Zoroaster

Persian religious leader

• Born: c. 628 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Probably Rhages, Media (now Rey, Iran)
• Died: c. 551 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Probably Media (now in northern Iran)

The founder of one of the great ethical religions of the ancient world, Zoroaster exerted direct and indirect influence on the development of three other world religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Early Life

Zoroaster (ZOHR-uh-was-tur)—the corrupt Greek name of the Persian name Zarathustra (zah-rah-THEWS-trah)—was one of the most important religious reformers of the ancient world and the founder of a new religion that took his name: Zoroastrianism. Because very little is known about his life, the dates of his birth and death are disputed. According to tradition, he “lived 258 years before Alexander” the Great. This has been interpreted as 258 years before Alexander’s conquest of Persia in 330 b.c.e. The date has also been interpreted not as a birth date but as the date of one of three principal events in Zoroaster’s life: his vision and revelation at the age of thirty, the beginning of his preaching at age forty, or the conversion of King Vishtaspa (or Hystapas) two years later. As, according to tradition, Zoroaster lived for seventy-seven years, he lived between 630 and 553, 628 and 551, or 618 and 541.

Although he was never deified, legends and pious embellishments began to grow about Zoroaster after his death. Such legends have both clarified and obscured modern knowledge about him. It was said that he was the product of a miraculous birth and that at birth he laughed aloud, thus driving away evil spirits. As an adult, he became a great lover of wisdom and righteousness, withdrawing to an isolated mountain wilderness, where he survived on cheese and wild fruit. There he was tempted by the devil but successfully resisted. He was then subjected to intense physical torture, which he endured by clinging to his faith in Ahura Mazda, the true god and the Lord of Light. He received a revelation from Ahura Mazda in the form of the Avesta, the holy book of his religion, and was commissioned to preach to humankind. After suffering ridicule and persecution for many years, he at last found a convert and patron in King Vishtaspa. Married and the father of a daughter and two sons, Zoroaster appears to have enjoyed a degree of local prominence at his patron’s court. His daughter apparently married a leading minister of the king.

Life’s Work

Like the other great ethical religions, Zoroastrianism had its origins in its founder’s reaction to the religious beliefs and practices of his people. The religion of the pre-Zoroastrian Persians displays many features in common with Hinduism. This is understandable, because the ancient settlers of Persia and India came from the same Aryan tribes that had invaded Persia and India a millennium before Zoroaster’s birth. Persian religion before Zoroaster was polytheistic, with specific deities attached to the three major classes of society: chiefs and priests, warriors, and farmers and cattle breeders. The deities known as asuras (lords), who alone were endowed with an ethical character, were attached exclusively to the first class. Two forms of sacrifice were practiced: animal sacrifice, apparently to propitiate the gods, and the drinking of the fermented juice of the sacred haoma plant, which, through the intoxication it induced, supplied a foretaste of immortality. To perform the sacrifices and the other rituals, a priestly class, the magi, rose to a position of great power in early Persian society.

Basing his teaching on the Avesta, a book of revelations from Ahura Mazda, Zoroaster conceived it as his mission to purify the traditional beliefs of his people by eradicating polytheism, animal sacrifice, and magic and to establish a new, more ethical and spiritual religion. Ultimately, Zoroastrianism succeeded because of its founder’s and early followers’ ability to accommodate their teachings with certain features of traditional Persian religion.

It is impossible to determine how many of the teachings of Zoroastrianism originated with its founder. The Avesta, as it has come down to the present, is composed of several divisions, including two liturgical texts, prayers, and two sets of hymns, only one of which, the Gathas, is definitely ascribed to Zoroaster. Much of the Avesta has been destroyed or lost. Zoroaster probably made additional contributions, as did his later followers. There is, however, general agreement that it was Zoroaster who provided the central teaching of his religion.

