daniel v zoroaster was the jewish discomfort with jesus in article bd a paranet fidonet org bill carlson p f n z fidonet org bill carlson writes since everywhere i look zoroaster is suggested as being a probable descendant of daniel suppose you prove he wasn t zoroaster is far older than daniel if anything one could claim that in a sense daniel is a descendant of zoroaster as daniel though being hebrew has assimilated into zoroastrianism and has successfully introduced the religion into the tanakh of judaism however the majority of the book is in hellenistic aramaic not babylonian aramaic and only has kethuvim or writing status ref encyclopedia of religion mircea eliade daniel or in hebrew daniyye l hero of the biblical book that bears his name daniel is presented as a jew in the babylonian exile who achieved notoriety in the royal court for his dream interpretations and cryptography and for his salvation from death in a lion s pit he also appears in the last chapters of the book as the revealer of divine mysteries and of the timetables of israel s restoration to national religious autonomy as a practitioner of oneiromancy in the court described in daniel written in the third person daniel per forms his interpretations alone while as a visionary apocalyptist in daniel written in the first person he is in need of an angel to help him decode his visions and mysteries of the future it is likely that the name daniel is pseudonymous a deliberate allusion to a wise and righteous man known from ugaritic legend and earlier biblical tradition ez the authorship of the book is complicated not only by the diverse narrative voices and content but by its language daniel a and are written in hebrew whereas daniel b is in aramaic the language division parallels the subject division daniel concerns legends and dream interpretations concerns apocalyptic visions and interpretations of older prophecies the overall chronological scheme as well as internal thematic balances daniel is chiliastically related suggest an attempt at redactional unity after the prefatory tale emphasizing the life in court and the loyalty of daniel and some youths to their ancestral religion a chronological ordering is discernable a sequence from king nebuchadrezzar to darius is reported dn much of this royal dating and even some of the tales are problematic for example daniel speaks of nebuchadrezzar s transformation into a beast a story that is reported in the qumran scrolls of nabonidus belshazzar is portrayed as the last king of babylon although he was never king and darius is called a mede who conquered babylon and is placed before cyrus ii of persia although no such darius is known the medes followed the persians and darius is the name of several persian kings presumably the episodes of daniel depicting a series of monarchical reversals episodes of ritual observances and reports of miraculous deliverances were collected in the seleucid period late fourth to mid second century bce in order to reinvigorate waning jewish hopes in divine providence and encourage steadfast faith the visions of daniel reporting events from the reign of belshazzar to that of cyrus ii but actually predicting the overthrow of seleucid rule in palestine were collected and published during the reign of antiochus iv prior to the maccabean revolt for it was then beginning in bce that the jews were put to the test concerning their allegiance to judaism and their ancestral traditions and many refused to desecrate the statues of moses and endured a martyr s death for their resolute trust in divine dominion all of the visions of daniel dramatize this dominion in different ways for example via images of the enthronement of a god of judgment with a son of man invested with rule this figure was interpreted by jews as michael the archangel and by christians as christ in chapter via zodiacal images of cosmic beasts with bizarre manifestations as in chapter or via complex reinterpretations of ancient prophecies especially those of jeremiah as found in daniel the imagery of the four beasts in chapter paralleled by the image of four metals in chapter representing four kingdoms to be overthrown by a fifth monarchy of divine origin is one of the enduring images of the book it sur vived as a prototype of jewish and christian historical and apocalyptic schemes to the end of the middle ages the role and power of this imagery in the fifteenth and sixteenth century work of the exegete isaac abravanel the scientist isaac newton and the philosopher jean bodin and among the fifth monarchy men of seventeenth century england for example is abiding testimony to the use of this ancient topos in organizing the chiliastic imagination of diverse thinkers and groups the schema is still used to this day by various groups predicting the apocalyptic advent the encouragement in the face of religious persecution that is found and propagandized in daniel contains a remarkable reinterpretation of isaiah regarding the suffering servant of god not as all israel but as the select faithful neither the opening stories about daniel and the youths nor the final martyrological allusions advocate violence or revolt they rather advocate a stance of piety civil disobedience and trustful resignation victory for the faithful is in the hands of the archangel michael and the martyrs will be resurrected and granted astral immortality persumably the circles behind the book were not the same as the maccabean fighters and may reflect some proto pharisaic group of hasidim or pietists the themes of resistance to oppression freedom of worship preservation of monotheistic integrity the overthrow of historical dominions and the acknowledgement of the god of heaven recur throughout the book and have served as a token of trust for the faithful in their darkest hour zarathushtra founder of the religion know as zoroastrianism or mazdaism from mazda or ahura mazda the name of the god prophesied by zarathushtra the etymology and history of zarathushtra the avestan and oldest form of the name as uncertain both in various iranian languages and in related forms else where there may have been an old persian form zara ushtra from which the greek form zoroastres may be derived and there may have existed an old iranian form zarat ushtra to which may be linked the middle iranian zrdrwsht several middle persian forms such as zrtwsht and the new persian zardusht we can state with certainty only that the second half of the name ushtra means camel the form zoroaster derived from the greek zoroastres was used traditionally