Hebrew Voices #239 – Persia, the Bible & Free Iran: Part 1

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Dr. Thamar Gindin: Some say…

Nehemia: Did they?

Thamar: “Amestris.” It sounds like Esther.

Nehemia: It does sound like Esther. I was going to say that, yeah.

Thamar: But her father is not Jewish.

Nehemia: Yeah, but don’t people lie about their lineage?

Thamar: And also, the things that Greek historians say about her we don’t want them to say about Esther. She was very vicious.

Nehemia: Well, that sounds… I mean, how do I say this? If you look at what they say today in Greece about Israelis, they’re also pretty vicious. They’re not true. But I mean…

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Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Thamar Gindin. She’s Israel’s first cultural attache in free Iran. We’ll talk about what that means. And until Iran is free, she builds bridges between the Iranian and Israeli nations, opening eyes on both sides to see that the other side is human and that we are more similar than different. She does this by social media, mass media, and other network activity in Hebrew, English, and Persian, mostly about current affairs, in addition to lecturing and writing about pre-Islamic Iran, which I think we’ll probably spend most of the time on. Dr. Gindin is a disciple of world renowned Iranist… Iranist? Iranianist? I don’t know how…

Thamar: Iranist.

Nehemia: Iranist! Prof. Shaul Shaked, and a research fellow at Haifa University’s Ezri Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Research. Shalom, Thamar. Thamar, is it Doctor Thamar Gindin?

Thamar: Yes, it’s doctor, but in Israel we usually don’t use it.

Nehemia: Okay, wonderful. Yeah, people always try to call me Dr. Gordon, and I say, “I’m just Nehemia,” meaning you can call me that, but anyway… So, there’s a lot of things I want to talk about. And you’ve been very generous with your time, and you do a lot of programs. I’ve seen you on TikTok, and I’ve seen clips from Israeli television talking about… you know, we just had a 12-day war with Iran as we’re recording this. And you’re no doubt an expert in that. But I’m a Bible scholar, and I want to touch upon some Bible scholar subjects. But maybe let’s just…

Thamar: I just want to say that my background…

Nehemia: Yeah, tell us about that.

Thamar: It’s presently in the Tehran Museum, but it was taken from the gates of Susa, which is Shushan Habira, the winter capital of the Achaemenid kings, the ones mentioned in the Bible.

Nehemia: Okay. So, in the Book of Esther, the whole story takes place in Shushan Habira. I don’t know how it’s translated in English. Like, probably like Susa the Capital.

Thamar: Shushan the Citadel.

Nehemia: Oh, okay. So, wait, so, in the story, at least, when Mordecai is standing outside the gates and he overhears this conspiracy to assassinate Achashverosh, or Artaxerxes, or however that’s translated in English…

Thamar: Xerxes.

Nehemia: Xerxes! Oh, it’s Xerxes, okay.

Thamar: Xerxes.

Nehemia: Okay, we’re going to get to that. So, this is what he might have seen. And I know there’s some question about the historicity that we’ll talk about, but this is the gate he would have seen. Wow. All right. So, that’s very cool.

So, the Jewish people, or, let’s say, Am Israel, the people of Israel, have this very long-standing connection with Iran, and I think most people don’t realize this. In 2 Kings 17, it talks about the exile; I’m pulling up here, the exile of the Ten Tribes, what we call the Ten Lost Tribes often today. And it mentions that they were sent to this… I believe it’s the cities of Persia…

Thamar: Arei Madai, The Cities of Media.

Nehemia: Oh, the Cities of Media. Okay, let’s start with that. So, we have the Ten Tribes going to Media…

Thamar: And we’re talking about…

Nehemia: And it’s not social media, right? What is Media?

Thamar: We’re talking about something like 721-723 before the common era.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Thamar: This is the first time that Israel came in contact with Iran. Media was the previous empire before the Persian Empire. Cyrus the Great conquered Media from his grandfather, according to myth. He conquered Media, he conquered Babylon, and united them under the brand Persia.

Nehemia: What do you mean he conquered it from his grandfather? His grandfather was a Mede and he was a Persian, or what?

Thamar: Well, the legend goes… The legend is cited also by Herodotus. But Herodotus himself says that there are many birth stories, but this is the most common one.

Nehemia: Tell the audience who Herodotus was.

Thamar: Herodotus is a Greek historian. Most of what we know about Persian kings and courts we know from Greek historians; we know from things that the kings wrote themselves. I read Ahasuerus in the original.

Nehemia: Oh, wow! Wait, so Achashverosh, Ahasuerus of Book of Esther; we have things he wrote?

Thamar: Khshayarsha, yes! He wrote a lot!

Nehemia: Okay. How did you pronounce his name?

Thamar: Khshayarsha.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: Because Khshayarsha is impossible for…

Nehemia: I can’t even say it, let alone an ancient Israelite.

Thamar: It’s impossible for Israelites of that era to pronounce. They added a prosthetic vowel before, and it became Akhshayarsha, and with time…

Nehemia: Mmm…

Thamar: …and script, and because the Bible was vocalized a few hundred years after it was written down, it became Achashverosh. And in Greek they called him Xerxes, because they couldn’t pronounce Khshayarsha.

Nehemia: Okay, so these are what we call exonyms, right? So, the Greeks call him Xerxes or Xerxes, and Jews called him Achashverosh.

Thamar: It’s different ways to pronounce the same name. An exonym is Persia, because inside the country they always call themselves Iran.

Nehemia: Wait, so, Iran isn’t the modern name? In ancient times they call themselves Iran?

Thamar: The name Iran is documented before Persia. Persia is one of the Iranian countries.

Nehemia: Wow! Okay.

Thamar: Or provinces.

Nehemia: Oh, you mean it’s a province? Okay. It’s like the Americans call the Netherlands, we call it Holland, even though Holland is a district in Netherlands.

Thamar: We also call it Holland, yes.

Nehemia: Yeah, right.

