spin

On this forum we've seen the desperate measures taken by fundamentalist christians who deny all evidence in order to claim that the Medes and the Persians were one kingdom. This they do because they work from the conclusion that Daniel must be prophecying the arrival of Jesus. This combination of Medes and Persians they are committed to because of their religious teachings. I just thought I'd provide another tack in dealing with the issue as those in denial will refuse to deal with the archaeology and Persian records.

There is a sizable body of ancient literature that deals with the notion of the four kingdoms and I start with the 4th book of Sybilline Oracles a diaspora Jewish collection of prophecies. Lines 49-101 deal with the four kingdoms. Lines 49-53 deal with the Assyrians. Lines 54-64 deal with the Medes, thus:

These [the Assyrians] will the Medes destroy, and boast on their thrones.
They will have only two generations. In their time the following things will take place:
There will be dark night in the mid-hour of the day;
the stars and the circles of the moon will disappear from heaven;
the earth, shaken by he turmoil of a great earthquake,
will cast down headlong many cities and works of men.
Then islands will emerge from the depth of the sea.
But when the great Euphrates is flooded with blood,
then indeed a terrible din of battle will arise for the Medes
and the Persians in war. The Medes will fall under the spears
of the Persians and flee over the great water of the Tigris.

Lines 65-87 are about the Persians, and lines 88-101 deal with the Macedonians. For the writer of this book of the Sybilline Oracles, dealing with the four kingdoms, it is clear that the Medes and the Persians were different kingdoms and not treated in any sense as one.

The Greek historian Polybius wrote in Bk 38.22

After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said: etc...

Once again the four kingdoms include both Media and Persia. And another writer mentioning the four kingdoms, Velleius Paterculus, writes (Bk 1.6.6):

Aemilius Sura says in his book on the chronology of Rome: "The Assyrians were the first of all races to hold world power, then the Medes, and after them the Persians, and then the Macedonians. Then through the defeat of Kings Philip and Antiochus, of Macedonian origin, following closely upon the overthrow of Carthage, the world power passed to the Roman people. Between this time and the beginning of the reign of Ninus king of the Assyrians, who was the first to hold world power, lies an interval of nineteen hundred and ninety-five years."

And of course Tacitus, (Hist. 5.8.4):

While the East was under the sway of the Assyrians, the Medes, and the Persians, Jews were the most contemptible of the subject tribes. When the Macedonians became supreme, King Antiochus strove to destroy the national superstition,...

In each of the four examples here the four kingdoms are Assyria, Media, Persia and Macedonia. This is also the case with Diodorus 32.24 and Appian Lybica 132 as well.

Media and Persia are seen in all these sources as separate kingdoms. When we consider Daniel (chapters 2 and 7), which is set after the time of the Assyrians, the first kingdom cannot be Assyria for it wouldn't be prophecy regarding it, so Babylon, which was better known to the Jews of the exile and onwards, has been substituted.

Even though there is a strong literary tradition, beside the archaeological evidence, which knows the Medes and the Persians as separate kingdoms, where there's a will to ignore evidence, people will turn a blind eye and pretend that it doesn't matter.

[Take this post as a FYI when dealing with people who want to argue that the Medes and the Persians were one kingdom.]


spin

DCHindley

Actually, there was a period between 550 BCE, when Cyrus of Persia captured Astyages, king of Media, and forced him to retire while Cyrus ruled as co-regent, and around 539 BCE, when he captured Babylon, that Cyrus the Persian formally ruled the Median empire. When Astyages finally died, the date is not known for certain, the empire became the Persian empire.

Some dates:

626 BCE. Babylon, under king Nabopolassar, established its independence from Assyria.

625 BCE. The Median empire was founded when Cyaxares threw off Scythian control.

606 BCE. Cyaxares defeated the Assyrian king Saracus, capturing the capital Ninevah, and merges it into the Median empire.

597 BCE. 1st fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon.

595 BCE. Elam annexed to Persia, a vassal to Media.

593 BCE. Astyages becomes king of Media.

586 BCE. 2nd fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon.

568 BCE. Croesus becomes king of Lydia.

560/559 BCE. Cyrus II becomes king of Persia, still a vassal to Media.

