Jewish Persian Empire

It seems that, in the bible, the Jews come very close to converting the Persian monarchy. What would have happened if the Persians, instead of being Zoroastrians, were Jewish?

World History would be odd....Jerusalem and Pasreagaerd protected to the last breathe...and Judea would be the first thing Alexzander the Great would try to take.

Imagine if they conquer Greece, or somehow spread Judaism to the west...perhaps a Jewish Rome? Now I don't know about you, but a mainly Jewish Europe seems humorous...plausible under the right circumstances, but humorous and quite ironic. Would a Jewish Europe persecute Christians?

Ever heard of a Jewish Pharisee named Saul? Of corse they'd presucute Christians.

Hmm. So...I guess that in this timeline, people would tell Christian jokes...

A Christian, a Persian and a Roman are flying in a plane. Suddenly, God grants them each one wish. The Persian wishes that there be no more Romans, and the Roman wishes that there be no more Persians. The Christian is satisfied and asks for a cup of coffee.

Romulus Augustulus said:

Imagine if they conquer Greece, or somehow spread Judaism to the west...perhaps a Jewish Rome? Now I don't know about you, but a mainly Jewish Europe seems humorous...plausible under the right circumstances, but humorous and quite ironic. Would a Jewish Europe persecute Christians?

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A question would be, whether there would be any Christians at all... Christianity was long considered an obscure sect of Judaism, and rebellions in Judea from about 44 to 71 AD did much to give it a distinct air of being, essentially, "Judaism for everyone, not just Hebrews" at the time - of course, neither group would admit that the other is a version of its religion, but to Romans and Greeks it was all the same.

With Judaism a primary religion of both the Hebrews and their foreign "oppressors", much of the messianic message of early Christianity would be lost, even if Christianity did arise as such. If by some miracle Jesus or someone very much like him is not butterflied away, it would require a very strong messenger for a religion as based on proselytizing as Christianity to take hold. If it does arise, much of early Christianity's success has been due to Romans being largely indifferent to it (with exception of few periods of persecution that was generally "too little, too late", and which, accordingly to Gibbon, seem to have been greatly exaggerated by the Christian authors as far as their magnitude); with Jewish Empire a major power in most of the territories Christian converts go to, they would be hunted down at a very early stage. Since early Judaism had a semi-rigid hierarchy that did not seem to like being challenged (if the Biblical stories of Jesus are a good, if biased, indication), Christianity would have been seen as a challenge to such structure, and thus persecuted early on, possibly into extinction. The difference between this and OTL would have been that the persecution would have started at day one, without giving proto-Christians any time to spread.

Before Jesus there were two messanic followings in the region that when their leaders died they were scattered. Also in the book of Acts there was quite a hostile feeling towards the followers of the way as their main converts were Hellenistic Jews, and Syrian Jews. Until after Peter's vision add Saul's conversation there was little to no push to convert gentiles.

Othniel said:

Before Jesus there were two messanic followings in the region that when their leaders died they were scattered.

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Let's not forget Simon Magus, who was one of the greatest showmen in the long and storied history of religions. He used to travel the circuit with a Tyrian prostitute by the name of Helen, whom he claimed to be the fallen Sophia (Divine Wisdom). Simon Magus was a disciple of John the Baptist, or as some say, John's disciple Dositheus. He himself was originally a Samaritan, which would make him Jewish, but his title, Magus, identifies him with the ancient priestly class of the Persian Empire. Hmm.... no, couldn't be.

According to Theodore bar Khonai (who was a Christian exegete living in the city of Merv in modern Turkmenistan) the other Dositheans ended in Babylon, where, by the testimony of al-Biruni, they became... the Mandaeans. The Mandaeans themselves maintain that the originally came from Judea, and that the Arsacids (rulers of Persia during the time of Christ), belonged to their religion. In fact, one of the first moves of the victorious Sassanids was to establish Zoroastrianism as the official religion of the empire, which the chief mobed (magus) Kerdir did with gusto. He boasts in his inscription on the Ka'aba-ye Zardosht that he persecuted Christians, Jews, Mandaeans, Gnostics, Manichaeans, Hindus, Buddhists, Zurwanites, and just about anyone else who was unlucky enough to wander into Iran.

