The Ancients - Persia and the Bible

Episode Date: June 29, 2023

As the Babylonian Empire fell into decline, and it's power faded, the Persian Empire stepped in to fill the void that was left - but how did this event directly effect the narrative of the Old Testament, and what other sources are available to learn more about this period? As Babylon's infrastructure deteriorated, with crumbling walls and blocked canals reflecting a spiritual decline, rival powers emerged both within and beyond Babylon. Viewed as the chosen one by the Babylonian gods, Cyrus the Great claimed to liberate the Babylonians, but why was this event so crucial in the creation of a Jewish identity - and beyond the bible, what sources do we have to consolidate this story?In this episode, Tristan welcomes back Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, to examine this important moment in ancient, and biblical, history. Looking at how Persian influences can be observed in certain books of the Bible, with Persian words appearing alongside Hebrew descriptions, and how the narrative of Joseph and the technicolour coat draws parallels with Persian court stories - just how big an influence did Persia have on the Old Testament, and what legacies has it left into the modern day?Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.For more Ancient's content, subscribe to our Ancient's newsletter here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode we're talking all about ancient Persia and its influence in the creation of the Old Testament. Now this is a follow-on episode from one we released roughly a month ago all about Babylon and the Bible, the influence of the Babylonian Empire, particularly in the early 6th century BC on the creation of the Hebrew Bible, thanks largely to an event that is known as

the Babylonian captivity. Now we're going a bit further forward in time to the end of the Babylonian Empire and the rise of a new superpower in that area of the world, the Persian Empire. We'll be covering famous names such as King Cyrus II, Cyrus the Great, as an extraordinary legacy is mentioned in the Old Testament. To explain all about it, I was delighted to get back on the podcast the same guest that we've had for Babylon and the Bible. He is none other than Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones from Cardiff University. And Lloyd, well, he's a fantastic speaker, so engaging, so eloquent. All of our episodes with Lloyd always prove incredibly popular and I've got no doubt that this one will prove equally so. I really do hope you enjoy and here's Lloyd.

Lloyd, welcome back. Thank you, it's great to be here again. Now last episode we really focused in on the Babylonian captivity, the Jews in exile in Babylon. It's a great influence on the creating of the Bible, the Old Testament. Now, we're going to focus on the end of that period today and its significance. What happens? In the last episode, we were kind of focusing in on Nebuchadnezzar and the early 6th century BC. But this period that we're talking to today, it's a bit later in the 6th century. Yes. So we're seeing now the decline and fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The last indigenous king of Babylon is a guy called Narbonidus. He's pretty problematic. Really, he's a fascinating character, but he's pretty problematic within the kind of story of Babylon itself.

Because he, first of all, came from a kind of an ancillary branch of royalty. So he wasn't like, you know, a thoroughbred, as it were. He has an amazing champion throughout his life, and that's his mother. This incredible woman called Adad Gupi, who lived to the age, if you can believe this, of 103. No way. The longest living person I know of from antiquity. She was born in the reign of Ashurbanipal.

So she had this kind of memory bank, you know. But what's amazing about her and why I mention her is that she was something of a religious zealot, really. And all of her energies went to the worship of a god called Sin, who was the god of the moon. And the main cult center of Sin in Mesopotamia was not Babylon, where Marduk reigned supreme, but in Haran, which is nowadays in Syria. It's quite a stretch away from Babylon itself. So she was born and bred in Haran, it seems, and absolutely devoted to this god. At one point, she even becomes a kind of like a nun. She gives up all her wealth, her fine clothing and does this. And she prays and

prays to sin that she will be given a son one day who will be powerful. And well, I don't know how she does it. God gives her grace anyway, but she does. She begets this boy who grows up to be Narbonidus, the king of Babylon. He gets to this lofty position. She's still alive at this point, so she sees him grow to power. And it's quite clear that she's been a major influence on his life because she herself says it in an autobiography that she leaves us. And it's quite clear that Nabonidus is also a follower of sin. And, you know, it's kind of difficult in a polytheistic world. You're supposed to kind of give allegiance to all gods, really, so that, you know, there's balance, a kind of cosmic balance. And certainly for the king of Babylon, that's very

