Introduction In the sixth century BCE, following the death of King Cambyses on his Egyptian campaign, the Persian heartland was the scene of an antique murder mystery, during which the Achaemenid throne was held or seized by one or several individual(s)—about whose identity our sources provide conflicting information—who were eventually eliminated through an aristocratic coup d’état fomented by Darius I. The event itself may have been of… Read more
Abbreviations DB = Inscriptions of Darius at Bisotun FGH = Fragmente der griechischen Historiker NPi = Inscription of Narseh at Paikuli LABS = Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, ed. Parpola Š-KhM = Šāhnāme, ed. Khaleghi-Motlagh … Read more
Chapter 1. The Sources Old Persian Epigraphy: The Bisotun Inscription According to Darius’ inscription at Bisotun (composed in the late sixth century BCE), [1] King Cambyses killed his brother Bardiya on the eve of his Egyptian campaign without the people (kāra-) being aware of his crime. [2] During the king’s absence in Egypt, according to the… Read more
Chapter 2. On the Historical Personae Bardiya and Gaumāta The duplication of the usurper in the Greek sources—which contrasts with the Bisotun inscription’s single “usurper”—is commonly believed to derive from the erroneous interpretation of Gaumāta’s titles as appellations of secondary persons. [1] The names of the pair transmitted by Herodotus, namely, Patizeithēs and Smerdis, could be respectively interpreted as graecized renderings of… Read more
Chapter 3. The Concept and Reality of the Substitute Kingin Mesopotamia and Iran Having made a case for the historicity of both Bardiya and Gaumāta, and their presumed functions of “kingmaker” and “puppet-king,” in the classical sources, there remains the necessity of revealing the historical prece-dents, or literary patterns, upon which Darius’ fabricated chronicle—as put forth in the Bisotun inscription—rested. The first of these forms the main… Read more
Chapter 4. The Evil Brothers in the Iranian Tradition The Legend of the Indo-European Twins Now let us turn our attention to the problem of the “two brothers.” [1] What could have triggered the identification of “two associates” with “two brothers”? This time the answer seems to lie within the Indo-Iranian epic tradition itself. From the Indic pantheon we know of… Read more
Chapter 5. Oral-Formulaic Theory and Iranian Royal Inscriptions Literary parallels between the Achaemenid inscriptions of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, especially those of Darius I (late sixth century BCE), and the Sasanian inscriptions of the third and early fourth century CE had already been recognized in the 1930s and were attributed to the survival of Aramaic translations of the former. [1]… Read more
1. Theodore’s Life, Education, and Ministry Theodore of Mopsuestia stands out as an influential figure well situated to observe and contribute to the Christianization of the Roman Empire during the late-fourth and early-fifth centuries. He was born into a well-to-do family in the city of Antioch (Antakya in southern Turkey) around the year AD 350. He was educated, along with his better-known contemporary John Chrysostom, in the… Read more
2. Approaching Catechesis We have now considered Theodore’s life and the circumstances surrounding his education, ecclesiastical career, and writings. Subsequent chapters address three key components of Theodore’s catechesis, but first we must take a step back from Theodore to consider several important factors surrounding the way clergy framed catechesis and the rites of initiation. Many preachers catechized Christian converts and they did so within a cultural and… Read more
3. The Community of Citizens In the last chapter, we discussed some of the ways that the church maintained cultic boundaries and rhetorically emphasized its exclusivity. We now turn to a consideration of just what the catechumens were doing as they pursued baptism. Many have sought to answer this question with the cognitive and psychological models discussed in the Introduction. Such approaches, however, tend to downplay if… Read more