Thamar: And each country calls the Greeks by a different name.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Thamar: We call it in Hebrew, and in Persian, it’s called Yavan or Younan, after Ionia, which is in present day Turkey, but was part of the Greek Empire. And the Greeks, the Greks, are another Greek tribe. But we were in Cyrus the Great…

Nehemia: Yeah. So, go ahead. Let’s go back to Cyrus. No, we were talking about Achashverosh, right? So…

Thamar: Achashverosh, Herodotus.

Nehemia: Oh, Herodotus, okay, yeah. Wait, so, how much of Persian history from that period do we have from the internal Persian sources? And how much do we have from, let’s say, the outside sources of the Greeks?

Thamar: Most of it is from outside sources. The Persian kings themselves wrote a lot but didn’t disclose too much information. There’s one story that we must discuss about Darius’ accession to the throne, and this story is documented in Greek sources and by Darius himself, in slightly different versions.

Nehemia: Okay. You know what? Can we talk for a minute about Jewish understanding of Persian history? So, there’s an ancient Rabbinical book, Seder Olam Rabbah, and when we say this year is 5700 and… are we in 85 yet, or is that coming in a few weeks?

Thamar: We’re in 85, and the next year is…

Nehemia: Ah, 86 were about to get to in a few weeks. So, that’s partially based on Seder Olam Rabbah, which tells us the Persian period was… and I want to say it was 52 years, but it’s been years since… it has some kind of some confusion about Persian history that Darius the Mede, and Dariavush, all these different figures were all the same person. And they kind of telescope all of Persian history and…

Thamar: Oh, yeah. And Chazal said they were all the same king. He was called Koresh because he was kosher. That’s Cyrus the Great…

Nehemia: [Laughter]

Thamar: And he was called… I don’t remember why they said he was called Xerxes… and they said that all the different names and Artaxerxes after his kingship… But no, we know the order…

Nehemia: Okay

Thamar: Because the Achaemenid kings, the things that they did document was the order. Okay?

Nehemia: So, the names of the specific kings we know, but some of the details we only know from outside sources. Which maybe are correct or maybe not.

Thamar: Yeah, he says, “Adam Khshayarsha… Darayavahush pusha… “I am Xerxes, son Darius, son of Vishtaspa.” He said all of the dynasty up to Hachamanish, who is the king after which the Achaemenid Empire is named.

Nehemia: Okay, tell us what Achaemenid means. I’m sure most of my audience has never heard…

Thamar: Hachamanish is the founding father. Actually, he’s not the founding father of the empire, he’s the founding father of the dynasty. Cyrus the Great was his… I don’t remember if it was his great-grandson or his great-great-grandson. I can look it up in a book that I have right by my side.

Nehemia: No, that’s sufficient for our purposes, and people can Google it as well. But um… so…

Thamar: I can also send you a family tree that you can…

Nehemia: Ooh, send that and we’ll put that on the website. So, I guess my point…

Thamar: I just want to say…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Thamar: That Cyrus the Great didn’t call himself Hachamanishya, didn’t call himself Achemenid. But Darius the Great, who was not Cyrus’s son, but a distant relative, was the first king to use the term Hachamanishya, Achemenid, to justify why he is the right person to succeed… actually, not Cyrus himself, but his sons. Cyrus had two sons, and the kingship was transferred to Darius in a story that we must address when we come to it…

Nehemia: Let me make a note so we don’t forget it.

Thamar: [Laughter]

Nehemia: It’s Darius’s ascension to the throne.

Thamar: And Darius married Cyrus’s daughter. So, Achashverosh, Ahasuerus, Xerxes, is Cyrus’s grandson, but Cyrus is his maternal great-grandfather.

Nehemia: Hmm.

Thamar: And in order to say, “We’re worthy of kingship,” he goes back, not to Chishpish, the first common ancestor he has with Cyrus the Great, but to Hachamanishya, Chishpish’s father.

Nehemia: Hmm. Okay. All right. So, we know pretty much about who the Persian kings were, and that’s from Persian sources. And, maybe we’ll talk a minute about the Behistun Inscription. I hope I’m saying that right. It’s like the Rosetta Stone of…

Thamar: Behistun.

Nehemia: It’s like the Rosetta Stone of Persian…

Thamar: It’s Darius’ ascension to the throne.

Nehemia: Okay, let’s talk about that. So, it’s this giant… I learned about this in my undergrad in the 90s in archeology, at Hebrew University, because it was like the Rosetta Stone… It’s the way they deciphered ancient Akkadian.

Thamar: Right. So, Persian was deciphered through this stone. A lot of the Achaemenid inscriptions are trilingual, written in…

Nehemia: What are the three languages?

Thamar: …Assyrian, Elamite… Elamitic, and Old Persian.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: And the way they deciphered Old Persian, they first deciphered the, like, blank space, which is cuneiform that’s like this. The second thing they deciphered was the sequence, khshayahya, king, because it was the most common word. And then from there, using Middle Persian, which was already known, and Avestan, which is another ancient Iranian language from the same generation as Old Persian, they used this and just deciphered the whole language. Luckily, Old Persian, unlike Assyrian, is not ideographic, it is like Hebrew; it has vowels and consonants. Each consonant can either be with “ah” or without, and then you have another vocalization. And they don’t have that many cuneiforms. I learned Akkadian, aka Assyrian, and it’s impossible. Each cuneiform can be read in a few ways, and each syllable can be written in a few ways. It’s very confusing.

Nehemia: Okay. All right. So, let’s jump into probably the story that most of my listeners will associate with Persia, the story of Esther, the Scroll of Esther. And you’ve written an entire book about the Scroll of Esther. I got the book both in Hebrew and in English. My understanding is that the English is not a translation, it’s a reworking of the book.

Thamar: It’s an adaptation.

Nehemia: Adaptation, okay. So…

Thamar: And the Persian is also in adaptation as we speak.

Nehemia: What do you mean?

Thamar: The Persian version of The Book of Esther Unmasked is…

Nehemia: Ah, you wrote the book in Persian, too?

Thamar: I have a linguist that I trust that adapts it, and I go over it and check it, and I tell him “Here, when I explain this in Hebrew, and this I explain in English, you explain it…”

Nehemia: Oh, that’s cool.

Thamar: “…by Persian.”

