Video Transcript: Lesson 6

Unit 04 01 Persia

 

Hello, welcome back to the Christian leaders Institute, world history course 101. This is a course that examines the rise of human civilizations in human cultures. And in the first section, we covered a number of cultures from all about 350 years before Christ until around the year 1000, before Christ. Today, we begin section two. And that is going to cover the time from 1000 years BC, until 580. That 1500 year period is very important in the rise of human civilization. There's so much to be said. And we'll have to go through really, really quickly. And, unfortunately, we'll have to move over and not covered. Welcome. My name is Rich hamstra. And it's my pleasure to be your speaker for this course, you will see that world history, one on one in this section, we're going to cover these various civilizations, Persia, India, China, Peru, Mesoamerica, as well as the Mediterranean basin, they'll not all get equal coverage in terms of time, the Mediterranean basin is going to end up being a significant focus for us. But we'll certainly do our best with the other areas just saw was Persia. And these are the primary areas that we're going to cover Cyrus the Great darious various the first and the Persian Greek wars of the fifth century. Before Christ, here's your first reading assignment in section two. It's the aka men Empire I commanded empire. And the article is found online written by Peter Davidson. If you're taking this course for credit, that is your assigned reading. So we begin with the person of Cyrus the Great. He's actually called Cyrus the second, but we'll just call him Cyrus degrade. He was a tribal chieftain. Basically down in southern what today we would call southern Iraq, and in the ancient world was called Persia and but Silas was able to, to work warfare in the most part, consolidate much of that Mediterra Mesopotamian area. He's so he took the Neo Babylonian Empire that was crumbling. And you might remember in the first section we, we talked about that empire. He was Cyrus who great was able to accumulate great influence and power, got the chieftains on his side got the various leaders on his side, so that by 559 or so, are by 570. He began that and by 559, he was really the ruler of all of Mesopotamia. That was a significant accomplishment. But then comes the real expansion of the Persian Empire under Cyrus when he goes and has a war with King crossers, who is in Lydia, I'll show a map in just a second and point out these areas that was closest that begins a lot of conflict between East and West, between what is basically the Greco Roman cultures and empires, and between the Eastern empires of Persia. And what follows after that. There are significant differences in those two cultures, particularly when it comes to notions of what a good leader is and who the leader ought to be. And that is a theme that we'll be emphasizing throughout this course. He was able to Cyrus the Great was able to expand the Persian Empire, at its greatest all the way from the Indus Valley in India, through the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. So the Persian Empire is often thought of, at least in this region, as the first great international or multicultural empire.

 

Here's a map of it. Coming around 540 BC This is not the end of how the Persian Empire went. But you'll see here it goes all the way To the Indus Valley in India that he had control up, here's really home base, this area for the Persians, Persepolis and act Gabbana, and Sousa. Eventually, and we'll see under the areas, the first they're able to control this entire area, and also Egypt. As I mentioned, Cyrus, things change dramatically, he was in charge of this area. But then when they had war was closest in Lydia now, and they won. Now, the Persian Empire takes over Asia Minor, and they're right on the borders, with Greece. Things become interconnected in history. And pretty soon we'll focus more on who the Greeks were and the development of their culture. But for right now, just we'll have to observe that the Greeks are already a significant seafaring power and trading power in the fifth century, and sixth century BC. So this is the area that Cyrus controls that he he does that in fabulous ways. The gates of entering into the city of Sousa, this is my wife, Sue, walking through here, this is a British Museum in London, you pass through these large figures that demonstrate the power of Cyrus to King. So Cyrus was, as I said, significant a lot of ways. But what he's remembered for a particular is he was one of the first if not the first, Emperor. He called himself King of Kings and Lord of lords, who ruled vast areas, and many different civilizations, many different groups. And the question becomes, how do you do that? Do you impose your own will and your own culture? Do you make them all like you? Or do you allow them to continue their local ways? Cyrus was one of the first to very purposely decided to allow people as much as possible. As long as they paid their tribute in their taxes to Cyrus and to the Persians. He allowed them to govern themselves in significant ways, and to practice their own cultures, and especially their own religions. You I remember that one of the tactics of the Babylonians was to take captured captors and bring them into Babylon and into their empire. And we pray and put them in refugee camps. Basically, the Israelites, for instance, taken from Jerusalem, captured and brought to the bank. So the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. What Cyrus did when he came into control, is he said, I am going to allow those people, I'm going to encourage them as a matter of fact, if they would like to go back to their homelands, and to go back to their ways, and I'm going to return to them a lot of the treasure that the Babylonians stole, and allow them to rebuild their temples rebuild their cities, repatriate and as long as they pay their taxes, that as long as they're loyal, and they put their sons into service and his armies, then they could live as they wanted. This is new, this is new in human culture. And Cyrus is greatly remembered and greatly reminded admired by many difference. This is a typical person image, the wing Griffon the king, or perhaps one of the deities. This is an image of the Cyrus Cylinder. This is housed at the British Museum in London. And it is a record is written in cuneiform, a record of Cyrus taking over the city of Babylon. This was done without setting any blood. He, he went in and he replaced the person who was in charge of Babel, and basically, by saying I'm going to return to the old ways, especially the worship of their god Marduk.

