`  :::Your claims about ``campaigning`` are simply nonsensical and bordering on a conspiracy theory. I really don't know where you're getting your ideas from. The ``revisionist`` view is based on new evidence - primarily archaeological, as there's little contemporary written material from ancient Persia. That was the whole point of the British Museum exhibition I mentioned earlier; it was specifically intended to present a view of ancient Persia that didn't depend on the caricatures of the ancient Greeks. This view is not only ``vetted by the broader historical community``, it is the modern mainstream view.   :::``Committed to gratuitous violence`` is again rhetorical exaggeration on your part. Nobody is suggesting this, not least the historians quoted in the article. Massacring a resisting city's population was a standard military tactic in the ancient world (had you forgotten the Jewish Revolt?). It wasn't ``gratuitous`` any more than, say, the bombing of Dresden was - it was simply a way of achieving ``shock and awe``, to borrow a phrase.  :::As for the Bible/Torah, they're basically a collection of Bronze Age mythology mixed with garbled oral histories, edited and re-edited repeatedly over the course of several millennia. There are certainly some nuggets of historical information in there. However, working out which bits are historically accurate is a difficult and controversial business. It's certainly not something you should be basing your assumptions on.    `