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Description
As touched on in yesterday's blurb, the Book of Daniel is a work of apocalyptic literature composed during the Maccabean Revolt. While the episode with Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a giant statue is a fairly obvious metaphor for the events of the day, Daniel's own vision in Chapter 7 is much more elaborate. The narrative describes a scene of a raging ocean being disturbed by four horrendous beasts usurped by the kingdom of heaven. The metaphor seems to be the same as that of the statue, though. The four beasts represent the four consecutive kingdoms which oppressed Judah: Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece. The third monster is a four-head leopard with four wings, which is meant to represent the Achaemenids, so I figure I should use this as a jumping off point to discuss this period in the history of Judaism.

After the Siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BCE, the kingdom of Judah was abolished and the Jewish people were exiled to Babylon. This was one of the greatest disasters in the history of Judaism, and the suffering it caused is still mourned by modern practitioners to this day. For nearly three generations, the Jews were cut off from their God and struggled to eke out an existence under the thumb of Nebuchadnezzar's dynasty, a pattern they'd sadly have to deal with for… really the rest of human history. In 550 BCE though, a new power would arise on the scene in the form of Cyrus the Great, formerly an Iranian vassal of his grandfather, Astyages, king of the Medes. After overthrowing Astyages, Cyrus became king of all former Median lands, and set his sights on liberating the rest of the known world (or conquering it, depends on who you ask, but I suspect all the people who would argue it was conquest are conveniently in a pine box… er… stone sarcophagus somewhere). In 538 BCE, Cyrus marched his army against the city of Babylon, and according to legend, he walked right through the gates without so much as a scuffle. Apparently, the last king of Babylon, Belshazzar, was extremely unpopular, and he could see the writing on the wall. He led one final stand against Cyrus, but he was either captured or executed, and Cyrus was recognized as ruler of all Babylonian territories. The Achaemenid Empire was thus born.

Cyrus was not just a skilled military commander, but a masterful administrator as well. Most Iranian kings were quite tolerant of the numerous cultures within their borders, taking from the example Cyrus set. He understood that the only way to govern such a wide territory peacefully was to allow his subjects to live as they pleased so long as they paid their taxes. Most famously, Cyrus allowed the exiled Jews in Babylon to return to Jerusalem and reestablish their Temple. For this, Cyrus is given unapologetic praise in scripture, and is the only person to ever be given the title of "messiah" in the entire Hebrew Bible. The grandson of the last king of Judah, Zerubbabel, and the grandson of the last High Priest of Israel, Joshua, were given those respective titles, and with their newfound freedom, they got to work on rebuilding the Temple. Foundations were laid in 537 BCE, but internal conflicts delayed construction until 520 BCE, at which point Darius the Great had become king of the Empire and sponsored the project himself. If building one temple to an obscure god in some middle of nowhere desert city would make his subjects see him as divinely inspired, Darius was hardly gonna pass up that opportunity to legitimize his rule.

The Temple was at last completed in 516 BCE, and the long process of figuring out what it meant to be Jewish in this new crazy world began. Many disparate factions had split off in the wake of the exile, so the priest Ezra visited Jerusalem in 458 BCE, sponsored as satrap under Artaxerxes I. Ezra is widely considered one of the most important figures in the development of modern Judaism, as it was he who first emphasized Deuteronomic law over literal belief in the mythology in the Bible. This way, Jews across the world could be united under a single law code in their communities regardless of distance or individual belief. This is very much the foundation of what would become Rabbinic Judaism, which is entirely built on interpreting and debating these laws word by word, letter by letter. This is why the Bible was compiled in this period, afterall. The priests needed to make sure they had a definitive body of literature to reference when addressing these many factions and conglomerating them together into a unified Jewish people.

Still, the people were never truly content with living as vassals to yet another empire. The Book of Daniel itself claimed to have prophesied the eventual fall of the Achaemenids to the Greeks, because it's really easy to predict things that have already happened. Alexander the Great stormed into the region in 331 BCE, and Josephus claims that when he arrived in Jerusalem, the priests showed him the prophecy in the Book of Daniel and he went… "Awesome!" and presumably went into a private room to stroke his divinely-inspired ego some more. As the Book of Daniel wouldn't be written for another two centuries, this is obviously just a legend, but I can't deny that is 100% in character for Alexander. Rabbinic legend tells another story where the King of Macedon met the High Priest Simeon the Just, and ordered a statue of himself be built in the Temple. Simeon, in what I can only imagine was the tightest situation anyone can possibly find themselves in, somehow managed to convince Alexander that this would be sacrilegious in their culture, and that instead all the priests' next sons would be named after Alexander. Apparently this was a fair trade, and Alexander left them be so he could go conquer the rest of the Achaemenid Empire. Unfortunately, the threat had only just passed, and the Seleucid Empire which would succeed Alexander's reign in the region would come to be Jerusalem's next Babylon, but we'll talk about that tomorrow.

Design notes, holy shit this was a pain in the ass to compose. The premise sounds simple enough, right? Leopard with four heads, I can do that, I thought. But no, turns out having four heads is absolutely cluttersome, no wonder evolution routes that out. I tried looking up references of multi-headed animals, because that does happen sometimes, but mostly in reptiles for some reason, and usually it's only two heads. Looking up multi-headed cats specifically just gave me a bunch of images of mutant kitties that made me sad. I tried to make it so that each head was positioned in a way that would seem like it matched the pose of the body, and for the most part it kinda works? But man, there just isn't a lot of room on a cat for four heads.

Description
As touched on in yesterday's blurb, the Book of Daniel is a work of apocalyptic literature composed during the Maccabean Revolt. While the episode with Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a giant statue is a fairly obvious metaphor for the events of the day, Daniel's own vision in Chapter 7 is much more elaborate. The narrative describes a scene of a raging ocean being disturbed by four horrendous beasts usurped by the kingdom of heaven. The metaphor seems to be the same as that of the statue, though. The four beasts represent the four consecutive kingdoms which oppressed Judah: Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece. The third monster is a four-head leopard with four wings, which is meant to represent the Achaemenids, so I figure I should use this as a jumping off point to discuss this period in the history of Judaism.

After the Siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BCE, the kingdom of Judah was abolished and the Jewish people were exiled to Babylon. This was one of the greatest disasters in the history of Judaism, and the suffering it caused is still mourned by modern practitioners to this day. For nearly three generations, the Jews were cut off from their God and struggled to eke out an existence under the thumb of Nebuchadnezzar's dynasty, a pattern they'd sadly have to deal with for… really the rest of human history. In 550 BCE though, a new power would arise on the scene in the form of Cyrus the Great, formerly an Iranian vassal of his grandfather, Astyages, king of the Medes. After overthrowing Astyages, Cyrus became king of all former Median lands, and set his sights on liberating the rest of the known world (or conquering it, depends on who you ask, but I suspect all the people who would argue it was conquest are conveniently in a pine box… er… stone sarcophagus somewhere). In 538 BCE, Cyrus marched his army against the city of Babylon, and according to legend, he walked right through the gates without so much as a scuffle. Apparently, the last king of Babylon, Belshazzar, was extremely unpopular, and he could see the writing on the wall. He led one final stand against Cyrus, but he was either captured or executed, and Cyrus was recognized as ruler of all Babylonian territories. The Achaemenid Empire was thus born.

Cyrus was not just a skilled military commander, but a masterful administrator as well. Most Iranian kings were quite tolerant of the numerous cultures within their borders, taking from the example Cyrus set. He understood that the only way to govern such a wide territory peacefully was to allow his subjects to live as they pleased so long as they paid their taxes. Most famously, Cyrus allowed the exiled Jews in Babylon to return to Jerusalem and reestablish their Temple. For this, Cyrus is given unapologetic praise in scripture, and is the only person to ever be given the title of "messiah" in the entire Hebrew Bible. The grandson of the last king of Judah, Zerubbabel, and the grandson of the last High Priest of Israel, Joshua, were given those respective titles, and with their newfound freedom, they got to work on rebuilding the Temple. Foundations were laid in 537 BCE, but internal conflicts delayed construction until 520 BCE, at which point Darius the Great had become king of the Empire and sponsored the project himself. If building one temple to an obscure god in some middle of nowhere desert city would make his subjects see him as divinely inspired, Darius was hardly gonna pass up that opportunity to legitimize his rule.

The Temple was at last completed in 516 BCE, and the long process of figuring out what it meant to be Jewish in this new crazy world began. Many disparate factions had split off in the wake of the exile, so the priest Ezra visited Jerusalem in 458 BCE, sponsored as satrap under Artaxerxes I. Ezra is widely considered one of the most important figures in the development of modern Judaism, as it was he who first emphasized Deuteronomic law over literal belief in the mythology in the Bible. This way, Jews across the world could be united under a single law code in their communities regardless of distance or individual belief. This is very much the foundation of what would become Rabbinic Judaism, which is entirely built on interpreting and debating these laws word by word, letter by letter. This is why the Bible was compiled in this period, afterall. The priests needed to make sure they had a definitive body of literature to reference when addressing these many factions and conglomerating them together into a unified Jewish people.

Still, the people were never truly content with living as vassals to yet another empire. The Book of Daniel itself claimed to have prophesied the eventual fall of the Achaemenids to the Greeks, because it's really easy to predict things that have already happened. Alexander the Great stormed into the region in 331 BCE, and Josephus claims that when he arrived in Jerusalem, the priests showed him the prophecy in the Book of Daniel and he went… "Awesome!" and presumably went into a private room to stroke his divinely-inspired ego some more. As the Book of Daniel wouldn't be written for another two centuries, this is obviously just a legend, but I can't deny that is 100% in character for Alexander. Rabbinic legend tells another story where the King of Macedon met the High Priest Simeon the Just, and ordered a statue of himself be built in the Temple. Simeon, in what I can only imagine was the tightest situation anyone can possibly find themselves in, somehow managed to convince Alexander that this would be sacrilegious in their culture, and that instead all the priests' next sons would be named after Alexander. Apparently this was a fair trade, and Alexander left them be so he could go conquer the rest of the Achaemenid Empire. Unfortunately, the threat had only just passed, and the Seleucid Empire which would succeed Alexander's reign in the region would come to be Jerusalem's next Babylon, but we'll talk about that tomorrow.

Design notes, holy shit this was a pain in the ass to compose. The premise sounds simple enough, right? Leopard with four heads, I can do that, I thought. But no, turns out having four heads is absolutely cluttersome, no wonder evolution routes that out. I tried looking up references of multi-headed animals, because that does happen sometimes, but mostly in reptiles for some reason, and usually it's only two heads. Looking up multi-headed cats specifically just gave me a bunch of images of mutant kitties that made me sad. I tried to make it so that each head was positioned in a way that would seem like it matched the pose of the body, and for the most part it kinda works? But man, there just isn't a lot of room on a cat for four heads.