Misconceptions About the Prophet and His Doctrine.

Most people do not know the name “Zarathustra” unless it is in relation to the title Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This is the title of both an 1896 tone poem composed by Richard Strass and, more famously, a book published in 1892 by Friedrich Nietzsche.  However, as Nietzsche made clear in Ecce Homo (which was written in 1888 and published in 1908), he used the character Zarathustra to express Nietzsche’s views rather than those of the ancient Prophet himself.  As a late nineteenth century German scholar, Nietzsche knew that Zarathustra placed adherence to Truth and ethical principles at the center of his original monotheistic creed.  And the German free-thinker, who opposed traditional Christian morality, cynically portrayed the ancient Prophet as renouncing his own ethical creed in the name of truth.

Others know Zarathustra as “Zoroaster,” which is the name given to him by the ancient Greeks.  Moreover, like most people in today’s world, the Greeks held very vague and confused notions about who was this great spiritual leader.  Furthermore, adding to this ignorance was obfuscation born of fraud.  Some Greco-Roman charlatans forged books that they alleged were written by “Zoroaster.”  One of the motives for producing such bogus works was monetary gain, that is, revenue from selling them to gullible curators of royal libraries.  Other writers propagated their own philosophical views and falsely presented them to the public as those of “Zoroaster” (Beck 1991, 491-493).  Pythagoras of Crotona was the most famous philosopher to make this false claim.

Misconceptions are further compounded by various fabrications regarding the time and place of the Prophet’s life. The Greeks knew that his lifetime was many centuries before their own Classical period.  But they mistakenly believed that he lived the equivalent of 6,000 years before the Common Era and that he was either the King of Bactria or a Babylonian magician (Beck 1991, 491, 522, 525, 495; Khazai 2003, 1-2).  However, most distortions of this type were produced by his nominal followers in the Persian Empire’s eastern provinces.  It was they who made self-serving claims that the Prophet spent most of his life in their own province.  Thereby, they encouraged large numbers of pilgrims whose presence provided local merchants and tax collectors with increased revenue. More misconceptions began during the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE).  Early in that period, the Magian high priests claimed that Zarathustra was one of them and that he was from their chief north Iranian town called “Raga.”  These self-serving, non-Persian charlatans also falsely asserted that he lived during the time we know as the sixth century BCE (Nanavutty 1999, 16).

All of these distortions are piled onto the basic problem that the Prophet’s unique, original, and divinely-inspired doctrine began to be corrupted by some neo-pagan concepts soon after his death.  Years later when his followers entered the Persian Empire, his revelation was perverted even more.  Over the generations, there were added to the already-compromised revelation a stultifying mass of liturgy, alien Babylonian-Levantine concepts, and use of “fire temples.”  Furthermore, most of these were imposed by the Magi.  This clever Armenoid clan was native to northwestern Iran, and for centuries, it used clever deceptions to get control over different religions in various lands ranging from Ethiopia to China (Darmesteter in Muller, 1887, IV, xlvi-xlvii; Boyce 1979, 48).  Therefore, the Magi easily gained favor with the Irano-Aryan Persian emperors, and they superimposed themselves over the faithful as the highest priesthood. Thereafter, even outright heresies emerged such as Zurvanism, and there also arose spinoff religions such as Mithraism.

Unfortunately, such a confusion of doctrines has appeared to many distant and misinformed Western observers as a single religious system.  These tragic corruptions and Western misinterpretations of Zarathustra’s great revelation were aptly summarized by Oxford professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics, Z. A. Zaehner (1961, p. 19):

Never has a great religious thinker been more grossly travestied—travestied by his own followers who straightway obscured the purity of his monotheistic vision, travestied by the Magi in the Levant who presented him to the Greco-Roman world not only as the author of a rigid religious dualism … but also as a magician, astrologer, and quack, travestied by Nietzsche … who fathered on him doctrines he would have found little to his taste, travestied again in these latter days by men reputed as scholars whose fuddled imaginations have seen him as either a witch doctor … or a political intriguer….

Prophet of the One Creator God

The real Zarathustra did not ever live in the area we now know as the country called Iran. Instead, he was from the land that the ancients called Airyana Vaeja—the original “cradleland of the Aryans.”  This territory comprised the Eurasian steppes between the Volga River and southwestern Siberia (Boyce 1979, 2).  The Aryan branch of Indo-Europeans lived there united together for centuries until about 2000 BCE.  It was then that those among them, whom we call “Indo-Aryans,” migrated southward into Central Asia (and much later into India).  However, Zarathustra was among the Irano-Aryans who remained in the homeland for a few more generations before many of them moved into Central Asia (and later into Iran).  Moreover, he lived some time during the fifteenth to thirteenth centuries before the Common Era (Boyce 1992, xi; Harvey and Slocum, 3).

