spin

Pssst! Don't tell that lazy testudines Gamera, who couldn't open a book to find out, but there were also contemporary writers who mentioned Alexander: Demosthenes (who wrote a speech: "On the Accession of Alexander"), Dinarchus and Aeschines (a well-known toady to Macedon).


spin

Iasion

Hi all,

Also the
Astronomical Diaries of Esagila,
a contemporary work
which mentions Alexander by name.

http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexande...ander_t40.html


Iasion

Roger Pearse

Firstly, we do have coins from Alexander, but that is not quite the issue, unless we are claiming that only people who issued coins existed -- and who did they issue them *for*, in that case!?!

If we look at the literary sources... what do they say?

Our best source is Arrian, who is writing some centuries later but using Ptolemy's memoires.

This is quite normal in ancient history. In modern history we have so much material that an arbitrary rule is laid down of only using material which is contemporary. But if we did that in ancient history we'd have nothing. Of course once we could have done this -- if we'd lived ca. 200 AD. The difference today is 2000 years of losses of literature, of course -- 99% of ancient literature is lost.

For instance our only literary source for what happened in Britain after the death of Theodosius the Great in 396 -- the expulsion of Roman officials by the magnates -- is Zosimus. He is writing in Greek in Constantinople in the early 6th century, 150 years later. In his day the Western empire doesn't even exist! But we wouldn't throw that precious gleam of light away.

In short, we must compare like with like, judge these things by equivalent standards. Ask what sort of literary sources can be expected for an obscure figure living in Judaea in the first century AD, by comparison with similar marginal figures. Nothing, would actually be a good answer; the odd scrap would be fortunate.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

Umm, it's not just coins, Roger Pearse, but you already know this, so your statement is merely rhetoric, isn't it?

History is based on evidence. Coins are good evidence. So are inscriptions. So are statues and reliefs. So is contemporary epigraphy. Further down the line after solid foundations are laid by the hard evidence, so are contemporary accounts, which often put the superstructure on the foundations. Things start to get shaky in the evidence department after that. It involves what is already known and how later material elucidates what is already known.


spin

Minimalist

An "obscure figure" who CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD? One imagines that such would have been big news in the first century even without the obvious political angle; the Romans executed someone and GOD brought him back to life! It is simply inconceivable that there would not have been comment on that and it was your Christian pals who oversaw what was retained and what was destroyed so one finds it hard to believe that they would not have retained accounts of such a "miracle."

Unless, of course, the whole miracle business was later chrome attached to the story.

andrewcriddle

I've posted something like this before in threads about Alexander but here goes again.

Yes we have rock-solid contemporary evidence of the existence of Alexander the Great, however a large amount of what we think we know about Alexander (eg that he killed Cleitus in a drunken quarrel) is based on much later sources.

IF we limit our claims about Alexander to those that certainly go back to contemporary records we are left with surprisingly little we can say. Much less than comes in most modern books about him.

For example, most modern accounts of Alexander seek to explain his later life in terms of his childhood, a childhood for which we are heavily dependent on Plutarch who is a late writer whose sources here are unclear.

Andrew Criddle

Steven Carr

Is this the obscure figure whose birth caused Herod to start killing babies, and people to cross countries to see him?

Or a different obscure figure?

Steven Carr

Don't forget that the oral legacy about Jerusalem disappeared after 70 AD so that there was no way somebody could have been told after 70 AD that there had been a pool at Bethsaida, and then written a book mentioning it.

I wonder why oral legacies were sometimes so fragile.

Gamera

I believe the oldest mss that mention Alexander are from about 1000 CE, though there may have been a few earlier ones: that is, we only have texts that are about 1300 years after his death. That's very problematic, since heaven only knows what interpolations were involved.

In contrast, the oldest NT ms we have, P52, is within a 100 years or so of Jesus' purported death, with many mss within the 200 horizon. That's remarkable in antiquity.

Now, I think Alexander existed, despite the bad mss record. And I also think Jesus existed. The point is, when in comes to the age and quality of the texts that place these persons in history, the NT mss win hands down.

Gamera

I don't see the ms history on the link. I suspect (though I could be wrong) that the copy we have of this text comes from 1000 CE or later.

[My bad -- I see this is a cuneform tablet. Very interesting. But I note that in the scholarly edition "Alexander" is in brackets (or at least "exander" is). Is this an interpolation? Also this an odd text -- never mentioning Darius, citing omens of his fall, and calling Alexander "king of the world" It's almost as if the Greeks had written it and not the Chaldeans.]