By Wm. Scott Harrop, published in the Spring 2013 Newsletter, Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Virginia:

“What appealed to the founding fathers about Cyrus,” according to MacGregor, was “a model of a state that was equidistant from all religions, rather than either adopting a state religion, or else being anticlerical.” Put differently, “the relic asks the question: can a state be equidistant from all religion?”

Read the article: Cyrus and Jefferson: Did they Speak the Same Language?