Babylonian relic to visit US with historic message of tolerance

Re: Babylonian relic to visit US with historic message of tolerance

Precisely! The babylonian talmud records that when Cyrus entered the city some time after its fall that Daniel presented him with the text in Isaiah where God wrote Cyrus a personal letter, calling him by name, over 100 years before his birth. Appropriately, Cyrus took note and indeed released the captives as God instructed. That historical artifact, the stele of Cyrus must be viewed in light of Isaiah 45, and not as some ridiculous first proclamation of human rights.

[wendyj]

Re: Babylonian relic to visit US with historic message of tolerance

Tolerance??

Daniel< I think was the reason, as he showed Cyrus the scriptures and Cyrus just did what God, in His wisdom, had ordained him to do .

Re: Babylonian relic to visit US with historic message of tolerance

I had an overnight layover in London on my way to Kazakhstan and made a special trip to the British National Museum specifically to see that one item! I browsed past other exhibits but seeing the steele of Cyrus myself was the exclusive purpose of that trip to the museum. Chuck Missler does a great job explaining the significance of it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/20...sit-us-message

It is a deeply unimpressive looking object – about the size and shape of a rugby ball, made from hardened clay and incised all over with the stick-like characters of Babylonian cuneiform. And yet despite an unpromising appearance, it is hard to think of an artefact freighted with such significance for so many different peoples. Made shortly after Cyrus of Persia captured Babylon in 539BC, the Cyrus cylinder records how the ruler allowed deported peoples to return to their homelands and ushered in an era of religious tolerance in his new, multiethnic empire.

For Jews and Christians, it is the object that – along with passages of Isaiah – records the end of Jewish exile in Babylon. In Iran, it has by turns been used as a symbol of the shah's power and, most recently, when the cylinder toured to Tehran in 2010, was adopted as a rallying cry for Palestinian freedom by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For others, it is the first declaration of human rights, and an international symbol of religious tolerance. For Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, to which it belongs, it is the "first press release".