As It Is Written . . .
Two Views of Persia
When "Western Civilization" came into being during the fifth century before Christ, two inseparable components formed its nucleus: first, a two-staged war, and second, a long literary reflection on the context and meaning of that war.
First, the war. In 490 the Persian Emperor, Darius I, landed a massive force on the shores of Attica, northeast of Athens. In prompt response, a handful of Athenians and their neighbors arrived on the scene and, in one afternoon, routed the invading army at a town called Marathon.
A decade later, Xerxes brought the Persians to Greece again, and again they were vanquished in a series of engagements, most notably by the Athenian navy at the Battle of Salamis in September of 480, and then, the following April, by a mere thousand hoplites at a place called Platea.
Second, the literary account. Around 440, a phenomenal Greek traveler/thinker/writer, Herodotus, pondered at length the significance of that war, deeply and in detail, providing an extensive treatment of its causes, geopolitical background, and historical significance. Herodotus believed that the conflict marked a critical, decisive moment in human history. Indeed, the title of his work, The Histories, was the first use of that noun in the same sense we have understood it ever since.
Apart from the Greek—largely Athenian—victory over the Persians, it is difficult to imagine what we know as "Western Civilization." Had Darius or Xerxes prevailed, the great experiment of the city state, the polis, would have perished in its infancy, along with the clothing that swaddled it: systematic philosophical reflection, coherent and humane political philosophies, the deliberate cultivation of the natural sciences, geometry, theater, historiography, and the ethical ideals of arete, "virtue," and paideia, "education." Without Marathon and Salamis, there would have been no Plato, no Aristotle, no Euclid, and no Roman Empire for the Christians to evangelize. The unique Europa would have remained, like the other continents, only a land mass.
The classicist Peter Green was astute in his description of the Greco-Persian War as "the first great ideological conflict in European history." The war with Persia was a war of ideas. The armies from the East simply had to be defeated, because they embodied a dark, impersonal despotism, radically incompatible with freedom and the enlightened aspirations of Hellenic culture. Oh, Mithra may have been a sun-god of sorts, but he was no Apollo.
A very different view of Persia, nonetheless—whether alternate or complementary—also clings to the nucleus of Western Civilization: the experience and testimony of the Jews. With respect to the Persians, Athens and Jerusalem were not of the same mind. To the Greek, the Persian was an invader; to the Jew, he was a liberator.
What the Bible Says
Indeed, the Jewish view is a bit older. A half-century before the invasion of Greece, for instance, and probably a full century before The Histories of Herodotus, an anonymous biblical writer had this to say about the founder of the Persian Empire: "Thus says the Lord to his anointed (messiah!), Cyrus, whose right hand I have strengthened, to subdue nations before him and to strip off the armor of kings" (Is. 45:1; cf. 44:28). Whoever composed this middle part of Isaiah, he was certainly not an Athenian.
Later—around 400 b.c., I venture—another biblical text recorded that "in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia . . ." (2 Chr. 36:2). The spirit of Cyrus, divinely stirred, promulgated an imperial decree that liberated the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity and authorized the reconstruction of the Temple.
Most of what the Bible says about the Persian period (539–331) is contained in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, along with the prophetic oracles of Haggai and Zechariah, these less than a generation after the restoration of Jerusalem. These works are concerned, in the main, with the recognized blessings made possible by Persian rule: the restoration of Judea (538) and the building of the Second Temple (516) and the walls of Jerusalem (445). A somewhat later work, the Book of Esther, strengthens the impression that the two "Persian centuries" were a period of stability, prosperity, high favor, and good fortune for the Jewish people.
Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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