Claiming the King: Cyrus Between Three Gods
Article 2 of 6 When Cyrus took Babylon in 539 BCE, three religions reached for the same man and each declared him the gift of its own god. The Babylonian priesthood said Marduk chose him. The Judean exiles said Yahweh raised him. Later Iranian memory set him in the world of Ahura Mazda. One conqueror, one conquest, three theologies — and not one of them reporting a fact, because the question they all answered, whose god stands behind the great king , was never a fact.
What this resource contributes
Article 2 of 6 When Cyrus took Babylon in 539 BCE, three religions reached for the same man and each declared him the gift of its own god. The Babylonian priesthood said Marduk chose him. The Judean exiles said Yahweh raised him. Later Iranian memory set him in the world of Ahura Mazda. One conqueror, one conquest, three theologies — and not one of them reporting a fact, because the question they all answered, whose god stands behind the great king , was never a fact. It was a claim, and every party made the same claim about the same king. Hold that in view, because it is the answer to a charge often laid against the Hebrew text: that it "hid" Cyrus's foreignness to dress him up as Yahweh's man. It hid nothing. It did something bolder.
Topics and source signals
Primary sources detected
Cyrus Cylinder · Hebrew Bible · Old Testament