in european culture until the eighteenth century when zarathustra closer to the original and as found in nietzsche came into common use after the rediscovery of the avesta the collection of sacred books of zoroastrianism and the resulting studies in iranian philology see avesta notwithstanding the great and continued popularity of zarathushtra even in western culture the sources available to us are few extremely fragmented and heterogeneous our principle sources are the five gathas songs attributed to zarathushtra himself and included in the yasna section of the avesta gatha ahunavaiti yasna gatha ushtavaiti yasna gatha spentamainyu yasna gatha vokukhshathra yasna and gatha vashishtoishti yasna the last of which was probably written after the prophet s death other sources of considerable albeit varying importance are the younger avesta and the remaining zoroastrian religious literature in particular the pahlavi texts of the ninth and tenth centures ce although the achaemenid inscriptions sixth to fourth centures bce never mention zarathushtra he is mentioned by some greek sources of the time not however by herodotus who seems unaware of him the avesta does not provide any direct or explicit data concerning the true chronological history of zarathushtra but the text is useful in an indirect way as it clearly implies that the environment in which zoroastrianism arose was not that of iran under the medes or the persians the greek sources on the other hand do provide some information concerning the time of zarathushtra although from a historical point of view they are unreliable some place him six thousand years before the trojan war xanthus of lydia eudoxus of cnidus hermippus hermodorus aristotle plutarch diogenes laertius and pliny the account by xanthus of lydia however has also been interpreted by some to mean six hundred rather than six thousand years before the expedition of xerxes against greece this interpretation is favored by diogenes laertius who makes reference to xanthus but although a few scholars a s shabazi helmut humbach have recently attempted to rehabilitate it under various pretexts it is generally rejected although the historical value of the greek sources is negligible they are nonetheless important in that they show that the millenarian doctrine of history of the cosmos had already been developed in iran by the achaemenid period as the above account would seem to demonstrate they also show that by this time zarathushtra was already seen as an almost mythical figure one from an extremely distant past all of this leads to the conclusion that the prophet could not have belonged to a historical period contemporary with or even close to that of the achaemenids later zoroastrian sources the pahlavi texts do provide an absolute chrono logy for zarathushtra one that was also accepted by some arab authors accord ing to these sources zarathushtra lived or years before alexander again scholars are divided on the validity of the chronology some view it as historically reliable while others believe that it is devoid of historical justification the most convincing arguments however seem to support the latter position the figure of years is accurate only on the surface because it represents in fact the more general one of which was employed by sasanid propagandists to locate zarathushtra s lifetime roughly around the beginning of iranian domination for a number of reasons connected with complex problems inherent in the iranian chronology there was also a desire on the part of the sasanid propagandists to avoid any millenarian threat in this context zarathushtra whom tradition places early in the ninth millennium after the beginning of the cosmos converted vishtaspa at the age of forty two and vishtaspa s conversion was viewed by some as the beginning of the millennium thus explaining the double date of and years before alexander given the unreliability of the few available sources we are forced to reconstruct an absolute chronology on the basis of other elements principally on the contention that zarathushtra must have lived a few centuries before cyrus the great cambyses and darius as there is no mention in the avesta of the great political achievements that took place in western iran in the middle of the first millennium bce nor is there any mention of the history of that period which was to lead iran to a position of such predominance at the same time for a number of reasons going back much further in history would not be justified consequently the traditionally accepted theory of placing zara thushtra around the beginning of the first millennium bce appears to be the most legitimate as to zarathushtra s land of origin many scholars agree on the basis of valid arguments that he must have come from eastern iran some have held that he was a mede largely because of a late iranian tradition linking zarathushtra with azerbaijan but also because of linguistic reasons based on the language of the avesta this hypothesis however should be discarded as we can suppose both on historical and linguistic grounds that zarathushtra came from the east even though we do not know precisely from which region there is a considerable variety of opinion on this particular matter including the improbable view that he came from chorasmia or present day khorezm or from a wider chorasmian region reaching as far as the oases of merv and herat most likely however zarathushtra s land of origin is somewhere in the vast area stretching from the hindu kush mountain range to the more southern regions of bactria and arachosia modern qandahar as well as drangiana the area of lake helmand it would thus be located in what is now afghanistan or in the border regions of iran zarathushtra himself tells us that he belonged to the priestly caste yasna he was a zaotar cf sanskrit hotr that is a priest belonging to a specific group connected with a school that produced very elaborate and learned religious poetry even in the so called younger avesta he is described as an athravan yashts a more general term encompassing the entire priestly caste to enter it he had undergone a long and rigid training which he used to lend dignity as in the gathas to the contents of his new message the product of a great and original ethical mind zarathushtra also belongs to that venerable priestly tradition linking india to iran in another way by centering his teachings on the praise of the ashavan or possessor of asha that is the one who as in the vedic rtavan seeks truth and masters it thus becoming ashavan in this life