Anyway, The return of the Jewish exiles apparently occurred in at least five stages.
First, Sheshbazzar returned and began work on the foundations of a new temple.
During the reign of Darius I (522-486) Zerubbabel led an attempt to restore the temple that was stymied by Samaritan opposition.
It was during the reign of the next king, Xerxes (486-465) that the events in the book of Esther occurred.
Third, in the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes I (465-425), Nehemiah was appointed governor of Judah and allowed to rebuild Jerusalem’s city wall (NEH 2:1-20 & 6:15).
Next, work on the temple began again in the second year of the reign of King Darius II (423-404), during the prophetic ministries of Haggai and Zechariah (EZR 4:24-5:2, HAG 1:1-15, ZCH 1:1-17, 4:6-10 & 8:9-15).
Finally, in the seventh year of the reign of king Artaxerxes II (404-359), Ezra the priest led an expedition from Babylon and reinstituted Judaism. He apparently ignored the messianic prophecies, which set the stage for conflict between the Pharisees and Christians. About this time Malachi wrote what proved to be the last book in the OT canon.
In 500 a rebellion against Persian rule by the Greek cities in Lydia/Ionia was abetted by Athens, so Darius I attempted to conquer Greece. However, his army was defeated at a battle on the plains of Marathon in 490. His son Xerxes marched an army across the Dardanelles Strait (Hellespont) on a pontoon bridge in 480, but his navy was defeated in the Bay of Salamis, so he had to abort the attack.
In order to be prepared for future Persian attacks, Athens formed an alliance called the Delian league, which won another naval victory over the Persian fleet defending Ionia in 468. This prompted Sparta to form a league, which fought the Peloponnesian War with the Delian league from 431-404 with Persian financial aid. Both sides were so weakened that they were easily conquered by Philip of Macedon in 338.
The period before Philip’s conquest was a golden age, which included work by Pericles (statesman), Herodotus and Thucydides (historians), Sophocles and Euripedes (dramatists), Euclid (mathematicians), and Hippocrates (medical doctor).
In philosophy,
Anaxorgas (c.430) was the first atomic theorist, although he also believed in a cosmic
nous, and
Protagoras (d.420) was a sophist, relativist, and
(secular) humanist, saying that “man is the measure of all things”. He was opposed by
Socrates (d.399), who utilized a dialectic method using inductive logic, and who said “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
Antisthenes, a student of Socrates, noted that every definition is tautolotical and descriptive, and along with
Diogenes (d.325) is viewed as founding
Cynicism, which preached asceticism and the debunking of customs that substitute for morals.
Another student of Socrates was
Plato (427-347), who wrote
Dialogues and
The Republic, and who founded a school called the
Academy about 387. He viewed himself as a gadfly for truth and taught that God is good, and good is absolute. He believed in eternal Ideas/Forms, four virtues, and three social classes. His pupil was
Aristotle, who wrote
Nichomean Ethics, advocating the “golden mean” and saying that happiness accompanies virtuous activity. He differed with Plato in saying that universals do not exist independently of particular entities (a debate which dominated medieval philosophy). He established a school called the
Lyceum in 335, and was hired by Philip to tutor Alexander.
Epicurus (c.310) taught atomism, the finality of death, and that pleasure and pain are the determiners of what is good and bad. Influenced by the Cynics,
Zeno (c. 301) founded
Stoicism by preaching that virtue consists in aligning desire with the universal deterministic Logos.
Alexander was a great military commander. He became king in 336 at the age of twenty when his father was assassinated, and he carried out his father’s dream of conquering the Persian Empire. He led his army across the Hellespont and defeated the Persian army at the Battle of Issus in 333. Then he marched along the coast, where Tyre finally succumbed after a seven month siege. Next he marched to Egypt, where he was welcomed by the populace as a liberator. Returning northward, Alexander’s forces won another major battle with the Persians at Gaugamela on the way to Babylon in 331. Not yet content, he attempted to invade India but died of a fever in 323.
When Alexander died, the empire fractured and was fought over by his generals. As the struggle progressed, the one with the most territory was
Seleucus, who controlled the region from Asia Minor to the Indus. His chief rival was
Ptolemy, who ruled Egypt and Palestine. To the east, the region of Bactria was allowed to drift out of the Seleucid Empire, and a man named Chandragupta Maurya established an indigenous empire in India.
Elsewhere in the world, the Mayan civilization developed in the Yucatan peninsula, and in Africa the Kushite kingdom in Nubia had a thriving trade with merchants as far away as China.
