We're Into Section 6!

Second Round essays: Henke Can't Read · Henke Can't Argue Philosophy Very Well Either · Henke Still Can't Read - Or Hasn't Done so To Lewis · To Reaffirm "Earliest Known Audience" · The Philosophy of History of Henke : Given without References, Refuted without References · He Applies It · (Excursus on William Tell and Catholic Saints) · Continuing on Section 5 · We're Into Section 6!

Henke continues to make little use of precise formulations by me ...

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.

Now, I have similar evidence, the kind that Henke disparages, for the Alexander coins being coined in honour of and perhaps also on the orders of the Alexander who was born to the Kingdom of Macedon and who Conquered the Empire of Persia. I am however considering what the coins would tell us without such texts, and the answer is "someone or something at the time of the coining referred to as Alexander existed."

How could a “something” order the minting of coins and then carry out that order?

A club could have a chairman, and a deity could have a temple and a priest.

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?

It could have been a kind of common currency, by mutual agreement. Like the Euro currency. As you may know, neither Napoleon, nor Hitler introduced this, the politicians who did may have been more humane, but they were also, very certainly, more humdrum, and individually less powerful.

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.

Why? First, we did know the carreere of Alexander by the authors before the archaeological evidence, and second, the archaeological evidence is certainly compatible with it but cannot give the details thereof.

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.

The problem is:

• who Alexander was, is only given in the texts
• and the texts are not contemporary and not independent but from within the Hellenistic cultural sphere, which looked back on Alexander as its founder, and this is the type of evidence we have for the Bible stories (when foundational).

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).

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

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.

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).

The Egyptian temples are perfectly compatible with there being a pagan deity (which Alexander was too).

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.

A single paymaster is, as per Euro coins, not necessary.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lundahl can’t find a shred of evidence to support his belief in a Talking Snake and Moses.

Talking Snake : in historicity of text. Historicity of text : in assessment of earliest known audience. Mosaic authorship : in assessment of earliest known audience. Precisely as with five texts, and before these the First Maccabees, speaking of Alexander as a Greek who conquered Persia with Egypt, Syria and Babylon.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
IV Lord's Day after Pentecost
3.VII.2022