Nehemia: All right. So, the story of Esther; we could probably talk the whole time on that, but I want to talk about different subjects. You have some very interesting insights, and I don’t even know where to begin. I think where I want to begin is, one of the things that strikes me about the story, and we talk about the historicity that you have some views on, but what strikes me about it is, you get that Xerxes, or Achashverosh, is this alcoholic who has ceded his authority to Haman, to Haman, because of this character flaw he has that he just can’t control himself. And you had like a different perspective on that, about states of consciousness. And… can you talk about that?

Thamar: Right. Again, it’s not mine. I took it from the Greek historians, from Herodotus.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: I say Herodotus, but there are a few Greek historians. He’s just the most famous. The Achaemenid kings, according to Greek historians, used to make their decisions while intoxicated and then approve it when they were sober. This way, you make the decision both from your heart, or liver, as Iranians would say, and from your head, or heart, as Iranians would say. Both by mind and by intuition or feeling.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: So, every decision is supposed to be made like this. This is why he makes the decision of banishing his queen, his main queen consort, while intoxicated, and then, “k’sh’shakhecha khamat hamelekh”, “when the king’s wrath subsided”, he approves of it and remembers what he did, and starts the search…

Nehemia: So, the way it’s been interpreted in Jewish sources is that he made a bad decision, but he was stuck with it when he sobered up. And you’re saying that, “No, it actually was deliberate.” That for the decision to be considered a good idea, you have to make it drunk and then still think it’s a good idea when you’re sober. Is that what you’re saying?

Thamar: Yes. There is this loophole. I don’t know if it’s a loophole; it’s like a trap, the opposite of a loophole. We have, in the Book of Esther itself, “et ha’nechtam be’taba’at ha’melekh ein lehashiv”. “Something that was sealed with the King’s signet ring cannot be undone.” So, if it was signed, it would be problematic to undo it. This is why you shouldn’t sign decrees when you’re drunk, only when you’re sober, after you’ve thought again about it. And there’s a similar story about a decree that was signed, and then you have to respect it, also in Greek sources, about going to the Persian-Greek Wars.

Nehemia: Hmm.

Thamar: Xerxes is famous in the West for the Battle of Thermopylae, which is the battle…

Nehemia: Thermopylae, we say in American English.

Thamar: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, wait, is that the Battle of the 300? I’m bad with Greek history.

Thamar: Yes.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: With the 300 Spartans. And the Persians won, but at… what a cost. And then, they lost at Salamis because of the weather.

Nehemia: And that was the naval Battle of Salamis, right?

Thamar: Right. And the Greeks were in the harbor, and the Persian ships were in the sea, and the storm just wrecked them.

Nehemia: Hmm.

Thamar: I also wrote another book about the Book of Esther, which is a historic novel. It was translated to English but not published yet.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: We hope to publish it maybe next year. And there, we say that at the end of the Thermopylae Battle, it is said that Xerxes buried 20,000 people before he let his army pass, because he didn’t want his soldiers to see that so many Persians have died and be discouraged. Now, burying people in the ground, in the good earth, in the holy earth, is a grave sin in Zoroastrian belief. So, we said, “Okay, he sinned. He strengthened the demons and weakened the gods. No wonder he lost because of the weather at Salamis.”

Nehemia: Hmm. So, we’re going to have to talk about Zoroastrianism. That’s the other thing that I think that’s extremely important from, let’s say, understanding a Tanakh perspective. There’s a lot of things related to that in the Tanakh. And… all right, so, that’s interesting. So, it sounds to me like, from what you’re saying, Achashverosh getting drunk was a feature, not a bug. Right? Meaning…

Thamar: Right. In the Greco-Persian Wars, he signed the decree and then he regretted it. But he had a dream vision that repeated a few times of a person coming and saying, “You already signed the decree. You can’t undo it.” Then he had someone else wear his pajamas and sleep in his bed and dream his dream to make sure that it was real.

Nehemia: Wow. All right. So, talk to me about… and I’ve heard you speak about the historicity of Esther, that you don’t think it really happened. Is that right?

Thamar: Yeah. I don’t want to risk making, you know, claims that when time travel is invented, we’ll just find out that the biblical author just exaggerated a lot. But there are a few things that, well, make you suspect it didn’t happen. Like, first of all, it’s not documented anywhere. The first time the Jews are mentioned…

Nehemia: In Persian sources, you mean.

Thamar: It’s not documented anywhere outside the Bible.

Nehemia: Oh, outside the Bible.

Thamar: Not in Persian sources, not in Greek sources. And in a Greek source, you would expect the Greeks, who didn’t miss any opportunity to badmouth the Persians, to miss such an opportunity, because it’s a Persian king who allows a minority to butcher… First of all, he commands all the nations to butcher a minority and then gives that minority permission to slaughter all the others. And 75,810 people, I counted in chapter 9, is a lot even for our days. And imagine for the world, like, 2,500 years ago… By the way, it’s exactly 2,500 years ago, it will be in 2026…

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Thamar: Because the 12th year of Ahasuerus is 474 before the common era.

Nehemia: Wow, okay. Very cool.

Thamar: So, you would expect the Greeks to write something about it, even if the Persians didn’t write anything about it, because maybe, you know, it’s embarrassing.

Nehemia: It’s embarrassing, yeah. So, ancient peoples didn’t write about embarrassing… I mean, look, I interviewed…

Thamar: They did write about embarrassments of the other side.

Nehemia: Okay. Well, I…

Thamar: We don’t have…

Nehemia: I interviewed Michael Oren about the Six Day War, and he pointed something fascinating out, which is that… and this is obviously a few years back. At the time, there was only one book ever written in Syria about the Six Day War, and the person who wrote it was a Druze, and he was executed, right? And this was like maybe 5 or 10 years ago. So, it doesn’t…

Thamar: Regarding the Twelve-Day War, the Iranians found a much better solution.

Nehemia: What’s the solution?

Thamar: They say they won.

Nehemia: Oh, there you go! They lied! All right. So, it doesn’t surprise me that there wouldn’t necessarily be a lot of information from the Persians. You’re saying you’d expect it from the Greeks, though.

