Zoroaster

Zarathushtra Spitama, more commonly known as Zoroaster, was an Iranian religious reformer who challenged the tenets of the contemporary Ancient Iranian religion, becoming the spiritual founder of Zoroastrianism. In the oldest Zoroastrian scriptures, the Gathas, which he is traditionally believed to have authored, he is described as a preacher and a poet-prophet. Some have claimed, with much scholarly controversy, to find his influence in Heraclitus, Plato, Pythagoras, and, perhaps less controversially, in the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, particularly through concepts of cosmic dualism and personal morality.

Zarathustra spoke Avestan, an old Iranian language which scholars lent its name to after the Avesta, the corpus of Zoroastrian religious texts written in the language. Based on this, it is tentative to place his homeland somewhere in the eastern regions of the Greater Iran (possibly Bactra, now in modern-day Afghanistan). His life is traditionally dated to some time around the 7th and 6th centuries BC; though most scholars, using linguistic and socio-cultural evidence, suggest a dating even further back to the end of the 2nd and the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Zoroaster is credited with authorship of the Gathas as well as the , a series of hymns composed in Old Avestan that cover core Zoroastrian beliefs. Little is known about Zoroaster; most of his life is known only from these scant texts. as used in Xanthus's (Fragment 32) and in Plato's First Alcibiades (122a1). This form appears subsequently in the Latin , and, in later Greek orthographies, as . The Greek form of the name appears to be based on a phonetic adaptation or semantic substitution of Avestan with the Greek (literally 'undiluted') and the BMAC substrate with .

In Avestan, is generally accepted to derive from an Old Iranian . The second component of the name is thought to be the Indo-Iranian root for 'camel', with the entire name meaning 'he who can manage camels'. Reconstructions from later Iranian languages—particularly from the Middle Persian (300 BC) , which is the form that the name took in the 9th- to 12th-century Zoroastrian texts—suggest that might be a zero-grade form of . Subject then to whether derives from or from , several interpretations have been proposed.

If is the original form, it may mean 'with old/aging camels', related to Avestic 'with angry/furious camels': from Avestan , 'angry, furious'. 'who is driving camels' or 'who is fostering/cherishing camels': related to Avestan , 'to drag'. Mayrhofer (1977) proposed an etymology of 'who is desiring camels' or 'longing for camels' and related to Vedic Sanskrit , 'to like', and perhaps (though ambiguous) also to Avestan .

The interpretation of the in the Avestan was for a time itself subjected to heated debate because the is an irregular development: as a rule, (a first element that ends in a dental consonant) should have Avestan or as a development from it. Why this is not so for has not yet been determined. Notwithstanding the phonetic irregularity, that Avestan with its was linguistically an actual form is shown by later attestations reflecting the same basis.

In Middle Persian, the name is , in Parthian , in Manichaean Middle Persian ,

Classical scholarship Classical scholarship in the 6th to 4th century BC believed he existed 6,000 years before Xerxes I's invasion of Greece in 480 BC (Xanthus, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Hermippus), which is a possible misunderstanding of the Zoroastrian four cycles of 3,000 years (i.e. 12,000 years). This belief is recorded by Diogenes Laërtius, and variant readings could place it 600 years before Xerxes I, somewhere before 1000 BC. According to Pliny the Elder, there were two Zoroasters. The first lived thousands of years ago, while the second accompanied Xerxes I in the invasion of Greece in 480 BC.

Zoroastrian and Muslim scholarship Some later pseudo-historical and Zoroastrian sources (the , which references a date "258 years before Alexander") place Zoroaster in the 6th century BC, ("258 years before Alexander" is only superficially precise.) It has been suggested that this "traditional date" is an adoption of some date from foreign sources, from the Greeks or the Babylonians for example, which the priesthood then reinterpreted. The traditional Zoroastrian date originates in the period immediately following Alexander the Great's conquest of the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BC. counting back the length of successive generations, until they concluded that Zoroaster must have lived "258 years before Alexander". This estimate then re-appeared in the 9th- to 12th-century Arabic and Pahlavi texts of Zoroastrian tradition, (The computes "200 and some years" (GBd xxxvi.9) or "284 years" (IBd xxxiv.9).) That '258 years' was the generally accepted figure is however noted by al-Biruni and al-Masudi, with the latter specifically stating (in 943/944 AD) that "the Magians count a period of two hundred and fifty-eight years between their prophet and Alexander."