important to be an upholder of all the shrines of the gods. But in particular, the god Marduk, whose New Year festival, when the calendar changes, is so important to Babylonian identity. This is when Babylon is reconfirmed as being the center of the earth, that the king is seen as the regent, the viceroy on earth for the god Marduk and so forth. And Nabonidus isn't very good at upholding these ceremonies. In fact, he goes off to Haran for a long spell. And then for a long time in his reign, almost a decade or more, in fact, he's away in Arabia at another cult center for Sin the moon god. And he leaves the government of Babylon to his very able advisors, but also to his son, who is famously known in the Bible as well, Belshazzar. And so he becomes a regent there.

But what happens is the great cult festivals, these really important cosmic events are not happening because Narbonidus is away. So there's a theological problem, a crisis going on amongst the, you can imagine the Babylonian priests and the Babylonian elite at this time, that their king is not really upholding the laws and the customs of the gods. And as a consequence, what comes out in in the texts of this period is that Babylon is going into a steady decline. In fact, the very infrastructure of Babylon is collapsing. The walls of the great city are breaking down.

The canals that crisscross the city are being choked up with mud and slime and all of this kind of stuff too so it's so almost like the spiritual life of Babylon is being reflected in actually in the physical structure of Babylon itself it's in decay should we choose to believe any of that of course okay but I will leave you with that's the image that's given to us in the textual material which is quite abundant in this period so not, out of this certain amount of negligence and certain amount of chaos, I suppose, rivals begin to emerge, not only within Babylonia itself, but also beyond Babylon's borders. The chief rival, and something that the Babylonians never saw coming, were the Persians. My favourites, of course. So we know that Cyrus the Great had led an army

from southwestern Iran up to the north where he had defeated the Medes, another Iranian tribal people, and he had inherited therefore all the Median lands which stretched from the north of Iran around the Caspian Sea right the way over the Zagros Mountains, and into northern Iraq, and even touching into northern Syria and modern-day eastern Turkey as well. So that swathe of like a huge crescent really was all under Median occupation, but now it falls to the Persians, to Cyrus the Great himself. So he's in charge of all this. Well, he kind of rides to the farthest end of that and then whips across Anatolia and defeats, of course, the Greek-speaking cities of Asia Minor, Sardis and the other cities of Lydia, causing great trauma to the Greeks. But before going home to Persia, as he's coming back through northern Mesopotamia, he thinks to

himself, well, Babylon would be the prize, wouldn't it? And so he marches his army down the Phrates towards Babylon. And the Babylonians anticipate his arrival. Some important Babylonians actually go over to his side. So we have evidence there of capitulation of some of the elites to Cyrus already. And Cyrus is quite vicious on his route into Babylonia at the city of Opis, which is just about 50 miles north of Babylon. He completely and utterly destroys the city. He raises it to the ground. And in fact, Prince Belshazzar has gone to try to defend the city, and he is killed at this point. And so when, therefore, the troops of Cyrus move closer and closer to Babylon, the Babylonians just swing open their gates and they let him in without any hindrance whatsoever. Now, this is, of course, a great PR triumph for Cyrus. And it's really Cyrus' take on all of this

that we then become dependent on. There must have been opposition within Babylon. Of course, there must have been. Although it's interesting to see that in the years immediately after the Persian occupation of the city, there's no disruption to things like the payment of tax, the administrative centers, the same sort of operations, the same personnel, which shows that regime change in Babylon actually seems to have been quite harmonious, if we can use, maybe that's too strong a word, but certainly was operational. But once installed in Babylon, of course, Cyrus needs to start his own PR campaign there. And it comes out very clearly in this document, this very important document we have called the Cyrus Cylinder, which is in the British Museum. And of course, within that, the conquest of Babylon is portrayed as the liberation of Babylon,