Thamar: From the Greeks, from the Babylonians, who kept an archive, that all the… the timing that we know exactly when… should I say Ahasuerus, Xerxes, or Achashverosh?

Nehemia: Whatever you decide. If you say Achashverosh, my audience will not know who that is, right? So, I always struggle with this.

Thamar: So, Xerxes would be best.

Nehemia: Xerxes? Sure. Yeah, sure.

Thamar: So, if we…

Nehemia: The king of the Book of Esther!

Thamar: The king of… yeah. We know exactly when he became king; it was November or December, 486 before the common era.

Nehemia: Wow, that’s specific.

Thamar: And we know that because the Babylonians kept very exact archives, and it was during that month, because before that they mentioned Darius, and after that they mentioned Xerxes. And the Babylonians didn’t say anything about it. Jews are first mentioned in Iranian sources in the 3rd century of the Common Era.

Nehemia: Wow!

Thamar: Yes.

Nehemia: Okay. Yeah, but we know there were Jews in Persia. So, there’s one of the points we struggle with in history is what we call the argument from silence.

Thamar: They weren’t that important.

Nehemia: No, but they existed, right? Meaning… oh, let me ask this; is there any dispute that there were Jews in Persia, I don’t know, in the 5th century BCE? No, but they’re not mentioned, so…

Thamar: Not really, no dispute.

Nehemia: Right. So, we have what we call, or what Chazal said, “Lo matzinu eino ra’aya. “‘We didn’t find’ isn’t proof,” right?

Thamar: Right.

Nehemia: The argument from silence doesn’t prove it didn’t happen. But you’re saying we would like to have had Greek sources, Babylonian sources. Okay, I hear what you’re saying.

Thamar: We also know that Xerxes had a wife whose name was Amestris. In Persian, it was probably Amastri; she was his wife. We know who her father was; Utana, one of the seven Persian nobles. Because Achaemenid kings were only allowed to have their queen consort from one of these seven families. So, she was the daughter of Utana, who was a Persian, not a Jew, and she outlived him. She lived well into the reign of his son Artaxerxes. Some say, “Oh, Amestris, it sounds like Esther!”

Nehemia: It does sound like Esther. I was going to say that, yeah.

Thamar: But her father is not Jewish.

Nehemia: Yeah, but don’t people lie about their lineage?

Thamar: And also, the things that Greek historians say about her, we don’t want them to say about Esther. She was very vicious.

Nehemia: Well, that sounds… I mean, how do I say this? If you look at what they say today in Greece about Israelis, they’re also pretty vicious. They’re not true, but, I mean, yeah. So… All right, so, I don’t know that we can say definitively that Esther isn’t true, that the Esther story didn’t happen. That’s what I’m hearing.

Thamar: Oh, we can’t say anything definitively until time travel is invented.

Nehemia: Okay, fair enough. All right.

Thamar: The story is suspiciously similar to the accession of Darius to the throne…

Nehemia: Oh, let’s talk about that!

Thamar: …that is also documented in the Behistun Inscription that you mentioned.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: This inscription describes his accession to the throne.

Nehemia: All right.

Thamar: And the Greek historians elaborate on it and add things that are not in the inscription itself.

Nehemia: Let me ask this; so, there’s a number of Darius’s. We have Darius mentioned in the Book of Zecharia, or Zechariah. Is that this Darius? Or is it a different Darius?

Thamar: I’m not sure about this Darius, but there have been three.

Nehemia: So, one of the Darius’s. So, tell us the story of his ascension.

Thamar: I’m talking about Darius the Great, who’s Darius I.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: In Persian, Darayavahush, “The person who carries the good”.

Nehemia: That’s what it means? Okay.

Thamar: Yes. In Hebrew he’s called Daryavesh.

Nehemia: Okay. So, how did he ascend to the throne? What’s the story in the Behistun and Greek sources?

Thamar: He wasn’t king; the king was Cyrus’s son, after Cyrus’s son, Kambujiya, called Cambyses in Greek sources, succeeded him. And he was really crazy; we’re not getting into it, but it’s another interesting story.

Nehemia: You mean he was crazy, like, he was, like, mentally ill or something? Is that what you mean?

Thamar: He was a psychopath.

Nehemia: Okay. He was like a Nero type figure, or something? What are we saying?

Thamar: When he had a dispute with one of his servants, he said, “Okay, bring your son. I’ll shoot an arrow. If I hit his heart, I’m right. And if I don’t hit his heart, you’re right.” And he killed the boy, for example. And he… when a two-headed calf was born in Egypt that was considered a god, he wounded his thigh…

Nehemia: He wounded his own thigh?

Thamar: No, the calf’s…

Nehemia: The calf’s. The calf… like a cow, you mean?

Thamar: Right.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: And if you wounded a sacred animal that’s a god, you can no longer be a god.

Nehemia: Okay. I mean, that kind of makes sense to me…

Thamar: Para aduma also has to be whole and uninjured.

Nehemia: The red heifer, yeah, okay.

Thamar: Yeah, red heifer.

Nehemia: All right.

Thamar: He was crazy, you know.

Nehemia: I don’t know if that’s psychopathic. Killing the son… that’s like a Kim Jong… whatever that guy’s name in Korea, kind of thing. But I don’t know; wounding the animal to show he’s not a god, that makes a lot of sense.

Thamar: Another thing that Herodotus says is that he convinced his father to allow him to marry his sister. But knowing Zoroastrian religion, it’s a commandment; it’s like one of the best things you can do if you want to go to heaven.

Nehemia: Is to marry your sister?

Thamar: Yeah. Your sister, your daughter…

Nehemia: Wait a minute! We’ll get back to Zoroastrianism; tell us about the ascension of Darius, the son of Cambyses.

Thamar: And we’ll get back to next of kin marriage.

Nehemia: Wow, all right.

Thamar: Okay. So, Cyrus had two sons. Kambujiya succeeded him. He was a little bit crazy. One night, he had a dream. He misinterpreted it, and accidentally sent a messenger… He was in Egypt.

Nehemia: This is Cambyses, or is this Darius?