 

And the Babel, Cyrus Cylinder records that Cyrus took over the Persian Empire by virtue of the god Bardo. And it also records his policy of repatriating people back to their homelands. The Bible nail testament knows a lot about Cyrus Cyrus the Great. This is from the first chapter of Ezra, and particularly the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, are come out of this culture come out of this time, where and they remember that Cyrus was actually an agent of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is just a little bit out of first desert. This is how the book of Ezra begins, it has a notice from Cyrus himself. In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus to King of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm. And to put it in writing. That cylinder that we saw is exactly that kind of writing. This is what Cyrus king of Persia, says, the Lord the God of heaven, and very typical Osiris, he was able to see worship Marduk, primarily, but he was able to give notice, he was able to give devotion to whatever God it was, that he was talking about. And the Lord, the God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and has pointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem and Judah, any one of his people among you, may as God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem, very clearly, he thought of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as being very localized, is the god of Jerusalem is not necessarily the god babblin. And the people of any place where survivors may now be living are to provide him with silver and gold with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem. So, Israel, indeed, records for us exactly this political policy, this ruling policy of Cyrus. Cyrus is also mentioned prominently in for instance, the book of Isaiah. And this is out of Isaiah chapter 45. Just the first three verses, but he comes up many times, you can check that out for yourself. Know what she says. This is what the Lord says to his anointed.

 

Now, that is the word Messiah. Cyrus is understood to be a Messiah, a Savior. That's pretty exalted language that comes out of the Old Testament.

 

This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold on, to subdue nations before him, and to strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him so that gates will not be shot. I will go before you and we'll level them out. I will break down the gates of bronze cut through the bars of iron, I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name. For the sake of Jacob, my servant of Israel, my chosen i summon knew by name. So the book of Isaiah understands that this King Cyrus is God's Messiah, his anointed one, and he has come given in order to save particularly the Jews. The Jews, in their Jewish history, have always had a very high opinion of Cyrus the Great. But of course, like all she falls, and he is succeeded by another one called darious. There were a couple of in between. And in between, by the way they take over Egypt, the Persian Empire takes over Egypt. But during their period of darious, the first Egypt Persia expands tremendously. Here's a reading assignment by Stephen Fife, that you'll find online with regard to derrius. The great darious was in charge of the Persian Empire from 549 to 486 BC. At this point, he expands the Empire to its largest extent, it's really considered the heyday of Persian power of their cultural and institutional economic, military artistic, he builds the new capital city, Persepolis. And he administers his empire by really is repeating something that we saw already in the Assyrian Empire that's a few 100 years back in this period of time, where they divide their area that they're really into satraps, or into what we might call different states. And he puts a ruler in charge of that. But he also put someone in charge, a separate person who takes care of the military. And this person is said to have to be the ears of the emperor in the satraps. So he plays a little bit of the governing power, as opposed to the military power. Various as well remembered he is was highly honored and highly respected by his people. He did begin to because there is a revolt in Lydia. We saw that remember, on the map, we saw that that's that western shores of Asia Minor. No, do the Greek says Ionia. And there is a revolt there. They're tired of paying the high taxes. And it's a tax revolt. So he sends his army, and the army just keeps conquering. They conquer. They go all the way through Libya, and Asia Minor, but they also cross into Europe, and take over parts of Greece. Well, of course, this becomes a major conflict now, between Greece and Persia. Persia is by all means, their larger, stronger, more affluent, diverse Empire. The Greeks are made up at this time of just a couple of city states, more than a few, some city states, with the prominent ones being Athens, and Sparta Peloponnesus. I want to spend a little bit time on the contrasting view of kings, between Persia and Greece. And one way to think of it is that the Greeks when they talked about the Persians, and when they talked about how people had to address the emperor of the Persian Empire, the leader of the Persian Empire, they used the Greek word for skewness is a Greek word. And what it means is to grovel like a dog.

