The Bible speaks of “Darius the Persian” (Neh. 12:22), “Darius the Mede” (Dan. 5:31; 11:1), “Darius the king” (Hag. 1:1, 15; Zech. 7:1), “Darius king of Persia” (Ezra 4:5, 24), and “Darius son of Ahasuerus of the lineage of the Medes, who was made ruler over the realm of the Chaldeans” (Dan. 9:1).1 Are these allusions to the same person or to different persons, and are they historically verifiable?
Historical Overview
The Mesopotamian city of Babylon and its kingdom (modern-day Iraq) was ruled by Babylonian kings as the first (old) Babylonian Empire (19th–16th centuries BC), concurrent with the period from Isaac to the Israelites in Egypt, and then the Neo-Babylonian Empire (7th–6th centuries BC) of the OT accounts of Babylon. The Chaldeans, whose name was synonymous with the empire itself, were a Semitic people who settled in southeastern Mesopotamia and merged into Babylonia, rising in power and influence.2
Northeast of Babylon, the Persians settled in the region of Persis (or Parsua) in southwestern Ariana (modern-day Iran). Achaemenes founded the Achaemenid dynasty and began his tribal kingdom that became the Achaemenid or Persian Empire. For a time they were subjugated by their ethnic kinsmen the Medes of neighboring Media in northwestern Ariana, until Cyrus II (“the Great”), who began ruling the Persians in 559 BC under Median overlordship, gained control of Media and other territories by 550 BC. He united these smaller kingdoms as the Persian (Achaemenid) Empire, and in 539 BC the Babylonians were conquered by the combined strength of the Persian-Mede forces.3
The Persian Empire was therefore comprised of several different nationalities, with ethnic Persians in the minority. Cyrus, a native Persian (though his mother was Median), was king of Persia a couple of decades before gaining control of the Babylonians, thus “the first year of Cyrus king of Babylon” (Ezra 5:13) marks this transition. His successors are also described as ruling the Empire of Persia, including the territories formerly known as the Babylonian and Assyrian kingdoms, while the city of Babylon remained a prestigious status symbol and strategic administrative center. The king of Persia (Ezra 1:1-8; 3:7; 4:3-7, 24; 6:14; 7:1) was also king of Babylon (5:13) and king of Assyria (6:22), a needful reminder to the antagonistic peoples around Judea (4:2; cf. Neh. 9:32).
Darius I the Great
When Cyrus died in 530/529 BC, he was succeeded by his son Cambyses II, who conquered Egypt 525-523 BC and died under mysterious circumstances in 522 BC. Darius I was one of his generals, married to Cyrus’ daughter Atossa, and ruled from 522 to 486 BC, although he had to quelch a number of uprisings before his control of the empire was secured by 519 BC. The Persian Empire reached its zenith under his rule. He is the Darius of Ezra 4:5, 23-24; 5:5–6:15; Haggai 1:1–2:10; Zechariah 1:1–7:1.
Darius the Persian
Darius the Persian was contemporaneous with Nehemiah and Ezra (Neh. 12:22-26). Without the presumption of textual emendation, Nehemiah’s report is “in” (MT) or “during” (LXX) rather than “until” the reign of Darius. But how do we determine whether “Darius the Persian” is an allusion to Darius I the Great (522-486 BC), Darius II Nothus (423-404 BC), or Darius III Codomannus (336-330 BC)? The latter would require editorial emendation or a much later date for Nehemiah, while Darius I would be a matter of historical record and Darius II within Nehemiah’s lifetime.
Nehemiah’s account reaches back to the initial Jewish exiles returning to Jerusalem in 538 BC (Neh. 12:1-9), includes a concise genealogy up to his present day (vv. 10-11), then gives a brief review of the second generation of priests “in the days of Joiakim” (vv. 12-21). This is followed by a summary of the record of Levites and priests of the third generation extending through to the fifth, documented “in the reign of Darius the Persian … in the days of Eliashib, Joiada, Johanan, and Jaddua … until the days of Johanan the son of Eliashib” (vv. 22-25).
