Persian Jerusalem: Lecture 8.1 - February 8, 2011

          This period was known as the “Second Temple Period” because it dealt with the rebuilding of the Temple all the way through to its destruction at the hands of the Romans. During the exile, the Prophet Ezekiel had a vision of the reemergence of God as a mobile entity and claimed that the Ark of the Covenant had wheels that made it a mobile shrine of God. The Persians came and conquered the Babylonians while all the Judeans were in exile. King Cyrus who was the leader of the Persians questioned why all these Jews were in Babylon and re-exiled the Jewish people back to Jerusalem. This was confirmed in the “Cyrus Cylinder” which was a clay cuneiform cylinder that announced a general return of Jews to their homeland. As a result of this the Jews referred to him as their “messiah” for saving them, even though he was not even of the same religion as them.