Alright, Lesson 3 of the Intertestamental Period. Today we're going to be looking at Daniel Chapter 8. If you want to go ahead and look there, remember we're using Daniel as a framework for our study because of the prophecies. A lot of them have to do with this Intertestament Period. As point of review, I turn your attention to this awesome drawing up here. All right, can somebody explain to me, ignore that, what this is? And can walk through it somewhat intelligently. Nebuchadnezzar's dream from chapter 2. Right? Walking through the dream, he said, you Nebuchadnezzar had this great dream, you saw this figure, and it had a head made of gold. And this is the only one that we know for sure what it represented because he tells us. What did the head of gold represent? Babylon. And what did the prophet Daniel say was next? Arms and chest of silver. His belly and thighs are bronze, legs of iron, and clay and iron mixed. So this is Babylon. This is what we know for sure. He says, after you comes another kingdom. And what came after Babylon? The Medo-Persian Empire. And followed by? Greece. Greece, followed by? Romans. And then what's defeating clay? We really don't know and it's not worth arguing about. That's not the, that's not what this class is for. So we can argue about that later, time for many. So what we're gonna talk about today is this orange and chest of silver. This is the Persian Empire. Again, just to remind you, the nation of Israel had split into two kingdoms. What happened to the northern tribe? The 10 northern tribes, the kingdom of Israel, what happened to them? Syria conquered them around 720 BC and scattered them all throughout the empire. And not only did they take a lot of the Jews out of that land, they moved other people from conquered nations into that land. And those people married and interbred with the native Jewish population that was there. And they formed a half-breed race, and I'm not doing this as a racist matter, but that's how the Jews saw them, an inferior half-breed race called the what? Samaritans. The Samaritans. And the Jews hated the Samaritans, and that's where they came from. That's why you see in the Gospels, the disciples didn't want to walk through Samaria, because they're a bunch of filthy half-breeds in their eyes. More on that later. So then the Assyrians were taken over by Babylon. The Babylonians partnered with another group called the Medes to overthrow Assyrian dominance. And once the Assyrians were defeated, Babylon kind of just pushed the Medes to the side because we don't need you anymore. But you promised us great things. Eh, whatever, go away. So Babylon rises to power, Nebuchadnezzar's this great king, his grandson or great-grandnephew, depending on how you look at it, named Belshazzar, having that party in Daniel chapter 5, and that's when Cyrus's army takes over Babylon. Remember they diverted the Euphrates River, went in through the mostly dry riverbed, up into the city and took it relatively bloodlessly in one night. So Cyrus had united the Persian tribes. It was the Medo-Persian Empire became just known as the Persian Empire because the Persian tribe rose to prominence over the Medes. And when Cyrus took over Babylon, he practiced something that was pretty much unheard of in his day. That was called religious tolerance. He was very, very open to cultures retaining their individual identity. If you want to worship Yahweh, awesome. He lets the Jews worship Yahweh. If the Babylonians want to worship Marduk, he lets them worship Marduk. And we have these inscriptions, they're called the Cyrus Cylinder, which talks about Cyrus' conquest and what he would do. And he would praise the God of whatever people he controlled. The Babylonian citizens, the common citizens, saw him as kind of a rescuer from the oppressive regime of Belteshazzar. So when he comes in and says, no, no, I'm not going to force you to become Persian. You maintain your culture. You maintain your religion. In fact, I'll help you rebuild some of your temples that have been destroyed in the battle. And he has this long quote that we have from history where he praises the god of the Babylonians and said, no, he's a great god. I'll rebuild his temple. I'll help fund it. And we see the same thing for what he did to the Jews. He lets the Jews return, said, all the Jews that are scattered throughout my empire can return back to their city. In fact, I'm going to fund their rebuilding of the temple. Their God is a great God. I'll help his temple get rebuilt. Anybody who threatens the Jews, I'm going to smash them and destroy them. So Cyrus was seen as a liberator. In fact, the word they used for Cyrus is the word that we call Jesus. What word is that? What word do they call Cyrus? What word do you think they use? A messiah. Cyrus is to this day seen as a messianic type figure because he rescued them from the Babylonian captivity. So the Jews go back, there's three waves where the Jews go back to Jerusalem. The first one was led by a guy named Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel goes back with the intention of rebuilding Jerusalem and getting that temple done. but they immediately run into problems. Does anybody know what the problems they ran into were? The walls were torn down. Why were they having trouble rebuilding that? But who was stopping them? They have an issue. The locals. Okay, so the Jews were deported. Yeah, the Jews were deported. They're gone. And unlike the Assyrians, Babylon never moved anyone back in. So who slowly crept in? What group of people? The people that surrounded the people before they left to do the stuff. The Samaritans, one group. You weren't here for that. The Samaritans creeped in. Some of the other people said, hey, there's kind of all this land that's available. And they just started moving in. When the Jews get back under Zerubbabel, They start to rebuild, but then it stops. So they need another guy named Ezra. He leads a group back, and this is what the whole book of Ezra is about. And he says, look, we're running into difficulties with the local governing authorities carrying out Cyrus's decree. So the emperor at the time, he writes another decree. No, they're going to rebuild it. So they start rebuilding the temple. Well, again, it kind of dies down. And you need a third guy to come in and really get things done. Who's this third guy who comes in? Nehemiah. Nehemiah. And you read his story in the book Nehemiah. So Nehemiah comes back and he's met by some of the leaders of these local groups, these other groups that have kind of moved in and settled. They don't want to give up the land they've been in for the last 70, 80 years at this point. These Jews kind of threaten their position. They have it pretty sweet. So they try to sweet talk them. They're like, hey, we worship Yahweh too. Let us help you build this temple. Now what's important to understand is they're not lying. They totally worship Yahweh. The understanding of all the groups that lived in that region, that Palestine region in Mesopotamia, is that gods were geographic. So now we're moving outside of Bible study. Now we're talking about how the native groups back then viewed deities. Yahweh was nothing more than the territorial god of Israel. Marduk was the territorial god of Babylon. This God was a territorial God over here. So if you move to a different area, you can still worship your God, but who should you also worship? You should worship the territorial God of that region, that domain. No, you don't. In fact, there's a story in... Remember the Syrian general? What's that guy's name? His name escapes me. He was a Syrian general. He had leprosy. Yes, Naaman. And Elijah heals him. And Naaman becomes a believer in Yahweh. And he asks, when I go back, can I please take some dirt from Israel with me? Why would he think to do that? What possible reason would he want to grab dirt to take it with him back to his home in Syria? It's a physical, tangible connection to the land over which Yahweh is sovereign. Now, I don't fault Naaman for that because he didn't grow up understanding. But Naaman came to understand that Yahweh is the only God who can heal in this capacity. He wants to worship that God. He's so worried that God may strike him dead when he carries his master, the king, into the temple to worship. I think it was Dagon. He goes, I don't want God to strike me dead. I'm doing my duty. My king's old. He's elderly. I have to help him there. He has to hold on my arm as I kneel him down and raise him up from the altar. And Elijah has to assure him that God's not going to strike you dead. So I have full confidence that Naaman, Naaman, became a true convert. But he still had in the back of his mind this understanding of, I need to have a physical tie to the God that I now serve. I think he had saving faith, just not a complete understanding of who Yahweh was. So these people that volunteer their help, yeah, they do worship Yahweh, but they don't worship him as king of kings, lord of lords, god of gods. He's just another god. All right, so that sets up what we're going to be talking about here. So let's look in Daniel chapter eight. And I have to get used to reading this Orthodox Bible because in this one, Daniel was the last book of the Old Testament. Yeah, so. And what we call Ezra is called Second Ezra here. And what they call First Ezra is not in our Protestant Bible. So it's really, it's not good to try to flip through quickly. Alright, so Daniel chapter 8. I want somebody to start reading in verse 1 and just be prepared to be interrupted. In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar, a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first. And I saw in the vision, and when I saw, I was in Susa, the citadel, which is in the province of Elam. And when I saw in the vision, and I was in the Ulai canal, I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. It had two horns, and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last. All right, let's stop right there. Now, what empire is ruling at this point? Babylon is, because of King Belshazzar. Right. And what animal does Daniel see? A ram. A ram. Describe it to me. Two horns. Two horns. One longer than the other. And which one? Yes. And the larger one came up second. Now, when we looked at apocalyptic literature last week in kind of an introduction, when we're reading biblical apocalyptic literature, Ezekiel, Daniel, Revelation, beasts typically represent empires. And the horns typically represent the kings of said empire. So this is a beast going to represent an empire, and it has two horns. All right, keep reading. First part. I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great. All right, let's stop right there. So this ram is pushing westward, northward, north, north, and southward, north, south, and west. He never goes to the east. This is, and it tells you later, we don't need to, for time's sake, we won't read this, but this is Persia. In fact, the national animal, if you will, of Persia is a ram. So it would have been immediately recognized, okay, talking about Persia. Persia, by this point, is already powerful. The Medo-Persian Empire is powerful. It started out as just being the Mede Empire. It became the Medo-Persian Empire. By the time Cyrus conquers Babylon, it's only the Persian Empire. So these two horns are the kings of Media and the kings of Persia. The greater one is Persia, because Persia ascended after Mede, and they became the greater part. Cyrus himself, some of his history is legendary, so this is not authoritative. but it's believed that Cyrus, his father was a Persian noble and his mother was from the