Eliashib, son of Joiakim (Neh. 12:10), had at least two sons, Joiada and Johanan (Ezra 10:6; Neh. 12:10, 23), while Jaddua was his great-grandson (Neh. 12:10-11). If twenty years are allowed per generation and Joiakim was born the year his father returned to Jerusalem, Jaddua is feasibly present by 458 BC, around the time Ezra arrived. If thirty years are counted as a generation, and if Joiakim accompanied his father to Jerusalem as an adult, Jaddua could have been present by 448 BC, about a decade after Ezra arrived and just a few years before Nehemiah came. Boys as young as three years old were included in genealogies of priests (2 Chron. 31:16). The book of Nehemiah, therefore, presents “no historical information and no single remark which Nehemiah might not himself have written.”4
Nehemiah 12:22-23 recounts the third generation of Levites and priests through to Nehemiah’s own time, without explicit reference to the office of high priest (unnecessarily assumed for each name in v. 22 by many commentators). Thus, in the immediate context, the reference to “Darius the Persian” more readily fits the reign of Darius II Nothus (423-404 BC) and is too late for Darius I and much too early for Darius III. The section concludes by noting those who lived “in the days of Joiakim … and [in addition] in the days of Nehemiah the governor and of Ezra the priest, the scribe” (v. 26).
Darius the Mede
Darius the Mede was exercising power concurrently with Cyrus when Babylon fell (Dan. 5:31–9:2; 11:1), approximately seventeen years before Darius I took the throne and about 116 years before the accession of Darius II. It has been suggested that the name Darius was a regnal or throne name for Cyrus,5 although liberal critics have accused the author of Daniel of having invented a fictious character or of having made a factual mistake.6 Among conservative scholars attempts have been made to identify Darius the Mede as a known historical figure of a different name, whether Cyrus’ general Gobryas,7 or uncle Cyaxares II,8 or son Cambyses II.9
Caution should be exercised when attempting to draw definitive conclusions from fragmentary and incongruous historical data. Ancient sources are not always credible, accurate, or complete. Accounts are necessarily selective and often modified or embellished. Specific details of the transition of power involving the Babylonians, the Medes, and the Persians are unknown apart from the biblical record and scant, incomplete, and/or unreliable extrabiblical sources.10
Historically the Medes, in league with the Persians under Cyrus, had earlier assisted the Babylonians in conquering the Assyrians and were still a force to be reckoned with.11 In fact, they had earned parallel recognition with the mighty Persians.12 When Darius the Mede acquired the Babylonian kingdom, it was not his alone but was “divided and given to the Medes and Persians” (Dan. 5:27-31).
During the transition of power from Babylonian rule to Persian rule, there appears to have been an initial period of either coregency, “the reign of Darius [the Mede] and the reign of Cyrus” (Dan. 6:28), or more likely Darius serving as the subordinate ruler or governing representative of the supreme empire-reigning monarch Cyrus.13 The fact that Darius “received” authority from another (Dan. 5:31) supports this inference. His dominion was restricted to “the realm of the Chaldeans” (Dan. 9:1), in contrast to Cyrus’ control of the entire Persian Empire (Dan. 10:1), yet the limited reign of Darius the Mede was short lived and his name accordingly disappeared from secular history.14 This would almost certainly be due to the historical prominence of Darius the Great, a.k.a. Darius I,15 and his regnal namesakes Darius II Nothus and Darius III Codomannus, all controlling and influencing recorded Persian history and supplanting that of the Medes.16
Conclusion
The great Persian Empire, inclusive of the conquered Babylonians, was ruled by Darius I from 522 to 486 BC (noted in the books of Ezra, Haggai, and Zechariah), Darius II from 423 to 404 BC (noted in Nehemiah), and Darius III, the last Persian king, from 336 to 330 BC, long after the publication of the above biblical documents. Much earlier, when the combined forces of the Medes-Persians gained control of Babylon in 539 BC, there appears to have been a brief period of Darius the Mede exercising authority in the newly-acquired territory of the Chaldeans, yet his reign was short lived and would have disappeared from recorded history were it not for the book of Daniel.
--Kevin L. Moore
Endnotes:
1 Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are the author’s own translation.
2 Isa. 48:20; Jer. 51:24, 35; Ezek. 23:15. The ancestry of Abraham is traced back to the land of the Chaldeans (Gen. 12:27-31). The name Kasidim [כַּשְׂדִּי] (“Chaldeans”) was also descriptive of a distinguished priestly order of Babylonian sages (Dan. 2:2-5, 10), having arisen among the prominent Chaldean peoples (Gen. 11:28; 15:7; Neh. 9:7). See Wise Men from the East.
