Having Reliable Information About Alexander the Great
Kevin R. Henke
September 15, 2022
In Henke (2022b), I summarize my conclusions on Alexander the Great:
“When looking at the archeological evidence in total, Mr. Lundahl also needs to ask himself why a Greek name (Alexandros) was inscribed numerous times in temples in Egypt, mentioned as a king in bureaucratic documents from central Asia, his military exploits discussed in Babylonian tablets and his name on countless coins spread throughout the region. Even without the five ancient histories, it’s obvious that there was a king named Alexander living in the 4th century BC that had a lot of wealth and power that extended from Greece and Egypt into Central Asia as demonstrated in Henke (2022a). The people in Egypt were simply not going to allow just any individual to walk into their temples and inscribe his name and image on at least 22 places (Bosche-Puche and Moje 2015). No one would put the name Alexandros on countless coins from India to the Mediterranean unless a powerful leader paid for it and had the power to enforce the order. Meanwhile, Mr. Lundahl can’t find a shred of evidence to support his belief in a Talking Snake and Moses.” [my emphasis]
Lundahl (2022p) then comments on the bolded section:
“I was suspecting that Henke was pushing the goal posts, but his initial statement was also this cautious:
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.
Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Kevin R. Henke's Essay: Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) and the Talking Snake of Genesis 3: History? https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2022/03/kevin-r-henkes-essay-alexander-great.html [this is Henke 2022a]
I submit we know more than this, namely his father united Greece under Macedon, and he took over the united forces of the Persian Empire. And this we know only through some texts, the oldest of which is I Maccabees. And the historicity of the texts, while partially confirmed by archaeology (not in the carreere moves I just referred to) is at its most basic historicity rather than fictionality on the basis of the earliest known audience and its assessment of them.”
Here Lundahl (2022p) admits that I did not move any goal posts. This is how I avoid possibly moving any goal posts. Before beginning any study, researchers are not going to know what they might discover. Thus, I write down modest and conservative hypotheses to test. Under the Method of the Multiple Working Hypotheses (Strahler 1999, pp. 19-20), hypotheses can always be added, eliminated or modified during the course of the study as the data demand. In this case, not only did I achieve the two goals of my modest proposal, the archeological evidence for Alexander the Great was a lot stronger than I realized when I first made my proposal, which is recorded in Henke (2022a).
Lundahl (2022p) then discusses other expects about the life of Alexander the Great and his father that we supposedly “know.” Nevertheless, as I clearly stated with my very conservative investigation of Alexander the Great in Henke (2022a), my goal was not to investigate all of these details. Based on the archeological confirmation that Alexander the Great was a real person, what the texts say about his father uniting Greece and other details might be true. However, to have full confidence in these texts, we still need to find archeological or other external evidence that confirms the identity of Alexander’s father and his accomplishments in Persia. What the “earliest known audiences” say about themselves is totally unreliable because people have a tendency to exaggerate and glorify their past, and makeup stories (Henke 2022dn). Mr. Lundahl just can’t see that.
References:
Bosch-Puche, F. and J. Moje. 2015. “Alexander the Great’s Name in Contemporary Demotic Sources”: Journal of Egyptian Archeology, v. 101, pp. 340-348.
Strahler, A.N. 1999. Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy: 2nd ed., Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, USA, 552 pp.