VoodooChild

Found this article here

http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/011682.html

I never considered this; why are the accounts of Jesus's existence disputed and not Alexanders?

Mageth

First, I'm not sure that there aren't some that might dispute the literal existence of Alexander (I'm not one of them). Certainly, some of his alleged deeds are disputed.

Second, there is considerably more "extra" physical evidence of the existence of Alexander outside the mss that tell his tale than there for Jesus, such as "Alexander coins":

http://rg.ancients.info/alexander/

Third, no one claims that Alexander is the saviour of the world, the Messiah, the Christ, that died and rose again so that we all might be saved, and that by some accounts is coming again soon.

There's a lot of Christians, but I know of no Alexanderians.

More info:

http://www.dragonrest.net/histories/alexander.html

Diogenes the Cynic

I actually don't know much about the provenance of Alexandrian biographies but the person quoted in the OP is wrong about the timeframe in which the Gospels were written. They were written, at a minimum in a period ranging from 40-70 years after the alleged crucifixion.

The notion that there should have been witnesses to contradict anything in them is completely fallacious. For one thing, there would have been almost nobody living in the communities for whom the gospels were written who would have been alive and in Palestine at the time of the alleged time of Jesus. But even if there was some oldtimer who had managed to survive the war and live into his 90's and stumble into a public reading of Mark (anything later than Mark is pretty much impossible for a contemporary to have heard. They would have to have been over 100 before these books were getting any kind of circulation) what were they going to say? That they didn't see no Empty Tomb. That they didn't hear nothin' about no Yeshua? Or maybe they have a vague memory of some nutcase getting himself nailed up by the Romans but they never heard anything about him coming back to life?

What kind of falsifying testimony would be possible for an event that never occurred? What if i were to say that my car spontaneously levitated on my way to work today and flew over the Metro area before landing in the parking lot. I flew over thousands of people and they're all still alive. If I'm lying, why don't they come out to contradict me?

Also, the person quoted in the OP is ignoring the fact that the Gospels contradict each other and that doesn't seem to shake up the faithful so why should we expect that anyone wuld have paid attention to some old coot in 95 CE who said he never saw Jesus come back to life?

Toto

From two years ago on this forum:

Alexander the Great and Jesus continued here.

Unfortunately, the links I used are now dead. But the information is good.

Peter Kirby

I believe the reason that history about Alexander is possible is that the Roman biographers of Alexander the Great are believed to have used sources, which are identified, which clearly have a historical interest and which were written by contemporaries of Alexander. That, and we have the outside vector of archaeology.

best,
Peter Kirby

Llyricist

Just to point out a little disingenuousness in the quote, it compares the earliest extant manuscripts about Alexander to the dates the gospels were supposedly written. Apples and oranges that.

Peter Kirby

That's the author's mistake. There's actually a 300-450 year gap between the life of Alexander and the Roman biographers. There's something like a 1300 gap between Alexander and the literary manuscripts.

best,
Peter Kirby

Iasion

Greetings all,

There appears to be CONTEMPORARY evidence for Alexander from the Astronomical Diary of Esagila :

"On the fourteenth, these Ionians [13] a bull [lacuna] short, fatty tissue [lacuna]. Alexander, king of the world, came into Babylon [lacuna], horses and equipment of [lacuna] and the Babylonians and the people of [lacuna] a message to"

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

Iasion

andrewcriddle

IIUC the original article was not claiming that there is as much evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ as for Alexander the Great.

What it seems to be arguing is that there is as good or better evidence that say Jesus appointed a special group of 12 core followers, as say that Alexander killed Cleitus the Black at a drunken party.

(An obvious response would be that both are dubious but that is another matter.)

Andrew Criddle

Marxist

In the case of Alexander, we have numerous outside sources, including stuff from as far away as India (if I am not mistaken). There are even sources (now lost) that were written while he was alive. Callisthenes, Aristotle's nephew, actually wrote The Deeds of Alexander and the Royal Diaries while campaigning with him, which are the primary sources of Cleitarchus and Ptolemy (also now lost), who are in turn the primary sources of Plutarch, Arrian, Diodurus, etc.

We have nothing even close to this with the NT, and even if we did, it wouldn't matter. Callisthenes was there with Alexander, and still believed him to be the son of Zeus, and yet Christians would reject this claim without a second thought. They only do themselves a disservice by comparing Jesus to Alexander.