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Zoroastrianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

George Foot Moore
George Foot Moore
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

The religion whose adherents call themselves “Worshippers of Mazda,” the Wise God, and which we commonly name after its founder Zoroastrianism, is in many ways of peculiar interest. It is the only monotheistic religion of Indo-European origin, as Judaism is the one independent Semitic monotheism. Zoroastrianism is, further, eminently an ethical religion, both in its idea of God and of what God requires of men. It presents itself as a revelation of God's will through his prophet. His will is that men, renouncing the false gods, should serve the Wise Lord alone, obey his word, and contend on his side for the defeat of evil and the triumph of all good in nature and society and in the character of the individual. The prophet warns men that the day of the Lord is at hand, an ordeal by fire in which God will separate between those who serve him and those who serve him not, and of the endless blessedness or the unfathomable misery beyond. God has his allies not only among men but among the hosts of spirits; to the hierarchy of good powers corresponds a hierarchy of evil. In the endeavor to clear God of the responsibility for evil, Zoroastrianism recognized a powerful head of the evil spirits, a devil. But it had firm faith in the final triumph of good and the end of all evil. When that day shall come, all the dead will be raised to stand at the bar of God in the grand assize and receive the just recompense of reward. The main features of this eschatology were adopted by the Jews and adapted to the premises of their own religion; through Judaism it passed to Christianity, where it was fused with elements of diverse origin; from Judaism and Christianity, and to some extent directly from later Zoroastrianism, Mohammedanism inherited it. The orthodox beliefs about the hereafter of the world and the individual entertained by the nations of Western Asia, Europe, and America, are thus ultimately derived in no small part from Zoroastrianism; only in the farther East, in India, China, and Japan, does another system prevail.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , April 1912 , pp. 180 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1912

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References

1 The term “monotheism” is often loosely applied to monarchical types of polytheism, in which one god is raised to a sovereign rank among the gods, as well as to the pantheistic speculation which sees in all the gods only names, forms, partial manifestations, of one god; but, inasmuch as in both cases worship continues to be paid to many gods in their own name and right, such religions can only be classed as polytheistic. We may distinguish them as monarchical polytheism or pantheistic polytheism, but to call them monotheism, even qualified by a contradictory epithet such as “latent” or “esoteric,” is a misuse of words. It may be added that no religion of these types has ever shown the slightest tendency to develop into religious monotheism. With monotheistic philosophies we are not here concerned.

2 It is perhaps not superfluous to remark that this Hystaspes is not the father of Darius.

3 The demon of idolatry.

4 A kind of ordeal by fire.

5 Abolition of slavery?

6 Yasna 30 5.

7 1 Cor. 10 20.

8 The name is not found in the Gathas themselves, but occurs in a prose text of approximately the same age.

9 In the inscriptions of Darius Hystaspis, the Druj (Lie) appears, as in the Gathas, to be the comprehensive word for evil.

10 Examples are found in America as well as among the Mongols.

11 A Mithradates is named among the assassins of Xerxes.

12 The Babylonian Anat, whose name has a superficial resemblance to Anahita, is never so much as named in Assyrian or New-Babylonian texts, that is, in the period in which the Persians might have heard of her, and apparently even in earlier times had a place in the pantheon only because it was proper for Anu to have a wife. The West Syrian Anath, a warlike deity, also disappears from view long before the Persian time.

13 Cf. also Tishtrya Yasht, 52.

14 With these verses in Prov. 8 cf. especially Gatha 1.

15 The contrary theory, that the Jewish cosmology was derived from the Persians, is, on chronological grounds, not worth considering.

16 Cf. Dinkart, viii, 13, 9, from the lost Citradat Nask. Here, again, the three groups in Genesis, Shem, Ham (Canaan), and Japhet will suggest themselves, or the three Greek stocks, Aeolians, Ionians, Dorians.

17 For the age of this myth it is significant that the name of the demon of idolatry is Buiti (Buddha).

18 Cf. Matt. 4 8–11.

19 This attack and rout of the demons is apparently in the infancy of Zoroaster, not at the beginning of his ministry.

20 Cf. Ephes. 6 10 ff., and with it Minokhired, c. 43, Sacred Books of the East, xxiv, 84.

21 An exception in Yasna 65 7.

22 A similar precaution is used by Shinto priests in Japan and by cooks in the Mikado's kitchen.

23 This performance is repeated at intervals so long as the body remains in the house.

24 This seems to be the original motive for the use of incense in the worship of the gods.

25 The Dakhmas are the favorite haunts of demons who smite men with all manner of diseases.

26 Names of classes of demons. See Vendidad 20.

27 Mithra Yasht 1.

28 Herodotus v, 25; cf. vii, 194.

29 Vendidad 3 23 ff.

30 Vendidad 18 37.

31 Cf. Leviticus 15 16; 22 4.

32 Vendidad 3 40 ff.

33 The spiritual world is, therefore, not without its creature comforts.

34 This is Christian doctrine also. Cf. Athenagoras, De resurrectione, cc. 3. ff.

35 Black being the common color.

36 According to Diogenes Laertius.

37 Damascius, ed. Kopp, p. 384.