The king of Persia from 486 to 465 BC. He inherited the throne from his father, Darius; his son Artaxerxes was king during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. In the Bible Xerxes is called “Ahasuerus” (though the NIV and some other versions use “Xerxes”), a Hebrew equivalent (’akhasherosh) of his Persian name. Esther (Hadassah) was wed to Xerxes in 479 BC and became queen (Esther 2:17), and thus she was in a position to save the Jewish nation from the annihilation plotted by Haman (Esther 4:12 17). Additionally, the “enemies of Judah and Benjamin” (Ezra 4:1) wrote a letter to Xerxes when the Jews began rebuilding God’s temple in Jerusalem.

In 1 2 Kings there are eighteen references to the “book of the annals of the kings of Israel” (e.g., 1 Kings 14:19; 15:31) and fifteen to the “book of the annals of the kings of Judah” (e.g., 1 Kings 14:29; 15:7). These (now lost) works may identify sources from which information was extracted or at least where further information about a king may be obtained.

A kingdom signifies the reality and extent of a king’s dominion or rule (Gen. 10:10; 20:9; Num. 32:33; 2 Kings 20:13; Esther 1:22). Some kingdoms were relatively small; others were concerted attempts to gain the whole world.

A kingdom presupposes monarchy, rule by an individual, human authority. Although kings only have as much authority as their armies and the general populace allow, they nevertheless exercise an almost absolute power, which invites either profound humility or hubris. Royal arrogance, unfortunately, is the primary motif characterizing kings in the Bible (e.g., Dan. 3).

God originally intended Israel to be governed as a theocracy, ruled by the one, true, living God (but see Gen. 17:6; Deut. 17:14 20). Israel was to be a “kingdom of priests” (Exod. 19:6), but the people demanded a king (1 Sam. 8:1–22). However, even when God granted their request, God remained King over the king and even retained ownership of the land (Lev. 25:23, 42, 55). The Israelite king was nothing more than God’s viceroy, with delegated authority. With few exceptions, most of the kings of Israel and Judah were corrupted by authority and wealth and forgot God (1 Sam. 13:13–14; 15:28; Matt. 14:6–11). But God made a covenant with David, so that one of his descendants would become a coregent in a restored theocracy, the kingdom of God (2 Sam. 7:1–29; Pss. 89:3; 132:11). In contrast to David’s more immediate descendants, this coming king would return to Jerusalem humble and mounted on a donkey (Zech. 9:9; cf. Isa. 62:11). The Gospels present Jesus Christ as this king (Matt. 21:1–9 pars.). Those who are likewise humble will inherit the land with him (Matt. 5:5).

Israel shared the cosmology of its ancient Near Eastern neighbors. This worldview understood the earth as a “disk” upon the primeval waters (Job 38:13; Isa. 40:22), with the earth having four rims or “corners” (Ps. 135:7; Isa. 11:12). These rims were sealed at the horizon to prevent the influx of cosmic waters. God speaks to Job about the dawn grasping the edges of the earth and shaking the evil people out of it (Job 38:12 13).

Israel’s promised land was built on the sanctuary prototype of Eden (Gen. 13:10; Deut. 6:3; 31:20); both were defined by divine blessing, fertility, legal instruction, secure boundaries, and were orienting points for the world. Canaan was Israel’s new paradise, “flowing with milk and honey” (Exod. 3:8; Num. 13:27). Conversely, the lack of fertile land was tantamount to insecurity and judgment. As Eden illustrated for Israel, any rupture of relationship with God brought alienation between humans, God, and the land; this could ultimately bring exile, as an ethically nauseated land “vomits” people out (Lev. 18:25, 28; 20:22; see also Deut. 4; 30).

For Israel, land involved both God’s covenant promise (Gen. 15:18–21; 35:9–12) and the nation’s faithful obedience (Gen. 17:1; Exod. 19:5; 1 Kings 2:1–4). Yahweh was the earth’s Lord (Ps. 97:5), Judge (Gen. 18:25), and King (Ps. 47:2, 7). Both owner and giver, he was the supreme landlord, who gifted the land to Israel (Exod. 19:5; Lev. 25:23; Josh. 22:19; Ps. 24:1). The land was God’s “inheritance” to give (1 Sam. 26:19; 2 Sam. 14:16; Ps. 79:1; Jer. 2:7). The Levites, however, did not receive an allotment of land as did the other tribes, since God was their “portion” (Num. 18:20; Ps. 73:26). Israel’s obedience was necessary both to enter and to occupy the land (Deut. 8:1–3; 11:8–9; 21:1; 27:1–3). Ironically, the earth swallowed rebellious Israelites when they accused Moses of bringing them “up out of a land flowing with milk and honey” (Num. 16:13). As the conquest shows, however, no tribe was completely obedient, taking its full “inheritance” (Josh. 13:1).

