King James Version · The Persian return
1 Esdras 7
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1Then the governor of and , and , with their companions following of king Darius, 2Did very carefully oversee the works, assisting the ancients of the and governors of . 3And so the works prospered, when and prophesied. 4And they finished these things by the of of Israel, and with the consent of , Darius, and , kings of . 5And thus was the house finished in the three and twentieth day of the month , in the sixth year of Darius king of the 6And the , the priests, and the , and others that were of , that were added unto them, did according to the things written in the book of . 7And to the dedication of of they offered an hundred bullocks two hundred rams, four hundred lambs; 8And twelve goats for the of all Israel, according to the number of the chief of the tribes of Israel. 9The priests also and the stood arrayed in their vestments, according to their kindreds, in the of of Israel, according to the book of : and the porters at every . 10And the that were of held the fourteenth day of the first month, after that the priests and the were . 11They that were of were not all together: but the were all together. 12And so they offered for all them of , and for their brethren the priests, and for themselves. 13And the that came out of did eat, even all they that had separated themselves from the of the people of the land, and sought . 14And they kept the feast of seven days, making merry before , 15For that he had turned the of the king of toward them, to strengthen their hands in the works of of Israel.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The Persian return, 539 BC to 332 BC ›
Persia takes Babylon and reverses its policy, sending exiled peoples home to rebuild their temples. Judah returns as a small province, rebuilding under imperial permission rather than independence.
- Persia
- The largest empire the world had yet seen, from the Indus to the Aegean, run through provinces, a royal road, and a postal system. Its policy on conquered peoples was to send them home and fund their temples, in exchange for loyalty and prayers for the king. The Cyrus Cylinder states the policy in Cyrus's own words, and Ezra opens with the same policy applied to Judah.
- Judah
- A small, poor province called Yehud, a fraction of the old kingdom, with a rebuilt temple that made the people who remembered the first one weep. No king, and no prospect of one. Leadership passes to priests and scribes, which shapes everything afterward.
- Greece
- Persia and Greece collide at Marathon and Salamis, Persia loses, and Athens spends the following decades on the Parthenon, tragedy, and Socrates. Herodotus writes the first history in order to explain that war. Then Plato and Aristotle, whose vocabulary the church will still be using at Nicaea eight centuries later.
- Further afield
- Rome throws out its kings and becomes a republic. In India and China this is the age of the Buddha's early followers and of Confucian teaching taking hold. More of what the world still thinks with was invented in this era than in almost any other.