Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

PARTHIA*, PARTHIANS

Land (roughly corresponding to modern Iran) lying beyond the eastern boundaries of the Roman Empire, and so almost outside the world of the NT.

It is included, however, in maps of the OT world, which generally encompass Eastern territory. Many Jews deported from Palestine after the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions were living in this area when in the sixth century BC it became part of the vast Persian Empire of Cyrus, and thousands stayed on in spite of Cyrus’s offer of repatriation. Two centuries afterward, that empire was conquered by Alexander the Great. But 100 years later several parts of it, including Parthia, threw off the yoke of his successors and became independent.

Parthia eventually became a great empire, stretching from the Euphrates to the Indus. In the NT period, even mighty Rome regarded it as a potential threat. The first confrontation between the two powers actually resulted in a defeat for the Romans (at Carrhae, the biblical Haran, in 53 BC). Only in the second century AD did the balance shift, and even then, though twice annexed, Parthia twice recovered its independence. It fell eventually in AD 226, not to the Romans, but to a neo-Persian coup within its own borders.

Wealthy because of their position astride Asian trade routes, and militarily strong because of their famous mounted bowmen, who won many a battle by apparently retreating and then shooting at the pursuing enemy (hence the phrase “parting [or ‘Parthian’] shot”), the Parthians seem also to have been a tolerant people. A large Jewish community continued to live among them, and at the time of Pentecost (Acts 2) their province of Babylonia had, curiously enough, a Jewish governor. More important, Jews from Parthia, and possibly also Parthian converts to Judaism (“proselytes”), were in Jerusalem on that epoch-making day (v 9). By them the gospel may have been taken, within weeks of the resurrection, well on its way to India.