because Cyrus comes in and he casts off the negligence or the misgovernment of Narbonidus. He replaces Narbonidus with himself. And it's not arbitrarily that this city has fallen, or been given to Cyrus, because in the cylinder Cyrus says how this chief god Marduk had scanned the horizons, looking out for a champion to come and liberate the black-headed people, is what he says, the Babylonians themselves, from this king who is negligent of the laws of the gods so certainly cyrus has the babylonian scribes and priesthood in his pay if they're not actually acquiescing to him that then certainly they're not putting up much of resistance so this is the story that comes out of babylon being liberated by this persian who is chosen by the chief god of babylon

by this Persian who is chosen by the chief god of Babylon. As he settles into his routines here as king of Babylon, and he appoints his son Cambyses as the kind of vice regent in Babylon as well, so they're definitely putting the Persian presence into the city, he begins a policy of returning foreign peoples to their homelands. So as we spoke about in the last time we met, lots of Jews and many, many other peoples were living in Babylonia at this period for over 70 years, 100 years maybe. Cyrus allows them, should they wish, to start to go back home if they like. Now amongst the Jews who had been settled there for 70 to 100 years, many didn't bother. Many of them wanted to stay. They'd made their homes, their careers. They had no pull towards this homeland of Abraham and Isaac, whoever they were. All those stories were still quite new,

don't forget, to many people, Jews at that time. But some certainly did want to go back. And I suppose those who wanted to go back were still these more traditionalists, I guess, the priests, the scribes, the elites, who had, after all, their family estates back in, you know, Judah and Israel, who perhaps had still plots of land out there as well. So you can see why there's this need to return as well. How is that sold? How do we sell that? This is something that Cyrus had to deal with. How then do I get this feeling that I am liberating these people? Well, it's really fascinating that Cyrus makes an appearance in the Hebrew Bible, in the Old Testament. First of all, in the prophecies of Isaiah. Now, the book of Isaiah is a very long book.

It's over 60 chapters. It actually was written over three very different periods. Chapters 1 to 39 were written in the 8th century BC. It looks at Assyria. Chapter 40 through to about 49 dates to this exilic period so we're talking here about what we call deuter Isaiah or second Isaiah so he is a contemporary of this moment when the Jews are allowed to return home the rest of Isaiah is probably post-exilic so once the Jews have settled down and I'll talk a little bit about that later on but the second isaiah due to isaiah

is the best sort of indigenous hebrew material we have for the return and i'm just going to read out a little bit of chapter 45 of isaiah the prophecies of isaiah so this is what we have this is what the lord says to his anointed, It's really remarkable. It's powerful enough in itself. But when you realize that's exactly the same rhetoric that's used in the Cyrus Cylinder, where Marduk looks around, calls Cyrus by name, even holds him by the hand. We have the same in Isaiah as well, and brings him into the cities and so forth. There is clearly something going on here where groups of foreign peoples are being fed the same

propaganda information and the same necessary propaganda information, I dare say, by Cyrus. This is the way that you're say, by Cyrus. This is the way that you're going to write it. This is how you're going to be seen. So two very, very diverse religious groups are using exactly the same rhetoric here, that Cyrus is the champion. And I want you to just to notice right at this very beginning here, this is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, to his anointed. The Hebrew is Mashiach, which we get Messiah, of course. He is God's anointed. He is the only non-Jew, the only Gentile in the entire Bible to get this title of Messiah. I will rise you up, Cyrus, in my righteousness. I will make all his

ways straight. He will rebuild my city, Jerusalem. He will set my exiles free, but not for a price of reward, says the Almighty. He does it out of his heart, in other words. It's extraordinary, isn't it? It really is amazing, and I actually really love that bit which you mentioned, and I'll repeat now. Cyrus Syllender, Marduk's chosen. In the Bible, he's God's chosen. It is an extraordinary, amazing piece of evidence of this propaganda by this Persian king. It's the machine at work, it really is. And I dare say, if we had Harian or Hittite evidence, the same kind of thing would be propagated there as well. It's quite extraordinary and really eye-opening to see the way in which this worked. I'm James Patton Rogers, a war historian, advisor to the UN and NATO,

and host of the Warfare podcast from History Hit. Join me twice a week, every week, as we look at the conflicts that have defined our past and the ones shaping our future. We talk to award-winning journalists. ISIS, this peculiar strain that we all came to know very well in the mid-2010s, really got its start because of the US invasion of Iraq. We hear from the people who were actually there. The Sudanese have been incredible. They have managed to get supplies to people, to individuals who are suffering.