Early date Scholars such as Mary Boyce (who dated Zoroaster to somewhere between 1700 and 1000 BC) used linguistic and socio-cultural evidence to place Zoroaster between 1500 and 1000 BC (or 1200 and 900 BC). and that it is thus implausible that the Gathas and Rigveda could have been composed more than a few centuries apart. These scholars suggest that Zoroaster lived in an isolated tribe or composed the Gathas before the 1200–1000 BC migration by the Iranians from the steppe to the Iranian Plateau. The shortfall of the argument is the vague comparison, and the archaic language of Gathas does not necessarily indicate time difference.

Almut Hintze, the British Library, and the European Research Council have dated Zoroaster to roughly 3,500 years ago, in the 2nd millennium BC.

Place

The birthplace of Zoroaster is also unknown, and the language of the Gathas is not similar to the proposed north-western and north-eastern regional dialects of Persia. It is also suggested that he was born in one of the two areas and later lived in the other area.

9 and 17 cite the Ditya River in Airyanem Vaējah (Middle Persian ) as Zoroaster's home and the scene of his first appearance. The Avesta (both Old and Younger portions) does not mention the Achaemenids or of any West Iranian tribes such as the Medes, Persians, or even the Parthians. The refers to some Iranian peoples that are unknown in the Greek and Achaemenid sources about the 6th and 5th century BC Eastern Iran. The contain 17 regional names, most of which are located in north-eastern and eastern Iran.

However, in 59.18, the , or supreme head of the Zoroastrian priesthood, is said to reside in 'Ragha' (Badakhshan).

Apart from these indications in Middle Persian sources that are open to interpretations, there are a number of other sources. The Greek and Latin sources are divided on the birthplace of Zoroaster. Among the Greek accounts, Ctesias located him in Bactria, Diodorus Siculus placed him among Ariaspai (in Sistan),

On the other hand, in post-Islamic sources Shahrastani (1086–1153), an Iranian writer originally from Shahristān, in present-day Turkmenistan, proposed that Zoroaster's father was from Atropatene (also in Medea) and his mother was from Rey. Coming from a reputed scholar of religion, this was a serious blow to the various regions which all claimed that Zoroaster originated from homelands, some of which had then decided that Zoroaster must have then been buried in their regions or composed his Gathas there or preached there. Arabic sources of the same period and the same region of historical Persia also consider Azerbaijan as the birthplace of Zarathustra. Khlopin suggests the Tedzen Delta in present-day Turkmenistan. Sarianidi considered the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex region as "the native land of the Zoroastrians and, probably, of Zoroaster himself." Boyce includes the steppes to the west from the Volga. The medieval "from Media" hypothesis is no longer taken seriously, and Zaehner has even suggested that this was a Magi-mediated issue to garner legitimacy, but this has been likewise rejected by Gershevitch and others.

The 2005 Encyclopedia Iranica article on the history of Zoroastrianism summarizes the issue with "while there is general agreement that he did not live in western Iran, attempts to locate him in specific regions of eastern Iran, including Central Asia, remain tentative".

Life

Zoroaster is recorded as the son of Pourushaspa of the Spitama family,

Zoroaster's training for priesthood probably started very early around seven years of age. He became a priest probably around the age of 15, and according to Gathas, gaining knowledge from other teachers and personal experience from traveling when he left his parents at age 20. By the age of 30, Zoroaster experienced a revelation during a spring festival; on the river bank he saw a shining being, who revealed himself as (Good Purpose) and taught him about (Wise Lord) and five other radiant figures. Zoroaster soon became aware of the existence of two primal spirits, the second being (Destructive Spirit), with opposing concepts of (order) and (deception). Thus he decided to spend his life teaching people to seek . He received further revelations and saw a vision of the seven , and his teachings were collected in the and the .

Eventually, at the age of about 42, Zoroaster received the patronage of queen Hutaosa and a ruler named Vishtaspa, an early adherent of Zoroastrianism (possibly from Bactria according to the Shahnameh).

According to the tradition, he lived for many years after Vishtaspa's conversion, managed to establish a faithful community, and married three times. His first two wives bore him three sons, Isat Vâstra, Urvatat Nara, and Hvare Chithra, and three daughters, Freni, Thriti, and Pouruchista. His third wife, Hvōvi, was childless. Zoroaster died when he was 77 years and 40 days old.

Cypress of Kashmar

The Cypress of Kashmar was a cypress tree, said to have sprung from a branch brought by Zoroaster from Paradise and to have stood in today's Kashmar in northeastern Iran and to have been planted by Zoroaster in honor of the conversion of King Vishtaspa to Zoroastrianism. According to the Iranian physicist and historian Zakariya al-Qazwini, King Vishtaspa had been a patron of Zoroaster who planted the tree himself. In his ('The Wonders of Creatures and the Marvels of Creation'), he further describes how the Al-Mutawakkil in 247 AH (861 AD) caused the mighty cypress to be felled, and then transported it across Iran, to be used for beams in his new palace at Samarra. Before, he wanted the tree to be reconstructed before his eyes. This was done in spite of protests by the Iranians, who offered a very great sum of money to save the tree. Al-Mutawakkil never saw the cypress, because he was murdered by a Turkic soldier (possibly in the employ of his son) on the night when it arrived on the banks of the Tigris.

