Chapter 31. By the Rivers of Babylon: Exile, Cyrus and the Persian Imprint on Judaism

The half-century between the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar and the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great is the point where the history of Israel meets the history of Iran. The Judaism that came back from Babylon was not the religion of the monarchy that went into exile. It had a written Torah enforced by a foreign empire, a priestly-scribal elite, and an expanding world of angels, demons, judgment and life after death. Whether these new elements were borrowed from Zoroastrianism, grew out of native roots, or came from a shared Near Eastern environment is one of the longest-running debates in comparative religion. This chapter connects Part 4 back to the Zoroastrian material of Part 1 and sets out the case for Persian influence, the case against it, and the political use the Persian crown made of the returning exiles.

Catastrophe and Collapse: 587/586 BCE

The Babylonian armies destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple in 587/586 BCE. Earlier and later deportations took the royal house, the priesthood and the skilled classes to Mesopotamia. Schniedewind stresses how complete the collapse was: “The Babylonians destroyed the larger cities and towns, but some small agricultural villages survived. According to archaeological surveys and excavations, over the course of a few decades, the population declined by as much 85 percent, and the continuity was mostly in smaller agricultural villages. The entire economy and infrastructure of Judah collapsed” [Schniedewind, Who Really Wrote the Bible, #70950, ch.10]. For a historian of writing, the consequence is that scribal activity had to find new patrons. Schniedewind looks for “Hebrew scribal communities during the Babylonian period” and notes a few material anchors for the “(short) Babylonian period (586–539 BCE)”, such as the fortress at Ramat Raḥel, which “continued as a Babylonian and Persian administrative center” [Schniedewind, #70950, ch.10]. He argues that the Deuteronomistic scribes made “another edition that included the destruction and the exile and concluded by explicitly explaining the fate of the monarchy” [Schniedewind, #70950]. In his account, the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel record the scribal communities of the exile itself (his ch.10, “The Stories of Jeremiah and Ezekiel”).

Cyrus the “Anointed”: Was the Liberator a Zoroastrian?

In 539 BCE Cyrus took Babylon. His policy of returning displaced peoples and their gods, known from the Cyrus Cylinder, allowed Judahites to go home and rebuild their temple [Wikipedia: Cyrus Cylinder]. Deutero-Isaiah calls him the Lord’s “anointed” (mashiach, Isa 45:1), the only non-Israelite given that title in the Hebrew Bible. The anonymous author of How All Religions Are False and Harmful tells the event plainly: “In 539 BCE, Cyrus, the Persian king invaded and defeated Babylon,” after which “Jews were permitted to return to their place under Ezra’s leadership” [Anon., How All Religions Are False and Harmful, #78476, ch.2]. That author compresses the chronology; Ezra belongs to the following century.

Whether Cyrus himself held Zarathushtra’s faith was already disputed in Moulton’s 1912 Hibbert lectures. Moulton quotes Eduard Meyer’s “summary dictum” that “it cannot be doubted by any unprejudiced mind that Cyrus was a Zoroastrian,” and then questions whether “Cyrus was in any sense a Zoroastrian” [Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, #55011, “Before Zarathushtra”]. He points out that the Cylinder shows Cyrus as “the worshipper of the Assyrio-Babylonian gods,” which “it may at least be supposed was done in order to please his new subjects, and to gain the favour of the powerful sacerdotal body.” He also notes that Cambyses “had no fear of the wrath of the sacred element when he burnt the corpse of Amasis,” and that the Achaemenid royal burials show “that the Magi had not yet come upon the scene” [Moulton, #55011]. His cautious conclusion is that Cyrus should be regarded “as probably a Mazdean not a Zoroastrian,” a worshipper of Ahura Mazdah as “god of the Aryans” without the prophet’s reform [Moulton, #55011]. The political point that follows is that Judaism’s “anointed” was a polytheist-tolerant imperial monarch, whatever his private creed.

