What foreign powers dominated palestine at the end of the Old Testament?

Answer 1

It was the mighty Roman power.

another answer

Actually they were under the control of the Persian empire at the time that the last book (Malachi) of the Old Testament was written, and shortly before the time when Alexander the great came on the scene and conquered most of the known world. This last book was wrote around 400 years before the birth of Christ.

A reason for wanting to deviate from this date is a result of wanting to take a book like Daniel and claim that it was wrote at a much later date than it would claim by its content, and so making it the last book of the Old Testament. According to Daniel, wrote by Daniel, it was wrote by this man near the end of the Babylonian Empire and into the onset of the Mede-Persian empire (around 530-576 BC)

The desire of critics to want to make the book of a much later date and by a different author, posing as said Daniel, results mainly from the detailed accuracy given in many of Daniels prophecies. These prophecies are very specific concerning the end of the Persian Empire by the rise and conquering by Alexander the great, along with his early untimely death, and the resulting split of his empire among his generals and the long back and forth battles between those split off sections of Alexander's old empire, especially between the Ptolemic dynasty of northern Africa and the Seleucid of the Syrian region, whereby Palestine become a battleground and a punching bag between these then world powers. All of this was prophesied about in Daniel in a very detailed fashion, centuries before it happened.

The reasoning was that because the prophecy was so specific pertaining to these things, and the stylistic use of both the Aramaic and Hebrew, switched back and forth in a book obviously not all wrote at the same time, that then therefore it must mean that the book of Daniel was not wrote by this person but by some Jew at a later date. That is, it must be wrote beyond the date of these happenings and so was actually a writing of history and not a prophecy.

Thus placing the Old Testament closing near the time of the rise of Rome, or at least later in the Seleucid empire, rather than the time claimed in the Text.

There are other things involved but as plausible as it might sound at first glance, this is a very tired old attempt that is full of holes and contradicts many ancient historical sources that testify to the veracity of Daniel ; Christ himself claims that Daniel was wrote by the Daniel of the book of Daniel by referencing a passage of that Book as being by Daniel the Prophet etc et.

That the Daniel of this book wrote this book and at the time the book demands in a historical context has been shown to be historically true, over and over again and the claims to the contrary have likewise been demonstrated time and again to be completely false and mere conjecture, and speculation with no legitimate basis in reality.

So, recap: Persia was in power at the close of the Old Testament (Malachi).