And we learn from the remarkable historians shining a light on forgotten histories. For the most part, the millions of people who were taken to those camps were immediately murdered. Auschwitz combined the functions of death camp and concentration camp and slave labor. Join us on the Warfare podcast for a history hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. So, did people take advantage of this? Well, yes, they did. Some Jews did go home. As I say, probably the elites. And we can turn to other parts of the Hebrew Bible

to begin to put together a chronology of what happens there as well, because we have the books of Ezra and the book of Nehemiah, both of which are probably late Persian period, looking back about 150 years on what had gone on before. They both claim to be autobiographies, but of course they are written at a later date. So what we have in the story of Ezra is that Ezra takes those Jews who want to return to Jerusalem, to the old site, and there he sees the ruins of the city. And there we learn that Cyrus gives the Jews a decree by which they can start to rebuild Solomon's temple.

So the temple begins to be rebuilt in Jerusalem. There are really, really fractious factions of Jews in Jerusalem at that time. Some of them are people who never left. So they kind of feel this sort of, well, who are you to tell us what to do? Now you've come back, you know, we've been here slogging it out all the time. Who are you to tell us that we should rebuild anything? And then, of course, there are the kind of rather zealous and enthusiastic ex-exiles who are coming back in saying, you know, this is our homelands, we want to do everything. So there's a real impasse sometimes about what's going on there. And it's quite clear that the

Persian monarchy get involved in arbitrating some of the squabbles that go on between these groups. So for instance, there's one group of Jerusalemites who say, well, while the temple's being built, let's build the city wall again. You know know we don't have a city wall anymore surely every city needs its wall for those who are kind of wanting to keep the persians happy you know they recognize that they've had permission to build the temple but no wall and so they write to cyrus and to later king saying why would they build a wall can't you see what they're going to do if they build a wall it means that they're ready to rebel against you because they're going to rebuild the fortifications. They're going to break away from you. So all of this is being narrated in the stories of, first of all, Ezra, and then Nehemiah, who is supposedly a courtier brought

up in Persia under Artaxerxes II, and is sent back to Jerusalem to begin to quell some of these frustrations that are clearly ongoing over several decades. So that's really interesting evidence for what's happening there. Some of this material that had been building in Babylon as well, this biblical material, emerges in this period too. Certainly this kind of deuteronomic laws against eating certain foods and so forth. Ezra is really, really preoccupied with marriage that exiled jews should not be marrying foreign women now that they're home in the homeland wow because to keep purity now and don't forget in babylon they've been seeing all of this going on all these

mergers going on but now it's like no no you must marry nice jewish girls and so forth okay so there's that again that's demarcation to start dividing the Jewish community up from all those around it who are not. And it's really fascinating because we can look elsewhere in the Persian Empire to find really good evidence of how this is operating beyond Judah as well. So we have a lot of very fine evidence written in Aramaic from the island of Elephantine in Egypt where for at least 150 years previous to these documents being written and they date to about the early 4th century BCE we know that there was a large large ghetto of Jews living on the island living very harmoniously with the Egyptian and Persian

neighbors as well. But at the beginning of the fourth century, you have these documents which show that actually there is a real clear upset going on in this Jewish community too, because they write to the high priest in Jerusalem, and they also write to the Persian satrap of Egypt saying, look, you need to help us with certain things. One of the things they want to do is to observe Passover. And this is the first mention we get in extra biblical sources for the Passover. And it probably means that Passover as a feast was a Persian period invention, probably early Persian period invention. So,ian period invention so you know it's not a bronze age thing at all remember we talked in the last episode about the captivity in egypt