The Case for Iranian Influence: Carter and Mills

George William Carter’s 1918 dissertation sets out the classic case. He observes that “the Hebrew idea of Yahveh immediately after the exile took on a richer and broader content. How shall we explain it? In part by foreign influence” [Carter, Zoroastrianism and Judaism, #55114]. He lists the shared elements directly: “Belief in angels and demons and in the future life were ideas common to both” [Carter, #55114, p.39]. On the angels he distinguishes two periods. Before the exile, angels “stand as simple ministers or messengers of Yahveh, sometimes appearing in bodily shape” (Gen 16, Josh 5, Judg 13). After it they become named and ranked beings, which Carter sets beside the Bundahishn [Carter, #55114, pp.39-40]. On the afterlife he writes: “In the Persian period of Jewish writings a belief in immortality has for the first time taken definite form, and this becomes clearer in still later writings,” against an earlier faith in which “their hopes of the future related to the enjoyment of Yahveh upon earth and to Israel’s glory” [Carter, #55114, p.102].

Lawrence H. Mills, the Avesta translator, puts the argument in geographical terms. The northern Israelites deported by Assyria had been “forcibly settled” in the “Cities of the Medes.” Recopying of the sacred texts “was done by men who lived near Babylon among the Persian garrisons as well as immediately within the ‘Cities of the Medes’.” He concludes: “Here then was Judaism in the heart of Media which was even more Zoroastrian than Persia proper or than Persian Babylonia” [Mills, Avesta Eschatology, #60373]. In his view the “tone of thought” on the last things in Jewish writing “at the time of the Exile and subsequently to it, was strikingly different from the tone of thought upon these subjects in the earlier Biblical literature” [Mills, #60373]. Mills extends the comparison to Daniel and Revelation, for example reading “the Throne of God and of the Lamb” as recalling “Ahura’s throne with Vohu Manah” and the revealing angel as recalling Sraosha [Mills, #60373].

Angels and Demons: Asmodaios, the Seven and Tir

Werner Sundermann’s 2007 Mary Boyce memorial lecture takes up the question with what he calls “small but precise and hardly contestable pieces of evidence.” He starts from the broad claim that Zoroastrian ideas “such as the all-encompassing dualism of good and evil, light and darkness, or the resurrection of the dead in the flesh” influenced, “from the middle of the first millennium BCE on,” Judaism, “and by way of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, too” [Sundermann, Zoroastrian Motifs in Non-Zoroastrian Traditions, #55067, “Asmodaios”].

His test case is the demon of the Book of Tobit. The story was “probably composed in the first half of the second century BCE,” and is set in Nineveh, Ecbatana and Rages (Rey near Tehran). Asmodaios has killed seven bridegrooms of Sara, and the archangel Raphael drives him off with the smoke of a fish’s heart and liver [Sundermann, #55067]. “Ever since Theodor Benfey, scholars have regarded Asmodaios/Ašmedai as a demon of Iranian, Zoroastrian origin,” derived from Avestan Aēšmō daēuuō, “Wrath the demon,” which is attested in Middle Persian as Xēšm dēw [Sundermann, #55067; Wikipedia: Asmodeus].

Sundermann then states the objections. “For Isidor Scheftelowitz this was an argument against the Iranian origin of the name”: the vowel ai should have produced a different Aramaic form [Sundermann, #55067, citing Scheftelowitz 1920]. Others derive the name from Hebrew šmd, “to destroy.” E. Stave argued that the natures differ: Aeshma is “the creator of wrath and revengefulness,” while Asmodaios is “particularly characterised by his lewdness” [Sundermann, #55067]. S. Pines accepted demonised wrath in both religions “but he also expressed his doubts about a total dependence of this idea in Judaism and Christianity on Iranian influence” [Sundermann, #55067].

His answer has several parts. The loan could have come through a Middle Iranian (Parthian) form, išm(ə)dēw, reshaped by Philippi’s law in Aramaic. The Jews probably also heard their own verb šmd in the name. So the Greek form goes back to an Aramaic Ašmedai in which “the Iranian word was remodelled.” On the demon’s character, Zoroastrian texts make Aēšma the enemy of the next-of-kin marriage (xwēdōdah) and of the procreation of children, active at night against married couples. He concludes: “Both the similarity of the names Aēšmō daēuuō and Asmodaios and the role they play as enemies of marital union lead me to conclude that the assumption of an Iranian origin of the Jewish demon Asmodaios is correct.” He adds that Tobit’s travelling dog reflects Iranian esteem for dogs, unlike the rest of the Near East [Sundermann, #55067]. His result is therefore mixed: the origin is Iranian, but the name and figure were refashioned through Aramaic and a Jewish reading.

