ABSTRACT
The Hebrew Bible and Persian Religion both evolved under the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Using Bourdieu’s field theory places the study of these traditions into a frame wherein the Great King had agency to reshape the Near Eastern Religious Field. This essay sketches ideas for such change through the topics of royal policy towards subject cults, the reimagining of the heavens on the model of the Achaemenid Empire, and comparing the two traditions as contemporaries in the same imperial religious field. Thus, despite the Hebrew Bible’s lack of explicit interest in Persian religion, studying the two in tandem remains a profitable historiographic exercise.
