10-16-2006, 06:16 PM
As Narukami mentioned, the Persians did one critical thing for Western Civilization: they sent the Jews back to Judea. Without this, there is no Second Temple. Without this effort, no one tries to collate the Hebrew Bible into a coherent document (needed to pull the disparate returnees and Jews who were left behind by the Babylonians). Without these things, the events of the New Testament weren't going to happen.
The Persian Empire also left another idea, although not one written down in some famous document. They ran their empire with tolerance for the religious and cultural peculiarities of their subjects; and this idea was adopted by Alexander (over the objections of many Macedonians) and does get into the Western tradition through Alex. I am not saying they invented the modern idea of religious freedom, but maybe they forshadowed it; and the people who did invent the modern idea may have known about this precedent.
The Persian Empire also left another idea, although not one written down in some famous document. They ran their empire with tolerance for the religious and cultural peculiarities of their subjects; and this idea was adopted by Alexander (over the objections of many Macedonians) and does get into the Western tradition through Alex. I am not saying they invented the modern idea of religious freedom, but maybe they forshadowed it; and the people who did invent the modern idea may have known about this precedent.
Felix Wang
