The Bible gives ancient Iran uniquely positive treatment

Evidence

The Bible gives us a uniquely positive picture of ancient Iran, in a literature which does not normally deal indulgently with strangers, nor even with its own people. … The earliest occurrences of the name Persia, Paras, are in the Book of Ezekiel, where Paras is listed along with other exotic and outlandish names to indicate the outer limits of the known world. Paras has something like the significance of ultima thule in western usage. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 291

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how civilizations remember their neighbors — echoes the addendum article on how cross-cultural judgments get encoded.