Moulton notes a parallel among the higher spirits. The six Amesha Spentas, with Sraosha as a seventh, have “their common relation to one Father, the Creator Ahura Mazdah,” and “it is noteworthy that in Tobit the ‘seven spirits'” appear, a reference to Raphael’s words in Tob 12:15 [Moulton, #55011, “The Prophet and the Reform”]. In discussing the old Iranian month-gods he also lists “the six Zoroastrian angels” next to the star-god Tir, whom he treats separately (p.435 f.) [Moulton, #55011]. The non-academic author Andrew Collins goes further. He claims that “the Persian angel Tir is a prime example of how Zoroastrianism has influenced the Judaic understanding of angelology, for in Hebrew mysticism he becomes Tiriel, who, like his Persian counterpart, presides over all activities appertaining to the planet Mercury” [Collins, From the Ashes of Angels, #71550, ch.25]. Collins also quotes Josephus on the tower of Daniel at Ecbatana: “they bury the kings of Media, of Persia, and Parthia, in this tower, to this day; and he who was intrusted with the care of it, was a Jewish priest” [Collins, #71550, ch.25]. He takes this as evidence of close Magian-Jewish relations in the Median capital.

The richest Second Temple angelology, however, is in 1 Enoch. Annette Yoshiko Reed follows the Book of the Watchers, the story of angels who descend, take human wives and teach forbidden arts. She documents its circulation in Palestine “from the second century BCE (BD, EE, Jubilees, BG?) to first century CE (Sim., Jude)”, and notes that it was “still being copied at Qumran.” She shows that the Damascus Document cites “the Watchers in a didactic context, as paradigms” of sin, and that the pairing of Asael with Azazel “ha[s] precedents in Second Temple sources” [Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity, #66169, chs.1-3]. The Parables of Enoch then speak of humans who “have learned all the secrets of the angels and all the oppressive deeds of the satans” [Reed, #66169, quoting 1 En.]. These are the beings that Carter and Mills would trace partly to Iran.

Resurrection and Judgment

The bodily resurrection of the dead, found only in late texts such as Daniel 12, is the doctrine most often credited to Iran. C. Norman Shealy, writing in a work on energy medicine, states: “the concept of resurrection of corpses originated with the Zoroastrian religion in Persia … These Zoroastrian doctrines were incorporated into Judaism” [Shealy, Energy Medicine, #63535, “From Zoroastrianism to Judaism”]. The anonymous How All Religions Are False gives a psychological route: such beliefs “might have been taken from Zoroastrianism … when Bible composers came into contact with them after Persian ruler Cyrus defeated Babylonians and released Israelites from the captivity in 539 BCE. Israelites must have felt grateful to Cyrus and Persians and hence might have studied Zoroastrianism favorably” [Anon., #78476, ch.2, part 16]. Within Judaism the doctrine stayed contested: the Temple aristocracy of the Sadducees rejected it into the first century CE (see Chapter 33).

Ezra, Nehemiah and the Persian-Enforced Torah

The restoration was a political project of the Persian crown. Schniedewind writes that “Ezra and Nehemiah will illustrate two different aspects of the post-exilic Hebrew scribal community.” Ezra, “titled both ‘Priest’ and ‘scribe,’ represents the main development of the Hebrew scribal community—namely, its association with the temple and temple service.” Nehemiah, “a Persian administrator and governor,” represents the imperial-administrative side [Schniedewind, #70950, ch.12, “Ezra and Nehemiah: Persian Scribal Communities”]. Schniedewind stresses that Ezra was “not just any priestly scribe. He has a pedigree”: his father Seraiah carries the name of the last high priest before the destruction. He also clarifies that Ezra “is indeed called a ‘scribe,’ but that is not his profession. He was a priest, who was literate” [Schniedewind, #70950]. The public reading of Nehemiah 8, where “Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra, the priest and scribe, and the Levites” interpret “the Torah of God” to the assembly, marks the arrival of a written law as the constitution of the community [Schniedewind, #70950, quoting Neh 8]. His ch.11 places the rival Samaritan sanctuary on Mount Gerizim in the same Persian setting.