Thamar: The kings were also pharaohs.

Nehemia: Is this Cambyses we’re talking about?

Thamar: Cambyses, yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. So, the father has a dream and he’s in Egypt. All right.

Thamar: Kambujiya is in Egypt, he has a dream.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Thamar: And the dream is misinterpreted. He thinks that his brother is going to steal the throne. So, because it was misinterpreted, he accidentally sends a servant to kill his brother, because that’s what you do if your brother is to steal your throne. And then, when he’s on his way back to Susa, the dream comes true. Exactly the same messenger he saw in the dream comes and tells him, in the exact same words, that his brother is sitting on the throne. And to make a long story short, it wasn’t his brother, it was an imposter.

Nehemia: Oh.

Thamar: Not only was it an imposter, he was a Mede. And we remember that Cyrus the Great redeemed the Persians from the Medes. So, after Cyrus the Great saved the Persian nation from the Medes and started the Empire of Persia, now the Medes are going to take over, because there’s a Mede sitting on the throne. And when Kambujiya jumps on his horse to run to Susa and make things right… By the way, the palace and Susa was built afterwards, but don’t confuse Greek historians with…

Nehemia: So, the Greek historians, you’re saying, got some of the details wrong.

Thamar: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: So, he jumps on his horse to go back to Susa, and he has an accident; his sword, for some reason, gets into his thigh in the same place where he wounded the Egyptian god.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: And we’re talking before the invention of antibiotics. After two weeks, he dies from the wound. And before he dies, he tells the Persian nobles that he misinterpreted a dream and killed his brother by accident, and the person sitting on the throne claiming to be his brother is actually an impostor. And then he dies. And the servant who killed the brother won’t confess because he doesn’t have the king to back him.

Nehemia: Uh-huh.

Thamar: So, when they’re back in Susa, they don’t know if it’s the real king or the imposter, because as we remember, Kambujiya was crazy. Maybe he’s just trying to make a mess also from the afterlife. They get to Susa, and they don’t know if this is an imposter or the real king. He is acting very odd. He doesn’t invite people to see his face, to see his presence. In the Book of Esther, we have ro’ei pnei ha’melekh, those who see the king’s face. We have the servants who serve the king’s face. Not everyone could see the king’s face, but there were a few people. He didn’t invite them. He didn’t go out in public, to be seen in public. And they get suspicious, but they need proof. So, one of these nobles, Utana, who is also the father of a Amestris, the wife of Xerxes…

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: One of his daughters, Phaidyme, was married to Kambujiya, Cyrus’s first son, and then moved with the whole harem to… we don’t know, to the imposter or to the second son.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: But she is married to the present king.

Nehemia: So, this Darius is on the throne, and we don’t know if he’s the real Darius or an impostor Darius…

Thamar: No, no, no, it’s not Darius.

Nehemia: Oh, it’s not.

Thamar: No, no.

Nehemia: Who is it?

Thamar: The one on the throne…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Thamar: Okay. The Greek historians call him Smerdis, and they say that both the impostor and Cyrus’s son were Smerdis.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: In Persian, they have different names. Bardiya is the real son, and Gaumata is the imposter. I just… I want to save on names because…

Nehemia: Yeah, yeah, it’s confusing.

Thamar: Could be confusing.

Nehemia: Okay, so Darius is not on the throne yet. Someone who’s either the real son or the fake son of Cambyses is on the throne, okay, and we don’t know if he’s an imposter.

Thamar: Of Cyrus. The brother, Cambyses’s brother…

Nehemia: Oh, Cambyses brother, who’s… I am confused! Who is the son of Cyrus or pretending to be the son of Cyrus. Got it.

Thamar: Right.

Nehemia: And Cyrus is the one who gave the decree for the Jews to return to Israel. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Thamar: Right; father of the first human rights declaration.

Nehemia: Okay, that’s an interesting way of looking at it, yeah.

Thamar: So, they don’t know, but Utana’s daughter is married to the king, and he can’t talk to her directly because he’s a man and she’s in the harem. It wasn’t called harem, because harem comes from Arabic.

Nehemia: But they had something like a harem, so…

Thamar: Beit nashim; woman’s house.

Nehemia: So, let me just, let me just… Look, I believe the Esther story happened, but that’s a theological position, right? Meaning, I’m not saying that as an academic. How do we know Esther wasn’t maybe one of the… what do you call it? Harem concubines or something?

Thamar: Oh, she could have been. She could have been.

Nehemia: Oh, okay. And maybe she was a very influential… What’s that?

Thamar: Yeah. She wasn’t the main queen as presented in the book.

Nehemia: Unless she’s Amastri, which you’re saying isn’t possible.

Thamar: And I also, I say, maybe it happened, and just the biblical author exaggerated, you know? It wasn’t 75,000, it was 75. It wasn’t in all the king’s kingdoms; it was only in Susa. We don’t really know. We can always say the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Nehemia: Well, let me ask. So, I want to get back to this…

Thamar: I didn’t finish the story.

Nehemia: Let’s finish the story of the ascension of Darius. So, Cyrus has a son, and either he’s on the throne or it’s an impostor pretending to be the son as the brother of Cambyses, the meshugena.

Thamar: As his brother, Cambyses the meshugena…

Nehemia: Okay. [Laughter]

Thamar: And the father can’t talk to his daughter directly because he’s a man, and she’s in the woman’s house.

Nehemia: He can’t talk to his own daughter? Ah, because they have kin marriage. We’ll talk about that.

Thamar: No. He sits at the king’s gate, and he talks to her…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Thamar: …by a eunuch, via a eunuch.

Nehemia: Ah, that’s in Esther’s story, too. Okay, wow.

Thamar: And their talk goes like this. He asks her via the eunuch, “Is the man that you share your bed with Cyrus’s son or someone else?” And she says, “I don’t know. I haven’t met him before I was married to him.” So, he says, “Okay, but all the women are together. You can ask Hutausa, the daughter of Cyrus the Great, who was married to her brother Kambujiya, then moved with the whole harem to either the other brother or the impostor. You can ask her. She obviously knows who her brother is.”