His clan was called “Spitama,” and his family may have dwelled in northwestern Kazakhstan near the present Russian border (Boyce 1992, 35-37; Basirov 1998, 3).  It is known that they were part of a pastoral settlement and that as a child he asked penetrating questions that confounded the local pagan priests.  And even though he himself became a priest at the usual age of fifteen, the questions continued and caused resentment in his community.  As a result, at age twenty, social pressure forced him to abandon this vocation and depart his home district.  Then for ten years he wandered in the wilderness, especially in the forested mountains.  And during that long period, he contemplated the meaning of life and the Truth of Asha, that is, divine Natural Law. At last, in the thirtieth year of his life, his inspired thoughts and observations produced a revolutionary divine revelation—the first monotheistic creed.

Zarathustra spent another ten years trying to convert his pagan ethnic kinsmen to accept his new revelation.  However, during his wanderings throughout Airyana Vaeja, he converted only his cousin and very few others.  In some localities, he even faced hostility and threats of violence.  Nevertheless, he persisted, and along with his cousin, Medyomah, he eventually entered a realm south of the Aral Sea ruled by Kavi Vishtaspah.  There—through his persistent efforts of persuasion and despite a treacherous conspiracy plotted against him by the kavi’s pagan priests—the Prophet converted Vishtaspah and his retinue.  Zarathustra then became one of the kavi’s chief advisers, and over the next few years, he and his regal convert persuaded the realm’s subjects to accept the new faith. Zarathustra lived the many remaining years of his life in the regal court.  He also married there, at about age forty-two, and lived an unusually long life for his time and place.  He died at age seventy-seven (Boyce 1992, 11-16); Dinkard, VII, 5 in Muller).

Zarathustra’s Message and Legacy

Spitama Zarathustra was the first religious leader to proclaim that there is one purely spiritual and universal God.  He was the first to associate God with the term “Holy Spirit.”  The Prophet was the first to proclaim that there is a heaven, a hell, and a purgatory and that those are mental or spiritual conditions and not physical places (Boyce 1979, 29; Mills in Muller 1887, XXXI, pp. xx & xxiii).  He was the first to say that there will be a last judgement.  He was the first to declare that there will be life everlasting for the good that will include the resurrection of the dead and the reuniting of good souls with their ideal bodies (Boyce 1979, 28-29).  He was the first to state that the fate of all men and women after death is based on our good or evil thoughts, words, and deeds in this life (Boyce 1992, 74-75).  And he was the first to forbid the making and worship of idols, for he envisioned the one true God as pure spirit.

These doctrines were later borrowed by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Boyce 1979, 29, 76-77; Zaehner 1961, 51-52, 57-58; Nanavutty 1999, 16; Masani 1968, 17-19 & 24; Campbell 1954, 143-150; Shaked, 8-10; Dawson 1931, viii-vix; Black and Rowley 1982; Wiley).  Moreover, the Mazdaist religion, which was an altered form of his doctrine, may have influenced the philosophy of the Greeks, including Plato and Aristotle, and the Romans (Masani 1968, 17).  It also influenced Buddhism (Boyce 1979, viii, 84: Nanavutty 1999, 16; Mallory and Mair 2000, 171), and it may have influenced Confucianism and Hinduism.

Zarathustra affirmed the goodness of both the spiritual realm and the material world.  He said we have a dutiy to keep our bodies clean and healthy for the sake of our physical and spiritual well-being, He forbade his followers to make blood sacrifices, and he forbade them to use mind-altering drugs, for to do so is to defile both body and soul.  He said it is a duty to keep clean and pure the air, the waters, and the earth, and to be kind to useful and harmless animals.

Zarathustra asserted that a person serves God and helps improve divine creation by performing honest and productive labor.  He also said that it is a moral duty to spare some portion of one’s wealth to help the honest and industrious poor who have suffered misfortune (Mills in Muller 1887, XXXI, xxii).  The Prophet established almost no fixed liturgies or sacred ceremonies (Boyce 1979, 37), for the path to salvation is through the moral choices of our everyday lives.

Any man or woman whose thoughts, words, and deeds predominate over his or her bad thoughts, words, and deeds is an “Ashavan” and will be granted a heavenly reward in proportion to that person’s goodness.  Anyone whose evil thoughts, words, and deeds predominate over the bad is a “drugvant” and will suffer a proportionate separation from our Creator that we call “hell.”  Thirdly, one whose spirit has produced a balance of good and bad will languish in a dull and cold existence called Misvan Gatu.  Moreover, after Ashavans have gained greatly in proportion to the evil and ignorant followers of false doctrines, a final judgement—the Frashokereti—will result in the destruction of all drugvant souls.

