More than forty years ago the then major honchos of molecular biology published a festschrift for Max Delbrück, lauding, in a self-congratulatory but often delightful and enthusiastic way, the central role bacteriophages played in the development of molecular biology (Cairns, J., G. Stent, and J. Watson. 1966. Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory). The prominence of bacteriophages as model systems for studying molecular biology has since waned. However, even in these days where genetics is rarely done by allowing organisms to move genes by themselves (horror, mating between the unmarried?), bacteriophages maintain a major rep as tools for studies of the genetics and molecular biology of bacteria.

Bacteriophages, however, rarely come to mind when one thinks of ecology and evolutionary biology. Despite increasing numbers of meetings devoted entirely or partially to the ecology and evolution of bacteriophages, and a growing constituency of young investigators participating in these meetings, ecology and evolutionary biology has been and remains dominated not only by eukaryotic practitioners but also by eukaryotes as objects of study. Of some 195 000 articles listed on PubMed with the word “evolution” in some field, less than 0.7% list “bacteriophage” in another field, and of approximately 23 000 articles with “ecology,” less than 0.6% list “bacteriophage.”

PRESERVATION AND ADAPTATION: THE ENCOUNTER WITH HELLENISM

Alexander and his successors

In 333 b.c.e. Alexander the Great defeated Darius the Persian and gained access to both Egypt and Mesopotamia. A year later he took Egypt as well as the Mediterranean coast, and Jerusalem, along with all the other cities of the region, submitted. With the conquest of the eastern Mediterranean the Hellenistic period begins. Despite reports in Josephus and later Rabbinic legend, Alexander did not visit Jerusalem. But his battles did take him to Persia, which he finally subdued along with Mesopotamia and surrounding territories as far as the Indus River (in present-day Pakistan). Alexander's untimely death in 323 left his unstable and scattered conquests in the hands of his fractious generals, but the cultural and political changes that took shape in his wake prevailed. The “Hellenistic period” would last until the growing influence over and the conquest of the area by the Romans between 200 and 31 b.c.e.

One of Alexander's generals, Ptolemy, used Egypt's natural borders and wealth to consolidate his rule there and, in 305 b.c.e., declared an independent kingdom. Another general, Seleucus, who ruled Mesopotamia from Babylon, fended off numerous attacks from both indigenous populations and a third general, Antigonus, who controlled Asia Minor (modern Turkey). After surviving exile from his own kingdom, Seleucus finally consolidated his control in 301 b.c.e. when he and a coalition of local military leaders defeated Antigonus at Ipsus in western Asia Minor.

THE WORLD OF ISRAEL'S ANCESTORS (THE BOOKS OF GENESIS THROUGH DEUTERONOMY) AND OUR WORLD

The first five books of the Bible describe the creation of the world (Genesis 1–2) and the earliest history of humanity including the destruction of the inhabited world by a flood, before they tell the story of the ancestors of Jacob, who came to be called “Israel,” which means “he struggles with God.” The story includes the call of Abraham to come to the land of Canaan (Genesis 12) and continues with the lives of Isaac and Jacob. Jacob is named Israel as the consequence of his physical struggle with God (Genesis 32), and he gives that name to the people called Israel. The twelve sons of Jacob/Israel go down to Egypt; after their descendants become a sizable people, they are forced into slavery by a pharaoh. Moses, one of the “Hebrews” (as the Egyptians call these foreigners with their strange, West Semitic language) brought up at the Egyptian court, leads the Hebrews out of slavery and through the wilderness of Sinai to the threshold of the land of Canaan. On the way, Moses gives the people, on behalf of God, civil, religious, and ceremonial laws that identify the Hebrews as the people of Yahweh, who first called Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and who delivered the Hebrews from slavery.