it is quite possible that early forms of Zoroastrianism did intersect with and influence these Jews in profound ways; however, the historical record provides us with no certain answers. The encounters between Achaemenid rulers and Judean leaders as described in the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemia do not tell us much about actual religious encounters. There is virtually no hint of the religious outlook of the Achaemenids in either Ezra or Nehemia, nor in the petitions to Bagoas, the Persian governor of Yehud, preserved in the Elephantine papyri – a cache of 5th‐century BCE Aramaic documents and letters from a Jewish military garrison in the upper Nile (Porton 1992). Some of the other biblical books dated to the Persian period (e.g., Haggai, Zekharia, and the post‐exilic sections of Isaiah) reflect novel religious conceptions, yet there is as of yet little clear evidence of Zoroastrian influence on these works. Claims by some scholars that Israelite monotheism derived from Zoroastrianism (Lang 1983: 13–59; Choksy 2003a) are unconvincing.

This does not mean that Jews were unaware of Iranian religion. Critical references to cultic fire‐rituals seem to merit mention in Isaiah 44:14–20 and 50:11, and a possible reference to the Zoroastrian barašnu ceremony might be found in Isaiah 66:17 (Winston 1966: 187–188). Nevertheless, perhaps the only vestige of religious interaction during this period appears in Isaiah 40–48. There, the prophet addresses Cyrus as god’s “anointed one,” who will exact vengeance from the Babylonian con-querors of Judea. The prophet also launches into a lesson about the Jewish god’s cosmic powers. A couple of decades after the discovery of the Cyrus cylinder, Second Isaiah’s “Cyrus Oracle” was profitably compared with the text of the Cylinder (Kittel 1898).
Over half a century later, Morton Smith (1963) suggested that both the Cylinder and Oracle were based on an attempt of Persian propagandists to convince Babylonian Marduk worshipers and Judeans of the divine sanction of Cyrus’ conquests. Smith further sug-gested a relationship between the language, style, and tone of this section of Isaiah and a number of strophes in the Gathas, in particular Yasna. Smith’s parallels are too many to consider here, but one noteworthy verse that may have addressed Iranian dualism is Isaiah 45:7: “I form light and create darkness. I make weal and create woe – I Yahweh do all these things” (Smith 1963: 419–420,contra Weinfeld 1968: 120– 126). Given the provenance, dating, and nature of the Gathas and Second Isaiah, an organic link between these two works is out of the question. Still, it may be possible to think of Isaiah 45 as a kind of early Jewish intersection with and reaction to Achaemenid Zoroastrianism concerning the powers of Yahweh versus Zoroastrian dualism. As we shall see, Jewish–Zoroastrian intersection regarding dualism continued into later periods as well.