Meanwhile, during their earthly lives, Ashavans and drugvants are in a struggle against each other.  Ashavans provide an honest livelihood for themselves and their families by producing goods or services or teachings that benefit others.  Drugvants are those who cheat, murder, and lie, and the Prophet called them “followers of the Lie.”  They take that which others have earned through hard and honest work.  And they propagate false doctrines that violate divinely-created Asha/Natural Law, that bring death and destruction to themselves and their people, and that destroy virtue in their community.  Therefore, an Ashavan does not give charity to the chronically lazy or evil-acting drugvants.

Zarathustra—the greatest Prophet of our Creator God—set in motion an enlightened spiritual message regarding how we must understand and follow Asha/Natural Law.  And this ancient guideline is in harmony with modern scientific and psychological knowledge.  Well over three thousand years ago, he indirectly set in motion a series of religious and philosophical movements that endure today.  However, these were all corrupted by distortions added long after his passing from the earth.  Consequently, he has been forgotten by millions of people who owe him their gratitude and whose very well-being would be vastly improved by following his unblemished guiding light.

Nevertheless, in our own era, the religion called “Ashavid” revives the Prophet Zarathustra’s simple and pristine monotheistic creed.  And the book entitled Ashavid provides details about his life, his theology, the ancient changes that corrupted his creed, and about the resultant faith called Mazdaism and its influence on the major Levantine religions.  It also describes the fate of the ancient Indo-Europeans and explores the differences between peoples originating in different spheres of the earth.  Moreover, it discusses the presently-ignored realities of the divinely-created Natural Law called “Asha” and the consequences of continuing to ignore Asha in our own time.  (See the outline of Ashavid in this blog.)

                       References

Beck, Roger.  1991. “Thus Spake Not Zarathustra: Zoroastrian Pseudepigraphia of the Greco-Roman World,” pp. 491-565 of A History of Zoroastrianism. Edited by Mary Boyce and Franz Grener.  Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publications.

Black, Matthew, and H. H. Rowley (editors).  1982.  Peake’s Commentary on the Bible.  New York: Nelson.

Boyce, Mary.  1979.  Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices.  London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

_______.  1992.  Zoroastrianism: Its Antiquity and Constant Vigour.  Cosa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers.

Campbell, C. G.  1954.  Race and Religion.  London: Peter Neville, Ltd.

Dawson, Miles Menander.  (1931)  1969.  The Ethical Religion of Zoroaster.  New York: AMS Press, Inc.

Harvey, Scott L., and Jonathan Slocum.  n.d. Old Iranian On-Line.  Series Introduction.  University of Texas Linguistic Research Center.  Retrieved April 20, 2012 from http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/aveol-O-R.html.

Mallory, J. P. and Victor H. Mair.  2000.  The Tarim Mummies.  London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.

Masani, Rustom, Sir.  1968.  Zoroastrianism: The Religion of the Good Life.  New York: The MacMillan Co.

Muller, F. Max, editor.  (1887) 1995.  Sacred Books of the East.  Vol. IV, The Zend-Avesta, Part I, The Vendidad. Translated by James Darmesteter and L. H. Mills. Delhi, India: D. K. Publications, Ltd.

_______.  (1887) 1996.  Sacred Books of the East. Vol. XXXI: The Zend-Avesta, Part III, the Yasna, Visparad, Afrinagan, Gahs, and Micellaneous Fragments.    Translated by L. H. Mills.  Delhi, India: D. K. Publications, Ltd. 

_______.  (1897) 2004.  Sacred Books of the East.  Vol. XLVII: Pahlavi Texts, Part V, Marvels of Zoroastrianism (Dinkard VII & V, Zad-Sparam).  Translated by E. W. West.  Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.

Nanavutty, Piloo.  1999.  The Gathas of Zarathustra.  Ahmedabad, India: Papin Publishing.

Nietzsche, Friedrich.  (1887 & 1888) 1967.  On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo.  Translated by Walter Kaufmann.  New York: Vintage Books.

Shaked, Shaul.  n.d. “Eschatology in Zoroastrian Religion.”  The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies.  Retrieved January 29, 2011 from http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religions/iranian.

Wiley, Mark.  n.d.  “Influence of Zarathustra on Judaism and Christianity.”  The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies.  Retrieved October 12, 2009 from http://www.cais-soas.com.

Zaehner, R. C.  1961.  The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism.  New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.