Below is from a post and comments at BSA: https://biblical-studies-academy.circle.so/c/general-discussion-a52be5/what-about-persian-influence
To Read at the Bible Time Machine
Ep. 112 Why the Bible Loves Cyrus the Great, May 19, Written By Dave Roos
Ep. 6 Ancient Persia and the Book of Esther
Response by Megan Kraege, Admin, BSA Assistant Community Manager
As far as I see it, there is a big difference between the beliefs of the people living in “the land” before the exile and after the exile, and the influence of Persian culture and religion in that difference is no coincidence. Disclaimer: The context that follows is my personal opinion as an interested layperson who spends far too much time on this sort of thing, but not a scholarly claim, as I’m not a scholar 🙂 Your mileage may vary.
I believe that upon the return from exile of the “remnants”, there was a tension between those who had continued living in the land during the exilic period, and those who had recently returned from Babylon. It is palpable within the biblical text, particularly in the rift between the “pro-monarchic”/”propagandistic” lines of thought in the Hebrew Bible, against the “anti-monarchic”/”populistic” lines of thought, and throughout the book(s) of Isaiah. Those who were freed from Babylon and rehomed to Judah/Israel were hyper-nationalistic, tied together by their identity as a once-disparate group united by their time together in captivity – and they had developed a new theology, reflected strongly in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. This rift, of course, didn’t die with the end of the composition of the Hebrew Bible – the Qumran/Dead Sea Scrolls community identified themselves as the true remnant, those who had remained in the land throughout the exile (see the beginning of the Damascus Document, for example). I think this is the same time period when countless rituals, practices, and beliefs from the First Temple period began to shift in favor of this new theology. This is reflected in the Deuteronomistic book of Judges, which demonstrates time and time again that the breaking of the covenant causes the dispossession of the promised land. This sounds dramatic until you compare it with the earlier priestly texts, which claimed that transgressions against the covenant cause the entirety of creation to wither and corrupt. It’s a stark difference when you look at it that way. The possession of the land was essential to this “remnant theology”, formulated by a people once without a land, who now adopted a glamorous new identity as the ones chosen to live in a holy city – the once-destroyed Jerusalem. They began to rewrite the entire history of the Israelite monarchy to suit their narrative. While their new ideas originally weren’t well-received by the people who had been living in the land throughout the exile, they were eventually to triumph, shifting the religious landscape of the entire future with their victory. Of course, this new theology also promoted a newfound form of henotheism, which began to gradually shift into monotheism, resurrected from the grave nearly a millennium after the death of Akhenaten. Unlike its Egyptian predecessor, Persian Zoroastrianism was embraced by the people, and monotheism was here to stay. I see this Persian-influenced remnant theology as the core of Jewish and Christian apocalypticism, monotheism, messianism, belief in judgement after death, conceptions of heaven and hell, and heavily influential to what became their “angelology” and “demonology”.
Books recommended by Megan etal at BSA.
