Parthia

• rising power; wars with Rome

121:1.9The first strug­gles be­tween the ex­pand­ing Ro­man and Parthian states had been con­cluded in the then re­cent past, leav­ing Syria in the hands of the Ro­mans. In the times of Je­sus, Pales­tine and Syria were en­joy­ing a pe­riod of pros­per­ity, rel­a­tive peace, and ex­ten­sive com­mer­cial in­ter­course with the lands to both the East and the West.

• rising power; wars with Rome

121:2.8The se­cret of the sur­vival of Pales­tine, the king­dom of the Jews, as a semi-in­de­pen­dent state was wrapped up in the for­eign pol­icy of the Ro­man gov­ern­ment, which de­sired to main­tain con­trol of the Pales­tinian high­way of travel be­tween Syria and Egypt as well as the west­ern ter­mi­nals of the car­a­van routes be­tween the Ori­ent and the Oc­ci­dent. Rome did not wish any power to arise in the Lev­ant which might curb her fu­ture ex­pan­sion in these re­gions. The pol­icy of in­trigue which had for its ob­ject the pit­ting of Se­leu­cid Syria and Ptole­maic Egypt against each other ne­ces­si­tated fos­ter­ing Pales­tine as a sep­a­rate and in­de­pen­dent state. Ro­man pol­icy, the de­gen­er­a­tion of Egypt, and the pro­gres­sive weak­en­ing of the Se­leu­cids be­fore the ris­ing power of Parthia, ex­plain why it was that for sev­eral gen­er­a­tions a small and un­pow­er­ful group of Jews was able to main­tain its in­de­pen­dence against both Se­leu­ci­dae to the north and Ptolemies to the south. This for­tu­itous lib­erty and in­de­pen­dence of the po­lit­i­cal rule of sur­round­ing and more pow­er­ful peo­ples the Jews at­tributed to the fact that they were the “cho­sen peo­ple,” to the di­rect in­ter­po­si­tion of Yah­weh. Such an at­ti­tude of racial su­pe­ri­or­ity made it all the harder for them to en­dure Ro­man su­zer­ainty when it fi­nally fell upon their land. But even in that sad hour the Jews re­fused to learn that their world mis­sion was spir­i­tual, not po­lit­i­cal.

• library at Alexandria contained manuscripts from

130:3.4By the fourth hour af­ter land­ing they were set­tled near the east­ern end of the long and broad av­enue, one hun­dred feet wide and five miles long, which stretched on out to the west­ern lim­its of this city of one mil­lion peo­ple. Af­ter the first sur­vey of the city’s chief at­trac­tions—uni­ver­sity (mu­seum), li­brary, the royal mau­soleum of Alexan­der, the palace, tem­ple of Nep­tune, the­ater, and gym­na­sium—Gonod ad­dressed him­self to busi­ness while Je­sus and Ga­nid went to the li­brary, the great­est in the world. Here were as­sem­bled nearly a mil­lion manuscripts from all the civ­i­lized world: Greece, Rome, Pales­tine, Parthia, In­dia, China, and even Japan. In this li­brary Ga­nid saw the largest col­lec­tion of In­dian lit­er­a­ture in all the world; and they spent some time here each day through­out their stay in Alexan­dria. Je­sus told Ga­nid about the trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek at this place. And they dis­cussed again and again all the re­li­gions of the world, Je­sus en­deav­or­ing to point out to this young mind the truth in each, al­ways adding: “But Yah­weh is the God de­vel­oped from the rev­e­la­tions of Mel­chiz­e­dek and the covenant of Abra­ham. The Jews were the off­spring of Abra­ham and sub­se­quently oc­cu­pied the very land wherein Mel­chiz­e­dek had lived and taught, and from which he sent teach­ers to all the world; and their re­li­gion even­tu­ally por­trayed a clearer rec­og­ni­tion of the Lord God of Is­rael as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in heaven than any other world re­li­gion.”

• Parthia

134:2.1It was the first of April, A.D. 24, when Je­sus left Naz­a­reth on the car­a­van trip to the Caspian Sea re­gion. The car­a­van which Je­sus joined as its con­duc­tor was go­ing from Je­ru­sa­lem by way of Da­mas­cus and Lake Ur­mia through As­syria, Me­dia, and Parthia to the south­east­ern Caspian Sea re­gion. It was a full year be­fore he re­turned from this jour­ney.