almost an initiate and blessed after death any good follower of such teachings seeks the vision of asha just as those chosing the right path in vedic india aspired to the vision of the sun a manifestation of rta behind these concepts and this language lies the great tradition of aryan mysticism that is of indo iranian mysticism zarathushtra s greatness however does not lie in his having belonged to a particular religious tradition rather it lies in the innovation and strength of his message which was in itself a break in the tradition one that force fully and effectively introduced two great revolutionary ideas dualistic monotheism the wise lord who fathers two twin spirits the beneficent and the evil and the expectation of a transfiguration av frashokereti pahl frashgird of life and existence see frashokereti both his monotheistic and dualistic ideas and his particular soteriological doctrine deeply separate zarathushtra s teachings from the indo iranian tradi tions of his upbringing they exemplify his rebellion against a formalistic and ritualistic religion that did not provide adequate answers to the problem of evil because of his basic tenets zarathushtra who advocated an inward religiosity and the right of the individual to resist the imperatives of tradi tion can be numbered among the greatest of religious figures another original facet of zarathushtra s message one that is not easy to understand but which however holds the key to a deeper understanding of the complex intellectual and poetic structure of the gathas is the doctrine of the amesha spentas the beneficent immortals these are spiritualizations of the abstract notions of good thought best truth desirable power bounteous devotion wholeness and immortality all of which operate according to a system of interrelations and correlations and can simultaneously be the manifestations of a divinity and of human virtue see amesha spentas other than the names of his father pourushaspa possessing gray horses and of his mother dughdova one who has milked we know almost nothing of zarathushtra s life a late pahlavi text also give the names of four brothers according to tradition zarathushtra left home at the age of twenty and at thirty he was subject to a revelation both through an intense and powerful inspiration and through a vision only after ten years had passed however did he succeed in converting a cousin of his maidhyoimah to his beliefs he was strongly opposed in his native land by kavis karapans and usijs priestly groups associated with traditional teachings and practices this hostility caused him to leave his region yasna and to seek refuge at the court of kavi vishtaspa a ruler who had been converted to the new religion together with his wife hutaosa when the prophet according to tradition was forty two years old we also know the name of a son isat vastra desiring pastures and of three daughters born of his first wife as well as the names of two more sons urvatatnara commanding men and hvarecithra sun faced born of his second wife hvovi a member of the influential hvogva possessing good cattle family two other figures belonging to the hvogva family are mentioned frashaoshtra and jamaspa the former as hvovi s father and the latter as the husband of the third daughter of the prophet pouruchista very thoughtful whose wedding is celebrated in the fifth hymm in the gathas yasna again according to tradition zarathushtra died at the age of seventy seven he was assassinated by a karapan a priest of the old religion who belonged to the tuirya tribe and was called tur i bradres his name is known only in the pahlavi form the paucity of information on the prophet s life is compensated by a tradi tion rich in legendary detail that arose through the centuries in zoroastrian communities the main texts documenting the tradition are the seventh book of the denkard a pahlavi work dating from the ninth century ce as well as passages from other pahlavi texts and a new persian work from the thirteenth century the zarathusht nama book of zarathushtra written by zaratusht i bahram i pazhdu mythical and ritual elements prevail in the later legends about zarathushtra which idealize him into a symbol and make him the archetype of the perfect man zarathushtra s great popularity in the ancient world continued throughout the renaissance until the enlightenment during the classical and hellenistic periods he was viewed as a wise man a typical representative of an alien wisdom a master of the secrets of heaven and earth a seer astrologer psychologist and wonder worker pythagorean thinkers went so far as to see the influence of zarathushtra on pythagoras himself and the academicians always openly admired the persian thinker who founded the school of the magi and advocated a doctrine of dualism earliest christianity viewed zarathushtra as a precursor of the christian faith one who not only prophesied as had the biblical prophets the advent of the messiah but also predicted the supernatural sign of his coming the star that was to appear in the east and guide the three magi to the manger in bethlehem see magi this christian interpretation is derived from the zoroastrian doctrine of the saoshyant the savior of the future see saoshyant later however religious struggles arose during the sasanid empire in persia third to seventh centuries ce which linked the spread of christianity with the roman empire zarathushtra s popularity in the christian world began to decline the iranian prophet who had been praised often by the gnostic schools and who had been seen by mani as one of the three great messengers from the past was now seen instead as a leader of imposture and heresy a teacher of the diabolic arts of witchery but during the renaiss ance and the enlightenment european cultures reverted to the image of zara thushtra that had come down through classical and hellenistic antiquity he was viewed once again as a great and wise man as the author of the chaldean oracles and probably inventor of qabbalah as a teacher of astrology as a possible bridge between christianity and platonism and at times as in voltaire as a symbol of non christian wisdom after western philology rediscovered zarathushtra during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries friedrich nietzsche in an intentional paradox gave the name zarathustra to the hero of his work also sprach zarathustra nietzsche saw the iranian prophet as the first to have discovered the true motive force underlying all things that is the eternal struggle between good and evil see also zoroastrianism