Here's a weird possibility:

Jews gain influence in Persia. Persia conquers greeks. Some Persians prefer the radical, more democratic, and secular Greek life, some the more traditional and relgiously moral Jewish life. What a weird possibility: Greeks revolting against a jewish Persian with the help of the less moral Persians.

This would proably make that area even easier for Rome to conquer.

We need more samartins in the world... more halfbreeds. More stories like the book of Ruth.Need more cultures being inflitrated with Jewish women.

Othniel said:

We need more samartins in the world... more halfbreeds. More stories like the book of Ruth.Need more cultures being inflitrated with Jewish women.

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I coudn't agree more. The Jews are too racialy focused. In the bible, they actualy tried to get converts. Thats the nice thing about this POD, Jews would be a religious, not an ethnic group.

Jesus might appear somewhere else, or at a different time...maybe even a different method of execution, too (did the Persians crucify? I thought it was a Roman idea)

Plausible it isn't, but it sure would be fun. I had the Roman Empire go Jewish once...

Now, if you allow for the Jewish faith to be much more accomodating to converts (and at certain times it was, so it isnt that outlandish) the question is, would it acquire the same missionary drive as Islam and Christianity, or would it stay welcoming, but non-mandatory? Personally I don't see how Judaism allows for a missionary imperative, but history has seen weirder things.

Without this drive, persecutions would be unlikely outside the faith. Within the flock, on the other hand, things could easily get quite nasty (remember King Josiah?). Assuming there will be a Jesus in this TL he could be crucified (the Persians knew how), though I think it more likely he'd suffer a traditional Jewish stoning. After all, if the Persian Empire is Jewish, the Jewish authorities won't be officially barred from carrying out executions. His followers, too, would most likely have a hard time because they'd be seen as straying Jews, not gentiles who'll believe any old thing. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if the altered structure of Judaism as a dominant imperial faith (in the context of the generally tolerant and easygoing Persian empire) wouldn't have a niche for - Jesuanic Judaism? If the huge weight of persecution, fear and inferiority complexes is taken off the faith I would expect a very pluralistic and tolerant atmosphere to be possible.

You'd have to ask yourself, though, whether Jerusalem could retain its dominant position. Holiest place, yes, but would religious dogma (as far as it goes) not rather be hammered out in Persepolis or Susa, or Babylon? Alternatively, if the Persian kings actually make Jerusalem their residence (I'm told it's really nice in spring), that would entail a shift westwards for the Empire. So much for evletheria and avtonomia...

Thande said:

Jesus might appear somewhere else, or at a different time...maybe even a different method of execution, too (did the Persians crucify? I thought it was a Roman idea)

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IIRC, the Persians came up with the idea. Alexander the Great adopted it when he was quelling the resistance of the Tyrian nobles; he crucified 2000 of Tyre's defenders all along the Via Maris. There were two Carthaginian envoys trapped in the city during the siege; they brought news of the technique back to home, and from there it passed to Rome.

You have it backwards. The Jews were never close to converting the Persians. It was the Persians who introduced Zoroastrian ideas into Judaism. The idea of a final judgement, and a war between good and evil, god and satan, is taken right out of Zoroastrian theology. It did not exist before, possibly not anywhere in the world.

There was a give and take. The influence was not exactly unidirectional.

For example, towards the end of the Arsacid era, and throughout the Sassanian era, the Zoroastrians embarked upon an ambitious project to collect and transcribe their religious literature in a cursive form of the Aramaic alphabet (their religious literature was largely oral; it hasn't survived in any other script, with the exception of the Manichaean stuff, if you consider that Iranian). Subsequently the Sassanians embarked upon an ambitious exegetical enterprise called the Zand ("Commentary" which appears to be directly influenced by Jewish (and later Islamic) models. So there was some cross cultural influence.