Influences In Christianity and Judaism

Athanasius Kircher identified Zoroaster with Ham. The French figurist Jesuit missionary to China Joachim Bouvet thought that Zoroaster, the Chinese cultural hero Fuxi and Hermes Trismegistus were actually the Biblical patriarch Enoch. Some legends identify Baruch with Zoroaster.

In Islam

The Encyclopædia Iranica claims that the stories of Zoroaster's life were attributed to him by quoting stories from Christianity and Judaism, but the most quotations were from Islam after the entry of Muslims into Persia, as it was a means for the Zoroastrian clergy to strengthen their religion.

The orientalist Arthur Christensen in his book Iran During The Sassanid Era , mentioned that the sources dating back to the era of the Sasanian state in ancient Persian that refer to the Zoroastrian doctrine do not match the sources that appeared after the collapse of the state, such as the Pahlavi source and others. The reason is that because of the fall of the Sasanian state, the Zoroastrian clerics tried to save their religion from extinction through modifying it to resemble the religion of Muslims to retain followers in the Zoroastrian religion.

Gherardo Gnoli comments that the Islamic conquest of Persia caused a huge impact on the Zoroastrian doctrine:

Maneckji Nusserwanji Dhalla described the doctrine of the Gayomarthians sect as another attempt to mitigate the dualism that has always been the essence of Zoroastrianism. This was due to the Prophet Muhammad’s emphasis on monotheism and the Muslims’ mockery of the doctrine of worshipping two gods, which made the Zoroastrians view dualism as a defect, so they added monotheism, which led to the Zoroastrians’ division into sects and he mentions examples of the Zoroastrian attempt to establish a monotheistic belief by diminishing the importance of Ahriman, including that Ahura Mazda and Ahriman were created from time, or that Ahura Mazda himself allowed the existence of evil, or that Ahriman was a corrupt angel who rebelled against Ahura Mazda. Then he mentions the name of a Persian book from the 15th century in which it is written that the Magi (Zoroastrians) believe that Allah and Iblis are brothers.

This provides an explanation of why a number of parallels have been drawn between Zoroastrian teachings and Islam. Such parallels include the evident similarities between Amesha Spenta and the archangel Gabriel, praying five times a day, covering one's head during prayer, and the mention of Thamud and Iram of the Pillars in the Quran.

The Sabians, who believed in free will coincident with Zoroastrians, are also mentioned in the Quran 22:17.

Muslim scholastic views

Like the Greeks of classical antiquity, Islamic tradition understands Zoroaster to be the founding prophet of the Magians (via Aramaic, Arabic , collective ). The 11th-century Cordoban Ibn Hazm (Zahiri school) contends that the designation "[follower] of the Scripture [of God]" cannot apply in light of the Zoroastrian assertion that their books were destroyed by Alexander. Citing the authority of the 8th-century al-Kalbi, the 9th- and 10th-century Sunni historian al-Tabari (I, 648)reports that Zaradusht bin Isfiman (an Arabic adaptation of "Zarathushtra Spitama") was an inhabitant of Israel and a servant of one of the disciples of the prophet Jeremiah. According to this tale, Zaradusht defrauded his master, who cursed him, causing him to become leprous (cf. Elisha's servant Gehazi in Jewish scripture).

Ibn Kathir has quoted the original narrative was borrowed from Tabari's record of the "History of Jerusalem". He also mentioned that Zoroastrian was synonymous with Majus.

Sibt ibn al-Jawzi instead stated that some older narration said that Zoroaster was a former disciple of Uzair.

Al-Tabari (I, 681–683)

In Manichaeism The four primary prophets of Manichaeism in the Manichaean Diagram of the Universe, from left to right: Mani, Zoroaster, Buddha and Jesus. Manichaeism considered Zoroaster to be a figure in a line of prophets of which Mani (216–276) was the culmination. Zoroaster's ethical dualism is—to an extent—incorporated in Manichaeism's doctrine which, unlike Mani's thoughts, viewed the world as being locked in an epic battle between opposing forces of good and evil. Manicheanism also incorporated other elements of Zoroastrian tradition, particularly the names of supernatural beings; however, many of these other Zoroastrian elements are either not part of Zoroaster's own teachings or are used quite differently from how they are used in Zoroastrianism.