and it's kind of you know manufacturing really in the exile but they also these letters also talk about how the jewish community is being attacked now by egyptian priests on the island and they've become the Egyptian priests have become really upset with the Jewish settlers because the Jews are performing animal sacrifice on a daily basis sheep and goats and they're sharing this island of Elephantine with the temple and priesthood of the god Hnum who was the ram-headed god. So it's blasphemy, as far as they can say. But what we really see in those letters, you see, those Aramaic documents, is the creation of Jewish festivals and the creation of Jewish ritual, cult, sacrifice, animal sacrifice,

and the rebuilding of the second temple in Jerusalem from this period of Cyrus on what we see there really is emphasis given completely to cultic ritual and Judaism is expressed not through the holy words through the scriptures because they're not there yet it's represented through ritual and especially the daily sacrifice blood sacrifice of animals and of course for second temple judaism that we call it so this is the temple that runs right the way through to the sack of jerusalem by the romans in 70 a.d second temple judaism is all about ritual really about animal sacrifice in particular the holocaust the burning of sacrificial bled victims so we see in this period how the exiles are coming back into their homelands also communicating with other jewish groups outside of

judah and that they're creating a new temple with ritual which is now giving a focus to them as an ethnic and religious group, very, very much their own people as well. So that is really, really fascinating. And the books of Ezra and Nehemiah basically talk about how this becomes codified, I suppose, constantly codified. And while we do not yet have anything like a Bible that these early Jewish practitioners were using, we do have evidence that the use of hymns and prayers were being codified and being set down many, many decades, centuries later in things like the Book of Psalms. So we have post-exilic psalms, for instance, coming out in things like the Book of Psalms. So we have post-exilic Psalms,

for instance, coming out in this period. And there's really, and also in the final chapters of the Book of Isaiah, we get this rise of what theologians have called Zion theology. So Zion was the ancient name given to one of the hills of Jerusalem. And it was the hill where traditionally the temple had been built and now we're being rebuilt to the temple, Temple Mount, Mount Zion. What Zion theology is all about is really fascinating. It talks about how the temple of God, of Yahweh, will now become a place where peoples from all over the world will gather. So it's really fascinating because what comes out of this exile, this return, is actually an embracing of the idea that God is no longer just for the Jews, but can be for all peoples.

And what I find really fascinating, as a Persian historian at heart is that this so reflects Persian royal ideology. When we look at Persepolis, for instance, you know, and we see these parades of foreigners moving towards the great king to give their honor and love and service to him. I think that's really influencing the ideology of what we call Zion theology at this period of all peoples coming together, not being judged on who they are. In past episodes with you, I've talked about this idea of this Pax Persiana, you know, this great Persian peace, which the Persian great kings are really keen to promote. And I think they do such a good job of it that actually permeates its way into the theological thoughts of the Jews of this period as well. So really, really fascinating. It is fascinating. You see that Persian influence, as you say, with the return.

I must take a step back and ask how we know all of this. Is it primarily just from the Bible? And the reason that I ask that is because we mentioned much earlier about the Cyrus Cylinder and how he mentions certain places and temples. And there's sometimes this idea of repatriation, which isn't very straightforward. But there isn't any mention actually of him sending the Jews back in the Cyrus Cylinder. But is it mentioned therefore solely in the Bible that happens or do we have other sources too? It's there mainly in the Bible but we do have lots of archaeological evidence as well. So what we've come to realise, and biblical historians really are onto this now,

is that the Persian period in the area they call, the Persians call Yehud, the satrapy of Yehud was so important and is so important for our understanding of what goes on in the creation of Jewish identity as well. So more and more and more we're understanding that the Persian period is the climax, really. It's the moment when some of these great Bible stories that are emerging in Babylon get polished, for instance, and settled, stories that are emerging in Babylon get polished, for instance, and settled, begin to settle down in a particular way, you know. And you can really see the Persian influences on some books of the Bible. In particular, Persian words, of course, are brought into, you know, old Hebrew words are suddenly next to some Persian words. So you can really see where parts of these stories are told.

