quote:
I read most of this thread and understand that you have a lot of questions about the chance of Jesus actually existing. I understand that you are going to believe what you want, but I'm curious if you accept Alexander the Great as someone who actually existed or not because as far as I'm aware, most of the historical writings about him come more than 60 years after he reigned.

The Babylonian Royal Diary is the best evidence posited for Alexander's existence.

There is a contemporary administrative document from Bactria, written in Aramaic, that records the moment of Alexander's arrival in Bactria in pursuit of the main assassin of Darius III, Artaxerxes V or Bessus. Indeed, the same documents record the moment that Bessus reached Bactria too, and as the documents both name him as King Artaxerxes and Bessus we have absolute confirmation about his status as a usurper.

Both of these, as stated, are contemporary (They happened in his time, not 60 years after) and while dating we can put several cities he conquered at the time of about his existence.

We also have contemporary inscriptions on coins with a universal portrait.

So, yes, I have no trouble believing that Alexander was a king who had a few battles here and there. It could have been augmented, but with so much contemporary evidence it'd be impossible to dismiss the majority of his works.

Not to mention the trek toward Asia and all of the cities named after him. It'd be strange to completely fabricate a king, his image, contemporary works and a bunch of cities for literally no reason whatsoever -- and then never mention that it wasn't to be taken literally. (There's a reason why Heracles is not considered a real man.)

So if we're comparing: Contemporary sources vs. Anonymous post-death sources, I'd say Alexander has much more evidence.

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Posted by StrawsDrawnAtRandom

Member since Sep 2013

21146 posts

Posted on 7/7/14 at 4:46 pm to StrawsDrawnAtRandom

As I touched on before, as well, is that Alexander's authors are all well-known throughout history. The New Testament, by and large is anonymous as I wrote earlier (when Stacked wasn't debating me).

The primary sources written by people who actually knew Alexander or who gathered information from men who served with Alexander, are all lost, apart from a few inscriptions and fragments.[1]

Contemporaries who wrote accounts of his life include Alexander's campaign historian Callisthenes; Alexander's generals Ptolemy and Nearchus; Aristobulus, a junior officer on the campaigns; and Onesicritus, Alexander's chief helmsman.[1]

Finally, there is the very influential account of Cleitarchus who, while not a direct witness of Alexander's expedition, used sources which had just been published.[1] His work was to be the backbone of that of Timagenes, who heavily influenced many historians whose work still survives. None of his works survived, but we do have later works based on these primary sources.[1]

As I said: It'd be damn near impossible to create a guy like Alexander the Great, and there's no motive to do so.

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