6 ms·

An obscure religion that shaped the West

70 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

personjerry 10y ago
My knowledge of Zoroastrianism came solely from Paradox Interactive games (Europa Universalis 4 and Crusader Kings 2)
stabbles 10y ago
The suggestion is that any religion or movement having a theme of Light vs Darkness has its roots in Zoroastrianism. I guess it's hard to prove that this is the case. Could be a coincidence as well. Such a theme is quite natural to develop in any culture in any moment in time I guess.
- booleandilemma 10y ago
  The natural alternation between night and day would be enough to get early human cultures to start thinking along these lines.
- giggles_giggles 10y ago
  The most ancient religion we know of, that of the ancient Mesopotamians, featured a war between the god Marduk and the god Tiamet, who symbolize light/darkness chaos/order etc, much in the way later religions do. My personal belief is that the religions are all describing the same real phenomenon: the way the individual draws order out of chaos to create the world. In the Mesopotamian myth Marduk (order/light) cuts up Tiamat (chaos/darkness) and casts her pieces across the universe, creating the world. In the Judeo-Christian myth Yahweh separates the earth (order) and the heavens (chaos) to create the world. I don't know of a religion that does not repeat this as a central theme. Personally I see this as evidence that they were all describing the qualities that the ancient believers saw embodied in their worldly heroes and immortalized them through an oral tradition describing the modes of action (a dramatization) which made those heroes admirable, and those phenomena thus appear wherever there is an ancient myth.
  - jcranmer 10y ago
    > I don't know of a religion that does not repeat this as a central theme. That's probably more because most major religions all arise from a rather small geographic region (the Abrahamic religions from the Middle East, Iranian religions (e.g., Zoroastrianism) from a little further west, and Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Indian religions are only a little further west than that), such that most religions you'd talk about in comparative religion essentially arise from the same place and broadly the same basic tenants. When you start looking in creation mythologies from indigenous peoples outside of that small core region, you get far more diversity in the way they see creation. Native American creation myths tend to focus on a cyclical view of creation (i.e., this is not the first Earth to be created), for example, and there's no clean delineation between good and evil or order and chaos.
    - giggles_giggles 10y ago
      Birth and renewal is another theme that is central in many religions. In Christianity of course, Christ dies and comes back renewed. In Hinduism reincarnation is a foundational belief. This theme appears in literature as well: Harry Potter sacrifices himself to the Basilisk (a snake, the dragon of chaos, who lives in the underworld beneath the school) in the Chamber of Secrets and is renewed (born again) by the phoenix (which is itself a mythological symbol of death and rebirth) at the end of the second book. The themes aren't always enacted as part of the creation myth, but are often still present, and there's meaning in the reality that they appear so often and so consistently throughout myth and literature. That being said, I will admit that I don't know enough about the Native American creation myths to comment on the way they approach good/evil and order/chaos. I would be very surprised if these themes were nowhere to be found within their myths, though, because the idea of the heroic individual who brings order out of chaos and defeats evil seems to be a human universal.
vivekd 10y ago
>. As well, one could well argue that the cosmic battle between the Light and Dark sides of the Force in Star Wars has, quite ostensibly, Zoroastrianism written all over it. . . . Or Christianity, or Hindu epics like Ramayana, or the Buddhist struggle for enlightenment and non-violence against our darker natures. >, as well as the inspiration for the legend of Azor Ahai – a demigod who triumphs over darkness – in George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones, as many of its fans discovered last year. I don't think Gerote RR Martin has ever gone on record about that, this is just speculation >The idea of a single god was not the only essentially Zoroastrian tenet to find its way into other major faiths, most notably the ‘big three’: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Jewish Monotheism was most strongly advocated by the Prophet Isiah. While this was done in Babylon, it was done prior to the birth of Zarathustra. Also the mention of Renaissance figures mentioning Zoroastrianism, while accurate, doesn't seem to be some much an influence of Zoroastrianism itself, but rather a fascination for Eastern culture that existed at the time coupled with a superficial understanding of Zoroastrianism. EDIT: Downvoters and contrarians, you seem to have the wrong date for Zarthustra's birth was around 628 BCE to 555 BCE not more than 3000 ago like some people are suggesting for some reason. Also, even if you argue the birth date, his religion wasn't popular in Iran until it was adopted by Darius in the mid 6th Century, so really it doesn't get you anything. See: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zarathustra https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zarathustra
- nkoren 10y ago
  > . . . Or Christianity, or Hindu epics like Ramayana, or the Buddhist struggle for enlightenment and non-violence against our darker natures. All of which post-date Zoroastrianism, which is the point. > Jewish Monotheism was most strongly advocated by the Prophet Isiah. While this was done in Babylon, it was done prior to the birth of Zarathustra. Possible, but unlikely. Isaiah was somewhere around the 7th-8th centuries BCE; Zoroaster somewhere between the 7th-15th. Although if it's the origins of monotheism that you're looking for, then Akhenaten certainly pre-dates Isiah, probably pre-dates Zoroaster, and is far more evidenced than either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten
- salimmadjd 10y ago
