
Scripture mentions Persians several times. Isaiah had prophesied of God raising up Cyrus to do his will. Daniel had a vision about the fall of Nebuchadnezzar’s empire to the Medes and Persians. Subsequently, the king of Persia, the great Cyrus, gave permission for the Jews to return home. Later Darius, the second king of the Persian Empire, was the one who decreed that no one could pray save to him, and the result was that the faithful Daniel was cast into the lion’s den and delivered by the hand of God. The book of Esther takes place in Persia during the reign of the great king Xerxes. Another king, Artaxerxes, was involved in allowing more of the Jews to return home and rebuild their wall and temple.
At the birth of Jesus wise men came from the East to see the infant Messiah. There is evidence that the Persian religious leaders learned from their interaction with the Jews of the coming Messiah and sent Magi on an official visit. These Magi would have belonged to the Zoroastrian religion which was the official state belief system for Persia.
The Persian nation arose about 500 BC under the control of Cyrus who was able to unite

the warring Median tribes who became his military, famous for their excellent cavalry. These events perfectly coincided with the prophecies of the Old Testament.
Persia fought a long war with the Greeks, chronicled by the historian Herodotus. The

conflict caused the very independently-minded Greeks to unite against the Persian threat. The Greeks won in a number of famous battles, like Marathon, which has given rise to the famous Marathon race because a runner from Athens went the twenty-six miles to the battlefield at Marathon and back, supposedly losing his shorts in the process and running naked, but he brought back the news of a great Athenian victory and promptly fell dead. The Greeks initiated the Marathon race to commemorate the runner and the victory. While the Greeks eventually defeated the Persians after twenty-five exhausting years, Herodotus came to respect them and find much in their culture worth praising.
One of their contributions was their decorative relief sculptures and walls built from colored bricks. My wife and I were able to see a dazzling display of Persian artifacts at the Louvre Museum in Paris. All such monuments are a tangible connection to the very real historical events recorded in Holy Scripture.
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