3 These conquering forces were prophetically depicted as the “chest and arms” of a great image (Dan. 2:32, 38-39), a bear-like beast “raised up on one side” (Dan. 7:5), and a ram with two horns, “but one was higher than the other” (Dan. 8:3), all descriptive of the combined forces of the “Medes and Persians” (Dan. 5:28; 6:8, 12, 15; 8:20).
4 C. F. Keil, “The Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther,” in Keil and Delitzsch’s Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969): 150.
5 Richard N. Frye, “Darius the Mede,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica 6.1 (15 Dec. 1994): 40-41.
6 H. H. Rowley, Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires in the Book of Daniel (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1964): 44-66; Lester L. Grabbe, “Another Look at the Gestalt of ‘Darius the Mede,’” CBQ 50.2 (April 1988): 198-213. Yet these allegations “all proceed upon the supposition that biblical statements not positively confirmed by outside evidence are to be regarded as disproved. But, upon examination, the negative evidence in this particular case is very far from conclusive” (George Fredrick Wright, Scientific Confirmations of the Old Testament History, 3rd ed. [Oberlin, OH: Bibliotheca Sacra, 1913]: 49-52.
7 William H. Shea, “The Search for Darius the Mede (Concluded),” JATS 12.1 (2001): 97-105; also Robert Dick Wilson, “Belshazzar and Darius the Mede,” in The Bible Student and Teacher 4.2 (Feb. 1906): 83-93; followed by Wright 49-52.
8 Josephus, Ant. 10.11.4 (“son of Astyages”); Jerome, Commentary on Daniel 5 (“maternal uncle of Cyrus”); C. F. Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971): 192-203; more recently Rodger C. Young, “Xenophon’s Cyaxares: Uncle of Cyrus, Friend of Daniel,” JETS 64.2 (2021): 265-85.
9 Charles Boutflower, In and Around the Book of Daniel (London: SPCK, 1923): 142-55. John H. Walton affirmed this position during an oral Q&A session, “Daniel 5 in Comparative Focus,” ETS 74th Annual Meeting (16 Nov. 2022), Denver, CO.
10 Note, e.g., Toby A. H. Wilkinson, Royal Annals of Ancient Egypt: The Palermo Stone and its Associated Fragments (London/ New York: Kegan Paul International, 2000): 45-60. Herodotus lists four Median kings and Ctesias nine, neither including Astyages’ successor Cyaxares II, which Xenophon does include (see Keil, Daniel 193-96).
11 Cf. Isa. 13:17; 21:2; Jer. 51:11, 28. The king of Assyria considered the Medes “the strongest of the neighboring tribes” (Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.5.2).
12 Esth. 1:3, 14, 18, 19; 10:2; Dan. 5:28; 6:8-15; 8:20.
13 For comparison, see 2 Kings 24:17; Jer. 37:1; Matt. 2:1.
14 Herodotus customarily made mention “only of the more celebrated of the rulers, passing by those that are less so …” (Keil, Daniel 196). Noting his age of about 62 years (Dan. 5:31) adds nothing to the storyline unless it is indicative of a relatively brief time in power. According to Babylonian records, by the following year in 538 BC, Cyrus was “king of the lands” and his son Cambyses II “king of Babylon,” although near the end of Cyrus’ reign in 530 BC both men wore both titles (Muhammad A. Dandamaev, “Cambyses,” in Encyclopedia Iranica 4.7 [15 Dec. 1990]: 726-29). Ahasuerus, the father of Darius the Mede (Dan. 9:1), is probably not the better-known Ahasuerus of Ezra 4:6 and Esth. 1:1–8:12.
15 The tomb of Darius I was inscribed, “Great King, King of Kings, King of countries containing all kinds of men, King in this great earth far and wide, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage” (Ronald G. Kent, “Old Persian Texts. The Lists of Provinces,” JNES 2.4 [1943]: 302-306).
16 Like Herodotus, Xenophon gathered his material from Persian tradition, which was “more fully transmitted than among the Medes, whose national recollections, after the extinction of their dynasty, were not fostered…. the Median rule over the Chaldean kingdom naturally sinks down into an insignificant place in relation to the independent government of the conqueror Cyrus and his people which was so soon to follow” (Keil, Daniel 196, 199).
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