|
History - After the Exile
Cyrus
When Cyrus the Persian conquered Mesopotamia and the whole of the Middle
East, he did so for religious reasons. Unlike any conqueror before him,
Cyrus set out to conquer the entire world. Before Cyrus and the
Persians, conquest was largely a strategic affair; you guaranteed your
territorial safety by conquering potential enemies. But Cyrus wanted the
whole world and he wanted it for religious reasons. Barely a century
before, the Persians were a rag-tag group of tribes living north of
Mesopotamia. They were Indo-European—they spoke a language from the
Indo-European family, which includes Greek, German, and English. To the
Mesopotamians, they were little better than animals and so went largely
ignored. But in the middle of the seventh century BC, a prophet,
Zarathustra, appeared among them and preached a new religion. This
religion would become Zoroastrianism (in Greek, Zarathustra is called
"Zoroaster"). The Zoroastrians believed that the universe was dualistic,
that it was made up of two distinct parts. One was good and light and
the other evil and dark. Cosmic history was simply the epic battle
between these two divine forces; at the end of time, a climactic battle
would decide once and for all which of the two would dominate the
universe. Human beings, in everything they do, participated in this
struggle; all the gods and all the religions were part of this epic,
almost eternal battle.
Cyrus believed that the final battle was approaching, and that Persia
would bring about the triumph of good. To this end, he sought to conquer
all peoples and create the stage for the final triumph of good. He was
the greatest conqueror that had ever been seen; at his death, his empire
was exponentially larger than any other empire that had ever existed.
His son, Cambyses, conquered Egypt; the Persians, it seemed at the time,
were on their way to world domination.
Although Zoroastrianism involved two gods—one good and one evil—all
other gods were ranged on one side or the other of this equation. Cyrus
believed Yahweh was one of the good gods, and he claimed that Yahweh
visited him one night. In that vision, Yahweh commanded him to
re-establish Yahweh worship in Jerusalem and to rebuild the temple.
Cyrus ordered the temple rebuilt. But what good is a temple without
worshippers? To this end, he ordered that the Jews in Babylon return to
Jerusalem. In fact, Cyrus sent many people back to the native lands in
order to worship the local gods there, so the situation with the Jews
was not unique. Not all of the Jews went home; a large portion stayed in
Babylon and some had converted to Babylonian religions.
The Rebuilding of the Temple
The salient feature to keep in mind, however, is that Cyrus sent the
Jews home for religious purposes only. Judah was re-established only so
Yahweh could be worshipped, and the Jews were sent to Judah for the
express purpose of worshiping Yahweh. Before the Exile, Judah and Israel
were merely kingdoms; now Judah was a theological state . The shining
symbol of this new state dedicated to Yahweh was the temple of Solomon,
which had been burned to the ground by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC. Under
the direction of Zerubabbel and later Ezra, the temple is rebuilt and
the walls of the city rebuilt by Nehemiah. The rebuilding of the temple
was difficult; very few Jews actually returned home, so the effort was
monumental.
During the Exile, the Jews set about "purifying" their religion; they
attempted to return their laws and cultic practices to their Mosaic
originals. This new-found concern with cultic purity and the Mosaic
laws, combined with the re-establishment of Judah as a theological
state, produced a different society. Hebrew society was almost solely
concerned with religious matters in the Persian period; foreign
religions were not tolerated as they had been before. Non-Jews were
persecuted, and foreign religious expelled. During the Persian period
and later, Judah was the state where Yahweh and only Yahweh was
worshipped. Both the Persians and the Greeks respected this exclusivity,
but the Romans would greatly offend the Jews when they introduced
foreign gods.
The Jews had learned many things from the Persians and actively included
Persian elements in their religion. It's important to note that this
occurred side by side with the effort to purify the religion! Most of
these elements were popular elements rather than official beliefs; they
would persist only in Christianity which arose among the people rather
than the educated and priestly classes. Among these were
a.) adoption of a dualistic universe. In early Hebrew belief, the
universe was dominated only by Yahweh. All history was the result of two
forces: Yahweh and human will. Perhaps in an effort to make sense of the
Exile, the Hebrews gradually adopted the Persian idea that the universe
is composed of two diametrically opposed forces, one good, and the other
evil. So, after the Babylonian exile, the Hebrews, in their popular
religion, talk about an evil force opposed to Yahweh, which becomes the
"devil" in Christianity. (Satan in the Hebrew story, Job , is actually a
member of Yahweh's circle; he seems to be some kind of itinerant
prosecuting attorney.)
b.) belief in a dualistic afterlife. Before the Exile, the Hebrews
believed that the soul after death went to a house of dust which they
called "Sheol," to abide for a brief time before fading completely from
existence. This belief was identical to all other Semitic versions of
the afterlife. Therefore, Hebraism was primarily a this-world religion
before the Exile. The Persians, though, believed that the souls of the
good would reunite with the principle of good in eternal bliss; the
souls of the evil would reunite with the principle evil to suffer until
the final defeat of evil. In popular religion, the Hebrews adopted this
view of the afterlife. This view of the afterlife powerfully explains
suffering in this life, such as the Exile; cosmic justice is apparent
only at one's death rather than during one's life. Again, it is only in
the popular Jewish religions, such as the Essenes and the Christians,
where this view becomes orthodox.
For another two hundred years, Persia dominated all of the Middle East
and Egypt, and came within a hair's breadth of conquering Greece. During
all this time Palestine was a tribute state of Persia. However, in the
late fourth century BC, another man got the idea of conquering the world
and set about doing it with ruthless efficiency. He was a Greek:
Alexander of Macedon. When he conquered Persia in 332 BC, Palestine
became a Greek state, and the children of Yavan would mix once again
with the children of Shem.
From:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/HEBREWS/HEBREWS.HTM
Back to History
|
|