The old, old story of Joseph, you know, Joseph, the amazing technical dream code. He's the son of Jacob. It's all set in the ancestral world of ancient Israel, but it's quite clearly a Persian court narrative. It's got everything that you would need in a Persian story, something out of Ctesias or something out of Herodotus for that matter as well. Well, how so? So, you know, you have this story of the boy, much loved by his dad, jealous brothers sending him away, saying that he's dead. It's a romance. It's a folk tale. It's a beautiful thing.

You even get very specific mentions of things like Potiphar, the king's chief prime minister, is a eunuch. Now, eunuchs were absent from Egyptian history, they just didn't have eunuchs in Egypt. But of course eunuchs were the highest levels of courtiers within Persian society. So all of these things are going on there. Joseph is definitely a very late Persian addition. And Solomon, his splendor is added to in the Persian period as well, because it's almost as if a Jewish scribe needed to create the image of the ultimate king of Israel. What did he have to draw on? Well, the only thing he could draw on is the Persian great king.

So, of course, you know, if the great king can have, according to the Greek sources, 360 concubines, well, Solomon can have 800. according to the Greek sources, 360 concubines. Well, Solomon can have 800. And if the great king can have, you know, ultimate stables, you know, in Megiddo, then of course, you know, this is just a reflection of what the great king can have. You know, Solomon is amplified. At this point, we hear, you know, in the Book of Kings,

Solomon's trade routes, you know, from Ophir, gold, ivory, apes, and peacocks are all pouring into Israel. Well, of course, there's trade routes, you know, from Ophir, gold, ivory, apes, and peacocks are all pouring into Israel. Well, of course, there's no evidence for that in the Bronze Age, but certainly in the Persian Empire, that's exactly what the great kings are getting. So Solomon is modelled on a Persian great king. I've recently published a book on Esther, and I write a section there which is called The Hidden Persian Kings of the Old Testament, because actually we can look between the lines and see all of this Persianization that's going on for many of the monarchs, actually, of ancient Israel. And then that brings us to, yes, to Esther. So there's this other great Persian presence in the Hebrew Bible. It's my opinion that Esther is a product

of the Persian period, probably written towards the middle of the 5th century. So this is a time when court stories are becoming really popular. So Joseph is written at this time, I think. In Aramaic, we have the story of Ahika. We have, in the Hebrew Bible, David and Bathsheba, all of these kind of romances set in courts. We also have Ctesias writing at this time. Herodotus has done his stuff,

but it still has some of these elements of the Greek romance to develop as well. So these kinds of stories seem to be very popular. And I think that's what's going on in Esther as well. Esther is not history, but it is. It's like a wonderful romantic novel set in a period, the kind of, you know, Philippa Gregory kind of things. It's a bodice ripper, essentially. It's set in the reign of Xerxes, 150 years before the

story is codified. And it opens with, in the days of Xerxes, yes, you know, that Xerxes who ruled 126 provinces, is how the book opens. In other words, you know, once upon a time when Xerxes was the king, you know, it has all of that kind of quality about it. But what we can see within Esther as well is evidence for the lives of Jewish communities who remained behind in Babylonia. Now Esther is actually set in Susa, just on the other side of Babylon, a very important imperial Persian centre of course, and it concerns this young Jewish woman and her uncle, a Jew. She marries Xerxes, which is a bit of a fantasy because we know historically Persians only wed Persian women, but of course she could feasibly have been a concubine. I don't think she existed to be honest, but that's the background. But, you know, Esther is quite remarkable in that it shows us a world of Jews doing really

