Of all of the human empires that affected the people of Israel, the Persians did something rather unique - they permitted the return of the people of the southern kingdom of Judah, by God's command (see above verses), 70 years after their exile by the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar.

At its peak, the Persian empire reached from the India to Greece, and from the Caspian Sea to the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. The Persians are believed to have originated in Media, which today corresponds to western Iran and southern Azerbaijan. They settled in Persia, on the eastern side of the Persian Gulf.

The Persians were Aryans, speaking one of the eastern Indo-European group of languages. Two lines developed from an early leader, Teispes, who had conquered Elam in the time of the decline of the Assyrian Empire - one line in Anzan, the other in Persia. Cyrus II, king of Anzan, united the nation, and conquered Media, Lydia, and Babylonia. His son, Cambyses, took Egypt, which was later ruled by Darius, the son of Hystaspes. Persepolis (see map) was an ancient city of Persia that served as a ceremonial capital for Darius and his successors.

From a Biblical perspective, the Persians were a link in the chain of human empires that molded Bible History - the Egyptians (see The Ancient Egyptians) from which the Exodus occurred, the Assyrians (see Ancient Empires - Assyria) who conquered the "Lost Ten Tribes," the Babylonians who conquered the southern Kingdom of Judah (see Why Babylon?), the Persians who permitted the return to Jerusalem, the Greeks (see Ancient Empires - Greece) who covered much of the time between the Old and New Testaments, and the Romans (see Ancient Empires - Rome) who covered the time of Jesus Christ and beyond (see Daniel's Statue).

Fact Finder: Which Persian (Mede) king conquered the Babylonian King Belshazzar after the famous "handwriting on the wall" incident?
Daniel 5:30-31

Plus much, much more on the same CD! Bible Maps Over 70 detailed full-color Bible study maps. Christian Music Enjoy the magnificent sound of over 1,900 hymns (midi computer format) Biblical Clipart Over 200 beautiful Biblical graphics (.jpg and .gif) Classic Works of Biblical History The Works of Philo, Complete and Unabridged (.txt format) The Works of Josephus, Complete and Unabridged (.txt format) Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (.txt format) Hebrew and Greek Alphabets The Hebrew alphabet of the Old Testament, and the Greek alphabet of the New Testament, with equivalent sounds in English.

How To Receive Your Daily Bible Study CD
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This ministry web site, with thousands of Bible studies (including a new study added every day, 365 days a year) is always freely available for everyone. As such, this Daily Bible Study has become a very expensive time and financial commitment for the author and the publisher. Every study, that takes you only minutes to read, takes many hours of work to write, format and technically make available and maintain on the web server. Without help, it would be impossible for this Daily Bible Study web site to continue. That is the simple reality of the situation.

We are not "selling" CDs. The CD is our humble thank you gift to the faithful who realize the importance of making Bible-based Christian teaching available to "all the world" as Christ commanded His servants to do. The map is an actual Daily Bible Study server statistics "snap shot" of visitors to Daily Bible Study at 7 am local time recently. The green bars represent the percentage of visitors to the web site (where on the planet requested pages were being sent to) at that moment in the entire time zone directly above the green bar. The graphic constantly changes through the day like a rolling wave across the world's time zones.

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God bless you!