Nehemia: Wait. So, just to be clear, the concubines of Cambyses go to have sex with the man who is supposedly the brother of Cambyses?

Thamar: When a king dies, the harem goes to his successor.

Nehemia: Okay! Well, we have something like that in the Book of Samuel, but…

Thamar: Right.

Nehemia: …yeah, that’s weird. All right, go on.

Thamar: So, she says, “But no, he split us up. We’re not together, we can’t talk to each other.” And this makes him very, very suspicious. And he says, “You know what? When your turn comes to be with the king, be’hagia tor na’ara vena’ara, when your turn comes, feel under his curls, because the imposter, the person we suspect is the imposter, doesn’t have ears. Cambyses cut them off as some punishment or in some rage attack, and the son of Cyrus would have ears. So, just feel under his curls next time after he falls asleep, and if he doesn’t have ears, let me know.” She says, “But if he wakes up and feels that I’m feeling under his ears, under his curls, and he is the imposter, he’ll kill me.” And he said, “But you’re our only hope. The freedom of your people depends on you.”

Nehemia: That sounds like the Esther story, too. All right.

Thamar: Yes.

Nehemia: Wow! All right. Oh, I see. You’re saying there’s an actual story that’s being told in the Behistun Inscription, by the Greeks, and the…

Thamar: In the Behistun Inscription, there is no girl.

Nehemia: Ah, there isn’t, okay. So, there’s some Greek sources…

Thamar: He talks about Kambuijiya and Bardia, the sons, and he talks about the imposter, and then he says, “I and other people went,” but he doesn’t say how they got to realize that he’s not the king…

Nehemia: The woman doesn’t get the credit. Got it.

Thamar: This is from the Greeks.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: So, he says, “You have to do it.” And she said, “Okay, I will go and I will save my people.” Ve’ka’asher avadti avadti.

Nehemia: “If I am lost, I am lost,” is what it says in Esther.

Thamar: “If I’m lost, I’m lost,” that’s from Esther, but she basically said more or less the same things. And the morning after her turn comes, she goes and informs her father that the person sitting on the throne has no ears.

Nehemia: Hmm.

Thamar: So, Utana goes and gathers six other Persian nobles; together they’re seven. Which is, you know, a good number in Zoroastrianism. And…

Nehemia: Really? Seven has a significance…

Thamar: Yeah, everything in Zoroastrianism is seven. It’s a typological number.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: So, they are seven, and they go; Darius, the Achaemenid, is the last to join them. And they go together and they kill the impostor, and they kill his brother, who was the servant who helped him sit on the throne. And they kill all the other Medes, and they run around with their heads in the streets and encourage more Persians to kill more Medes. And, at least until the 4th century, which is about… it’s more than a hundred years after this incident, they still celebrated, on that day, a very odd holiday called in Greek, it’s Magophonia, I think in Persian it’s Magukauwan, protector of the clergy, because clergy were not allowed on the street on that day. If they go on the street, they might get beaten up. Because the Mede impostor in Darius’s story, he was a Magu.

Nehemia: So, he was a Zoroastrian priest?

Thamar: Yes.

Nehemia: What in the Christian world, they’re called the Magi, right? Which is plural…

Thamar: Right. Magi is the plural of magus in Persian, or Avestan, it’s Magu.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: And ask me when that holiday was.

Nehemia: Was it on the…

Thamar: When the event took place.

Nehemia: Was it in Adar, on the 14th day, or…

Thamar: No.

Nehemia: Oh, when was it?

Thamar: It was in the 10th day of Bagayadi, which is the equivalent of Tishrei.

Nehemia: Oh, so it’s on what was Yom Kippur in Judaism. Wow.

Thamar: Yes.

Nehemia: Okay. So, how do you explain that? What’s the explanation there?

Thamar: The explanation is new year’s myths in the ancient world. In the ancient world, before the new year, it’s not like… you know, we’re pretty sure that the new year will start.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: Our ancient forefathers were not so sure that the new year will start. The world was always in danger. This is also until today. In Elul there is Selichot, in Yom Kippur, you know, all the fortunes are signed and decided. It’s very…

Nehemia: Yeah, but I think in Judaism… let’s say in Judaism, as it’s evolved over the centuries, because there was no significance to Elul, you know, thousands of years ago, right? So, what you mentioned there, I’m just telling for the audience, Selichot are these prayers of forgiveness that are recited for 40 days leading up to Yom Kippur, beginning in the sixth month, Elul.

Thamar: Yeah, so…

Nehemia: But that’s kind of a later tradition, isn’t it? Or are you saying it has some parallel in Zoroastrianism?

Thamar: It has very, very deep roots.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: In the ancient days, on Yom Kippur the Jews didn’t fast. It was the grand priest, Kohen Gadol.

Nehemia: Right, the high priest.

Thamar: The high priest who used to go into the Holy of Holies, and everybody was afraid because nobody knew if he would come out of it alive. He went to atone for the sins of everybody. But the 10th or 13th day of the year is always the ominous day, and the new year is either around the autumn equinox or spring equinox, or the longest night of the year.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: So, the 13th day or the 10th day is ominous, and for the world to be saved, God, or God’s representative, has to die. And God’s representative is usually the king, or a prophet, or God’s son, if you’re a Christian, but you usually don’t kill the king. So, all these holidays had stories about an alternative king. Haman had the signet ring, but he wasn’t the king.

Nehemia: Right.

Thamar: This king was not the real king, not really Cyrus’s son.

Nehemia: As Americans say, he just played one on TV, right?

Thamar: Yeah.

Nehemia: Meaning, like, he was, he was the viceroy, effectively, the second to the king.

Thamar: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, are you saying that Magophonia, this holiday in the Zoroastrian world, or maybe in the Persian world…

Thamar: Persian.

Nehemia: …goes back to some maybe ancient early pagan idea? But then they made up a story about the assassination…

Thamar: Yeah. They also suspect that Darius’s story is not true, you know?