According to Zoroaster, the history of the world was the ongoing conflict between the forces of good and evil. God, Ahura Mazda, represented the former; the devil, Ahriman, the latter. Ahura Mazda, one of several of the asuras of traditional Persian religion, was elevated by Zoroaster to the place of the one high god; Zoroastrianism was originally a distinctly monotheistic religion, although later it absorbed polytheistic features. Zoroaster divided history into four three-thousand-year periods, during which Ahura Mazda and Ahriman competed for people’s souls and the ultimate victory of their respective causes. At the end of the final stage, which some Zoroastrians interpreted as beginning with the birth of Zoroaster, Ahura Mazda would overpower Ahriman and his minions in a great conflagration and cast them into the abyss. This would be followed by a resurrection of the dead, a last judgment, and the beginning of a new life for all good souls (believers in Ahura Mazda) in a world free of evil, darkness, pain, and death.

Zoroastrianism included concepts of a hell and purgatory as well as a paradise. At death, all souls would have to cross the narrow Sifting Bridge (also known as the Bridge of the Requiter), which was like a long sword. The good would be offered the broad (flat) side of the bridge and would be welcomed into paradise by a beautiful young maiden. There they would reside with Ahura Mazda throughout eternity. The evil souls—the followers of Ahriman—would be forced to walk along the razor’s edge of the sword-bridge and would fall into a hell that would be their abode of darkness and terror forever. For the souls who had sinned but whose good works outweighed their bad, there would be a short period of temporary punishment to cleanse them in preparation for entrance into paradise. For sinners of greater degree, who had nevertheless performed some good works, suffering in hell would last until god’s final victory and the last judgment, when they also would be welcomed into paradise. Those who subscribed to Zoroaster’s teachings, therefore, could face death unafraid in anticipation of a blissful afterlife, if not immediately at least ultimately.

The religion of Zoraster was ethical. People’s duties were threefold: to befriend their enemies, to lead the wicked to righteousness, and to educate the ignorant. The greatest virtue toward which the believer must strive was piety, followed by honor and honesty in both word and deed. The worst sin was unbelief, which was not only a denial of Ahura Mazda but also a rejection of his ethical code of conduct and an acceptance of evil. Because piety was the greatest virtue, the first obligation of the believer was to worship god through purification, sacrifice, and prayer.

Although Zoroaster rejected blood sacrifices, he retained the sacrifice of fire, which was a symbol of Ahura Mazda and thus of purity and truth. Although Zoroaster decried the drinking of the fermented juice of the haoma plant for its intoxicating qualities, it was retained as a medium of Holy Communion. Historically, the fire ritual became the central feature of Zoroastrian worship. Sacred fires are tended and preserved by priests in fire temples, where the king of fires, Bahram, is crowned and enthroned. Modern Zoroastrians (Parsees) have also retained the practices of wearing the sadre, the shirt that symbolizes their religion, and the daily untying and reknotting of the kushti, the sacred thread whose seventy-two strands symbolize the chapters of the Yasna, one of the sacred liturgical texts. The final act of piety is proper provision for the disposition of one’s body after death. The corpse is neither cremated nor buried, because the first method would defile fire and the second method would defile the earth, both of which are regarded as good creations of god. Instead, the dead are exposed to the elements, where their flesh is consumed by vultures. This practice survives today in the famous Towers of Silence in Bombay among the Parsees (Persians), virtually the last significant surviving community of Zoroastrians.

Although Zoroaster was a monotheist, he nevertheless sought to accommodate his religious traditions. Surrounding Ahura Mazda are the six “Beneficent (or Holy) Immortal Ones” and the yazads (the worshiped ones), who probably had their origins in the deities worshiped by the lesser orders of ancient Persian society. These beings have been compared to the archangels and angels of Christianity. Because of the exalted nature of Ahura Mazda, it came to be believed that he should be approached indirectly through these servants, who came to personify certain facets of god’s creation and qualities. The yazad Mithra, keeper of the sacred fire (the fire temples came to be called the courts of Mithra), who represented justice and friendship and who was Ahura Mazda’s chief lieutenant in the struggle against evil, was himself to become the deity in a religious offshoot of Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, which was one of Christianity’s chief competitors in the Roman Empire. Opposed to the servants of god were Ahriman and his hordes of demons, who were also associated with lesser ancient Persian demigods. They brought evil into the world in its various forms and worked to deny humans their blissful afterlife with Ahura Mazda and his servants. Zoroaster is thought to have died at the age of seventy-seven; legend states that he was murdered.