In the Bahá'í Faith Zoroaster appears in the Bahá'í Faith as a "Manifestation of God", one of a line of prophets who have progressively revealed the Word of God to a gradually maturing humanity. Zoroaster thus shares an exalted station with Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Jesus, Muhammad, the Báb, and the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, Bahá'u'lláh. Shoghi Effendi, the head of the Bahá'í Faith in the first half of the 20th century, saw Bahá'u'lláh as the fulfillment of a post-Sassanid Zoroastrian prophecy that saw a return of Sassanid emperor Bahram; Effendi also stated that Zoroaster lived roughly 1000 years before Jesus.

Philosophy

In the , Zoroaster sees the human condition as the mental struggle between and . The cardinal concept of —which is highly nuanced and difficult to translate—is at the foundation of all Zoroastrian doctrine, including that of (who is ), creation (that is ), existence (that is ), and as the condition for free will.

The purpose of humankind, like that of all other creation, is to sustain and align itself to . For humankind, this occurs through active ethical participation in life, ritual, and the exercise of constructive/good thoughts, words, and deeds.

Elements of Zoroastrian philosophy entered the West through their influence on Judaism and Platonism and have been identified as one of the key early events in the development of philosophy. Among the classic Greek philosophers, Heraclitus is often referred to as inspired by Zoroaster's thinking.

In 2005, the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy ranked Zoroaster as first in the chronology of philosophers. Zoroaster's impact lingers today due in part to the system of religious ethics he founded called . The word is Avestan and is translated as 'Worship of Wisdom/Mazda' in English. The encyclopedia Natural History (Pliny) claims that Zoroastrians later educated the Greeks who, starting with Pythagoras, used a similar term, philosophy, or "love of wisdom" to describe the search for ultimate truth.

Zoroaster emphasized the freedom of the individual to choose right or wrong and individual responsibility for one's deeds. This personal choice to accept and shun is one's own decision and not a dictate of . For Zoroaster, by thinking good thoughts, saying good words, and doing good deeds (e.g. assisting the needy, doing good works, or conducting good rituals) one increases in the world and in themselves, celebrating the divine order, and coming a step closer on the everlasting road to .

Iconography

Beginning in the nineteenth century, Zoroaster was visually depicted with physical attributes borrowed from other faith traditions. He is rarely depicted as looking directly at the viewer; instead, he appears to be looking slightly upwards, as if beseeching. He is almost always depicted with a beard along with other factors bearing similarities to 19th-century portraits of Jesus.

Indian Zoroastrian depiction of Zoroaster from a 1906 travel guide. Derived from a figure that appears in a 4th-century sculpture at Taq-e Bostan in South-Western Iran. The original is now believed to be either a representation of Mithra or Hvare-khshaeta. A Sassanid-era rock-face carving at Taq-e Bostan depicts a figure, with a in hand, a gloriole around his head and standing on a lotus, presiding over the coronation of either Ardashir I or II. Now identified as Mithra it was mistakenly believed to be Zoroaster and directly inspired a widely circulated 19th-century painting of the prophet which in turn shaped many modern visual representations.

Western references to Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism In classical antiquity

The Greeks—in the Hellenistic sense of the term—had an understanding of Zoroaster as expressed by Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, and Agathias that saw him, at the core, to be the "prophet and founder of the religion of the Iranian peoples," Beck notes that "the rest was mostly fantasy". Zoroaster was set in the ancient past, six to seven millennia before the Common Era, and was described as a king of Bactria or a Babylonian (or teacher of Babylonians), and with a biography typical of a Neopythagorean sage, i.e. having a mission preceded by ascetic withdrawal and enlightenment.

Zoroaster has also been described as a sorcerer-astrologerthe creator of both magic and astrology. Deriving from that image, and reinforcing it, was a "mass of literature" attributed to him and that circulated the Mediterranean world from the 3rd century BC to the end of antiquity and beyond.

The language of that literature was predominantly Greek, though at one stage or another various parts of it passed through Aramaic, Syriac, Coptic, or Latin. Its ethos and cultural matrix was likewise Hellenistic, and "the ascription of literature to sources beyond that political, cultural and temporal framework represents a bid for authority and a fount of legitimizing "alien wisdom". Zoroaster and the magi did not compose it, but their names sanctioned it." The attributions to "exotic" names (not restricted to magians ) conferred an "authority of a remote and revelatory wisdom."

Among the named works attributed to "Zoroaster" is the treatise titled On Nature , which appears to have originally constituted four volumes (i.e. papyrus rolls). Academic sources describe it as part of "Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha;" texts falsely attributed to Zoroaster in the Greco-Roman era.