tribe of the Medes. So he had the bloodline of both. So when he rebelled against his Median overlords and assumed the throne, both tribes accepted him because he's from the noble family of both tribes. So Cyrus comes to the power, we already talked about how awesome he was, and he conquered Greatly. I mean he was he was a liberator a lot of people willingly surrendered to him because he's a Fantastic leader. He's not called Cyrus the Great for no reason. Okay. This guy is awesome military genius extremely politically savvy and From what we can tell all around great guy. All right, so being under Persian rule was not bad at all All right. Keep reading As I was considering, behold, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. Conspicuous is not a word we use often. Anybody have a different translation that has a more English friendly word? Notable. Notable. One large horn. So if beasts represent empires and the horns represent the king, what empire do you think is going to be represented by a goat? Greece. And who would this very large, prominent, notable, conspicuous horn represent? Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great. Another great guy. I don't think he was as great as Cyrus, but he's called great. Why? Why don't you think he was great? Alexander was not as... He's not... He was... No, no, no. Militarily, yes. When it comes to... He didn't last as long. Militarily... And we're gonna look at this. Alexander was, of course, probably unmatched until Napoleon. And that's debatable. But we're not going to talk about the poll here. Maybe at the end of the class if we run out of things to say. He came to the ram with the two horns, which I had seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath. I saw him come close to the ram, and he was enraged against him and struck the ram and broke his two horns. And the ram had no power to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and trampled on him. And there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power. Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it, there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven. Okay, so now we're going to talk a little bit about what happens leading up to this. Now the goat is Greece. In fact, prior to Alexander's ascendancy to power in the Greek Empire, they were looked down on by the Persians as a bunch of goat herders. That's the similarities to documents we have. Those good-for-nothing, dirty goat herders way out to the west on their little islands. That's how they were seen. So when it talks about this goat, oh, that's Greece. So when Cyrus died, his son, I'm going to butcher all these names, Cambias, assumed the throne. And he immediately set out to conquer a problem in his empire that was Egypt. So that's what he does. He goes out, he conquers Egypt. And as he's winning the battle, this guy who says his name is Bardiya, has risen up back home in Persia and says, I'm going to assume the throne. Now the problem is Bardiya was Cambus' brother that he had already murdered to secure his place on the throne. So this is somebody claiming to be his brother. So he has to leave Egypt, he has to go back over there and execute this guy to solidify his power. He leaves behind in Egypt a group of Jewish mercenaries in this island, an island in the Nile River, the Nile's huge. is called the Isle of Elephantine, and it leaves a Jewish garrison to help guard that. Now what's significant about that is in the 1940s, prior to the Dead Sea Scrolls, they discovered this massive amount of documents at the Isle of Elephantine that talked about this Jewish community that grew up around that garrison, that talked about all of their communications back and forth, official documents, religious worship, and what they did. Because These Jewish community, obviously, what did they not do when Cyrus was king? They didn't go back. A bunch of Jews did not go back. They only estimate like 20,000 Jews returned to Jerusalem when Cyrus allowed them to. But we have stories about these Jews in the Bible who never returned. Anybody think of them? What stories in the Bible do we have of the Jews who chose not to return, besides Daniel? Esther. Esther's the most famous one. Obviously, Nehemiah didn't, because he was a cupbearer to the king. He didn't return until long after. Now, there's some debate as to which emperor it was of the Persian Empire that Nehemiah served. Some say it was Xerxes. Some say it was his son Artaxerxes. Most people say Xerxes, but I heard a really good argument that it's Artaxerxes, and if it is, that means Esther was the queen that Nehemiah was talking to, because it said he went to the king and the queen to ask permission to go back, if that lines up. It would be cool, so I want to believe it because it's cool, but it's not something to really argue about. But obviously, a lot of Jews didn't go home, and some achieved great success in wherever they were. Nehemiah was cut bare to the king. Esther. Mordecai. Mordecai was a well-respected individual in the capital of the Persian Empire. So Jews didn't go back. So they were scattered, and they still were, all over the place to this point. And this garrison that was stationed at Elephantine is proof that there were thriving Jewish communities all the way in Israel. And one of the attacks against our Bible is that Judaism is nothing more than Zoroastrianism, the official religion of the Persian Empire, repackaged. You ever heard that name? Yeah. But the documentation that we have proves otherwise. So anyway, so Cambyses leaves that Jewish garrison there. And he goes off and secures his throne. Egypt is conquered. All's well, he dies. A guy named Darius comes to the throne. Darius, this is not Darius to me from Daniel chapter five. This is a different Darius. This is the emperor Darius. And he's