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[Above: Alexander—Smith, Henry and Alexander MacCaul. The Protestant Bishopric in Jerusalem; Its Origin and Progress. United Kingdom, B. Wertheim, 1847. Public domain]

MICHAEL SOLOMON ALEXANDER moved to England from a small town in Prussia in 1819 after a confrontation with his older brother, a rabbi. Although Alexander adhered to Judaism, he felt the Talmud’s teachings bogged down in nitpicky rules. His brother ordered him to abandon the studies that were leading him to doubt this compendium of Jewish wisdom or else to leave home. Alexander chose the latter and moved to England, his father’s birth country.

In England, Alexander won the esteem of various Jewish communities, eventually becoming a rabbi of the Plymouth synagogue and its shohet (meat slaughterer—Jews eat kosher meat with the blood properly drained). In Plymouth he fell in love with a fellow Jew, Deborah Levy. However, curiosity had taken him to a Christian mission for Jews. The gospel tugged at his heart. He began reading the New Testament and was impressed with Christ’s genealogy and moral teachings. He received more exposure to Christianity when he taught the Hebrew language to priests of the Church of England. Rev. B. B. Golding befriended him and they discussed the Old Testament prophecies in light of the New. Alexander secretly attended Golding’s services. He told Deborah he was considering conversion. At the urging of friends, she broke off the engagement not once but five times. However, in the end she married him although she was not yet a Christian convert, because she trusted him and saw he behaved more nobly than his opponents. 

Deborah was baptized five months after her husband. Together they had eleven children—nine daughters and two sons.

After his baptism in 1825, Alexander accepted various positions with the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews. For a while he was appointed to Danzig, Poland, where he helped establish a successful school. When he visited his family in Posen, he had to do so under cover of night and leave quickly because of the hostility of local Jews. In 1832 he became Professor of Hebrew and Rabbinical Literature at King’s College, London, where he revised the Hebrew New Testament and prepared a Hebrew version of the Church of England’s Prayer Book. Following many years of Christian work, his reputation was firmly established and he was elevated to an even higher position.

For many years the English had desired to establish a bishop in Jerusalem. Prussia had the same desire. The two nations agreed to unite their Protestant work under a single bishop. (This arrangement was one of the reasons John Henry Newman left the Church of England.) The position was offered first to Dr. Alexander McCaul, a leader in the London mission, but he declined the honor, saying someone of the Hebrew race ought to be appointed. Michael Solomon Alexander was the obvious choice. On this day, Sunday, 7 November 1841, the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by the bishops of London, Rochester, and New Zealand, ordained him at Lambeth Palace. “The duty of the new bishop was defined to be the superintendence of the English clergy and congregations in Syria, Chaldæa, Egypt, and Abyssinia, and of such other Protestant bodies as might wish to place themselves under his episcopal care and to be admitted into communion with his church,” says the Dictionary of National Biography. 

The honor would be the death of Alexander. The region that had formerly been named Israel was now a neglected backwater of the Ottoman Empire, and Jerusalem was a filthy city with few amenities. Alexander had to work himself half to death to establish and develop the church, its hospital, and its school. In 1845 the work had finally reached a point he could take a break. Traveling home to England by way of Egypt, he went to bed feeling unwell one evening and died unexpectedly during the night.

His efforts in Jerusalem resulted in several conversions. The hospital and school he founded bore fruit after his death. His Hebrew New Testament is considered a masterpiece.

—Dan Graves

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Jerusalem was a backwater when Michael Solomon Alexander went there, yet it is a city that holds a special place in each of the major Abrahamic faiths as well as in prophecy. Learn more about the biblical city in the dvd Jerusalem, The Covenant City. Watch it at RedeemTV.

Jerusalem, The Covenant City can be purchased at Vision Video.