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Why is this CRITICAL juncture in religious history not explored/mentioned more? I find it rather interesting that when it comes to the Jews, their interaction with the Babylonians, Greeks and Romans get most of the attention primarily because of their wars and/or written hatred for those empires. Their scribes yearned to see the heads of Babylonian children smashed against rocks in their craving for revenge. They loathed the Greeks and their vulgar Hellenism, even going to war to resist Greek influence and infringement on their sacred beliefs. Their struggle against the Romans is well documented. Yet for some 170 plus years, the Jews were under Persian rule and it was rather quiet, peaceful and amicable, yet on the religious front, some interesting changes came into Jewish religious thought that shaped Judaism going forward and subsequently, Christianity and Islam.
Some say these changes began in the days of Ezra who supposedly came from Babylon under the blessing of the Persian king to teach the local people the ways of Persian religion (Zoroastrianism) and perhaps giving rise to the sect that would become the Parsi/Pharsi (Pharisees), a group that would become instrumental in the wars against the Greeks and very prominent in New Testament times.
The Persians seems to be the overlooked great people of the ancient world. Until the recent movie 300, it seems many people were even unaware they had an empire even larger than the Roman Empire ruled by exceptional kings well ahead of their time, notably, their first king, Cyrus. Of course the movie exaggerated things about them quite a bit, however.
I have honestly never heard of any changes that occurred during Persian rule. After Persia freed the Jews from their last captivity there was much rejoicing (they even called Cyrus God's anointed), although not much really changed. They were still treated as subhuman, which wasn't uncommon in those days. Perhaps you could explain more to us about it?
the history of the mideast is facinating. but history and the current state seem out of sync.
in the past persia assimulated their enemies now they wana nuke them. did i sense the yearning for revenge in your post?
I thought I read something pretty positive in the Catholic Encyclopedia on Zoroastrians, but I can't seem to find it now.
The main things I've heard be linked to Zoroastrian/Persian influence are
The idea of angels, particularly guardian angels.
The idea of having women live separately during menstruation.
The idea of a Messiah.
The idea of a final Judgment.
The idea of the Devil as a powerful force for evil in his own right rather than simply as some kind of mischievous or "testing" figure.
The second is not really relevant for most Jews or Christians these days. The rest kind of intrigued me, but Persians had a pretty high culture so I figured maybe they just came to some right ideas by thinking on it amongst themselves.
I have honestly never heard of any changes that occurred during Persian rule. After Persia freed the Jews from their last captivity there was much rejoicing (they even called Cyrus God's anointed), although not much really changed. They were still treated as subhuman, which wasn't uncommon in those days. Perhaps you could explain more to us about it?
I am certianly no authority on this, but as far as I know, Cyrus was unlike other kings before him and his reputation preceded him which is why the Jews were ecstatic about his march on Babylon where they were held captive. I also believe that even the Babylonians themselves welcomed him with open arms and he took their city without a fight. His style of governance was one of patronage. He allowed his subjects to keep their temples and to worship their supreme deity, unlike previous kings of the region who opted to loot and burn down the temples of the conquered and crush their idols to dust.
Either he or his successor even underwrote the Jewish return to their homeland and even went as far as funding their rebuilding projects which I'm sure endeared them to the Jews. What seems to have happened next, however, was the Persian king sending a delegation of "priests" (some believe these were Persian Magi or holymen, versed in the Persian relgion of Zoroastrianism) back to Judah to teach the inhabitants this new religion that had some very interesting concepts (hell, angels, demons, deism, afferlife, cosmic wars and so on) absent in older Judaism.
One point of interest to me has been with the Pharisees. Their names seems to have derived from the Persian word Parsi/Pharsi, which I believe is a region in southern Iran (ancient Persia) where Zoroastrianism may have begun or where the Persian holymen may have resided. The Jews did not have a concept of an afterlife other than a shadowdy place called Sheol where ALL dead souls went, good or bad. The Persians, however, had a rather interesting religious view that involved a resurrection of the souls to paradise or damnation which was carried over into New Testament Judaism and Christianity.
It appears that the Pharisee sect (Pro-Persians) was responsible for spreading concepts like these amongst the common folk who stood to gain the most from such a blissful afterlife. Their rivals, the Sadducees, who upheld the status quo and original Jewish teachings appears to have rejected such concepts as foreign and this is evidenced in the New Testament. In a story where the Sadducees confronted Jesus about a question regarding wives in the afterlife, the writer was careful to add a side-note stating that the Sadducees did NOT believe in "the resurrection" which I think is a VERY important point because it highlights a point of contention between the two camps. Why was this mentioned other than to show that the Sadducees who harkened back to the ancient priestly (aristocratic) tradition were not willing to go with the NEW concepts that were held by the majority common folk?
I have honestly never heard of any changes that occurred during Persian rule. After Persia freed the Jews from their last captivity there was much rejoicing (they even called Cyrus God's anointed), although not much really changed. They were still treated as subhuman, which wasn't uncommon in those days. Perhaps you could explain more to us about it?
One thing that they introduced into Jewish thought was duality. This was a foreign concept prior to the influence of the Persians. While the Pharisees and the follow-on Christians version of duality is slightly different than Zoroastrian duality, the point is that the concept of an evil counterpart to god did not exist among the Israelites until the Persians.
Why is this CRITICAL juncture in religious history not explored/mentioned more?
I'm not sure what makes this juncture any more critical than any other, but I can only assume that you're referring to Gentiles who may not be well versed in Jewish history. We don't have any problem acknowledging a Persian influence, particularly since there were major centers of scholarship that existed in Persia for hundreds of years.
I'm not sure what makes this juncture any more critical than any other, but I can only assume that you're referring to Gentiles who may not be well versed in Jewish history. We don't have any problem acknowledging a Persian influence, particularly since there were major centers of scholarship that existed in Persia for hundreds of years.
Yeah...dem guys!
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