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When was Jesus Born

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WHEN WAS JESUS BORN?: M. M. NINAN<br />

‘Thus has the Lord, God of Israel, spoken: “Your fathers dwelt in olden<br />

times beyond the River [Euphrates], Terach, the father of Abraham and<br />

the father of Nachor, and they served other gods. And I took your father<br />

Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of<br />

Canaan….”<br />

Thus what has happened <strong>was</strong> they were back to the land from which the<br />

Patriarchs started their journey. The Parthian Empire existed in and<br />

around Aram from where Abram came. This is the land of<br />

Mesopotamia, the land between the two Rivers. Many Jews found<br />

shelter in various other countries as well.<br />

But majority of them were in Mesopotamia where they rose to become<br />

of the great powers of the period which contended with the Roman<br />

Empire. The Parthian empire occupied all of modern Iran, Iraq and<br />

Armenia, parts of Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan,<br />

Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and -for brief periods- territories in<br />

Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine .”<br />

George Rawlinson, Parthia and The Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy.<br />

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Various officials of the Achaemenid Persian Empire were from<br />

the Israelite tribe of Judah, and the Parthians were themselves<br />

descendants of the ten tribes of Israel. The term “Iran” comes<br />

from the ‘Ephraimite clan named after “Eran,” and even the name<br />

of the language “Pahlavi” contains the name of the Israelite tribe<br />

of Levi! The name Parthia itself comes from the consonants are<br />

91

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