well in the diaspora. There is no longing to go home amongst the Jews encountered in Esther whatsoever. They're very happy being in Persia and being Persianised, completely happy. And what's really fascinating about this story is that you can look in vain for any mention of God in it whatsoever. God doesn't appear even once in this text. It is a purely secular text. It's a love story. It's a romance. There is no mention of the temple, of cult, of fasting or dietary laws. The fact that Esther even marries a Gentile, of course, breaks the traditions that are going on back home when Ezra is trying to keep Gentiles and Jews apart. So it's a remarkable testimonial, really, to a kind of very settled Jewish society doing extremely well for themselves in Babylonia and in the western part of Iran as well. And I think that we can comfortably say that was the story for many,

many, many generations of Jews. And we shouldn't forget that in the third and fourth centuries CE, it's the Jews of Babylon, Babylonia and Iran who are writing the Talmud, the great commentaries on the Hebrew Bible and the great laws and so forth. Babylonia and Iran remained the center of Jewish culture and intellect more than anywhere else, remarkably. But it's also so interesting because you mentioned those, we have that division almost, those who stayed in Babylon and passed the Persian Empire become more Persianised Jews, and those Jews who returned to Judah and you say there's no marrying with the Gentiles. But yet in both cases, if we're talking about ancient Persia, there is a very real admiration for the Persians. Yes. And that's a fascinating, overarching theme that you

have. Absolutely. It is in stark contrast to what we get in the Greek sources, of course. In the Hebrew Bible, the Persians are good guys. They really are. They're civilized. They're enlightened. They see God. God sees them. God loves them. These are good guys. It's a complete turnaround to what we have in Herodotus and Xenophon and all of the other pejorative works from the Greeks. The Esther story, however, goes even deeper than that, I think, because I think sitting behind the Esther story is a much, much older Babylonian story.

Esther, of course, Esther in Hebrew, is a variation on Ishtar. Ishtar, the goddess of love and so forth. And Mordecai, behind that, is Marduk, of course, the god of Babylon. So probably what this story originates from is a myth where Ishtar and Marduk are working together, or perhaps they were even two, an Ishtar myth and a Marduk myth, which were then sort of brought together

over the centuries. And this morphs into this court story of Esther. And it's an interesting thing. I mean, the book of Esther is history in itself of the book. It's fascinating. Because the Jews in successive eras found it quite difficult to deal with

because of its lack of presence of God. So when in the second century BC, the Jewish scholars were brought to Alexandria to create a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, as we call it, the 70 books, the Jews who dealt with the book of Esther just liberally insert God everywhere. So Esther prays, Mordecai prays, Esther prays again, Mordecai prays again. God is sacrificed to, God is honored, God is worshipped. Constantly, constantly, constantly, they big up God in the Greek version. So the Greek version of Esther is completely different to the Hebrew version of Esther. And more than that, there's a very

problematic ninth chapter in the Hebrew Esther, in which this lovely world of everybody getting on really well in Persia, a couple of nasty characters who want to try to get Esther out of the position, Haman, suddenly it turns really dark and sour. And there's this whole idea that the Jews are going to be annihilated by their foes, and that Xerxes gives them the right to fight back. by their foes, and that Xerxes gives them the right to fight back. This doesn't ring true to being true Esther to me. And it's my estimation that that chapter of Esther is probably written in the Hasmonean period. So this is the period when the Maccabees were kind of freedom fighters against the Seleucids in Jerusalem and Judah. And that has all the hallmarks of a kind of, you know, guerrilla warfare turning against your

enemies. Possibly at that time as well, Judah was being ruled by a very brilliant woman called Alexandra Salome. And probably she is given a kind of Esther role, if you like. Probably the book gets known more in that period because of Alexandra Salome ruling there as well. So it's a rich, rich book, layers and layers and layers of this creation of a Jewish story, a Jewish identity, the creation of the celebration of Purim, of course, which has been so important to Jewish identity

right the way down to today. It's the most joyous of all the great Jewish festivals. Also in the Hasmonean period, of course, things like Hanukkah is celebrated for the first time. So all of these great Jewish rituals are done there. So I suppose what we've seen here is this return. So we've got this movement going on within the homelands itself,

which, you know, the return of a cult, the return of a second temple form of Judaism, which has a longevity then of, you know, five, six hundred years. But meanwhile, we see in Babylonia, the Jews also working in their own way to maintain, uphold and create another kind of Jewish identity. And the two don't necessarily overlap, of course. I suppose the final coda to all of this, if you like, is what happens in 70 AD, which is the destruction of the second temple in Israel, in Jerusalem. Well, that means for the second time, God is displaced and that ritual goes with it. So all those animal sacrifices, all the things that gave cogency to what the Jews were for that period goes.