553 BCE. Cyrus of Persia revolts against Medes.

550 BCE. Cyrus II defeats Astyages of Media, forcing him to retire under house arrest as "co-regent." Cyrus the Persian now formally rules the Median empire.

549 BCE. Nabunaid king of Babylon retires active rule and allows Belshazzar to rule as his regent.

547 BCE. Babylon, Lydia and Egypt forms alliance to resist Media under command of Cyrus.

546 BCE. Cyrus defeats Croesus king of Lydia and incorporates Lydia into Median empire. Northern Mesopotamian portion of Babylonian empire submits to Cyrus.

539 BCE. Babylon falls to Cyrus' general Gobyras, and Cyrus takes control of Babylonian empire. At this point, Cyrus drops pretense of ruling the "Median" empire and it is universally recognized as the Persian empire. Astyages probably dead by this point.

529 BCE. Cambyses II is appointed co-regent with Cyrus, who dies shortly later same year. Cambyses II becomes sole ruler.

525 BCE. Egypt is conquered by Cambyses.

Some of these dates are contested, but it is clear that the transition from Median to Persian empire was not sharply defined.

DCH

aguy2

I would say that the Medes and Persians are oft times lumped together because they are both non-Semite Indo-European peoples, and represent successive 'waves' of relatively closely related peoples.
aguy2

premjan

Medes and Persians were united by Cyrus into the Achaemenid empire.

spin

Sorry, definitely not united. Cyrus conquered the Medes and they became a vassal kingdom, just as prior to that time the Persians were a vassal to the Medes.

I've done a little work on the Book of Daniel entry on the four kingdoms (and a few other things there). This page is one big mess.


spin

Casper

Can you throw a bone out there for a date to the Sybilline Oracle text referred to? I'm not liking what I pull on the web and I don't know anything about them. Lots of conflicting info on them, and that is even acknowledging the difference from the Sybilline Books. Would this actually predate 167 BCE?

Polybius Histories I note covers a time period of 220-146 BCE as per wiki, but I don't find a publishing date. Was this an all-at once (relative to the technology) effort or protracted? Same question, do we date that text referenced to before 167 BCE?

Tacitus, definitely later. Can we argue that his source is less viable? I'm not, in fact it shows an even later acknowledgement of the two being separate states.

Just trying to fit the dates together to see them in the context of the 167 BCE frame of mind.

spin

The dating of the 4th oracle -- they each have different datings because they feature indications from different periods -- is not a single point in time. There is a view that the kernel was written close after the time of Alexander, though it clearly deals with Nero and the sack of the temple.

I didn't cite these sources for their exact time placement. What is essential to me is that there are three distinct contexts, Greek, Roman and Alexandrian Jewish, that deal with the notion of the four kingdoms (including Media and Persia as separate entities) and because they include Assyria rather than Babylon, they are not derivable from Daniel and they make more historical sense, as Media was contemporary with Babylon, whereas Assyria was before it thus better reflects the progress from one to the next.


spin

Casper

Okay, but to get this out there, if they are later than Daniel could it be argued that they misread the sources used by the author(s) of Daniel or even misread Daniel itself?

I think it is lame myself but in the context of arguing the point with a TrueProphecy advocate I think it is sure to be used. How do I address this? The Assyria vs Babylon point goes only so far on its own.

spin

My only arguing point would be that the Medes and Persians were never seen as a single entity (at least until Daniel was reused for specifically christian purposes and they needed to manufacture a reference to the Romans as the last of the four kingdoms, which led to the Medo-Persian rubbish). The conflation of the two is a misreading of Daniel, not a feature of that text and even other literary sources from three different cultural contexts (not to mention contemporary Persian inscriptions) do not admit the possibility.

The fundamentalist christian approach confuses the notion of a shared cultural background (the Medes and the Persians had the same legal system in Dan 6 and Dan 8 made the two kingdoms were two horns of the one ram) with them being one kingdom, which no ancient source supports, but which all contradict.

There's more to the four kingdoms material, but I can't get references to the tradition.


spin

PaulK

Daniel 8 solidly places the "End Times" (8:19) during the Hellenistic period, centering on the ruler of one of the Diadochi states (8:22-23).

While Christian "prophecy buffs" won't like that fact (and typically won't accept it) it's very hard to argue against it.