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detail of the processional frieze on the east side of the terrace of the Apadana Palace,
Persepolis, Iran
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Genesis 10:2 names him as a son of Yaphet ben No'ach. Usually reckoned to be Media, later the Medes of Persia (Mâda in Old Persian), whose kings Dar-Yavesh (Darius) and Koresh (Cyrus) ) supported, indeed encouraged, first Zeru-Bavel, then Ezra and Nechem-Yah, to return to Yeru-Shalay'm with those who had been brought into captivity by the Beney Ashur (Assyrians), and which led to the writing of this book - The Tanach - in the first place.
2 Kings 17:6 claims that it was in "the cities of the Medes" that the Yisra-Elim deported by the Assyrians (cf 18:11 ff) were resettled, though the reference to the Medes at the end of this verse, as in the Genesis above, is probably an anachronism - though it would have been the logical way of explaining it to the people of the time (for a modern equivalent, we might talk of the first English settlers in the Americas establishing themselves in Georgia or Carolina - which wouldn't actually have those names until the settlement was achieved).
Jeremiah 25:25 and 51:11/28; Isaiah 13:17 and 21:2; Daniel 5:28, 6:1, 6:12, 9:1 and 11:1; Esther 1:3 and Ezra 6:2 all confirm that this is in Persia, the land of the Medes, though Cyrus (Koresh) actually preferred to call his land by the name we use today, Iran, signifying the Aryan people as distinct from the Arabs.
The Genesis reference is also an anachronism. The people known as the Medes did not come into existence by that name until the 7th century BCE, when they arose first from a small people to a large nation and quickly, under the leadership of Dârayavauš (Darius in English, Dar-Yavesh in Yehudit), conquered the whole of Persia and Bavel (Babylon) and became involved in that long and famous war with the Greeks that ended only with the victories of Alexander of Macedon some two hundred years later.
Given the geographical region that was Midyan, as well as the similarity of the names, is it possible that Maday (מדי) in the Genesis reference is in fact a dialect variation of Midyan (מדין) and not Persia at all?
Copyright © 2019 David Prashker
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The Argaman Press
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