What about having an member of the Davidic Bloodline upsurp the throne after Cyrus Death. He would sit on the throne rather uneasily but could strengthen and perserve his dynasty so by the the Alexander gets ready to invade Persia...It is Ruled by an Hebrew...Most of the Population speaks Hebrew...and worship Yaweh.

Historico said:

What about having an member of the Davidic Bloodline upsurp the throne after Cyrus Death. He would sit on the throne rather uneasily but could strengthen and perserve his dynasty so by the the Alexander gets ready to invade Persia...It is Ruled by an Hebrew...Most of the Population speaks Hebrew...and worship Yaweh.

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In that case, the Persian Empire no longer exists by the time of Alexander. Clan loyalty counts for a lot with the Achaemenid nobility, so an outside usurpation can be read as signalling a free-for-all (unless the usurper is generally 'taken to be' an Achaemenid). Things were bad enough while only royal princes could have a go at the throne.

Next, the conversion / ethnic reconstitution policy. The Persian court most likely does as it is told because that is what courtiers do, but don't think for one second the citizens of Babylon will forgo their colourful ceremonies without a fight. As to other parts - the Egyptians had already shown in no uncertain terms they weren't standing for newfangled cults. I'm pretty sure the Phrygians, Phoenicians, Syrians, Lydians, Carians, Ionians and various otherians aren't going to welcome the missionaries of a jealous God with open arms either. Hebrew on its own just might have a chancem provided it becomes the administrative language of the Empire - that's how Aramaic made it big, and they share similar advantages of cuneiform and demotic - but once you tie it to religion and ethnicity, it is dead in the water. On the upside, said member of the House of David just invented the religious war several centuries early, so not all is darkness...

Honestly, a more radical departure from every core policy of the Empire is hard to imagine.

I (maybe) could see the Iranian nobility adopting Yahweh, and then worshipping him alongside Ahura Mazda, Anahita, Mitra, and the rest, which would infuriate the Jews to no end. We don't know much about the religion of the Achaemenids except that it is generally assumed that they espoused some flavor of Zoroastrianism (nowhere in any of the Old Persian inscriptions is Zarathustra mentioned, although the basic lines of the Zoroastrian faith are present). I'm fairly confident that, from the perspective of Kerdir and the rest of the Sassanian mobeds, the Achaemenids would not have been considered truly orthodox. The Iranian nobility was known to toy with other religions (the Arsacids were occasionally branded as pagans, and the Sassanians did initially flirt with Manichaeism).

Suffice it to say that any form of Judaism espoused by the Achaemenids would be even more heavily Iranized than OTL Judaism is today - and that's saying a lot. The very word for religion in Hebrew, den, is borrowed from Avestan (daena), as is one of the major words for law (dat).

Leo Caesius said:

I (maybe) could see the Iranian nobility adopting Yahweh, and then worshipping him alongside Ahura Mazda, Anahita, Mitra, and the rest, which would infuriate the Jews to no end. We don't know much about the religion of the Achaemenids except that it is generally assumed that they espoused some flavor of Zoroastrianism (nowhere in any of the Old Persian inscriptions is Zarathustra mentioned, although the basic lines of the Zoroastrian faith are present). I'm fairly confident that, from the perspective of Kerdir and the rest of the Sassanian mobeds, the Achaemenids would not have been considered truly orthodox. The Iranian nobility was known to toy with other religions (the Arsacids were occasionally branded as pagans, and the Sassanians did initially flirt with Manichaeism).

Suffice it to say that any form of Judaism espoused by the Achaemenids would be even more heavily Iranized than OTL Judaism is today - and that's saying a lot. The very word for religion in Hebrew, den, is borrowed from Avestan (daena), as is one of the major words for law (dat).

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I agree, the relationship of whatever was practiced to Judaism would probably be as close as Christianity is to Judaism.