not Cyrus the Great. He's not Cambyses. He's a petty dictator. He grew up during the Golden Age. He really didn't have to fight for anything. He was born rich. He's been rich his entire life, didn't have to work for it. And he is so great, he's going to build a monument to his greatness. And I want to read, I actually want to read this book here. This is the book that I use. I haven't lost it already. Most of what I'm getting from this is called Between the Testaments by Charles F. Pfeiffer. Fantastic little book. So this guy Darius is going to build a monument to his awesomeness. It's called the Heston Inscription. He chose a mountainside and he carved it. It's like 80 feet tall and 100 feet wide, written in three different languages that were spoken at that time about how awesome he is in all this military conquest. In fact, that inscription, because it was written in three languages, is why we can understand cuneiform today. because, oh, okay, we can speak that language, so if this is, we identify these languages, this is this and this is that in a different language, then this must be that inscription in cuneiform, hey, we can read cuneiform. It's like the Rosetta Stone. So he wrote that, and it is pretty, it's understood that Darius was one of the guys who let Ezra go back. That's pretty much, pretty much widely accepted. During this time when Ezra goes back, he starts the rebuilding of the temple, but the city itself isn't complete. It stops. The temple is almost done, but not quite. And God's kind of upset by this, so he sends two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, to kind of kick the Jews and say, hey, why aren't you building my temple? Your houses are built. You have these wonderful houses. The streets are paved, yet my temple is still not complete. Why not? And that's what re-energizes the people and they get the temple done. One thing Darius did that is fantastic is he started a postal system. He had a massive empire. But what they did is they had these horses stationed, like little stations of riders, from one end of the empire all the way to the other. So you would give your letter to that guy and he would take off for like, I think, 70 miles or so until the next one, and they would hand it off, and that guy would take off. They said you could cover from one end of the Persian Empire all the way to the other in just a, wait, I'm not gonna say, I'm gonna say it wrong. I'm gonna read it. I don't wanna say three days, because I know that's not it. Four days. It's just an early Pony Express. It is, that's exactly what it is. Okay, so I'm just gonna read from here. So this is Pfeiffer. The development of roads in the postal system was another of the projects Custerius designed to facilitate the governing of his far-flung empire. Several great roads were inherited from the old Assyrian empire. One of those extended from Babylon to Carchemus, with a connecting spur to Nineveh. And it went all the way to Egypt. Another one went from Babylon to the heart of the media. Custerius rebuilt all these roads and blah, blah, blah, the postal system could cover. Any message from the king from one governor to another was carried from one stage to the next until it reached its destination. Here we go. Herodotus, the father of history, wrote this. He said the Persian post can be seen engraved, or that their motto, rather, is engraved across the New York post office to this day. and this is the inscription that Darius had written. These, neither snow nor rain, nor heat nor darkness of night, prevent the accomplishing each one of his appointed tasks with the very utmost speed. 111 post stations were located along the 1,670 mile road from Susa to Sardis and Ephesus. Those are the three main cities. It took 90 days to travel that road from end to end. The royal carriers that relay of horses would cover it in one week. Wow. Yeah, an early pony express. It lasted longer because they didn't have trains. So Darius- And the telegraph was always away. Yeah, a bit. So Darius, in spite of being a kind of a petty dictator, he wasn't very kind to people, he did have some very innovative ideas. It's also Darius who was fought in the battle of Marathon. Y'all have heard of the Marathon race, right? So what happened is the Greece cities, those goat herders, were starting to grow in power. They're starting to encourage some rebellions here and there throughout the Persian Empire, and this upsets Darius. These goat herders are causing trouble, so he's going to go and attack them. Now, at this point, Greece is not united. There is no Greek empire. All these city-states were just kind of doing their own thing. You had Sparta over here, you had Athens, you had Thebes. All these cities, they are ruled independently of each other. They all have the same language. They all have the same kind of philosophy, culture. They all dress the same. But as far as working together, uh-uh. They're casted at each other's throats. In fact, the Spartans and the Athenians would fight the Peloponnesian Wars against each other and try to eradicate each other multiple times. But when this Persian army is arriving, the Greeks unite to repel the invaders. And legend has it that one of the guys sprints all the way to Marathon to say, hey, can you come help us? And he's told, no. So he runs back and says, they're not going to help us, and he dies. And that's why we have the marathon to commemorate this guy's sacrifice. Wow. But the Greeks, they win. They stop the Persian advancement. Now they're still not united, but what that did is it kind of started this idea of, hey guys, if we all work together, we can accomplish great things. So it sets that idea into motion. After dealing with another Egyptian revolt, Darius dies, and Xerxes I comes to power. He had been the king, the sub-king of Babylon prior to