 

So that if you came into the presence of the emperor, the King of kings and Lord of lords, what you had to do was you had to lie flat on your stomach, your face down, and you had to grovel like a dog grovel Sally, if you've seen a dog coming before its master, and whimpers and it has its tail between its legs. That's what they thought people had to look like when they came in front of an emperor. The Greeks on the other hand, under good that their leaders were their leaders, but they were first among equals. And you did not bow and scrape you didn't grovel like a dog in front of your leaders, the leaders of the Greek city states, the generals and political leaders, we shouldn't have the notion that it was a democracy like a modern democracy. But we should understand that they were selected by at least the leading families and wealthier citizens. They were. They did not claim that they were appointed by the gods. They didn't claim that they had authority to rule from heaven. They took their authority from being chosen by the people, and they were responsible to the people. And to to the folks who who put them in power has very different notions of leadership. So in Greece in the West, the notion is that you are chosen by the people to lead them to represent them to leave their armies. But in the east, you are chosen by the gods. And the gods give you authority to virtually rule was complete power. You whatever you said happened and you were treated like the God in the flesh. It is not enough in that in the New Testament, the word press kinesys of which the Greeks used to grovel like a dog is one of the more common words that's used for a translated as to worship. So the east, they worshipped the emperor in the West, they respected and followed. But they chose who their generals would be, who their political leaders would be. And those words have been contrasting views of leadership between East and West. In many ways, that is still true today. I don't want to give the impression that East has not had more democratic societies it certainly has, nor that the West has almost always functioned that way, long periods of Western history in which it was ruled by autocrats. But the fundamental values, the the heart of the culture is very much shaped by this understanding of who a leader is, how a leader ought to be, and the allegiance that we owe a leader. In many respects, this is part and parcel of the battle between the Greeks and Persians. So it seems to be worth spending a little bit of time. This is just a picture of the the tillers that held up the gates, I think this is in Sousa, one of the primary cities of the Persian Empire. It is massive and intimidating. Again, the architecture tells you when you come into the presence of the king, when you come into the presence of the Emperor, you grovel like a dog. So this is darious, the first Persia you see all the way down to securely to the Indus River in the east, but also into what we would call China today, and goes here into western Turkey, but they have also now taken control of much of the coastline of the Black Sea, and even down into Greece. They control Egypt down into the liar, and as far as I really in Libya, so it is a humongous Empire under darious. The first like to spend a couple of minutes just talking about the religion. Zoroastrianism which is

 