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: I think there were rumors that he’s not the legitimate king; he killed Cyrus’s son. Also, the period that the imposter sat on the throne is either three or seven months, which is also typological numbers. It’s too… you know…

Nehemia: Yeah, but it kind of rings true in the sense that, if there really is a King Darius who’s overthrowing his… the previous king, you’re going to make up a story that, “Well, I killed him because he was a faker,” right?

Thamar: Yeah.

Nehemia: Meaning, isn’t that what someone would do? And maybe some of the details have been exaggerated or made up, that sounds right. But…

Thamar: And maybe it wasn’t really in the 10th day of Bagayadi, but they wrote it…

Nehemia: They latched on to that day. And so, this is a genuine question for me; if you don’t believe, and I’m not saying you don’t… but if one doesn’t believe that the Esther story took place, where did this holiday come from? Maybe you’ve just explained it, but it’s on the 14th and 15th day of the twelfth month.

Thamar: It’s in that, all new year’s holidays have in their myths, there’s, you know, the death of the king’s representative or someone on his behalf. Like, not Pharaoh, but all his hosts, and all the firstborns. Not God, but Jesus. Not Allah, but Imam Hussein. On the 10th day of…

Nehemia: I don’t know enough about that to fully understand it, but…

Thamar: The Ashura, the 10th day of the Muslim year…

Nehemia: So, that’s where the Shiites celebrate the death of their founder, or something?

Thamar: “Celebrate…” Mourn!

Nehemia: Or they observe… oh, is that where they hit themselves in the head with swords?

Thamar: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. Which is very interesting… Yeah.

Thamar: And there are always holidays… because there’s a temporary king, in many cultures it was someone from death row who would become king for a very limited time and then killed.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: And if someone from the death row is king… the king used to sit in the field, which we also sing in Elul… some Jewish people sing in Elul, “ha’melekh ba’sadeh”, “the king is in the field”.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: Because at that time the king goes to sit in the field and he’s more accessible…

Nehemia: Hmm. As opposed to being in the palace.

Thamar: Yeah. The myth also needs some bloodshed. That we have in Egypt, and we have in the Book of Esther, and we have in Darius’s accession to the throne, and in a lot of other holidays, in the Ashura…

Nehemia: You know, I…

Thamar: And…

Nehemia: Yeah, I’m skeptical of the skepticism, because…

Thamar: And then there’s a holiday that is very, very weird.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Thamar: In Yom Kippur, we don’t eat. In Purim, it says, “nahafokh hu”, “on the contrary,” we dress up…

Nehemia: We do the opposite, yeah. Well, the dressing up is a very late thing, come on. That’s like from 15th century Venice or something.

Thamar: Italy. Yeah, right. But we do the opposite; the mitzvah is nahafokh hu, to do things that we don’t that usually do.

Nehemia: The opposite, okay. Yeah.

Thamar: And even Seder Pesach is a Greek symposium, and we drink like Gentiles.

Nehemia: Well, so, I think what maybe we can agree on is that there are rituals that we have that were kind of added on over the centuries, that were influenced by surrounding cultures. In other words, in the Torah, it doesn’t say to get drunk on Passover.

Thamar: Or, we have the same roots.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: We have the same roots, and the myths changed maybe according to history that was, maybe according to history that we wish there was. The Book of Esther was written about 200 years after the events took place or not, in the Greek period, and we really missed the Persians because they were good to us.

Nehemia: Hmm.

Thamar: Cyrus the Great let us come back.

Nehemia: Let’s talk about Cyrus the Great. So, this is a story that we read in the Tanakh, and we read it in two places verbatim. At the end of Chronicles and the opening verses of Ezra, that there’s this king Cyrus, and he fulfills the prophecy of Jeremiah by telling us we can go back to the land, which… talk about that.

Thamar: And, what you said in the beginning, that not having external sources is not proof that it didn’t happen…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Thamar: …is exactly what happened here, because there were no external sources until the late 19th century, when the Cyrus Cylinder was found.

Nehemia: Tell us about the Cyrus Cylinder, yeah.

Thamar: The Cyrus Cylinder was found in 1879 in the excavations in Babylon, and Cyrus says there in… he says it in Akkadian, not in Old Persian. Cyrus didn’t leave anything in Old Persian. There are a few inscriptions that say, “I’m Cyrus the Great Achaemenid.” I think they’re… I think they’re fake. I think Darius needed to…

Nehemia: Do you think Darius concocted some kind of older inscriptions?

Thamar: Yeah.

Nehemia: You know.

Thamar: There are also fake “olds”, not only fake “news”.

Nehemia: Yeah. Oh, no, for sure, yeah.

Thamar: So, in the cylinder, he says, “I returned. I let the gods have their people back. I returned the gods’ peoples to their gods.”

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Thamar: Which means, “I allowed them to go back to their lands. And I built the temples for all the gods that his predecessor had ruined.”

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Thamar: Because his predecessor, the previous Babylonian king, said everyone should pray to the moon god and no other gods. And Cyrus let everyone…

Nehemia: Really? Wait; talk about that for a minute. Was this Nabonidus? Or who was this?

Thamar: I’m not sure. I think…

Nehemia: But one of the Babylonian rulers is making everybody worship his God. That’s in the Book of Daniel, by the way, right? Meaning, like the…

Thamar: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: And then Cyrus says, “Anyone can worship whatever god they want, as long as they don’t hurt others.” It’s the first human rights declaration. The present-day Islamic Republic doesn’t work according to these principles. A lot of places in the world are still behind Xerxes from over 2,500 years ago.

Nehemia: Is it Cyrus or Xerxes? It’s Cyrus you mean, right?

Thamar: Cyrus. Cyrus the Great.

Nehemia: So, Cyrus makes this decree; any nation can worship any god he wants.

Thamar: “I returned all the people to their gods. I built all the temples for the gods, and I ask all gods to say good things about me to Marduk in heaven.”

Nehemia: Okay, wait; but Cyrus didn’t believe in Marduk, did he?

Thamar: We don’t know. We don’t know. It was found in Babylon, so, maybe…

Nehemia: Ah, so, that’s the Babylonian version.

