The Enemy Who Saved Judaism: Cyrus II, the Great, Only Gentile Messiah in History and his Prodigy, Darius

Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

Cyrus II, (600-530 BCE)  the Great, King of Persia who died in 529 BCE,   treated the Jews  fairly well during their exile in Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar II of the Babylonian Empire in 597 BCE and again, who destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem  in 586 BCE and both times taking thousands of  Israelites with them, all documented  in the Bible.  In the course of Cyrus's conquests, he overran the Babylonian Empire, including Palestine.  The Jewish exiles regarded Cyrus II as a Divine agent. (Isaiah 44:28:45:1).  

The Jewish Bible's Ketuvim ends in Second Chronicles with the decree of Cyrus, which returned the exiles to the Promised Land from Babylon in 538 BCE (2,559 years ago) along with a commission to rebuild the temple.  Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia: All the kingdoms of the earth hath the LORD, the God of heaven given me; and He hath charged me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whosoever there is among you of all His people – the LORD, his God, be with him – let him go there. — (2 Chronicles 36:23) In other words, he sent the Jews back to Jerusalem, with directions to rebuilt their destroyed Temple!  What enemy has ever tried to undo what a previous enemy had done?  

                                                            

This edict is also fully reproduced in the Book of Ezra.  In the first year of King Cyrus, Cyrus the king issued a decree: "Concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, let the temple, the place where sacrifices are offered, be rebuilt and let its foundations be retained, its height being 60 cubits and its width 60 cubits; with three layers of huge stones and one layer of timbers. And let the cost be paid from the royal treasury. Also let the gold and silver utensils of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took from the temple in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon, be returned and brought to their places in the temple in Jerusalem; and you shall put them in the house of God." — (Ezra 6:3–5)  Cyrus was even returning the booty, the money, the loot!  

                                               

               Cyrus II of Persia
  

The Jews honored him as a dignified and righteous king. In one Biblical passage, Isaiah refers to him as Messiah (lit. "His anointed one") (Isaiah 45:1), making him the only gentile to be so referred. Elsewhere in Isaiah, God is described as saying, "I will raise up Cyrus in my righteousness: I will make all his ways straight. He will rebuild my city and set my exiles free, but not for a price or reward, says God Almighty." (Isaiah 45:13) As the text suggests, Cyrus did ultimately release the nation of Israel from its exile without compensation or tribute. These particular passages (Isaiah 40–55, often referred to as Deutero-Isaiah) are believed by most modern critical scholars to have been added by another author toward the end of the Babylonian exile (c. 536 BC).

                                                   

            

            Cyrus the Great is said in the Bible to have liberated the Jews from the Babylonian captivity to resettle and rebuild Jerusalem, earning him an honored place in Judaism.   He had founded the Achaemenid Empire, the first Persian Empire.

In the first year of the reign of Cyrus, which was the seventieth from the day that our people were removed out of their own land into Babylon (70 years in captivity) , God commiserated the captivity and calamity of these poor people, according as he had foretold to them by Jeremiah the prophet, before the destruction of the city, that after they had served Nebuchadnezzar and his posterity, and after they had undergone that servitude 70 years, he would restore them again to the land of their fathers, and they should build their temple, and enjoy their ancient prosperity. And these things God did afford them; for he stirred up the mind of Cyrus, and made him write this throughout all Asia: "Thus saith Cyrus the king: Since God Almighty hath appointed me to be king of the habitable earth, I believe that he is that God which the nation of the Israelites worship; for indeed he foretold my name by the prophets, and that I should build him a house at Jerusalem, in the country of Judea." This was known to Cyrus by his reading the book which Isaiah left behind him of his prophecies; for this prophet said that God had spoken thus to him in a secret vision: "My will is, that Cyrus, whom I have appointed to be king over many and great nations, send back my people to their own land, and build my temple." This was foretold by Isaiah one hundred and forty years before the temple was demolished. Accordingly, when Cyrus read this, and admired the Divine power, an earnest desire and ambition seized upon him to fulfill what was so written; so he called for the most eminent Jews that were in Babylon, and said to them, that he gave them leave to go back to their own country, and to rebuild their city Jerusalem, and the temple of God, for that he would be their assistant, and that he would write to the rulers and governors that were in the neighborhood of their country of Judea, that they should contribute to them gold and silver for the building of the temple, and besides that, beasts for their sacrifices.

According to the Bible it was King Artaxerxes who was convinced to stop the construction of the temple in Jerusalem. (Ezra 4:7–24) "  Artaxerxes turns out to be the name of 3 Persian kings:  1. Longimanus Artaxerxes  (reigned from 465-421 BCE)  He is the one identified with the Artachashasta of the memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah.  Ochos Artaxerxes, the one who reigned from  358-338 BCE exiled many Jews to Hyrcania.  Hyrcania is a historical region composed of the land south-east of the Caspian Sea in modern-day Iran and Turkmenistan, bound in the south by the Alborz mountain range and the Kopet Dag in the east. It was occupied by Cyrus the Great in 549-548 BC.While Cyrus was praised in the Tanakh (Isaiah 45:1–6 and Ezra 1:1–11), there was Jewish criticism of him after he was lied to by the Cuthites, who wanted to halt the building of the Second Temple. They accused the Jews of conspiring to rebel, so Cyrus in turn stopped the construction, which would not be completed until 515 BCE, during the reign of Darius I. 