assuming the throne. And this is who most people think is called Ahasuerus in the book of Esther. Most people think this is that guy. Under his power, the Greeks, again, were causing trouble. And he says, fine, I will do what my predecessor didn't. I'll teach these filthy goat herders a lesson. And he launches a massive fleet against them. And there's this pass called Thermopylae. and it was a very narrow way, and King Leonidas of Sparta and his troops are gonna defend this pass against the approaching heathens, they called them Persians. And they said, we got this beat, no one knows how to get around it, it's the only path through the mountain, we're secure. But a trader went to the Persians and said, hey, there's actually another pass around here and you can completely surround the Spartans, and that's what happened. An incredible fight. They were all wiped out. The story is probably exaggerated. Probably. And it ultimately didn't even really slow the advance of the Persians. It was just kind of like a speed bump. But it did give the Greeks just a few more days to put aside their differences and launch a counterattack against the Persian fleet. Right before the battle, the storm happened, and it sank a lot of the Persian vessels. Yeah, so when the Greeks met, it wasn't an overwhelming force they were fighting, it was kind of equal. Well, the Greeks won. Their tactics were vastly superior, and they sank the entire Persian fleet. The Persians still had a massive land army, but they no longer had support. There was no supply chain, so they eventually had to leave as well. So Persia was crushed. Imagine just the economic devastation that they lost. Their entire fleet was sunk. Zerxes was there to watch this. He actually built a temporary throne on a cliff so he could overlook and watch his victory and it ended up being a defeat. So he goes back in complete shame and he's being assassinated because he's a failure. Don't lose your fleet. Yeah, don't lose your fleet. Yeah. Yeah, don't ever get involved in a land war. Actually this was a naval, so I guess that doesn't apply here. So he goes back and the captain of his bodyguard assassinates him. So that guy manages to stay on the throne, this captain of the guards, for seven months until Xerxes' son, Artaxerxes, assassinates him and assumes the throne. So This is when Herodotus writes all of his histories. Herodotus is the father of history. During this time, the Greeks build the Parthenon. And Athens is under the leadership of a guy named Pericles. And Athens becomes the principal city of Greece, as far as its power and influence. Artaxerxes has to put down a third rebellion in Egypt. And this rebellion in Egypt was sponsored by none other than what group of people do you think? No, this is a rebellion by Egypt against the Persians, but they were aided by people, by the Greeks. Yeah, the Greeks keep poking. The bear. Keep poking the bear. Yeah, they keep, which is funny because Persia is referenced as a bear in Daniel 4. So they're literally poking the bear. Think about how easy it would have been for Persia to just cut Africa off of. There's not a land bridge other than yeah, look that's Suez Yeah, all you gotta do is guard that a little bit and just be like you guys go do whatever you're doing over there But that's emitting defeat. I mean and we're gonna be over here We're gonna be super successful because we're the cradle of the universe at the time like the Greeks are gonna do stuff but it's that it's the trying to grasp everything and end up grasping nothing and It's like Princess Leia said to Darth Vader. The tighter you squeeze, the more star systems slip through your fingertips. At least I think that's what she said. I've obviously never watched Star Wars. It's heathenistic. She said that to Grandma. Nerd. No, no, it's Darth Vader. Look. Wait, what? No Vader. I generally don't argue. OK, no, no, we're all subject. No, no, OK. OK, get to it later. Next semester, I'll teach the gospel in Star Wars. It's a book. We'll teach that. OK, get him back. You know there is a religion called Jediism. Yeah, oh gosh. OK. Yes, and Britain. All right. So that's what's going on in Persian. The Greeks are just constantly saying, hey, Egypt, you should totally rebel against Persia. It never works, but Egypt keeps doing it. And Persia is just constantly getting mad at Greece. But because they're so far away, and they've already lost their fleet, and they're very financially crippled at this point, they really can't do much about it. So it's just a growing problem. Back in Israel at this time, this is Ezra's leading his reform. A lot of the mixed marriages are a problem. The Jews that went back under Zerubbabel, they've kind of gotten placent. They're marrying all these Samaritan women. They're marrying these heathen women. It's just causing constant problems. Nehemiah comes back, gets the wall rebuilt, tells all the Jews to divorce their heathen wives and send them away. Now, obviously, these women converted to worshiping Yahweh. They're allowed to stay. But many of the Jews say, we understand, and they kick their foreign wives out. And this is when Malachi comes and prophesies. And that's the end of our Old Testament period. That's it. Artaxerxes is on the throne. Nehemiah has rebuilt Jerusalem. Ezra's really, really old, if he's still alive when that's finished. They were contemporaries, Ezra and Nehemiah. Malachi does the final prophecy. Old Testament's done. Turn the page. Rome's in power and John the Baptist is. running around like a madman in the wilderness somewhere. That's kind of how the Bible works. When was the temple completed? About 400. 