Changes

The rise of common languages during this time, first expressed in Aramaic, also likely explains how multiculturalism flourished. <ref> For information on how Aramaic plays an important social role, see: Folmer, M. L. 1995. The Aramaic Language in the Achaemenid Period: A Study in Linguistic Variation. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 68. Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en Dép. Oosterse Studies.</ref> In effect, while cultural groups were free to worship as they please pleased in most periods and conduct their own affairs, common language enabled the creation of an identity that groups could relate with to enable the state and, more significantly, the multicultural system to persist. Therefore, while ethnic groups retained their own sets of ideas and religions, they were also integrated into a larger society where a common language allowed them to communicate with others more easily.<ref>For more information about common languages in the Near East in the Classical Age, see: Noble, T. F. X. (2013). Western civilization: beyond boundaries (Cengage advantage edition, Seventh edition). Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, pg. 149.</ref>

 Given this rise of multiculturalism, it is perhaps not surprising that when we do get the rise of Christianity and Judaism, religions that were universal and monotheistic, they seem to have been accepted or tolerated in many areas of the Near East ruled by Iranian dynasties, such as the Parthians and Sasanians, by then had a long experience with multiple cultural groups and beliefs. These groups recognized, perhaps, the benefits of keeping a united state through the tolerance to different groups, even those that emphasized a narrower worldview of salvation that Rome found so threatening. <ref> For information on religious tolerance in the Parthian and Sasanian periods, see: Curtis, John, Vladimir Grigorʹevich Lukonin, and British Museum, eds. 2000. Mesopotamia and Iran in the Parthian and Sasanian Periods: Rejection and Revival C. 238 BC-AD 642: Proceedings of a Seminar in Memory of Vladimir G. Lukonin ; Funded by a Gift from Raymond and Beverly Sackler. London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press.</ref>