| Diasporic Culture and the Makings of Alexander Romances is a cultural study of how Alexander Romances interact with and reflect medieval Jewish and Islamic attitudes toward astrology. Legends about Alexander the Great are connected to some of the deepest religious and philosophical issues confronting medieval Jews and Muslims, since astrological concerns were inextricably connected to God's plan for human history (e.g., the end of the Jewish diaspora or the ascendancy of Islam) and to the boundaries of human knowledge. This work departs from previous scholarship by showing that enduring interest in the heroic Alexander, and especially in romanticized versions of his life and deeds, stems from a perceived connection between Alexander and the transmission of occult knowledge about the stars. On the one hand, because such knowledge was held by some medieval thinkers to be the goal of all thinking, the best way to understand God's work in the universe and plan for history, knowing astronomy and astrology was close to knowing God. On the other hand, many felt that accepting astrology, a science that seemed to allow stars power over earthly events, was tantamount to denying monotheism---a claim more acutely problematic when Muslim and Jewish astrologers admittedly inherited their knowledge from pagan sources. On both sides of the debate, astrologers seemed to be setting a limit on God's power over men by subjecting men's fates to the movements of the stars. Insofar as the legends of Alexander engage this debate---which they do by providing narrative examples of "real" astrologers at work, by connecting Alexander to Jewish and Muslim eschatological narratives, and by using him to investigate and comment on the nature and limitations of human knowledge---this work argues that they were self-consciously connected to the most serious theological and philosophical debates confronting medieval Jews and Muslims. |
