From: Baha’i Historical
Facts
As to what thou didst ask regarding the history of the
philosophers: history, prior to Alexander of Greece, is extremely confused, for
it is a fact that only after Alexander did history become an orderly and
systematized discipline. One cannot, for this reason, rely upon traditions and
reported historical events that have come down from before the days of
Alexander. This is a matter thoroughly established, in the view of all
authoritative historians. How many a historical account was taken as fact in
the eighteenth century, yet the opposite was proven true in the nineteenth. No
reliance, then, can be placed upon the traditions and reports of historians which
antedate Alexander, not even with regard to ascertaining the lifetimes of
leading individuals. …..
The histories prior to Alexander, which were based on oral accounts current
among the people, were put together later on. There are great discrepancies
among them, and certainly they can never hold their own against the Holy Writ.
It is an accepted fact among historians themselves that prior to this time
history was transmitted by word of mouth. Note how extremely confused was the
history of Greece, so much so that to this day there is no agreement on the
dates related to the life of Homer, Greece's far-famed poet. Some even maintain
that Homer never existed at all, and that the name is a fabrication.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (Authorized translation
of unpublished Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Baha to Ethel Rosenberg in 1906 in reply to
her questions about the Tablet of Wisdom. Research Department, Baha'i World
Centre. Published pp 78-81 in Ethel Jenner Rosenberg, the ‘Life and Times of
England's Outstanding Baha'i Pioneer Worker’, by Robert Weinberg; George
Ronald, Oxford, 1995).