the official religion that there is the first brought to the Persian Empire. Again darious did not say that everybody had to practice so asteroid is but that was that became the state religion, rather than the worship of Baruch and some of the ancient gods. It's also important because it becomes a significant influence on later the later religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So Astron ism is started by a man named Alastor. Long long many hundreds of hundreds of years before dairy is the first it was practiced in the hill country, but brought into the mainstream under darious as rule it has a monotheism associated with it although we have to be careful with that term. It's it's the ology is not always so explicit, to make it clear, but there does seem to be one chief god to the law, the other gods report. And once you've thought who is supreme deity, and does not have any rivals? That God damn is a whore? Mazda. Enzo astronism It's understood that this world is in constant struggle between good and evil. Ahora Mazda is the God who created good and to be on that God's side you do good. The world is filled with angels and demons. And, you know, there's sort of the old cliche was that the demon says I one size, and the angel sits on another and each whispers in the person's ear about what to do and the person has to choose between good and evil. That's a pretty apt image, it seems to me for How's Austrian ism, understand or understood the conflict within a person. There are always these these influences to get one to do what's right and good or to do what's wrong. Humans aren't we are waiting created specifically to be ethical agents and endo astronism. Our job is to be on the side of good and to work that out. And good is often understood as caring for your neighbor, loving other people. So it's an ethical religion, but people are always free to choose. And that freedom, the choice to choose is very deep, was Enzo astronism. That's one of the features that does indeed, come up again in other religions. So astronism believed that the history ran in a linear way, not the circular way that we saw more Buddhism and Hinduism, but in a linear way, and that there will be a definitive end of the world definitive struggle between good and evil, between the angels and the demons. That battle that later gets reflected is an apocalyptic literature as Armageddon or in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it's part of the war scroll, where there is a fight between good and evil, but ultimately, and so astronism. Good does when the ultimate reward for having an ethical life for choosing what is good, and to have more good deeds than evil deeds, is that you receive eternal bliss. The word paradise, for instance, which I believe only actually occurs in the Bible, once in the New Testament. One of the sayings of Jesus on the cross where He tells the thief on the cross today, you will be with Me in Paradise. I do believe that's the only time that occurs in the Bible. That is a word that comes from those Austrian religion. It is that beautiful places like a garden of Eden. It's a beautiful Verdun place. And that is one's eternal reward. So, and of course, there's punishment, the punishment of Hell or Hades, where one death is not just the end of life, nor is it just a return, nor is it a place of shadows or the shades she'll like it is in the Old Testament, but it is a place of punishment for one's bad deeds. Probably sense already themes that reoccur in those other religions I mentioned. So Astrid ism becomes the official religion of Persia, and undoubtedly, particularly the Jewish people

 

who lived in the Persian Empire, were acquainted with XO astronism, and strongly affected by it. And most scholars, at least those of the kind who see a lot of cultural influence in the Old Testament and New Testament, understand that astronism has influence, particularly that apocalyptic way, in the Old Testament and New Testament, that in turn gets passed on to Islam. There was some conflict, religious conflict during darious is rule between Zoroastrianism and an older religion that was practiced particularly in Babylon, by people called the Medes. That was one of the large groups that Cyrus actually overcame. But the beads had practice and older religion probably associated with Marduk, or maybe one of the sun gods. They were astrologers, they observed the heavens, and they were known as the Magi, or the magicians. We get the word magician from Magi. And they seem to represent a very high, very influential priestly caste that was at odds with some of his illustration. But it's important for us Christians to note that the wise men do the Magi that are reported to have seen the site of Jesus in the sky and to come and to find this king who was born are these Chaldeans or Magi from the Persian Empire. We're going to turn down a little bit to the specifics of the conflict Greek and Persian War wars and here's your assigned reading Persian Wars by Mark Cartwright my point in having you do these readings is not that you glean every detail there are many details, but they they should reinforce things that I'm saying, as well as some and lots of gaps of things that I'm skipping. So here is a map of the Persian Empire. And during this is during the time of darious, they control this area, this oranges area, they have great influence over these other areas. And so you see there, the Persians are way down into the Greek peninsula. All that the Greeks are really controlling is this is called the Peloponnesus. This island they are in appeal Pelops, where Sparta is. Spartans thought of themselves as Peloponnesian, and here is Athens on the attic Peninsula, but the rest is all under Persian control. So, in 499, various, puts down a tax revolt in Ionia, Western Asia lighter, and then sends his army over the Hellespont into Europe, overcomes Macedonia, Thrace pushes, to conquer all agrees he's had it was great. He's had it with their rebellion. He's had it with their competition in the Mediterranean for trade. And so he's got to just overwhelming but he knows in order to do that he has to conquer the city states, particularly of Athens and Sparta. There's a major battles at pass called marathon, which you've probably heard about, that was in 490 BC. At that battle, it's important that a smaller, very small Greek armies actually stop the invasion of the Persian armies. And you probably know the legend. I'm not sure it's really a lot more than that. But the legend of the runner who was sent in from the battle of after the battle was finished a marathon was sent to run the 27 miles or so, from Marathon to Athens and spread the word that the derrius says is Persians had been defeated, and see origins, the legendary origins, at least, the great marathon run. About 10 years later, the next emperor darious dies, and the next emperor by the name of Xerxes, who decides that he is going to take over