Douglas Reed’s The Controversy of Zion gives a polemical reading of the same events. In his account the returned Judahites had “gradually developed normal relationships with their neighbours,” and “many of the people still prayed to ‘other gods'”. Then: “in 458 BC, the Levites struck. Their Law was ready, which was not by itself of much importance. The Persian King was ready to enforce it for them, and that was of the greatest importance, then and up to the present moment” [Reed, The Controversy of Zion, #64653, ch.6]. Reed writes that “Ezra brought the new racial Law with him.” Acting “as emissary of the Persian king” he ordered “that all mixed marriages were to be dissolved.” Men who “could not satisfy Persian officials and the Levite elders of their descent from Judah, Benjamin or Levi were rejected ‘with horror'” (quoting Kastein). Finally, “in 444 BC, Nehemiah had Ezra embody the ban on mixed marriages in the Torah,” and clan heads were required to sign a pledge to keep it [Reed, #64653, ch.6, parts 6-8]. Reed adds a parenthetical comparison with twentieth-century racial decrees. This is his interpretation of Ezra 9-10 and Nehemiah 9-10. Its core claim, that a foreign power enforced a sectarian law, is a thesis he develops across the whole book.

The Modern Echo: Keshe on Persians and Jews

In the Knowledge Seekers Workshops, Mehran Tavakoli Keshe, himself Iranian-born, presents the Persian-Jewish link as an unfinished prophetic cycle. In KSW 608 he says: “we are in the last days of the 6,000 years of anarchy and everything else. And somebody has to be that the Jews win over the Persians. This is what’s in the Holy Books. And then the peace will come,” and “The Kingdom of Moses and the King David will complete, when the Jews win over Iran” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 608, #378320, parts 13-14]. He presents modern Iran-Israel hostility as “all set up by religions which you are not aware” of, tied to sacred calendars. He also calls the Christian calendar “based on a lie” because Jesus’ birth “was brought forward to coincide with the festivals … commemorating the birth of Mitra” [Keshe, #378320, part 12]. Recalling his earlier words, “We’ve taken the love of God from the blood of Moses,” Keshe goes on: “They shall have no home, let alone the land they took by occupation,” adding that “this is not just to the followers of Moses,” but “the same for the Muslims, the same for Christians … the whole of humanity” [Keshe, #378320, part 15]. So Cyrus the “anointed” and the Persian-Jewish rivalry reappear in Keshe’s account as a cosmic scheme still being played out.

Key points

• The Babylonian destruction (587/586 BCE) cut Judah’s population by up to 85 percent and forced scribal culture into exile and imperial service (Schniedewind).
• Cyrus, Isaiah’s “anointed,” was in Moulton’s judgement “probably a Mazdean not a Zoroastrian,” against Meyer’s view that he was certainly Zoroastrian.
• Carter and Mills argue that angels, demons, immortality and eschatology took “definite form” in Judaism only in the Persian period, partly “by foreign influence.”
• Sundermann’s Asmodaios case concludes for an Iranian origin (Aēšma daēva), remodelled through Aramaic and the Hebrew šmd; Scheftelowitz, Stave and Pines doubted it.
• Moulton links the Amesha Spentas to Tobit’s “seven spirits”; Collins traces Tir to Tiriel and cites a Jewish priest guarding the Median-Persian royal tomb at Ecbatana.
• Reed (Annette Yoshiko) documents the Book of the Watchers as the centre of Second Temple angelology, copied at Qumran.
• Ezra (priest-scribe) and Nehemiah (Persian governor) made a written Torah the community’s law under imperial authority; Douglas Reed reads this as a Persian-backed “racial Law” (458/444 BCE).
• Keshe (KSW 608) presents a prophetic end-cycle in which “the Jews win over the Persians.”