Significance

The history of Zoroastrianism following the death of its founder was characterized by change, accommodation, decline, and revival. The most notable changes were the emergence of dualism, with the deification of Ahriman and the conception of history as the struggle between separate gods of good and evil, and the emergence of an increasingly powerful priestly class, the magi, who introduced elements of magic, astrology, and blood sacrifice in a perversion of Zoroaster’s ideals. Following the Muslim conquest of Persia in the seventh century, Zoroastrians were alternately tolerated, persecuted, and forcibly converted to Islam. In the eleventh century, all but a small remnant left Persia and emigrated to India, where most of them settled in the area around Bombay. There they have remained, and, known as the Parsees, they have become among the wealthiest, best-educated, and most charitable members of Indian society, all the while holding fast to their religious beliefs and practices. In the nineteenth century, they reestablished contact with the remaining Zoroastrians in Iran, the Gabars.

There are significant parallels between Zoroastrianism and three of the world’s great religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, although the extent of Zoroastrianism’s direct influence remains a subject of debate. Perhaps Zoroaster’s greatest contribution, both to his own age and to later civilizations, was the elevation of religion from debasement, magic, blood sacrifice, and pessimism to a scheme that optimistically promises rewards to those who conform in word and deed to a high, but realizable, code of ethical conduct.

Bibliography

Duchesne-Guillemin, Jacques. The Western Response to Zoroaster. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973. This is a valuable introduction to scholarship on Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism by one of the leading twentieth century scholars on the subject.

Durant, Will. Our Oriental Heritage: Being a History of Civilization in Egypt and the Near East to the Death of Alexander, and in India, China, and Japan from the Beginning to Our Own Day, with an Introduction on the Nature and Foundations of Civilization. Vol. 1 in The Story of Civilization. 1954. Reprint. New York: MJF Books, 1992. Contains an especially helpful and perceptive account of Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism. Durant considers the subject both in its ancient Persian context and as a powerful influence on later religions.

Kriwaczek, Paul. In Search of Zarathustra: The First Prophet and the Ideas That Changed the World. New York: Knopf, 2003. The publisher’s note states: “Moving from present to past, Paul Kriwaczek examines the effects of the prophet’s teachings on the spiritual and daily lives of diverse peoples.” He covers the impact of Zoroastrianism and follows it back to the man himself.

Masani, Rustom. The Religion of the Good Life: Zoroastrianism. 1938. 2d ed. New York: Macmillan, 1968. This is a useful account by a Parsee of the teachings and practices of Zoroastrianism.

Olmstead, A. T. History of the Persian Empire. 1948. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. This classic history of ancient Persia is useful in placing Zoroaster in his historical context.

Parrinder, Geoffrey, ed. World Religions: From Ancient History to the Present. Rev. ed. New York: Facts on File, 1983. In this revised and enlarged edition of a book first published in the United States in 1971 as Religions of the World, Zoroastrianism is traced from its origins to the present, including material on its most important offshoots, Mithraism and Manichaeanism.

Zoroaster. The Hymns of Zarathustra: Being a Translation of the Gāthās Together with Introduction and Commentary. Translated by Mrs. M. Henning. 1952. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1979. This translation of the Gathas, which contains the only teachings of Zoroastrianism that can definitely be attributed to its founder, is indispensable to serious study of the subject. Includes an introduction and commentary by Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin.