Lion I understand if you are overwhelmed by everyone “piling on” with different arguments. Nevertheless I want to go back to a thread that got dropped in this discussion, and that is about the histories of Alexander.
Too bad lion doesn't actually seem to want to engage in rational discussions as he does seem pretty smart.
He's very clearly disingenuous in that regard at best; an intellectual coward at worst. Much like Strobel, ironically. They both exhibit signs of being closet atheists, desperately trying to convince themselves that magic exists. Faith requires no rational thought, so the whole endeavor to concoct a bullshit artifice of "evidence" as Strobel (and all apologists) attempt just reeks of desperate
atheistophobia, if you will.
Faith is, in fact, the antithesis of rational thought and deliberately so. Indeed, there are many many many passages in the NT that admonish against any such rational thinking. Paul in 1 Corinthians in particular (even though he suspiciously quoted Isaiah incorrectly).
Hang on, this is a basic matter of controversy - contested claims.
I'm as interested in knowing whether Blomberg is right or wrong as funinspace is in drawing the matter to my attention.
Clearly Blomberg (via Strobel) is technically correct to say that the
extant biographical accounts of Jesus' life predate those of Alexander the Great. Nowhere do they claim that the historicity of Alexander the Great is less accurate than that of Jesus.
First, Strobel and Blomberg say clearly that the first biographies of Alexander were written more than 400 years after Alexander’s death. They don’t say “extant” biographies, nor do they mean to. Their point is that a reliable biography could be written after 400 years
without any intervening works. Strobel throws out the comment again in the video I linked to earlier:
[youtube]Ikxb09pyZwM[/youtube]
Check from approximately 14:50 to 15:15. There is no equivocation.
Legendary materials only began to emerge later, after 500 years, Strobel and Blomberg claim. Here is an image from page 33 of
The Case for Christ which states this clearly:
Now the truth is quite the reverse, and very instructive. First, as funinspace pointed out, there were many histories of Alexander that Arrian and Plutarch drew on, some from eyewitnesses. These eyewitnesses are named and we therefore know who they were. Alexander’s more or less official biographer, Callisthenes, for example, was the great nephew of Aristotle. He was an eyewitness to Alexander’s life. A second was Onesikritos.
In addition to the biographies, myths and legends arose about Alexander while he was still living, and were circulated in a work that came to be known as the
Alexander Romance within twenty-five years of Alexander’s death (
Alexander_romance). Even the
eyewitnesses like Callisthenes and Onesikritos contributed legendary material.
Now, Onesikritos was himself something of a character, and an unreliable reporter, even though he was an eyewitness. For instance he reported that he himself was in charge of Alexander’s fleet, when critics pointed out he was only a pilot on one ship. He also reported things that could not have happened, for which he was ridiculed by other historians. For example, he reported that Alexander met with the (mythical) Queen of the Amazons.
So here we have it: both myth and reputable history about Alexander originated even during his own lifetime, and some of the obvious myths were reported by
eyewitnesses who we can name.
It’s like the mythical story of George Washington and the cherry tree – written (invented) by a reputable historian within a year of Washington’s death.
Strobel’s argument for the historical reliability of the Gospels fails.
