Robin Lane Fox Alexander the great

[dean]

Hello,

I have just finished reading Alexander the great by Robin Lane Fox.

I would give it a five star rating as he has certainly done his homework and written a wonderful book to boot.

I know Alexander's story but the detail was quite impressive that he brings to the table in this tome.
There were numerous points that made me step back and think for a moment.
I have yet to check but he mentions that in total in the sources there are 5 different ways Callisthenes was killed/executed. Only one can be correct but why five?
He also mentions that Mazaeus more than likely had a prearranged deal with the Macedonian side before the battle of Gaugamela.
He points out that it is highly likely that Mazaeus helped steer things in Alexander's direction due to his lacklustre command of the right wing and also his lightning reinstatement as satrap of Babylonia just seven days after the battle.
There are many details in the book such as these. Observations such as, on his death bed, if he was unable to speak how was it possible for him to communicate he wanted his empire left in the hands of "the strongest".
The book is a true achievement in my opinion.
In the last chapter, Lane Fox discusses Alexander's legacy one of them being the use of Greek and how Alexander's conquest permitted its proliferation. Also mentions that if it hadn't have been for this use of Greek as a lingua franca Christianity may not have left Judea.
Out of coincidence, the next book I am reading, in this case, about inconsistencies in the bible states in St Mark that Pontius Pilate asks Jesus if he is, in fact, the king of the Jews" to which he answers in Greek "su legeis" - if you say so.
If here we have Jesus in Jerusalem whose mother tongue would have been aramaic, being tried by a Roman governer whose mother tongue would have been latin and here both asking and answering questions in Greek.

Anyways, before I digress, all in all an excellent book.
Best regards,
Dean.

[system1988]

Regarding the last paragrap .... the whole Bible is in Greek (that s a great legacy of Alexander ) but i dont imagine Christ or Pilatus speaking Greek , they would have to have an interpreter

[Alexias]

Thanks for this. Gosh, it is a long, long time since I read this (1980s I think), but I do remember that it was full of detail. I wonder though whether any of it is now out of date, not the big things but interpretations and further details that were not known then.

[Alexias]

Regarding the last paragrap .... the whole Bible is in Greek (that s a great legacy of Alexander ) but i dont imagine Christ or Pilatus speaking Greek , they would have to have an interpreter

Yes, I can't say I have ever heard of Christ speaking Greek before.

[Sweetmemory41]

A scan of the Google Scholar indicates that there are several publications on the topic of Jesus speaking Greek. Given below is a small sample.

Barr, J. (1970). Which language did Jesus speak?–some remarks of a Semitist. Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 53(1), 9-29.

Gleaves, G. S. (2015). Did Jesus Speak Greek. The Emerging Evidence of Greek Dominance in First-Century Palestine. Wipf and Stock Publishers.

Ong, H. T. (2012). An Evaluation of the Aramaic and Greek Language Criteria in Historical Jesus Research: A Sociolinguistic Study of Mark 14, 32–65. fn, 25, 37-55.

Patterson, S. W. (1946). What Language Did Jesus Speak?. The Classical Outlook, 23(7), 65-67.

Porter, S. E. (1993). Did Jesus Ever Teach in Greek?. Tyndale Bulletin, 44, 199-235.

Porter, S. E. (2011). The Role of Greek Language Criteria in Historical Jesus Research. In Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (4 vols) (pp. 361-404). Brill.

Speak, W. L. D. J. The Multilingualism of Ancient Palestine and the Multilingual Jesus Hughson T. Ong McMaster Divinity College Hamilton, ON, Canada Which languages did Jesus speak? On what occasions were Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin.

[system1988]

Thank you a really interesting number of sources. Anyway i think he was the son of a poor carpenter ,and poor himself .It was expensive to have a Greek education at that time -it was considered a luxury .Only the rich could paid a lot for it .Correspondance has been preserved that proves it . But i think further discussion would not add anything essential

[sean_m]

Thanks for this. Gosh, it is a long, long time since I read this (1980s I think), but I do remember that it was full of detail. I wonder though whether any of it is now out of date, not the big things but interpretations and further details that were not known then.

If its the book by Robin Lane Fox I am thinking of, he gave a very loose paraphase of the Gadal-Yama contract from 422 BCE tinged with stereotypes about the east. There was no English translation at that time and he obviously didn't know Akkadian so he paraphrased and translated one of the French or German translations.

I think there is something to books which are engaging and guess where we can't know the answer, but that bit stood out to me as not the most rigorous scholarship.