Back to Judah
- Michael Jay Tucker's explosive-cargo
- Jun 25
- 5 min read
Last time, I left off with Cyrus The Great taking over Babylon and its empire more or less bloodlessly. He presented himself to the population as a supporter of orthodox religion. For most Babylonians, that meant honoring Marduk after he’d been shamefully neglected by the deposed former king, Nabonidus. It was a deliberate policy which paid off handsomely.
But, he didn’t stop with Marduk. Cyrus announced that Israelites living in the city (and possibly other defeated peoples) could all go home. And, further, he’d give them money and the royal authority to rebuild their Temple.
It was, of course, brilliant statecraft, a superb PR move, and it won him the support of minorities all over the empire. The Israelites went so far as to proclaim him one of their national heroes, guided and inspired by God himself.(1)
In retrospect, you do have to ask his motives. Why was he so generous? Was it simply realpolitik? Or, did he actually find something attractive about the emerging religion of Judaism? It is true that he, himself, was probably a Zoroastrian, that is, a follower of the ancient faith of the Iranian peoples, as founded by their prophet Zoroaster. During Cyrus’s lifetime, that religion was probably moving toward some form of monotheism, just as Judaism was, and perhaps he found something in the faith of Yahweh that reminded him of his own belief in Ahura Mazda.(2)
The Jews may have reciprocated. There is evidence that Judaism borrowed extensively from Zoroastrianism at this particular time. For instance, the Iranian faith included numerous sub-deities, who did the work of their God--in other words, Angels. Moreover, Zoroastrianism is somewhat dualistic. That is, there is a God of Light and Good, but there is also an evil figure, Angra Mainyu or Ahriman, who is responsible for sin and death. In other words, he’s like Satan. Perhaps dualism, too, made its transfer to Judaism at this time.(3)
In any case, at least some of the Israelites living in Babylon took Cyrus up on his offer. They packed up their possessions, and the tenets of their newly reformed Judaism, and headed off for the Holy Land.
However...it wasn’t all sweetness and light when they arrived. They had money, and royal support, and maybe a few Persian troops...but the people who had been left behind had been living their lives all this time, working their fields, getting on with their lives, doing their best in difficult times, and...occasionally...marrying men and women from different groups who were living in the area (people, perhaps, imported by the Assyrians and Babylonians when the Hebrew elites were taken away).
Okay, now these people...the ones who had been left behind...suddenly found themselves in the company of newcomers who didn’t look like they did, didn’t act like they did, didn’t talk like they did, seemed to have lots of money, and were maddeningly arrogant. For example, when the newcomers set out to rebuild the Temple, the locals offered to help. After all, they were all Jews, weren’t they? They all worshipped the same God, right?
Well...no. The newcomers said (here quoting Ezra 4:3 in the King James Version), “...[you] have nothing to do with us to build a house untoWhi our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the Lord God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us.” In other words, according to the returning elites, the local people...the ordinary people...had no place and no voice in the worship of Yahweh... or the management of the state.
Once again, it was the Northerners who led the way out of the Union. They said, “hey, we’ve seen this movie before,” and they abandoned Judah. They created their own Temple on Mount Gerizim, and founded their own polity, with its capital (eventually) at Samara. And, yes, they became the Samaritans, an independent branch of Judaism, worshipping in their own way, and detested by the Judeans -- and, much, much later, made the subject of Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan, something which wasn’t supposed to exist in official interpretations.
But, this left the Judean returnees free to impose their vision of monotheism and religious centralization on the peoples who had not joined the exodus to Samara.
It would take long decades...generations...but eventually they seem to have won the day. In the end, their conception of a single God, a single Temple, and a single Law prevailed, at least in the areas in which they had authority. And, perhaps that was a good thing. Maybe.
But...and here I’m just guessing...I also suspect that the imposition of these ideas and practices, over the objections of the local people, wounded the society. It was, I think, what anthropologists call a “cultural trauma.” I suspect that it built up resentments that never entirely went away, and that generations later, hatred of the returned elites smoldered still in the hearts of those whose ancestors had been oppressed and humiliated.
And, in fact, as we shall see, two hundred years later, in the 3rd Century BCE, and all the way to the time of Jesus, the Priestly Elite of the Temple...
Was despised.
More to come.
Footnotes:
1. See “Cyrus the Great In the Bible,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great_in_the_Bible
2. Zoroastrianism is a fascinating religion and, depending on who you talk to, may have been the first faith to embrace monotheism, though, in Cyrus’s time, it was probably henotheistic. Today, of course, it is completely monotheistic, with Ahura Mazda being the supreme being. According to Wikipedia, there are between 100,000 and 200,000 Zoroastrians world-wide, mostly in India (to which they fled following intense Muslim persecution), and with smaller populations in Iran. There is also a growing diaspora in the West, and one can only hope that they flourish in the United States.
3. “Ahriman,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahriman
Copyright©2026 Michael jay Tucker
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