almon
(Joshua 21:18), now Almit, a mile north-east of the ancient Anathoth.
- ALEXANDER man-defender. (1.) A relative of Annas the high priest,
present when Peter and John were examined before the Sanhedrim (Acts
4:6).
(2.) A man whose father, Simon the Cyrenian, bore the cross of Christ
(Mark 15:21).
(3.) A Jew of Ephesus who took a prominent part in the uproar raised
there by the preaching of Paul (Acts 19:33). The Jews put him forward to
plead their cause before the mob. It was probably intended that he should
show that he and the other Jews had no sympathy with Paul any more
than the Ephesians had. It is possible that this man was the same as the
following.
(4.) A coppersmith who, with Hymenaeus and others, promulgated certain
heresies regarding the resurrection (1 Timothy 1:19; 2 Timothy 4:14), and
made shipwreck of faith and of a good conscience. Paul excommunicated
him (1 Timothy 1:20; comp. 1 Corinthians 5:5).
- ALEXANDER THE GREAT the king of Macedonia, the great conqueror;
probably represented in Daniel by the “belly of brass” (Daniel 2:32), and
the leopard and the he-goat (7:6; 11:3,4). He succeeded his father Philip,
and died at the age of thirty-two from the effects of intemperance, B.C.
- His empire was divided among his four generals.
- ALEXANDRIA the ancient metropolis of Lower Egypt, so called from its
founder, Alexander the Great (about B.C. 333). It was for a long period the
greatest of existing cities, for both Nineveh and Babylon had been
destroyed, and Rome had not yet risen to greatness. It was the residence of
the kings of Egypt for 200 years. It is not mentioned in the Old
Testament, and only incidentally in the New. Apollos, eloquent and
mighty in the Scriptures, was a native of this city (Acts 18:24). Many
Jews from Alexandria were in Jerusalem, where they had a synagogue
(Acts 6:9), at the time of Stephen’s martyrdom. At one time it is said that
as many as 10,000 Jews resided in this city. It possessed a famous library
of 700,000 volumes, which was burned by the Saracens (A.D. 642). It was
here that the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek. This is called the
Septuagint version, from the tradition that seventy learned men were