Thamar: …maybe he gave each nation a declaration with their own god, because in the Bible it says the god of the heavens, or maybe this was the declaration. It mentioned Marduk because he was the most popular god in the area, or the Babylonian god, and maybe Cyrus didn’t write it on his own, because kings were not…

Nehemia: Yeah, one of his scribes or something.

Thamar: …supposed to read and write. It wasn’t what they did. They had writers for that.

Nehemia: So, all right, so, is your understanding that what’s reported in the Tanakh about Cyrus giving permission to the Jews to return to the land; that’s a true thing that happened?

Thamar: It happened. He let everybody go back.

Nehemia: Okay. Ah.

Thamar: And he let everybody build their temples.

Nehemia: So, you could take away from the Tanakh that, “Wow, that was something special; he let the Jews back.” But the Cyrus Cylinder would suggest he let lots of nations go back to where they had been exiled from.

Thamar: Yes, but that includes the Jews. So, the Cyrus Declaration is a true event.

Nehemia: So, let me ask this question. So, the Babylonians and the Assyrians had this strategy that they would kidnap entire populations and move them somewhere else so that they couldn’t rebel, because now, like, your neighboring towns, you don’t know who they are, because you’re in exile. And the Persians had a different… Why did they change that strategy? Do we know? Why would they let the Jews go back?

Thamar: They let all the nations go back because maybe they realized that maybe they would rebel less, or they would be grateful and pay their taxes on time. I mean, empires… what do you need to conquer countries for? For their taxes and for their soldiers.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Thamar: So, maybe they thought that they would give soldiers and their taxes more…

Nehemia: Be eternally grateful.

Thamar: Yeah. Keep them grateful, that’s… and it worked. Or I don’t know… maybe because they have been in exile for a few generations; not everyone went back.

Nehemia: Only about ten percent.

Thamar: Xerxes was his grandson, and there were Jews in Persia at the time.

Nehemia: Yeah, yeah, that’s a misconception. People think all the Jews went back. Maybe it was ten percent, maybe less. It sounds…

Thamar: Like now, not all the Jews are in Israel.

Nehemia: Right. Although it’s almost the majority at this point, but we’re getting there, so. All right. So, that’s really interesting, about Cyrus.

Thamar: If you want a real event that you and I remember, that also answers to the same pattern of the 13th day of the year, a country that’s in danger, and number two gets killed, and then big bloodshed, and then a holiday, and then back to normal, because I think that the new year’s myth and the holidays that were doing the contrary and doing other things were an opportunity for the people to vent, but in an orderly manner, and then go back to normal. That’s my theory. I didn’t read it anywhere; maybe someone else also wrote it.

Nehemia: Can you talk to me for a minute about… I want to get back to… so many things to talk about. I want to talk about Zoroastrianism.

Thamar: But remind me that I want to tell you how a real historical event that you and I remember conforms to this pattern of…

Nehemia: Tell us. Tell us.

Thamar: Okay. We said that the new year could be the longest night of the year, right?

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: The longest night of the year in the Iranian calendar is the night before the first of Dey. Dey is the month that begins in the longest night of the year.

Nehemia: The month is called Dei?

Thamar: The month is called Dey, yes.

Nehemia: That’s confusing. Okay! The month of Dei.

Thamar: The month of Dey.

Nehemia: Of D-E-I.

Thamar: Yeah. D-E-Y.

Nehemia: Oh. D-E-Y.

Thamar: On the 13th of the month of Dey…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Thamar: …which was January 3rd, 2020, Qasem Soleimani was eliminated by the United States.

Thamar: Okay.

Nehemia: He was an arch terrorist, for those that don’t remember.

Thamar: It was the 13th day after the longest night of the year. He was Khameini’s number two. Not officially in the hierarchy, but he was the closest person to him.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Thamar: The Islamic Republic felt that it’s in danger by physical war, economic war, moral war, because of the Western influence on Iranian youth, cyber war, you name it. They were under all kinds of threats. And after his death, there were a lot of people who died. There were a few people who died in his funerals. It was like a tour in Iraq, and in two cities in Iraq, and like five cities in Iran, and a few people got squished to death in his funerals. And then the IRGC wanted to shoot a missile to an American base in Iraq, and instead they shot down flight 752 of Ukrainian Airlines, that had more than 170 people on board, more than half of them Iranian. So, there was…

Nehemia: They messed up, okay.

Thamar: That caused… first, after he was killed, the people rallied around the flag. After the plane was shot down, they first said that the Americans shot it down, but then it was revealed that it was the IRGC. And there were protests even by people who were…

Nehemia: And the IRGC is the Iranian Revolutionary… what is IRGC?

Thamar: Islamic. The word “Iran” is not in the name of the IRGC.

Nehemia: Oh, really!

Thamar: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Nehemia: So, that’s basically like the SS of the Islamic Republic.

Thamar: Yeah, they protect the Islamic Revolution against the Iranian people and outside threats.

Nehemia: All right.

Thamar: So, there were a lot of protests, and since then, Iranians celebrate on the 13th of Dey. Ruz-e Kotlet, Cutlet Day. Because Soleimani became a cutlet when…

Nehemia: Cutlet, like…

Thamar: …he was killed.

Nehemia: Like chicken cutlet?

Thamar: Yeah. Like Soleimani cutlet.

Nehemia: Because he was blown up? Or what does that mean?

Thamar: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Thamar: He became ground meat, so, they celebrate… cutlet.

Nehemia: And they call it that?

Thamar: Yeah. The government doesn’t like it at all. And there was a chef that who posted to Instagram a cutlet recipe on this day, and his Instagram was banned and he was arrested.

Nehemia: So, are you saying this is something…

Thamar: But people still celebrate it.

Nehemia: So, this is like a popular holiday or…

Thamar: Yeah, it’s a satirical holiday. It’s not a real holiday.

Nehemia: Oh, okay, I got you. All right.

—

Nehemia: So, all right. So, Zoroastrianism, talk to us about the religion… So, the religion of Zoroastrianism is extremely important because of, I would say, its influences on Judaism and Christianity. But also, in the Tanakh there is, at least as most Bible scholars understand it, Isaiah 45 is addressing Zoroastrianism.

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