Xerxes I, commonly known as Xerxes the Great, was the 4th King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, ruling from 486 to 465 BCE. He was the son and successor of Darius the Great and his mother was Atossa, a daughter of Cyrus the Great, the first Achaemenid king. It is this King Xerxes I who is thought to be King Ahasuerus in the Biblical story of Queen Esther.  

"Ahasuerus" is given as the name of a king, the husband of Esther, in the Book of Esther. He is said to have ruled "from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces" - that is, over the Achaemenid Empire. There is no reference to known historical events in the story; the narrative of Esther was invented to provide an aetiology for Purim, and the name Ahasuerus is usually understood to refer to a fictionalized Xerxes I, who ruled the Achaemenid Empire between 486 and 465 BCE. Persian kings did not marry outside a restricted number of Persian noble families and it is impossible that there was a Jewish queen Esther; in any case the historical Xerxes's queen was Amestris. In the Septuagint, the Book of Esther refers to this king as 'Artaxerxes' (Ancient Greek: Ἀρταξέρξης)."

Obviously, our Book of Esther was not written in Persian but in Hebrew or Aramaic 

and Hebrew names were used.  Of course, Persian history would leave out the

ugly parts like having a Haman out to destroy ALL Jews for no good reason.  Our

truth stands.  That we were the oppressed people taken by force to their land and

had the most interesting take on how Ahasuerus chose an outsider as his Queen

would have been covered up in the Persian take on the history.  I've heard that

Darius was the son of Esther, too.  Why not?  He allowed the building of the Temple

to be restarted.  Why was he so nice?  

                                                      

The Achaemenid Empire (Persian)  at its greatest territorial extent,  under the rule of Darius I (522 BCE to 486 BCE), who was born after Cyrus.  He inherited the throne of Cyrus the Great.  At the beginning of his reign, Darius permitted Zerubbabel (b: 480 BCE) grandson of King Jehoiachin of Judah and the Jews who had returned to Jerusalem to resume reconstruction of the Temple.  

Cyrus the Great, also called Cyrus II, (born 590–580 BCE, Media, or Persis [now in Iran]—died c. 529, Asia), conqueror who founded the Achaemenian empire, centered on Persia and comprising the Near East from the Aegean Sea eastward to the Indus River.

 The eponymous founder of this dynasty was Achaemenes (from Old Persian Haxāmaniš). Achaemenids are "descendants of Achaemenes" as Darius the Great, the ninth king of the dynasty, traces his genealogy to him and declares "for this reason we are called Achaemenids." Achaemenes built the state Parsumash in the southwest of Iran and was succeeded by Teispes, who took the title "King of Anshan" after seizing Anshan city and enlarging his kingdom further to include Pars proper. Ancient documents mention that Teispes had a son called Cyrus I, who also succeeded his father as "king of Anshan." Cyrus I had a full brother whose name is recorded as Ariaramnes.  

Darius I, byname Darius the Great, (born 550 BC—died 486), king of Persia in 522–486 BC, one of the greatest rulers of the Achaemenid dynasty, who was noted for his administrative genius and for his great building projects. Darius attempted several times to conquer Greece; his fleet was destroyed by a storm in 492, and the Athenians defeated his army at Marathon in 490.

Although Darius consolidated and added to the conquests of his predecessors, it was as an administrator that he made his greatest contribution to Persian history. He completed the organization of the empire into satrapies, initiated by Cyrus the Great, and fixed the annual tribute due from each province.

                                                               

"Alexander III the Great's (b:356 BCE in Macedonia)   undermanned defeat of the Persian King Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela is seen as one of the decisive turning points of human history, unseating the Persians as the greatest power in the ancient world and spreading Hellenistic culture across a vast new empire."  I learned of this when I watched Netflix's Alexander the Great.  Alexander was also another favorite of our Jewish history.  Many Jewish people bear the name of Alexander being he was a favorite.  

So in ancient days, a king was either created or born and had to take more land than his father did in order to keep what power they thought they had, visual in terms of money from taxes or other resources.   I suppose that King Solomon of Judah was a rarity in that he was not out to take land, but did use his people to

build the Temple.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great

Tanakh, Stone Edition (Bible) 

https://www.history.com/news/alexander-the-great-defeat-persian-empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaemenid_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyrcania#:~:text=Hyrcania%20(%2Fh%C9%99r%CB%88k,Kopet%20Dag%20in%20the%20east.