400 BC. Because it's called the 400 years of silence, so we're going to use that. Like the temple, they're like, ta-da! Yes. Fast forward, Rome's in power. And they're like, whoa! Where'd they come from? So the intertestamental period is 400, about 400 years. Yeah, 400 years of silence is called, the academic call it second temple Jewish period, the second temple period, or intertestament. All three kind of mean the same things, slight variation. All right, now what happens during that time with Persia, Greece constantly causing problems, Egypt causing problems, There are a lot of revolts by the common people. So Persia's not only having problems on its fringes in Egypt, it's not only having problems with the competing nation to the west, Greece, the common people in Persia are really getting upset by all these high taxes. Surprised people have hated being taxed always. And also during this time, about 338 BC, this guy named Philip, who is the king of the Macedonian tribes just north of Greece, decides, these people to my south are great people. I love their culture. I love their philosophy. They have nice togas. They should be won. They're obviously incapable of doing this by themselves. I'm going to help them out. And he conquers Greece. So for the first time in 338 BC, all these separate city-states of Greece become one under Philip of Macedonia. Philip dies, and his young son at the age of 20, 23, assumes the throne as the emperor of the Greek nation. And what is his name? Alexander. Alexander. He's not the great yet. Not yet. Not yet. He's got some work to do. We're going to see what Mr. Alexander does. All right, so he officially becomes king in 336 BC. Now, the same year that he became king, Darius III becomes the emperor of Persia. Alexander was told by his father, Philip, on his deathbed, you need to go after Persia. Persia's launched attack after attack against Greece. Greece hates Persia. Persia is weaker than they've ever been. They're ripe for the taking. You can take them over. That is my dying wish to you, my son. Conquer Persia. Alexander says, okay, dad. And in three years, he's conquered all Persia. Three years. A lot of these cities welcome him with open arms. Because why did they hate Persia? What were they being? High taxes. High taxes. Alexander was seen as a liberator now one of the legendary stories when Alexander is Coming to Jerusalem because Jerusalem was controlled by the Persians. So as far as he's concerned, this is a well-fortified city of my enemy He gets to them and he's met by the high priest at that time and he opens up the book to Daniel chapter 8 and says we were told you were coming but I'm paraphrasing this. Alexander, what do you mean you were told I was coming? Our God has said through our prophet Daniel a hundred years ago that a great goat from the West is coming to destroy the ram. You are our deliverer. Welcome, Alexander. Apparently, Alexander was so flattered by this that he went back, had dinner with the priest, hung out, petted the dog. That's funny. Jews don't have dogs. OK, anyway. So the high priest and Alexander are great friends. And Alexander's army stays, gets some reinforcements, and they just carry on their merry way. And Israel is left completely unscathed. by all of this. Brilliant. Yeah, fantastic. I mean, they're very shrewd. They weren't going to win a gunfight. They were not. And the official end of the Persian Empire is dated at 330 BC, in case you wanted to write that down. And when did the Persian Empire die? 330 BC. So 550 to 330 BC was the reign of the Persian Empire. And now all that they controlled is now ruled by one man, Alexander, now known as the Great. All right, any questions so far? Because I talked a lot. OK. What's going on in Rome at this point? It's not a thing yet. It's not a thing. It hasn't been born yet. Yep. It's not a thing. Sorry. All right, so a little bit more about what the Jews were doing, because remember, they've been scattered all over the place since 720 BC. You already talked about the Samaritans. They're considered a mixed race, half-breed, inferior. The Jews in Jesus' day didn't like them. So when Alexander the Great takes over, did he also take over Egypt? Egypt became his too. Yeah. Yeah, in fact, he built... Libraries, right? Yeah. The man... When he conquered all Persia, so from Egypt all the way to the Indus River in India, he controlled all of that. The only reason he stopped is because his army said, dude, we're done. If you don't stop now, we're going to kill you. So Alexander says, you know what? I think I'm done. And they turned around. They started marching back. Now, this has been like 10 years, the entire campaign. I mean, Persia fell, but he kept going. So on the way back, and this is the part that Daniel spoke of, Alexander, well, through the whole way, he's spreading Greek culture, right? He loved the Greeks, just like his father did. He loved the language, the culture, the togas, everything. He wanted everyone to become Greek, because it was the best. In fact, his tutor was Aristotle, the famous philosopher. You know, you had Socrates, a.k.a. Socrates, Plato, then Aristotle. Alexander's private tutor was Aristotle. So the man loved, loved Greek culture. But his downfall was, is as he's taking victory after victory after victory, conquering city after city, He starts to go into these various places of the deities that those local people worship, and he starts to assume titles for himself that makes it seem like he sees himself as a god. Now this is something the Greeks completely rejected. Now of course they believed in Zeus and all these gods and having affairs with mortals and producing demigods, but no human king could claim divinity for himself. So as he's gaining greater and greater glory for himself, he's taking on these titles of divinity. And he named 70 cities after himself. Maybe it was 50. Dozens of cities after himself. Alexandria, the most famous of which is Alexandria, Egypt, where this huge library, which had been the Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, all wrapped up into one of its day. They collected writings from all over the known world. Everybody brought their scientific studies, religious books. The Jews, remember that large Jewish population in Egypt, Elephantine? Well, there was also a lot of Jews in Alexandria because people were encouraged to move there. They were state-of-the-art cities. So the Jews there are the ones who would end up translating the Old Testament, which was written in Hebrew, into a language that everybody of their day could read, which was what? Greek. Which, Greek. So, all these, Alexander... When was Hebrew dead? It died during the Babylonian captivity. During those two or three generations that were born and grew up in, it was gone. They didn't know it. The old people knew it. So if you were 10 when you were taken, you were 80 when you came back. Most people back then didn't live that long. So there had been a handful of Octarians that spoke Hebrew some of the uh religious leaders to people that family you know families were super orthodox they would make sure their kids knew it ezra was not 80 but he knew hebrew so but the number overall the common person didn't speak hebrew after the captivity it took 70 years to pretty much wipe it out has daniel written all in hebrew or is it different languages with different different languages so hebrew was still Yeah, the first there's there's a very clear line in Daniel Yeah, it starts in Hebrew chapter 1 I think the first half of chapter 2 are written in Hebrew Yeah, the prophecies are written in Hebrew So there's a part where it says in Daniel answered in Aramaic and from that point forward is in Aramaic Yeah, the prophecies are written in Hebrew. It wasn't completely dead. Not everybody could read it. Yeah, but the scholars knew it. It wasn't spoken in Jerusalem post. When everybody came back they all spoke Aramaic except for Maybe a few who could then translate what was brought to Alexandria. Which is why they had no idea what the law said. It wasn't Ezra who read it and they all cried because they were like, oh, snap. Yeah, like, oh, we need to, we're not supposed to. We haven't done any of those things. Let me know how. I never thought about it. Maybe there was a language barrier at that point. I just assumed it was lost or whatever. Lazy. When was the Bible translated from Hebrew to Greek? Was that 300 BC or in that same time? Was that when it was done? Because they still had the scholar there? Yeah, I don't have that date of when the Septuagint was written. I want to say it was like 300 something BC when the Persian fell, right? Correct. Okay. So when the Greek came in, so there still had to be some Hebrew. Yes, there's still people who spoke it. Yeah, just if you went to a group of kids playing and started speaking to them in Hebrew, they might just stare at you like, I understand a few words that you're saying, but I can't discuss religion and politics with you in Hebrew. Google says that the Septuagint was written between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC. So what Google says. I'll just say it. That'll give us a ballpark. Yeah, ballpark. When they all came storming back and started burying people who weren't of Jewish descent, were those leftovers from the people that Joshua didn't destroy? Some of them probably would have been. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a vacuum. Says whoever was around there when they noticed there's no one there in that very nice city. Where'd Bob go? Yeah. Bob's got him. Bob has a nice house. Mine. Dance. Squatter. Dance. That's exactly. Bunch of squatters. And the Samaritans were a big part of that, because they're just north of the border. So... And did the Samaritans have the same feeling toward the Jews, or did they just like... Well, they didn't. There was no love loss. There was no love loss between them. Remember the Jews, when Jesus got there, remember he meets the woman at the well? Yeah. And she's like, you know, our fathers say that we'll worship on this mountain, but you guys say we can only worship in Jerusalem. And there's already this difference. The Samaritans had their own copy. of the Septuagint. It's called the Samaritan Septuagint. There's not one Septuagint. There's multiple Septuagints. So the legend is that the 70 scholars got together and they produced the entire Septuagint in 70 days or something ridiculous like that. No, that is just a legend that was created to promote. I think it's 70. The 70. What's that? No, no, St. Nick was 80. Santa Claus was later. Santa Claus is the guy who punched Arius in the face at the council. Was it Nicaea? Yeah, yeah. The people who wrote the Septuagint aren't... I didn't find anything that said, you know, Eleazar and Daniel III or anything like that did the Septuagint. Just 70 people. But that's legend. What preserved all of the Old Testament before it got to Alexandria? Well, they did have it written in scrolls. But these people back then would memorize tons of stuff. So temple gets destroyed, everyone leaves Jerusalem. What were their manuscripts that were hauled off that were then brought back? The details, I don't know. We do know that they had it written down because some of the kings of Judah, the godly nation, when they forgot the law, and good King Josiah, was it Josiah who discovered it? Yes. And he read it, and the people hadn't heard it. So it was written down. Sure. But even when they were, you know, a godly nation, they left it. So they had writing, it was written down in scrolls, it was not found in a book like what we have now. Sure. So they did have written documents. But back then, it was not uncommon for people to memorize massive passages of Scripture. They would shame all of us today with what they would memorize. They had to. It was