Quote:
Originally Posted by hobnail
Peter Green wrote a book, Alexander of Macedon and in the preface or beginning of the book he says that the earliest writings about Alexander the Great were written hundreds of years after his life (300 or 700). I'd also read a book about the early history of Christianity and he said that the earliest books in the New Testament were written 70 years after the life of Jesus, thus none were written by anyone who was alive when Jesus was.
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There is a difference between the earliest writings and the earliest writings that we have copies of. There were quite a few people who were contemporaries of Alexander who wrote about him, but we don't have any copies of those works. We just have references to those works by later writers. The Greek historian Arrian used the writings of Ptolemy I, one of Alexander's generals and Aristobulus, an officer in Alexander's army for his history of Alexander's campaigns.