AVisitWithJesus: Bible Empire Details

The Median Empire was the first empire on the territory of Persia. By the 6th century BC, after having together with the Babylonians defeated the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In Greek references to "Median" people there is no clear distinction between the "Persians" and the "Medians"; in fact for a Greek to become "too closely associated with Iranian culture" was "to become medianized, not persianized". The Medes were able to establish their own empire, the largest of its day, lasting for about sixty years, from the sack of Nineveh in 612 BC until 549 BC when Cyrus the Great established the Achaemenid Empire by defeating his overlord and grandfather, Astyages, king of Media.

The Achaemenid Empire was the first of the Persian Empires to become a world empire. At the height of its power, the Empire spanned over three continents, namely Europe, Asia, and Africa, and was the most powerful empire of its time. It also eventually incorporated the following territories: in the north and west all of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), parts of the Balkan peninsula - Thrace, Macedon and Paeonia, and most of the Black Sea coastal regions or present day southern and eastern Bulgaria, northern Greece, and Macedonia; in the west and southwest the territories of modern Iraq, northern Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, all significant population centers of ancient Egypt and as far west as portions of Libya; in the east modern Afghanistan and beyond into central Asia, and parts of Pakistan.

Encompassing approximately 5.5 million square kilometers at its height in 500 BC,[23][24] the Achaemenid Empire was territorially the largest empire of antiquity.

Following Judah's destruction by the Babylonians, large numbers of Jews were found in Babylonia. After the overthrow of Babylonia by the Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus the Great allowed the Jews to return to their native land (537 BCE). According to the Hebrew Bible (See Jehoiakim; Ezra; Nehemiah and Jews) more than forty thousand are said to have availed themselves of the privilege, however this is not supported by modern scholarship. Lester Grabbe argues that the immigration would probably only have amounted to a trickle over decades, with the archaeological record showing no evidence of large scale increases in population at any time during the Persian period.

The Bible states that Cyrus ordered the rebuilding of the Second Temple in the same place as the first but died before it was completed. The historical nature of this has been challenged. Mary Joan Winn Leith believes that the decree in Ezra might be authentic and along with the Cylinder that Cyrus, like earlier rules, was through these decrees trying to gain support from those who might be strategically important, particularly those close to Egypt which he wished to conquer.

He also wrote that "appeals to Marduk in the cylinder and to Yahweh in the biblical decree demonstrate the Persian tendency to co-opt local religious and political traditions in the interest of imperial control." Darius the Great, after the short-lived rule of Cambyses, came to power over the Persian Empire and ordered the completion of the Temple. This was undertaken with the stimulus of the earnest counsels and admonitions of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah.