Darius the Mede - I claim he was King Astyages

Darius the Mede by Hunter Irvine

“That very night, Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two (Daniel 5:31-32 NIV).

   There is a big dispute as to the identity of “Darius the Mede,” since he is not found by name in other historical sources.  Incredible as this may sound, I have learned this all boils down to a name issue.  But I start by acknowledging that many people think Darius the Mede was a ruler put in place by King Cyrus immediately after he conquered Babylon.  The evidence against this theory:

   First: Though the Persians and Medes were allies, I doubt King Cyrus would have appointed a Mede be a king with the power to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, as is shown in Daniel 6:1!  I support this by noting what Herodotus said: “It will be seen that the governorship (or satrapy, as the Persians call it) of Assyria is by far the most coveted of all their provincial posts…” (Book One; 192)(1).

   Second: If Darius the Mede was simply put a ruling position in Babylon by King Cyrus around 536 B.C. (or some scholars say 539 B.C. while other scholars say 538 B.C.), then that means the incident of Darius putting Daniel in the den on lions would have taken place when Daniel was at least 85 years old, because Daniel was taken to Babylon around 605 B.C.

   So who is Darius the Mede?  The only reason I was able to detect his identity is because there was a period in the spring of 2008 when I would come home after a big day of work and read sections of The Histories by Herodotus, though I skipped over a number of sections and the end chapters since there is so much violence.  In carefully reading certain sections of that ancient history which has been studied for centuries, I was able to discern Darius the Mede was King Astyages; he fits the description.

   First, in Daniel 5:31 we learn Darius the Mede was age 62 when he took over.  And Herodotus tells us Astyages had reigned for 35 years before he was defeated by King Cyrus.  That would mean that his reign ended between 561 B.C. and 550 B.C., thus he would be older during that time period.

   Second, Astyages was portrayed by Herodotus as violent, the type of person who would throw a nice guy in a lion’s den.

   This is not my new theory or a recent theory.  I have seen one scholar propose Astyages as Darius the Mede.  That scholar was the author of a book from around the mid-1900's which I read a part of standing in a used Christian bookstore around ten years ago, the reason I got to pondering the subject myself.

   But then why do so many people dispute this?  If Asytages was Darius the Mede, and he took over Babylon in the 550's B.C., they conclude there would be no grounds for King Cyrus conquering it in 536 B.C.  Makes sense.  Yet I figured out the golden point!  King Astyages, a Mede, gained control over the resistant Babylon after “Belshazzar” was slain.  But then it would have only been a few years later, with this all happening between 561 B.C. and 550 B.C., that King Cyrus the Persian defeated King Astyages.  The golden point is that just because King Cyrus defeated King Astyages, does not mean that Cyrus immediately inherited what had been the entire Median Empire.  Many provinces, including Babylon, which was never fond of foreign rule, went back to self-rule I propose, based on information Herodotus gives.  King Cyrus had to recapture certain lost territory!

   Support of this is the fact Babylon even had a revolt later under Persian rule, and gained self rule for a short period of time!  This happened under the reign of King Darius the third Persian ruler, not the Mede.  “The revolt had been long and carefully planned; indeed, preparations for withstanding a siege had been going quietly on all through the reign of Magus and the disturbances which followed the rising of the seven against him, and somehow or other the secret never leaked out” (Book Three; 150) (2).

   Herodotus goes on tell about how King Darius (not Darius the Mede) worked to get Babylon back.  "[Babylon] could not be taken, not even when Darius, after all else failed, attempted to repeat the method which Cyrus had previously used with success.  The Babylonians were always on the watch with extraordinary vigilance, and gave the enemy no chance" (Book Three; 152) (3).

   You can read about how the Persians regained Babylon from there in a story which shows how the Persians even resorted to deranged measures in their effort to regain rule over Babylon.  So what Herodotus calls the second capture, I would agree was a second for Persia, yet previously, the Medes had captured Babylon sometime near the end of the reign of King Astyages, probably only a short time before Babylon went back to self rule after Astyages, Darius the Mede, was defeated by King Cyrus the Persian.

   Thus King Astyages, as called by Herodotus, was called by the Hebrew author of the book of Daniel "Darius the Mede."  And the Median rule of Babylon by him and the rule by King Cyrus, had a period of Babylonian self rule in between!  Wow.

Hunter Irvine

(1) Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey De Selincourt (New York: Penguin Books, 1954), 84.

(2) Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey De Selincourt (New York: Penguin Books, 1954), 235.

(3) Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey De Selincourt (New York: Penguin Books, 1954), 236.

The fourth of four controversial issues: abortion

   In the last blog post I mentioned my nice (and brilliant) but boring Biology professor.  Now I tell about Dr. J.W. Tubbs, my Constitutional Law professor and Jurisprudence professor at Virginia Tech.  Dr. Tubbs was one of my great professors.  Normally students hardly mentioned professors outside of class, but he was a professor who made such an impression at Tech that people would exchange rumors about the guy.  One of the rumors was he had earned a perfect score on the LSAT, which I never could verify.  One rumor I did verify, since I got the truth from him in person, is that Dr. J.W. Tubbs had read every Supreme Court decision ever written.  He had a muscle disease, and sometimes he would lose control of his muscles.  There was an occasion when he was seriously hit by the problem, and he was in bed for an entire year.  During that time, he read every single decision!!

   Dr. Tubbs employed the Socratic method in his teaching.  He rarely even gave his own personal opinion, rather he would ask hard questions, and then debate with the person who answered the question.  He would argue both sides effectively.  In my second quarter of Constitutional Law at Virginia Tech our class studied Roe vs. Wade.  There obviously was much discussion, though surprisingly not over-heated, with students taking both sides.  We spent a ton of time on that one case.  When we were about to wrap it up after a few days of much intellectual law debate, a bold student ask Dr. Tubbs his view on abortion.  Dr. Tubbs seemed to get more personal for the first time.  He asked, "How is it determined a person is dead?"  The answer was when a person's heart has completely stopped beating.  He said then if a fetus had a beating heart, then he considered her or him to be alive.  No one had any rebuttal.

   As a follower of Jesus, I have been made aware of the sacredness there is to human life, since God has made human beings in His image.  Applying the lesson from that class, my question is: When does the heart of a soul start beating?  I do not know.  Therefore, I think that zero chances can be taken, and that no abortion is appropriate, unless if the mother's life is in danger, since she has a better chance of living.

   Being an uncomfortable topic, the best thing I can do is tell people about a friend from my church back in 1998 and 1999.  His name is Brad.  Brad's mom was in Canada back in the 1960's.  She became pregnant and made the decision to get an abortion.  The doctors worked to abort the child, and out came the fetus, and he was alive.  That child would latter be named Brad, and his birth weight was one pound, eight ounces.  Due to that failed abortion attempt, Brad has brain damage and birth defects which he still has to deal with to this day.  In knowing Brad, I could truly understand the reality that abortion is wrong.

   If you have ever had your baby aborted, know for real that forgiveness is available from Jesus.  If you talk with Jesus, and express to him that you are sorry, He will forgive you.  Abortion is an American tragedy.  Jesus loves even those who have done tragic things.  Jesus loves you.

Hunter Irvine

The third of four controversial issues: creation versus evolution

   One of my most boring classes at Virginia Tech was Biology.  For two quarters I had Dr. Patterson.  He was the nicest guy, but also a boring professor.  From those classes in 1986 and 1987, the main thing I learned is that calcium is used in a huge number of chemical functions in the body.  There you have it.  I am not a scientist of any sort.  High school Biology, Chemistry, and Physics will get me no where in the scientific world today.  Fortunately for me, and for others who are not science experts, we can still know God.  And in fact you will not discover God through science.  Why?  God is Spirit! (see John 4:24)  Being Spirit, we are only able to know God because He revealed Himself to us.  Incredibly enough, God has revealed Himself to us as the Spirit became incarnate (in flesh).  Jesus was fully God, and fully human.

What does this all have to do with evolution?  I propose you need to know God before you can truly understand what it is to be human, because of our limitations.  In knowing God, you learn that God is purposeful in what He does.  In God's creation, there is telos.  The theory of evolution is based on random activity.  Why?  Because mutations are random.  Not only that, mutations usually have a negative affect, not a positive affect.  Yet God did not haphazardly create the universe.  Genesis shows He created it with a purpose, and with distinct order.

   Within the Christian community, us folks who believe evolution is false (not to mistake evolution with adaptation, which are changes that take place which are available within the genes) are in a minority.  In fact, I think many in the Christian community look down on me because I believe evolution is false.  Yet I totally believe that Adam and Eve were real people.  I totally believe that living beings were created directly from the work of God.  I stand by my interpretation of Scripture.  And I encourage you to investigate the telos of God for yourself.

Hunter Irvine

The second of four controversial issues: sex outside of marriage

   Sex outside of marriage has become a key point of disagreement in the culture of the United States.  There has been a rapid shift from a cultural norm that favored sex within marriage to the current cultural norm where sex is widely accepted outside of marriage.

My personal theory as to why sex outside of marriage has become so common in only a few generations is that birth control in the U.S. today is extremely easy to procure.  Once I was in a store and birth control was right next to the toothpaste, and I presume any teenager could have gone to the "self-checkout" lane and purchased the items without anyone even knowing.  Such were not so easy to purchase fifty years ago.

   I turn to the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 19: 4-6, "Haven't you read," [Jesus] replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?'  So they are no longer two, but one.  Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate" (NIV) (1).

   Jesus ordained marriage, which was His idea in the first place.  Sex was meant to be a special expression of love within marriage.  Yet how do I know it was solely meant for marriage?  When furthering the Law in what many people call the "Sermon on the Mount," Jesus said that adultery and even lust, which is the root of adultery, is utterly wrong.  Why?  Because they lead away from the God's purposes for sex.  I add that since lust is so commonly done by some folks, it may seem like a ridiculous rule Jesus is giving here.  Yet the point of the Sermon on the Mount on the whole is that God's ways can only be carried out as a person relies on God to be a better person.  There is forgiveness offered by Jesus for wrongs we have done, and there is a command to change and live a life free from sexual wrong doing, of which the Spirit of Christ will help.

  The designer of sex was God.  Indeed, He came up with it.  Thus sex is good!  Now God had multiple intentions for sex, yet first and foremost it is to be a growing expression of love between a man and a woman in a lifelong covenant relationship.  Go with God's intention for sex, and you will be blessed!

Hunter Irvine

(1) The Holy Bible; New International Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1973), 1528.