Media was a country located to the south of the Caspian Sea, to the east of the Tigris River and Zagros Mountains, to the west of Parthia, and to the north of Elam. The northern portion of the modern country of Iran occupies the same area, although at the height of Media’s power, the kingdom included parts of modern-day Iraq and Turkey. The best-known city was Ecbatana. The people of Media, the Medes, lived on the steppes and were known among the neighboring countries for their excellent horses.

The Medes and Media figure most prominently in the biblical books of Daniel and Esther. Daniel began his exile and rise to fame under the Babylonians but finished his prophetic career under the rule of the Medo-Persian Empire. Both Daniel and other prophets foresaw this change of governance and the Medes’ part in the conquest of Babylon (Isa. 13:17; 21:2; Jer. 51:11, 28; Dan. 5:28). The importance of the Median contribution to the culture and governance of the new empire is manifest in the fact that the Medo-Persian ruler Darius is called “the Mede” in Dan. 11:1 due to his mixed ancestry (cf. Dan. 9:1). Indeed, the idea that an established law could not be changed even by the king himself (cf. Esther 1:19) seems to be a Median contribution to the empire and was the political tool used by Daniel’s enemies to have him thrown into the lions’ den (Dan. 6:8, 12).

Many of the exiled Jews from Judah chose to settle in Media instead of return to Judah, and a portion of their story is recounted in the book of Esther. Esther 1:3 notes that “the military leaders of Persia and Media” were among those present at a great feast of Ahasuerus (Xerxes I). Similarly, in Esther 1:14 the king’s closest advisers are labeled “nobles of Persia and Media,” indicating the unity of the two countries and the cultural mix among the high officials. The same was true of the high-ranking women in the land (Esther 1:18).

Jews from Media who recognized the Median language being spoken by the Spirit-filled disciples are mentioned in Acts 2:9. Thus, although the country had ceased to be a dominant power in the world, its language and culture were still present during the NT period.

Esther’s Benjamite cousin, he lived in the Persian province of Susa due to the Jewish deportation in the Babylonian exile (Esther 2:5 7). After Esther’s parents died, Mordecai assumed a fatherly role in raising the child, and in time he played an influential role in Esther’s initial rise to prominence and in the deliverance of the Jews from imminent death at the hand of Haman. Mordecai also alerted King Xerxes (Ahasuerus) to a potential threat on his life, resulting in his own exaltation.

The history of the Persians and their rulers prior to their emergence in biblical, Greek, and Mesopotamian history remains poorly understood, but probably they had come to the Iranian plateau from central Asia around 1000 BC, roughly the time of the emergence of monarchic Israel in the Levant.

As a political entity, the Persians appear in ancient Near Eastern history around 550 BC, when the Persian leader Cyrus II (“the Great”) defeated the Medes (another Iranian people to whom the Persians had been subject) and seized their capital at Ecbatana, along with their royal treasure. Cyrus claimed descent from a line of Achaemenid kings going back to the second half of the seventh century BC and founded by Cyrus I (“of Anshan”). The term “Achaemenid” refers to a yet more distant, and possibly legendary, ancestor Achaemenes, who putatively lived around 700 BC. Cyrus then turned toward the territory of the Lydian (Greek) king Croesus in modern western Turkey, which he conquered with the fall of Sardis and the defeat of Croesus around 546 BC. Cyrus’s territorial gains in Anatolia would remain a part of the Persian Empire until the time of Alexander the Great.

Following this western campaign, which would set the stage for two centuries of Greco-Persian rivalry, Cyrus returned to Mesopotamia, where he marched against the Neo-Babylonian Empire of Nabonidus, taking advantage of a falling out between Nabonidus and the inhabitants of Babylon (Nabonidus had controversially removed images of Marduk from their rightful place in Babylon). It is at this point that the history of the Persian Empire intersects dramatically with biblical history, for Cyrus’s capture of the capital Babylon in the fall of 539 BC came only half a century after the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II had sacked Jerusalem and exiled the elite inhabitants of the southern kingdom of Judah to Mesopotamia, including a group that was brought to Babylon itself. Like the priests of Marduk (the chief Babylonian deity), who in the Cyrus Cylinder inscription lauded Cyrus for delivering them from the impious Nabonidus and restoring the proper worship of Marduk in Babylon, the Hebrew Bible speaks fondly of Cyrus as the restorer of the Jewish people from exile. It was Cyrus, according to 2 Chron. 36:23; Ezra 1:2 4, who mandated that a group of Judeans return to their homeland and reestablish their capital Jerusalem and the temple of their deity, Yahweh. Isaiah 45:1 speaks of Cyrus as Yahweh’s “anointed” and suggests a personal and intimate relationship between the king and the God of Israel. In terms of the biblical periodization of Israelite history, the edict of Cyrus marked the end of the exilic period and the beginning of what modern scholars term the “Persian period” of Israelite and Jewish history.

Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses II, who conquered Egypt before his death in 522 BC. Darius succeeded Cambyses through a palace intrigue in which he emerged over Cyrus’s son Bardiya (also known as Smerdis or Gaumata). The circumstances of Darius’s succession remain unclear in several respects. He was not in the royal line, yet in his own monuments he insists that it was his rivals who were usurpers and that he was the rightful claimant of the throne. Under Darius (“the Great”), the Achaemenid Empire reached its greatest geographical extent. He organized the empire into twenty-two administrative districts, or “satrapies,” and built up a vast network of roads and cities. The lands of biblical Israel fell into a large satrapy known as “Beyond the River,” or “Trans-Euphrates” (see, e.g., Ezra 4:10). Darius is remembered in the Bible as renewing Cyrus’s order for the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple. The decree of Darius is represented in Ezra 6:1–15. As a result of his attention to the matter, the temple was completed during his reign, in 515 BC (Ezra 6:15). Daniel 5:31 portrays Darius (“the Mede,” not “the Persian”; see also Dan. 9:1, which reaffirms Darius’s Median ethnicity while making him the son, not the father, of Ahasuerus/Xer-xes), not Cyrus, as the conqueror of Babylon (though it is Belshazzar, not Nabonidus, who loses his kingdom).

Darius was succeeded by his son Xerxes, who in 481 BC led a vast army across the Bosphorus into Greece. He was turned back by a series of defeats and was assassinated in 465 BC. Neither Xerxes nor his successors managed to expand the empire beyond the achievement of Darius. The Bible mentions Xerxes (Ahasuerus) at Ezra 4:5–6 and alludes to him at Dan. 11:2. Artaxerxes appears in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah (e.g., Ezra 4:7; Neh. 2:1); however, the identification of this figure is controversial, whether he is Artaxerxes I (r. 464–424 BC), Artaxerxes II (r. 405–359 BC), or even Artaxerxes III (r. 359–338 BC). Moreover, it is debated whether Ezra and Nehemiah were contemporaries (i.e., living under the same king Artaxerxes), and which one of them preceded the other in his mission. Moreover, it is unclear from ancient versions whether the king in the book of Esther is meant to be Xerxes (Ahasuerus) or Artaxerxes I (so the LXX).

The Achaemenid Empire fell in 330 BC, during the reign of Darius III, whom Alexander the Great defeated decisively at Gaugamela in 331 BC.

In the ancient biblical world, tribute was a payment made by one state to another, which was a mark of subjugation. The state required to pay the tribute (the vassal) often was a conquered people. The payment could consist of precious metals, currency, commodities, animals, and even human beings. Tribute allowed the sovereign state (the suzerain) to increase residual capital and gain large amounts of valuable materials, at the same time impoverishing and severely weakening the subjugated state (making future rebellions unlikely). Its administration was straightforward: every year the vassal was required to bring tribute to the suzerain. If such a payment was not made, it was a tacit sign of rebellion, and the suzerain sent a military force to punish the rebels.

At times, Israelite kings had occasions to impose tribute on other nations (e.g., 2 Sam. 8:2, 6; 1 Kings 4:21; 2 Chron. 17:11; cf. Ezra 4:20). However, in most instances described in the Bible, Israel appears to be on the other side of the tributary arrangement and makes monetary payments to foreign nations. Some of these instances are clear examples of Israel paying regular tribute payments to their overlord (e.g., Judg. 3:15; 2 Kings 23:33; Ezra 4:13), while others refer to bribes paid to foreign nations in order to secure military assistance against another enemy (1 Kings 15:18; 2 Kings 16:8) or settlement payments made to an attacker in exchange for its withdrawal (2 Kings 12:18; 18:15 16). On other occasions, the wealth of Israel is taken by foreign monarchs as spoils of war rather than as regular tribute (e.g., 1 Kings 14:26; 2 Kings 24:13–14). However, in nearly all these circumstances such payments resulted in Israel being required to give regular tributary payments thereafter to the foreign monarch.

The NT and the OT have considerably different but partially overlapping textual histories. For clarity, it is best to begin with a survey of the NT manuscripts and versions.

New Testament

Greek texts. Although no autographs of the NT books survive, there exist more than five thousand Greek texts covering anywhere from a portion of a few verses up to the complete NT. Traditionally, these texts have been classified into five groups: papyri, uncials, minuscules, lectionaries, and quotations in patristic texts.

