ABSTRACT
The original Alexandrian age was that period from the fourth to the first centuries bce, in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great; those conquests connected the Eastern Mediterranean with Mesopotamia, Persia, and beyond, establishing a cosmopolitan network of trade and communication between Europe and India, a network that would survive the Roman, Parthian, and Sassanid empires and last, more or less, until the rise of Islam. Rabbinics, among many other things, tells the story of how the Rabbis reveal the tensions in their accounts by arguing, implicitly or explicitly, that no such tensions exist. Humanists should welcome not only allies, but critical conversation partners, and chastening critiques. Indeed, perhaps the best allies are those who repeatedly offer such critiques. For humanism, at its best, is about the possibility of new beginnings, the possibility of rebirth. And yet the fact that it is a re-birth, a new beginning, bespeaks the self-consciousness of a history.