And of course, the temple is never rebuilt. the Jews were for that period goes and of course the temple is never rebuilt so what we see instead and this is something now that the Jews over in Babylonia and the Jews in Jerusalem can do together is suddenly we have the emergence of the holy scriptures so without the presence of God's in his temple now it's God in his word that becomes important so finally we get an acknowledgement of something we can call the bible at this point where people are turning their attention to the scholars in the gospel of mark for instance you know jesus goes into his synagogue in nazareth he reads from the scroll of isaiah for instance so this is now how the tradition of being Jewish, of being under the protection of Yahweh Elohim, is preserved. And that's why now it can spread.

So as the Jewish diaspora continues and continues throughout the Middle Ages and so forth, so the Word of God can be taken around through the Holy Scriptures and the establishment of synagogues, of course, as well. So the big picture approach is really fascinating. We see small pockets of returnees trying to struggle in Jerusalem for what to be, how to return to God's favor, other pockets of people remaining in Babylonia taking a different approach. But ultimately, after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, this new world where scripture, these holy stories that have been told for generations, become the chief articulation of faith, cultural identity. I guess it's also interesting if you're 70 AD for the destruction of the temple. So this is, it's more than, well,

wow, let's see, one, two, three, 400 years after the fall of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. And yet that legacy of Persia and of Babylon has remained so strong, even in half a millennium. Absolutely. And you know, Jesus' apostles, Paul, and the other writers of the New Testament, they all draw on Babylon in particular, you know, constantly referring to Babylon as the ultimate, you know, despicable, vile place. You know, Rome is compared to Babylon. You know, it is the second Babylon and so forth as well. So Babylonia becomes a touchstone for Jewish identity. And rightly so, because brilliant things emerged from the Babylonian exile and the millennia

that followed it as well. Is Persia and Cyrus, are they mentioned in the New Testament too? Or is there just a real focus on... No, they're not. But you know, in the modern state of Israel, of course, Cyrus is greatly honoured today. The cylinder, the Cyrus cylinder, has been used on Israeli stamps, Israeli coins. So there's a very alive and active awareness that this great Persian king gave the Jewish people an identity, which emerges, of course, in the Jewish state itself. And there's a really fascinating kind of history of identification of politicians with Cyrus the Great as well. So back in the late 1940s, after the creation of the

state of Israel, of course, we know that President Truman was a major mover and shaker in making that happen. And he was invited to Jerusalem, I think in 1953, to receive an award. And whoever was hosting him said publicly, you know, you are like Cyrus to us. And Truman snapped, like Cyrus, I am Cyrus, he said. More terrifyingly, in recent times, Trump, Donald Trump, has also been likened to Cyrus the Great too. So the move of the American embassy from Tel Aviv into Jerusalem, stimulated within Israel, some parts of Israeli population, and some parts of the far Christian right in America to herald Donald Trump as the return of Cyrus. Well, there you go. Well, you mentioned Cyrus. We will definitely return to Cyrus in a future episode, won't we, my friend? This has been absolutely brilliant. And you

mentioned, we've talked about the book of Esther and so much more, but you have recently written a book all about that topic, which is? It's called Ancient Persia and the Book of Esther, the Achaemenid Court in the Hebrew Bible. Wow, there you go. Persia in the Bible. I think we found a title for our episode today as well, right there. Lloyd, thank you so much. You're very welcome.

Always a pleasure. Well, there you go there was Professor Lloyd Llewellyn Jones talking all things Persia and the Bible I hope you enjoyed the episode last things from me

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