The earliest texts of the NT are those written on papyrus. Ninety-eight of these manuscripts have been identified. The second category of manuscripts is the uncials, which usually were written on parchment and span the fourth through the tenth centuries. About 270 uncials are known, and they range from a few verses up to complete copies of the NT or even the entire Bible. The third category of NT manuscripts is minuscules. These texts date from the ninth century and later and comprise approximately 2,800 manuscripts, which are denoted by a number not beginning with zero.

Versions. With the spread of Christianity during the time of the Roman Empire, the NT was translated into the language of the native peoples. These versions of the NT are important both for textual criticism of the NT and for the interpretive decisions that are reflected in how the text was rendered into a new language. Among the most important early versions of the NT are the following.

As Latin began to displace Greek as the dominant language of the empire, there was a need for a Latin version of the Bible. The earliest translation, known as the Old Latin or Itala, was made probably in the late second century, though the oldest manuscript (Codex Vercellensis) is from the fourth century. With the proliferation of Latin texts a standardized Latin translation became desirable, and in AD 382 Jerome was commissioned by Pope Damasus to provide a new translation known as the Vulgate.

Another family of NT versions is the Syriac texts. Around the late second century the four Gospels were translated into a version known as the Old Syriac. It is extant in two incomplete manuscripts that are probably fifth century. The translation that became the standard Syriac text is the Peshitta, which was produced in the early fifth century. It does not contain 2 Peter, 2 3 John, Jude, or Revelation because these were not considered canonical among the Syriac churches.

Other important versions of the NT from antiquity are the Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, and Ethiopic translations.

Old Testament

Hebrew texts. The text that has served as the basis for most modern editions and translations of the Hebrew OT is the Masoretic Text (MT), named after the Masoretes, the Jewish scribes who transmitted the text and added vocalization, accentuation, and notes to the consonantal text. The most important Masoretic manuscripts date from the end of the ninth century to the early eleventh century. Notable among these is the Leningrad Codex (AD 1008), denoted as L, which is the earliest Masoretic manuscript of the entire OT. Also important are the Aleppo Codex (c. AD 925), denoted as A, which preserves all of the OT except for most of the Pentateuch; the British Museum MS Oriental 4445 (c. AD 925), denoted as B, which contains most of the Pentateuch; and the Cairo Codex (c. AD 896), denoted C, which contains Joshua through Kings and also the Prophets.

Although these manuscripts are much later than the biblical period, their reliability was largely confirmed with the discovery of the DSS beginning in 1947. Among the Qumran library are many manuscripts of biblical books as well as biblical commentaries, apocryphal and pseudepigraphal works, and sectarian literature. All the OT books are represented among the scrolls that were found except Esther and Nehemiah, though the latter is usually presumed to have been at the end of Ezra but has not survived. The books with the most manuscripts are, in order, Psalms, Deuteronomy, and Isaiah. One of the striking characteristics of these scrolls is that they reflect a diversity of text types. For example, there is a copy of Jeremiah that is close to the Masoretic version, but also a manuscript of Jeremiah similar to the much shorter version found in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the OT).

Another Hebrew text of the OT is that of the Samaritan Pentateuch, which is the text transmitted by the Samaritans. It is similar to the MT in some respects but also has differences that reflect theological interests. The main manuscripts for the Samaritan Pentateuch are from the twelfth century.

Versions. Between the third and first centuries BC, the entire OT was translated into Greek. This version, known as the Septuagint (designated by the abbreviation LXX), became the main version of the OT used by the early church. Due to its adoption by the church, the LXX has been preserved in numerous manuscripts, including Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Vaticanus. By the late first century BC or early first century AD, there were two revisions of the Greek text: the Proto-Lucianic version and the Kaige recension. The latter aimed to revise the Greek toward closer conformity with the Hebrew text and derives its name from its peculiar tendency to translate the Hebrew word gam (“also”) with the Greek work kaige. In the second century AD three other Greek translations were made by Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus, all of which revised the Kaige recension back toward the MT.

Another important early version of the OT consists of the Targumim, which are Aramaic translations or paraphrases (and sometimes extensive elaborations) of OT books. The official Targumim for Judaism are Targum Onqelos for the Pentateuch (c. second century AD), which is quite literal, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan for the Prophets (sometime before the fourth century AD), which ranges from being quite literal to somewhat paraphrastic. Unofficial Targumim for the Pentateuch include Targum Neofiti and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. There are also various unofficial Targumim for the Writings section of the OT, except for Daniel and Ezra-Nehemiah (which are already written partly in Aramaic).

Besides the Greek and Aramaic translations, there are other important versions of the OT. Sometime in either the third or fourth century AD, the Peshitta of the OT was produced, though there is evidence that there were earlier Syriac translations of some books already circulating. Also important is a group of Latin translations known collectively as the Old Latin. These versions were produced sometime during the second century AD and were primarily made from already existing Greek translations rather than Hebrew texts. As with the NT, a later Latin translation was made by Jerome for the Vulgate.