 

where darious left off, and he's says his other armies, the Persian armies did not leave Greece. After the Battle of Marathon, they entrenched they, they didn't attack they didn't try to conquer, but they did not leave. And so Persian influence continued. In 480 BC, Xerxes decides that he's finally got to put an end to this. This battle is caused all sorts of problems. Plus, he needs the money. Egypt has revolted. They got tired of paying high taxes to the Persians, and he spent a lot of money time carrying them back again. So Xerxes needs the money, and he sends another army to conquer the Battle of Thermopylae, very famous one was actually lost. But for the first time the Spartans into the war, they come to their aid, the Athenians, and they hold off the Persian army long enough for the Persian army for the Greek army to sort of regroup to evacuate Athens, because they knew that Athens could not be held, and after the Battle of Thermopylae, where the 300 Spartans are all tilled, the Persians come down, they invade and conquer Athens and actually burn it. So it's sacked. So now the Persians controlled virtually all of Greece, except that island of the Peloponnesus later, in the fall of that year, in 480, there is a naval battle at a place called Solomon. And that naval battle was extraordinarily important, because if the Persians had won, then there would be virtually no Western culture, it would all be Persian. And the there was, the only hold out were the Spartans, and there are a very much smaller Devi of Greek warships which were much smaller, but much more maneuverable than the Persian fleet and outmaneuvered kind of got the Persians in a place where they couldn't turn their boats fast enough and Greek boats smashed into them and sunk them, and the Persian navy is defeated. This causes Xerxes to abandon the notion that he could conquer Greece. And he returns, although he does leave much of his army in Greece. Now, at the last battle I'm going to mention pelatih are the Greek and Persian armies head off, they're pretty well evenly matched in terms of size. But the Greeks win because of superior armament and tactics in their hoplite soldiers. At that point, the Persians decided to give up their invasion of Greece, go back to Asia Minor, and the Greek culture, Greek civilization, particularly the city states of Athens, which rebuild of Sparta. They began to control the whole Jian area. And the history of Greece comes out of that. In 499 BC, there's a peace treaty signed between Greece and Persia, and that is a conclusion of the Greek, Persian Wars. East and west the cultural differences, the political differences, the differences in religion, those in philosophy, and in leadership, all hung the balance in these years, basically 50 years of the Greek Persian Wars, and because the Greeks held on, and eventually the Persians retreated, we have east and west in very different ways. This map will just again, just got to point out some of the places I already mentioned, here is the past that Dimopoulos Why were the 300 Spartans held off the Persian invasion, at least for a little while, here is marathon.

 

Where the, the battle is, is one and Athens is spared for the moment. Here's Solomos, the naval battle, where the Greeks outmaneuvered the person fleet. And here is Plataea, where the final battle is fought between the armies. So the Greek Persian Wars become a real turning point, at least in the Mediterranean basin,

 

how history will unfold. I think what that we're going to leave right now, the

 

mobile, sorry, we'll just finish off a little bit of the the Persian story, and then move on. The Persian Empire is actually known officially, and they were known to themselves not as the Persian Empire, but as the Achaemenid. Empire. That's because that was the clan that Cyrus was from. But that lasted another 200 years after Xerxes pulled his troops out of Europe and out of Greece. Well, it went on and the book of Esther, for instance, in the Old Testament, we comes from this period, I think, it was still a mighty and great empire and ruled huge grass of area. But it turned inward and became more and more about palace intrigue. The story of Esther is very interesting historically, in the sense that it tells us it's an illustration of palace politics, and how things are done within the palace and seems to be a very true reflection of how much the Persian Empire was decorated, and was falling. It held power in the area, all the way until the time of Alexander the Great is going to be another one of these Greeks in 334 BC conquers and takes over the entire Persian Empire. Basically, just a few years, quite astounding. With that, we'll leave Persia for a while. You'll have to come back. Now I'd like to shift gears to ancient India. Basically the time in between 500 BC and 1080. I get 1500 years of important history in the foundations of culture. of a country. And we're just having to skip so much. I hope you maybe are stimulated enough to to go back and check out more of the details. The fundamental theme of this time is that there's a real shift in cultural influence from the Indus Valley, which in section one of this course, the early years, we talked about that, too. Now, the Ganges, which is our flows to the east, so we moved from the west influence to the east.

 

I think that actually we're going to just save this until our next session. Thank you very much for being here today. Hope to see you soon. God bless