I posted recently on the Greek empires that arose in the centuries following Alexander the Great, like the Ptolemaic regime in Egypt, and the Syrian-based Seleucid Empire. Specifically, I suggested that these realms shaped the worlds of Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity. This was nowhere more true than in their ideologies of kingship and government. Both Jews and Christians reacted forcefully against the divine pretensions of those kings, and that reaction has left powerful traces in the Bible.
When Alexander launched his invasion of the Persian realm in 334, Greek kingship was very different from the Asian forms of power that are sometimes stereotyped as “Oriental despotism.” At least initially, Macedonian kings like Alexander did not claim a divine right to rule in anything like the Persian sense. Rapidly, though, Alexander’s successors adopted Persian and Egyptian concepts of divine kingship. Between about 300 and 63 BC, Seleucid kings regularly bore such titles as Soter (Savior) and Epiphanes (“Made Manifest”, as in Epiphany).
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