دار بيبليون
Zoroaster: His time and his country
Conference by Lwiis Saliba on Zoom
Wednesday 05/01/2022
The Zoroastrian impact on the five great world religions
1-Hinduism: There is a close interaction between the earliest forms of Hinduism, namely the religion of the Rig Veda, and the ancient Iranian religious thought: Zoroaster and his book ‘The Avesta’. There are many similarities between the Rig Veda and the Avesta, and their language is one of them, as will be mentioned later. A number of historical accounts confirm that the migrations of Indo-European peoples were from Iran to India.
2-Buddhism: Few people know that the Iranians played a key role in the spread of Buddhism in China through the Silk Road. This Buddhism spread and flourished in Balkh as well as in other parts of Iran, as we shall see.
3-Judaism: Judaism had a clear Zoroastrian influence, especially in the beliefs of Judgment Day, Heaven and Hell, Evil (Satan), prophecy and others. And the Persian emperor Cyrus is the only one among the kings of the nations who is praised by the Torah (Isaiah 28/44), who broke the captivity of the Hebrews and brought them back from captivity. Moreover, the Babylonian Talmud is often called the Persian Talmud because of the Iranian influence on it.
4- Christianity: At the birth of Jesus, we find the Magi coming from Iran to offer him their gifts and show him their obedience. On the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples, a number of Iranians were among those present and they witnessed the miracle, as narrated in the Acts of the Apostles (9/2).
5-Islam: Next to the Prophet and his family was the great companion Salman al-Farsi, who travelled countries and long distances in search of the truth, only to find it with Muhammad, as narrated in his biography. And in the hadith of the Prophet: “Salman is among us, Ahl al-Bayt (the family of the Prophet)” the collectors of the six Sahihs among Sunnis are Persians. In the emergence and development of Islamic mysticism, there was a clear even decisive Persian presence, and Abu Yazid al-Bistami, al-Hallaj, Hafez, Saadi, Jalal al-Din al-Rumi and others are proof of this.
Since its appearance on the scene of historical events, Iran has always been interested in the religious phenomenon, and this is still the case today. We begin our study by identifying some of the words and terms needed for research.
Iran: land of the nobles
Among the thousands of word roots that the researchers recovered from the Indo-European mother tongue, an ancient language that was never written down, is Airyo, which means noble or aristocrat. This word seemed to represent a concept that Indo-European speakers considered extremely important, and perhaps even an essential feature of their identity, as a number of their descendants used it as their Aryan name, meaning the noble, and Iran, the land of nobility. There is another country with a name in the same sense, Aryavarta, which is in the northwestern part of India in Vedic times. Iran is therefore the land of the nobility, as was India in the Vedic period. This unity of names inevitably leads us to look for the deep and close links between the two countries, especially on the religious/spiritual level, to which we shall return.
The true religion
The word religion has the same meaning in Arabic and Persian. And the Sassanid kings in Iran called Zoroastrianism, which means the religion adopted by the Sassanid Iranian state from the third century CE onwards, as Veh-din, which means the right religion or the true religion. We have carefully examined the unity of the term for religion in Arabic and Persian, and we have mentioned what the linguist Abu Hilal Al-Askari (d. 395 AH) says in support of this in one of our previous works. We have seen there what goes in the direction of confirming the impact of the Zoroastrian prophetic model in the Abrahamic religions. We are content here with this reference.
The problem of Zarathustra’s time and country
The most important figure that remains in the history of religions in Iran, and indeed in the emergence and interaction of ancient religions in general, is Zoroaster. This figure, present and influential to this day, poses many problems. None of the founders of religions is shrouded in mystery as is Zarathustra. It is almost unknown when and where he lived.
The orientalist Edward Brown expresses the great disagreement in determining the time and place of Zara as follows:
“As for the character of Zarathustra, the dates of his life and his place of birth, opinions are numerous and multiple, even contradictory. Some go so far as to deny his historical existence. While others see that his personality is evident in the kata. The kata, according to those who say this, if not the direct teachings and instructions of Zoroaster, are at least the words of his disciples. Some scholars believe that the date of his life is consistent with the age of the Vedas, i.e. 1800, 2000, or even 6000 BC. There are even those who say he lived seven thousand years before Christ.
“Some believe that Zoroaster originated in Balkh, in the far north-east of Iran. While others say he originated in Atropaten in the far northwest. This disagreement is also true of the Avesta, which is the sacred book of the followers of Zoroaster. There is not only a lot of disagreement on this subject, but the views are very heated about it” ( )
The orientalist Richard Foltz summarizes the different opinions concerning the time and place of Zoroaster as follows:
There is a hypothesis that Zoroaster lived either in the time of Abraham (18 BC) or in the time of Buddha (5-6 BC). While some Greek sources say that he lived six thousand years before their time! As for where he lived, it was said that he lived in the region that is now called Kazakhstan, beyond the north-eastern borders of the Iranian world, while others say that he lived in Azerbaijan” ()
Foltz wonders about the reason for this great discrepancy, and believes that it is due to a historical fact that can be summarised in the following context: “When Zoroastrianism spread in the Iranian world, priests from different parts of Iran invented myths, or distorted existing ones, in order to link the Prophet to the regions to which they belonged” ()
Foltz tends to bring Zoroaster back to the time of the Vedas, which means that he is immemorial. He says: The most ancient proof of Zoroaster is found in the fragments known as Gathas kata, that is to say, poems or stanzas of the Avesta, which are said to be the words of Zoroaster himself.
The language of these poems is very ancient and very close to the language of the Rig Veda. Like most ancient literary works, including the Homeric epics and the Bible, these two texts were transmitted orally from generation to generation for many centuries before they were finally written down.
We had discussed this issue and focused on the remarkable convergence between the two languages of the two ancient books: Rig Veda and Avesta, and what can be concluded from this. But it has been considered more likely that Zara was older than the Rig Veda, because he knew it and quoted it, as he says: “Like the poet of the Vedas, he sometimes includes in his hymns a demand for wages, shall I receive my reward, by right, ten dowries and a horse, with a camel, which you have promised me.” ( )
The problem here is that the poems of the Avesta date back to different times, ancient and not so ancient, and can be separated by a time gap of several centuries!
In concluding Foltz’s research on what expresses what we know, or rather what we do not yet know, about historical Zoroaster, he says: “At the present time it must be admitted that the questions concerning the time and homeland of Zoroaster have not yet received definite answers. There is no evidence to indicate the date of the transmission of Zoroaster’s teachings, by whatever means, from the eastern Iranian world to the western regions, which became the home of the great Iranian empires. And all we can confirm is that somehow, and at some time, they moved.” ( )
As for us, we tend to take in this respect the conclusion of the research of the historian of religions Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), especially since it is based on a comparative linguistic and philological research of the language of the Avesta in its different sections and comparing it with similar passages of the Rig Veda. Eliade says: “It was customary to advance, in general, to determine the time of Zoroaster, between 1100 and 600 BC. If we adopt the Mazdean tradition, which speaks of 258 years before Alexander, then we can determine the time of Zoroaster between 628 and 551 BC. Earlier dates have been suggested on the basis of an early feature of the kata (songs of Zarathustra), in particular the similarities with the Vedas. An analysis of this language and its etymology allows us to conclude that the Prophet lived in eastern Iran, most probably in Khwarezm, or Bakhtirian.
In our research, we do not intend to study Zarathustra’s personality, biography and teachings in various aspects, as this would require several books and many studies. It is enough for us to focus on his decisive impact on other religions, and on the most important characteristics of his faith and teachings.
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