  >Jewish Monotheism was most strongly advocated by the Prophet Isiah. While this was done in Babylon, it was done prior to the birth of Zarathustra. Not True! Scholars put Zarathustra 1000 BCE or even as far back as 1700BCE but [0] but Isaiah at around 700 BCE [1] Also many aspect of Judaism like the story of flood or creation were copied from Epic of Gilgamesh [2] that goes even further back. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
inputcoffee 10y ago
For some reason the exact dates have become an issue. From Wikipedia we know there is no consensus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster "Dating is uncertain as there is no scholarship consensus,[3] as on linguistic and socio-cultural evidence, he is dated around 1000 BCE and earlier, but others put him in the 7th and 6th century BCE as a contemporary or near-contemporary of Cyrus the Great and Darius I.[4][5][6][7] " And you can follow the links there. There are two important distinctions we, who write comments here, should make: 1. There is a difference between when a historical figure is reputed to have lived, and when the first influential texts based on that figure came into being. The text often has a stronger claim to historical influence and is certainly easier to locate in time. 2. There is a difference between an abstract idea that someone thought of "first" and the version of that idea that actually birthed the version that we know. So, for instance, if there was a historical figure in a cave who never wrote anything, but merely thought of monotheism, that is not the same thing as a written text that was read by Abraham, or the writer of the text in which Abraham appeared. All this is just to say, let's be clear on what we are arguing, at least.
- baldfat 10y ago
  Just bad academic research. I ran into it all the time as a Theology Student. People from other Academic Disciplines would repeat something without a reference and it would become its own self referencing statement that after further investigation just proved to be some lazy scholarship by people not in the field. Like a historian making chemistry statements.
  - cat199 10y ago
    The main point of this article in my opinion, is not so much Zoroastrianism itself, as it is the conclusion that: " Iran’s many other legacies and influences aside, the all but forgotten religion of Zoroastrianism just might provide the key to understanding how similar ‘we’ are to ‘them’. " and so I would similarly presume that any editorial slant would likely take the loosest scholarly opinion to suit this thesis..
gremlinsinc 10y ago
I recall reading somewhere that Judaism may have believed in existence of other gods...in genesis it says created in 'our' image, and I read some theories once that the sumerian god Anu might have become Elohim or the God of the jews... I think the theory is that the god as well as the jews were outcasts and so that god made the jews his chosen people, and wrought mighty miracles, and convinced them that he was the only true god. or something along those lines. iirc Sumerian mythology in terms of time-line has the oldest texts known to man.
- lapis_fenrir 10y ago
  When I was a child growing up in the Southern Baptist Church system, I struggled with the paradox that the Christian God is supposedly the only god that exists, yet in the Old Testament that same god clearly told his followers that they should not worship "those other gods". I recall asking my pastor and other church leaders, even my own parents, about this paradox and I received non-answers, diversions, a lot of "gee, I don't know" or "you're right, that is strange" responses, and was even totally ignored once by a pastor who was visibly disturbed that a small child would dare ask a hard question. Of course, as I got older and was exposed to the Internet I was able to research the history of religion and break out of the bubble. I learned that the Christianity of today is nothing whatsoever like early Christianity in its infancy just after Christ's death, and a large part of what is taught in traditional Protestant churches is wholly incompatible with his message. If you follow his commandment that we "love one another, that is the fulfillment of the Law", suddenly all of the -isms have no place in a Christian's heart. Racism, sexism, homophobia, elitism, all violate the creed of "love your neighbor". Yet the most racist, sexist, phobic people I've ever met identify as Christians; yet another paradox to ponder.
  - cr0sh 10y ago
    > yet another paradox to ponder It's not a paradox if you consider the idea that god is made in man's image, instead of the other way around. IOW, "my god likes the same things I do; my god hates the same things I do" - because ultimately, god to the believer is the believer's inner thoughts.
  - 10y ago
baldfat 10y ago
> but arguably introduced to mankind its first monotheistic faith. As in no scholar in the discipline of Religion, Biblical Scholar or Theology would state this as anything but a real stretch by someone not well informed about world religions. To say someone that we can't even give a date range of 500 years and we have so much other evidence of other monotheistic religions and the time frame for its development is put between 2000 and 4000 BCE. This is just poor academic research.
rusk 10y ago
Fun fact: Freddy Mercury was Zoroastrian
redsummer 10y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if Zoroastrian Parsis had the highest IQ of any group, even though I have no data to confirm that. Higher than Quakers, Ashkenazim, Episcopalians and even Unitarians.
- viewtransform 10y ago
  They are also good at arm-wrestling https://youtu.be/1jyyBkohi3Y?t=12 https://youtu.be/1jyyBkohi3Y?t=12
adictator 10y ago
> Indo-Aryan I had to stop reading beyond that. Even in this day & age people choose to believe such bullshit. There is no Indo-Aryan - they are one and the same, Indian.
idclip 10y ago
1000-1500 bc,isnt judiasm ~4000bc?
RRRA 10y ago
And here I thought they would talk about objectivism...
mythrwy 10y ago
I wouldn't call Zoroastrianism an "obscure" religion at all. The term really doesn't fit. Zoroastrianism was a major religion and the religion of one of the worlds major empires years ago. True it's declined and doesn't have many adherents today but the word "obscure" just doesn't fit.

70 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

My knowledge of Zoroastrianism came solely from Paradox Interactive games (Europa Universalis 4 and Crusader Kings 2)

The suggestion is that any religion or movement having a theme of Light vs Darkness has its roots in Zoroastrianism. I guess it's hard to prove that this is the case. Could be a coincidence as well. Such a theme is quite natural to develop in any culture in any moment in time I guess.

booleandilemma 10y ago
The natural alternation between night and day would be enough to get early human cultures to start thinking along these lines.
giggles_giggles 10y ago
The most ancient religion we know of, that of the ancient Mesopotamians, featured a war between the god Marduk and the god Tiamet, who symbolize light/darkness chaos/order etc, much in the way later religions do. My personal belief is that the religions are all describing the same real phenomenon: the way the individual draws order out of chaos to create the world. In the Mesopotamian myth Marduk (order/light) cuts up Tiamat (chaos/darkness) and casts her pieces across the universe, creating the world. In the Judeo-Christian myth Yahweh separates the earth (order) and the heavens (chaos) to create the world. I don't know of a religion that does not repeat this as a central theme. Personally I see this as evidence that they were all describing the qualities that the ancient believers saw embodied in their worldly heroes and immortalized them through an oral tradition describing the modes of action (a dramatization) which made those heroes admirable, and those phenomena thus appear wherever there is an ancient myth.
- jcranmer 10y ago
  > I don't know of a religion that does not repeat this as a central theme. That's probably more because most major religions all arise from a rather small geographic region (the Abrahamic religions from the Middle East, Iranian religions (e.g., Zoroastrianism) from a little further west, and Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Indian religions are only a little further west than that), such that most religions you'd talk about in comparative religion essentially arise from the same place and broadly the same basic tenants. When you start looking in creation mythologies from indigenous peoples outside of that small core region, you get far more diversity in the way they see creation. Native American creation myths tend to focus on a cyclical view of creation (i.e., this is not the first Earth to be created), for example, and there's no clean delineation between good and evil or order and chaos.
  - giggles_giggles 10y ago
    Birth and renewal is another theme that is central in many religions. In Christianity of course, Christ dies and comes back renewed. In Hinduism reincarnation is a foundational belief. This theme appears in literature as well: Harry Potter sacrifices himself to the Basilisk (a snake, the dragon of chaos, who lives in the underworld beneath the school) in the Chamber of Secrets and is renewed (born again) by the phoenix (which is itself a mythological symbol of death and rebirth) at the end of the second book. The themes aren't always enacted as part of the creation myth, but are often still present, and there's meaning in the reality that they appear so often and so consistently throughout myth and literature. That being said, I will admit that I don't know enough about the Native American creation myths to comment on the way they approach good/evil and order/chaos. I would be very surprised if these themes were nowhere to be found within their myths, though, because the idea of the heroic individual who brings order out of chaos and defeats evil seems to be a human universal.

vivekd 10y ago

>. As well, one could well argue that the cosmic battle between the Light and Dark sides of the Force in Star Wars has, quite ostensibly, Zoroastrianism written all over it. . . . Or Christianity, or Hindu epics like Ramayana, or the Buddhist struggle for enlightenment and non-violence against our darker natures. >, as well as the inspiration for the legend of Azor Ahai – a demigod who triumphs over darkness – in George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones, as many of its fans discovered last year. I don't think Gerote RR Martin has ever gone on record about that, this is just speculation >The idea of a single god was not the only essentially Zoroastrian tenet to find its way into other major faiths, most notably the ‘big three’: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Jewish Monotheism was most strongly advocated by the Prophet Isiah. While this was done in Babylon, it was done prior to the birth of Zarathustra. Also the mention of Renaissance figures mentioning Zoroastrianism, while accurate, doesn't seem to be some much an influence of Zoroastrianism itself, but rather a fascination for Eastern culture that existed at the time coupled with a superficial understanding of Zoroastrianism. EDIT: Downvoters and contrarians, you seem to have the wrong date for Zarthustra's birth was around 628 BCE to 555 BCE not more than 3000 ago like some people are suggesting for some reason. Also, even if you argue the birth date, his religion wasn't popular in Iran until it was adopted by Darius in the mid 6th Century, so really it doesn't get you anything. See: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zarathustra https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zarathustra

nkoren 10y ago
> . . . Or Christianity, or Hindu epics like Ramayana, or the Buddhist struggle for enlightenment and non-violence against our darker natures. All of which post-date Zoroastrianism, which is the point. > Jewish Monotheism was most strongly advocated by the Prophet Isiah. While this was done in Babylon, it was done prior to the birth of Zarathustra. Possible, but unlikely. Isaiah was somewhere around the 7th-8th centuries BCE; Zoroaster somewhere between the 7th-15th. Although if it's the origins of monotheism that you're looking for, then Akhenaten certainly pre-dates Isiah, probably pre-dates Zoroaster, and is far more evidenced than either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten
salimmadjd 10y ago
>Jewish Monotheism was most strongly advocated by the Prophet Isiah. While this was done in Babylon, it was done prior to the birth of Zarathustra. Not True! Scholars put Zarathustra 1000 BCE or even as far back as 1700BCE but [0] but Isaiah at around 700 BCE [1] Also many aspect of Judaism like the story of flood or creation were copied from Epic of Gilgamesh [2] that goes even further back. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

inputcoffee 10y ago

For some reason the exact dates have become an issue. From Wikipedia we know there is no consensus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster "Dating is uncertain as there is no scholarship consensus,[3] as on linguistic and socio-cultural evidence, he is dated around 1000 BCE and earlier, but others put him in the 7th and 6th century BCE as a contemporary or near-contemporary of Cyrus the Great and Darius I.[4][5][6][7] " And you can follow the links there. There are two important distinctions we, who write comments here, should make: 1. There is a difference between when a historical figure is reputed to have lived, and when the first influential texts based on that figure came into being. The text often has a stronger claim to historical influence and is certainly easier to locate in time. 2. There is a difference between an abstract idea that someone thought of "first" and the version of that idea that actually birthed the version that we know. So, for instance, if there was a historical figure in a cave who never wrote anything, but merely thought of monotheism, that is not the same thing as a written text that was read by Abraham, or the writer of the text in which Abraham appeared. All this is just to say, let's be clear on what we are arguing, at least.

baldfat 10y ago
Just bad academic research. I ran into it all the time as a Theology Student. People from other Academic Disciplines would repeat something without a reference and it would become its own self referencing statement that after further investigation just proved to be some lazy scholarship by people not in the field. Like a historian making chemistry statements.
- cat199 10y ago
  The main point of this article in my opinion, is not so much Zoroastrianism itself, as it is the conclusion that: " Iran’s many other legacies and influences aside, the all but forgotten religion of Zoroastrianism just might provide the key to understanding how similar ‘we’ are to ‘them’. " and so I would similarly presume that any editorial slant would likely take the loosest scholarly opinion to suit this thesis..

gremlinsinc 10y ago

I recall reading somewhere that Judaism may have believed in existence of other gods...in genesis it says created in 'our' image, and I read some theories once that the sumerian god Anu might have become Elohim or the God of the jews... I think the theory is that the god as well as the jews were outcasts and so that god made the jews his chosen people, and wrought mighty miracles, and convinced them that he was the only true god. or something along those lines. iirc Sumerian mythology in terms of time-line has the oldest texts known to man.

lapis_fenrir 10y ago
When I was a child growing up in the Southern Baptist Church system, I struggled with the paradox that the Christian God is supposedly the only god that exists, yet in the Old Testament that same god clearly told his followers that they should not worship "those other gods". I recall asking my pastor and other church leaders, even my own parents, about this paradox and I received non-answers, diversions, a lot of "gee, I don't know" or "you're right, that is strange" responses, and was even totally ignored once by a pastor who was visibly disturbed that a small child would dare ask a hard question. Of course, as I got older and was exposed to the Internet I was able to research the history of religion and break out of the bubble. I learned that the Christianity of today is nothing whatsoever like early Christianity in its infancy just after Christ's death, and a large part of what is taught in traditional Protestant churches is wholly incompatible with his message. If you follow his commandment that we "love one another, that is the fulfillment of the Law", suddenly all of the -isms have no place in a Christian's heart. Racism, sexism, homophobia, elitism, all violate the creed of "love your neighbor". Yet the most racist, sexist, phobic people I've ever met identify as Christians; yet another paradox to ponder.
- cr0sh 10y ago
  > yet another paradox to ponder It's not a paradox if you consider the idea that god is made in man's image, instead of the other way around. IOW, "my god likes the same things I do; my god hates the same things I do" - because ultimately, god to the believer is the believer's inner thoughts.
- 10y ago

baldfat 10y ago

> but arguably introduced to mankind its first monotheistic faith. As in no scholar in the discipline of Religion, Biblical Scholar or Theology would state this as anything but a real stretch by someone not well informed about world religions. To say someone that we can't even give a date range of 500 years and we have so much other evidence of other monotheistic religions and the time frame for its development is put between 2000 and 4000 BCE. This is just poor academic research.

rusk 10y ago

Fun fact: Freddy Mercury was Zoroastrian

redsummer 10y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Zoroastrian Parsis had the highest IQ of any group, even though I have no data to confirm that. Higher than Quakers, Ashkenazim, Episcopalians and even Unitarians.

viewtransform 10y ago
They are also good at arm-wrestling https://youtu.be/1jyyBkohi3Y?t=12 https://youtu.be/1jyyBkohi3Y?t=12

adictator 10y ago

> Indo-Aryan I had to stop reading beyond that. Even in this day & age people choose to believe such bullshit. There is no Indo-Aryan - they are one and the same, Indian.

idclip 10y ago

1000-1500 bc,isnt judiasm ~4000bc?

RRRA 10y ago

And here I thought they would talk about objectivism...

mythrwy 10y ago

I wouldn't call Zoroastrianism an "obscure" religion at all. The term really doesn't fit. Zoroastrianism was a major religion and the religion of one of the worlds major empires years ago. True it's declined and doesn't have many adherents today but the word "obscure" just doesn't fit.