Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

ALEXANDER S COMMENTS ON THE PATRIARCHS. XXXV
of the Mountain had given him, he says to
them, "Behold, ye have eaten of the bread of
"angels, even as the prophet David saith in the
"LXXVIIth Psalm, 'Man did eat the bread of His
"angels'" (p. 263). The, idea of the Macedonian
king possessing such an intimate acquaintance with
the Scriptures is quaint, and shews how little re-
gard the translator had either for probability or
fact; on the other hand we find that when Alexan-
der comes to Babylon he wilfully destroys a number The eight
of wonderful things which were supposed to have erbyion de-
been the property of Solomon, the son of David ''*''°^'"'-
(p. 291). After the banquet which Olympias makes
by Alexander's wish, when she has realized that
sorrow comes to all alike, she makes a speech
wherein she says, "It is good for a man to say,
"'Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts'" (p. 307),
an evident reflection of a Christian conception.
We have seen that the translator has inserted
into his version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes a series
of addresses by Alexander and a Christian Legend,
for which there is but scanty authority in the Greek,
and now we come to a long interpolated passage
which records his address to his scribe Rahaman, The scribe
and his "Precepts" for his disciples (pp. 293— 331). "'""''"
In the address to his scribe Alexander makes a
series of remarks which any believer in our own
times might have made, and his description of the
throne of the Deity (p. 300) reflects the visions
of Ezekiel the prophet. In his "Precepts" for his
disciples he reviews at some length God's dealings