No Comparison between the Evidence for Alexander the Great and Genesis 3
Kevin R. Henke
September 15, 2022
In Henke (2022b), I stated the following:
“As mentioned in Henke (2022a), Alexander the Great had numerous silver coins minted in his name during his lifetime. Lundahl (2022g) makes the following responses to Henke (2022a) and the coins:
“I would need to acknowledge that someone or something at the time of the coining referred to as Alexander existed.
That this entity disposed of a mint in Macedonia - and elsewhere in the budding Hellenistic world.”
While Lundahl (2022c) blindly accepts that Genesis 3 is history and without a shred of evidence believes the old story that Moses wrote it, Lundahl (2022g) thinks that the individual that ordered the minting of these coins and the humans that did it were only “someone or something.” How could a “something” order the minting of coins and then carry out that order? How could “someone or something at the time of the coining referred to as Alexander” afford to mint all of those coins, have the power to do it, and have so much influence that those coins would be widely used from India to Greece and Egypt if he wasn’t a powerful and wealthy leader? Again, all of the archeological evidence must be examined together – the Alexandros coins, the Egyptian temple inscriptions, the Bactrian documents, etc. – and not just the five ancient histories to confirm the existence of Alexander the Great. While I see no historical value whatsoever in Genesis 3, I do not dismiss these five ancient histories of Alexander the Great as worthless. They are very valuable when their individual claims are confirmed by archeological data. Once specific events in these histories are confirmed, then the information in the histories may carefully provide additional details and possibly answer questions raised by the archeological data. The written histories and the archeological data must complement each other – in isolation they are inadequate to truly provide the best information on who Alexander the Great really was.” [my emphasis in bold; original emphasis in bold and italics]
Lundahl (2022p) then responds to the bolded section in the above quotation from Henke (2022b):
“Henke continues to make little use of precise formulations by me ...
Kevin R. Henke: ‘As mentioned in Henke (2022a), Alexander the Great had numerous silver coins minted in his name during his lifetime. Lundahl (2022g) makes the following responses to Henke (2022a) and the coins:
“I would need to acknowledge that someone or something at the time of the coining referred to as Alexander existed.
That this entity disposed of a mint in Macedonia - and elsewhere in the budding Hellenistic world.”
While Lundahl (2022c) blindly accepts that Genesis 3 is history and without a shred of evidence believes the old story that Moses wrote it, Lundahl (2022g) thinks that the individual that ordered the minting of these coins and the humans that did it were only “someone or something.”’
It was someone or something referred to as Alexander. Without the texts, this need not mean the Alexander who was born to the Kingdom of Macedon and who Conquered the Empire of Persia.
It could be a man, it could be a fake deity, it could be a club, it could be an insurance company (Alex-ander means man-protector) ... For Moses being the author of Genesis, I have the earliest known assessment of the authorship of Genesis. That's not without a shred of evidence.” [my emphasis]
Previously in Henke (2022fe), I responded to a blatant strawman fallacy in this section of Lundahl (2022p). That is, in reality, I do not dismiss the five ancient histories of Alexander the Great as worthless. Their claims are valuable when they’re confirmed by archeology or any other external evidence. Nevertheless within his reply, Lundahl (2022p) makes another very careless statement:
“For Moses being the author of Genesis, I have the earliest known assessment of the authorship of Genesis. That's not without a shred of evidence.”
Now, I have been quite clear in Henke (2022a) and Henke (2022b) about the value I place on ancient written documents that have archeological support, and how archeology and the written documents by themselves are not good enough to adequately confirm historical claims. Now, in Henke (2022a), I achieved my goal of only using archeological data to make the following limited and conservative conclusions about Alexander the Great:
“My proposal or hypothesis for testing the existence of Alexander the Great is very conservative. I simply propose that Alexander the Great was:
1. a human being that lived in the 4th century BC and not a mythical or fictional being.
2. he was a military leader that had an extraordinary political effect over a wide region of at least the Middle East.
Again, I don’t expect to “prove” these statements, but only show that they are either probable or beyond a reasonable doubt. That is, as a scientist, I don’t claim ultimate proof. However, some claims are so well verified that I would identify them as demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt. If these two claims are demonstrated to be probable or even beyond a reasonable doubt, then I could look at other claims made about Alexander in the works of Arrian, Curtius Rufus, Plutarch, etc. and possibly test them with external evidence. I also fully recognize that my very conservative and cautious approach will at least initially overlook many of his detailed accomplishments and underestimate Alexander the Great’s influence in his society. But, I want to be slow and cautious.”
As also mentioned in the paragraph from Henke (2022b) at the top of this essay, I stress how the five ancient histories on Alexander the Great can be very important:
“While I see no historical value whatsoever in Genesis 3, I do not dismiss these five ancient histories of Alexander the Great as worthless. They are very valuable when their individual claims are confirmed by archeological data. Once specific events in these histories are confirmed, then the information in the histories may carefully provide additional details and possibly answer questions raised by the archeological data. The written histories and the archeological data must complement each other – in isolation they are inadequate to truly provide the best information on who Alexander the Great really was.” [emphasis in the original]
In contrast, it’s clear from his essays in this debate that Mr. Lundahl has little or no interest in archeology or archeological confirmation of historical claims. Why? Why would anyone neglect any contribution from a science when investigating a claim about the past? The answer is quite clear. Mr. Lundahl knows full well that he does not have a shred of archeological or other external evidence to claim that Genesis 3 is history and not myth. So, he has to disparage archeology and other methods of external confirmation, and somehow claim that they are really unnecessary in confirming history and separating it from possible mythology. Instead of wisely basing ancient history on ancient written statements that have been confirmed by archeology and other external evidence, Mr. Lundahl attempts to solely rely on ancient texts along with worthless schemes involving “earliest known assessments” and “cultural communities” to determine ancient history. Unless claims about the past have good archeological or other external evidence, the claims are not reliable. As I have stated many times before, Mr. Lundahl has no way of separating an historical account that has no external evidential support from a popular myth that was widely believed as history by a gullible “earliest known audience” and a “cultural community” soon after it was written.
Also, Mr. Lundahl has no “precise formulations.” He simply comes up with invalid excuses involving “early known audiences” and “cultural memories” to desperately justify his religious belief that the Talking Snake in Genesis 3 actually existed. He improperly ignores the importance of archeological data in confirming ancient histories and he simply believes far-fetched fairy tales, like Genesis 3, without a shred of archeological or other external evidence.