Pliny the Elder names Zoroaster as the inventor of magic (Natural History 30.2.3). "However, a principle of the division of labor appears to have spared Zoroaster most of the responsibility for introducing the dark arts to the Greek and Roman worlds." That "dubious honor" went to the "fabulous magus, Ostanes, to whom most of the pseudepigraphic magical literature was attributed." Although Pliny calls him the inventor of magic, the Roman does not provide a "magician's persona" for him.

Zoroaster's association with astrology, according to Roger Beck, was based on his Babylonian origin, and Zoroaster's Greek name was identified at first by Diogenes Laertius with star-worship (, 'star sacrificer"). Greek etymology of his name also associated its first syllable, Zōo-, with the phrase 'living' star.

The alternate Greek name for Zoroaster was Zaratras or Zaratas/Zaradas/Zaratos. Pythagoreans considered the mathematicians to have studied with Zoroaster in Babylonia. Lydus, in On the Months, attributes the creation of the seven-day week to "the Babylonians in the circle of Zoroaster and Hystaspes," and who did so because there were seven planets. Lucian of Samosata, in Mennipus 6, reports deciding to journey to Babylon "to ask one of the magi, Zoroaster's disciples and successors," for their opinion.

While the division along the lines of Zoroaster/astrology and Ostanes/magic is an "oversimplification, the descriptions do at least indicate what the works are "; they were not expressions of Zoroastrian doctrine, they were not even expressions of what the Greeks and Romans " the doctrines of Zoroastrianism to have been".

Almost all Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha is now lost, and of the attested texts—with only one exception—only fragments have survived. Pliny's 2nd- or 3rd-century attribution of "two million lines" to Zoroaster suggest that (even if exaggeration and duplicates are taken into consideration) a formidable pseudepigraphic corpus once existed at the Library of Alexandria. This corpus can safely be assumed to be pseudepigrapha because no one before Pliny refers to literature by "Zoroaster",

The exception to the fragmentary evidence (i.e. reiteration of passages in works of other authors) is a complete Coptic tractate titled (after the first-person narrator) discovered in the Nag Hammadi library in 1945. A three-line cryptogram in the colophones following the 131-page treatise identify the work as "words of truth of Zostrianos. God of Truth []. Words of Zoroaster." Invoking a "God of Truth" might seem Zoroastrian, but there is otherwise "nothing noticeably Zoroastrian" about the text and "in content, style, ethos and intention, its affinities are entirely with the congeners among the Gnostic tractates."

These pseudepigraphic texts aside, some authors did draw on a few genuinely Zoroastrian ideas. The Oracles of Hystaspes, by "Hystaspes", another prominent magian pseudo-author, is a set of prophecies distinguished from other Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha in that it draws on real Zoroastrian sources. Pliny also records that Zoroaster's head had pulsated so strongly that it repelled the hand when laid upon it, a presage of his future wisdom. Plutarch's description of its dualistic theologies reads thus: "Others call the better of these a god and his rival a daemon, as, for example, Zoroaster the Magus, who lived, so they record, five thousand years before the siege of Troy. He used to call the one Horomazes and the other Areimanius".

In the modern era

An early reference to Zoroaster in English literature occur in the writings of the physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne who asserted in his Religio Medici (1643):

In E. T. A. Hoffmann's novel Klein Zaches, genannt Zinnober (1819), the mage Prosper Alpanus states that Professor Zoroaster was his teacher.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885), considered to be his seminal work, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche gives to the central character the native Iranian name "Zarathustra". Nietzsche explained the choice of the name in his autobiographical work Ecce Homo: "Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle of good and evil the true driving-wheel in the machinery of things [...] Zarathustra created the disastrous error that is morality: thus he must also be the first to acknowledge the mistake." Though the naming of Zarathustra is an acknowledgement of the lineage of moralism, Nietzsche advocates atheism and moral nihilism, directly contradicting the philosophy of Zoroaster, and makes subversive allusions to Zoroastrianism. Despite Nietzsche's iconoclasm, some admirers of pre-Islamic Persian culture see his use of the name "Zarathustra" as a mark of uncritical respect towards the historical figure.

Notable influence on modern Western culture

A sculpture of Zoroaster by Edward Clark Potter, representing ancient Persian judicial wisdom and dating to 1896, towers over the Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State at East 25th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan. A sculpture of Zoroaster is included among other prominent religious figures in a procession representing major faith traditions on the south side of Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago. It features figures from Abraham to the Reformation, illustrating a historical continuum of religious thought that includes the likes of Zoroaster, Moses, Plato and others.