Lecture 9

We began this lecture talking about Persian Jerusalem.  This time encompasses the 2nd temple period, Cyrus' edict of return, expansion and renovation of temple by Herod the Great, and the destructions of the temple by the romans.  We see prove of this period written in the bible and we also see it in non-biblical text.

We then spoke about Ezekiel's visions, such as that of the new mobile god that now uses wheels, and the weird Cherubim thing with 4 faces, wings, etc.  We then talked about King Cyrus of Persia, and how he let the people go back to Jerusalem.  We see this in evidence too in Cyrus' cylinder.  While the jews think it was the hebrew god that made him do it as a messiah (which is a bad mistake because a messiah is supposed to be someone from the davidic line) while on the cylinder it says he did it because of the Marduk, the babylonian god.

With the return of the jews to Jerusalem, we see a struggle to rebuild the temple amongst other things.  Finally Darius I won, and set into motion his own way of doing things.  He rebuilt the temple, but it didn't look nearly as nice as Solomon's temple.  Under his reign we also saw that the Persians maintained control and influence. We see in the Yehud coins an aramaic saying, therefore showing that Persia was controlling at this point.

We also discussed the parallels of Judaism and Zoroastrianism.  This religion from Persia shows several similar parables and concepts that Judaism is known to have today.  Here is my list of parallels:

o   Judaism and Zoroastrianism

§  Six periods of creation in the Zoroastrian scriptures

·         Vs. 6 days in Hebrew bible

§  Humans descend from first couple mashya (man) and mashyana (woman)

·         Like adam and eve

§  Zoroaster given commandments on mountain (moses)

·         Like moses

§  Introduction of angels (Pharisee v. Sadducee)

·         Concept of other divine beings besides god

§  Introduction of evil counterpart (ahriman/angra mainyu) (v. Satan) (Zech 3:2?)

·         Like satan

§  YHWH became a universal god of love, good, perfect, remote (like ahura mazda)

§  Cyrus is called Jewish messiah (Isa 45:1)

§  Aramaic in Bible (Ezra, Daniel), Targums, and Talmud

§  Purity codes in marriage (Ezra 9-10)