very expensive to have anything handwritten. To copy the Bible, Before the printing press came around, it would take about 10 months to a year by hand to write this out. So if you wanted a copy of a Bible, you're gonna pay a scribe a year's salary to get it. So this would be a $22,000 book right here. Yeah. The common person didn't have their own copy of the scripture. So what did they do? They memorized it. And this is something that's lost in America. Even recently, they would tell stories about what people would do in the 1800s, like the school kids were required to do. They would have to memorize chapters. They would recite their lessons. Yes, recite. Get up there and just talk. And for 30 minutes, they would just read off what they had memorized. It's something that's lost in our culture, and we can't even fathom having to do that today. Because we can go, hey Siri, when was the Septuagint written? I mean if you want me you can't afford this you can't afford it you want to know the God's Word you go listen to it and you memorize it So, long story short, they either had copies or made new copies of the Old Testament that was written in Hebrew and they, during the intertestinal period at Alexandria, it got translated into Greek, which is what would have been later translated into English. Correct, correct. they were able to rebuild, because I'm sure they weren't, if they didn't have copies of all those scrolls laying next to each other, they had to rebuild that library, if you will, to make it complete to be able to translate. Yeah, what other gaps they had in actual documentation would have had to have been from memory. But, I mean, the Jews were, they did value their scrolls, so they, it would make sense to me, again, I don't know the details, that they would have when they went to exile, Daniel probably took with him writing, because he had the copy of the book of Jeremiah. So, because he references it. So yeah, they would have, they had their means of preserving it. I don't know what to extent, I can't speak authoritatively on that, but they had it written down. So Alexander spreads Greek culture, names all these cities after himself. They are built, all these Alexandrians, for the sole purpose of promoting Greek culture. Now, Alexander did not force anybody to start worshiping Zeus or Poseidon or any of that stuff, but he wanted them to learn Greek. And he was extremely successful in it. Because, so on the way back, when he went to the India River, his army says, we're done. Legend says Alexander wept because there were no more lands to conquer. He turned around and went back. He dies mysteriously on the way back. He never makes it back to Greece or Macedonia. He has no viable heir. He has a wife. I think she was Persian. who had an infant son, but she is killed very quickly along with the newborns. And Alexander on his deathbed even said, To the strongest goes my empire. He didn't even leave it to his son or anything. He said, to the strongest goes my empire. So his wife and kid were killed quickly after he died? Very quickly, yeah. Within like two weeks. Which is not uncommon in the ancient world. Because you've got to kill the bloodlines. Destroy the whole empire. Otherwise, in 20 years, the son's like, hey, yo, my turn. I'm the rightful heir. You killed my father. Prepare to die. So Alexander dies. To the strongest goes my empire. Now, that is Alexander's stupid statement because what was always important for a king to have is a male heir to the throne for the sole purpose of not having a war after his death. So when Alexander dies and says something as stupid as, to the strongest goes my empire, what would you expect to happen? people to fight, because I would like to find out who the strongest is. So there are four generals. So remember that Daniel's vision was that great horn at the height of his power is broken off and four other large horns come up, though not to the extent of the first. So these four generals take over the empire. I am not going to try to pronounce their names. The two that I can pronounce are Ptolemy and Seleucus. And it is a surprisingly bloodless affair. I mean, I'm not saying people didn't die, but there's no... Yeah. Correct. As far as massive armies fighting each other. Because let's say for argument's sake, okay, Alexander dies, okay? You're what Alexander? You die. I, Matt, Chris, and Nate are the generals, and we all kind, we were already in charge of regions, and now There's no Alexander. Alexander has no heir. I have my armies in Egypt. Hey, I want to rule Egypt. Anybody got a problem with that? And Matt's right next to me in a... And Syria, that's like, nah, not really, because if I go to war with you, even if I beat you, I've still lost a lot of people, then Nate will attack me. But if Nate attacks him, Nate's gonna lose a lot of people, so then Chris can just kind of take over. So there's this uneasy alliance of these four generals who become kings in their own right that divide up Alexander's empire. Yes. It's all like rock, paper, scissors, but there's four of us. and just go after him. Yeah, but always someone stabs the other person in the back. They're Greeks. They stand at the end of the battle, and then all of a sudden, someone's getting stabbed into the ribs. So that's where we're going to stop because it's 740. Alexander is dead. Four generals end up taking over. The only two that we care about are Ptolemy and Seleucus. Ptolemy controls Egypt, and Seleucus controls the region of Syria. All right, any questions about what we covered today? Today was just kind of more of a blanket history. History of blankets. All right, if nobody has any questions, I will stop the recording. We'll look at these individual Greek empires and kind of what they did and their love affair with power and how Israel is stuck in the middle.