In Our Time - Zoroastrianism

Episode Date: November 11, 2004

Melvyn Bragg and guests discusses Zoroastrianism. "Now have I seen him with my own eyes, knowing him in truth to be the wise Lord of the good mind and of good deeds and words." Thus spake the real Zarathustra, the prophet and founder of the ancient and modern religion of Zoroastrianism. It has claims to be the world's first monotheistic creed and perhaps as long ago as 1200 BC Zarathustra also said, "I point out the way, it is the truth, it is for all living". Truth is a central tenet of the religion which holds that people must above all do good things, hear good things and see good things.How was the religion established in Ancient Persia, what is its body of beliefs and how have they been developed and disseminated?With Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, Curator of Ancient Iranian Coins in the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum; Farrokh Vajifdar, Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society; Alan Williams, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester.

Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello. Now have I seen him with my own eyes, knowing him in truth to be the wise lord of the good mind and of good deeds and words. Thus spake the real Zerathustra, the prophet and founder of the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism. It has claims, though these are contentious in some people's eyes, to be. the world's first ethical, monotheistic creed. And perhaps as long ago as 1200 BCs, Althrusta also said, I point out the way, it is the truth, it is for all living. Truth is a central tenet of the religion which holds that people must above all do good things,

hear good things, and see good things. How was the religion so powerfully established in the influential civilizations of ancient Persia? How was it established there? What is its body of beliefs and how have they been developed and disseminated? discuss the history and philosophy of Zoroastrianism, Isfrog Vajifdar, fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and a lifelong student of Zoroastrianism, Alan Williams, senior lecture in comparative religion

at the University of Manchester, and Vesta Sarkos Kirtis, curator of ancient Iranian coins at the British Museum. Vestar Sarkos Kirtish, how much do we know about Zarathustra himself? We know that he lived probably around 1,200,000 BC, Although not everybody agrees on this date, certain people, certain scholars, dating much later. But I think that he probably lived around 3,000 years ago,

and we know that he came from a priestly background. He lived probably somewhere in the north of Central Asia, sort of to the northeast of the Caspian Sea. His father's name was Porash, and his mother's name was Dugdov, We know that, for example, when he was conceived by his mother, there was enormous light shining around his mother, a sign of divine glory. And we know that when he was, for example, through later texts when he was born, he arrived actually with a smile on his face. And he could also speak immediately as a newborn, baby, child. What's the proof for all this?

These are all much later texts. But we know from his own words in the Gartha, in the most ancient, sort of one of the most ancient parts of the Avesta, the holy book of the Zoroastrians, that he was a priest. He was a high priest. And he had several revelations during his life. But his first revelation came to him at the age of about 30 when he was taking part of. in a special ceremony and these again are later descriptions and he went down to the river to cleanse himself and when he came back he was carried by light to a certain place and this was when he saw ahura masda or the wise lord and it was then that he decided to follow the path

of righteousness and also the teach uh the truth truth to people. So the gods that he, if I can use the word gods, the deities that he'd been brought up with, there were many, they tend to be very mussely and victor-seeking, and he replaced them by this worn god, Ahura master, the wise master,

the wise lord. Was this a radical thing to do at the time? It was very much so, and also it was a very dangerous thing to do because there was an awful lot of opposition to him. A lot of the priests, the Magi, were very much against his

reforms and he was not really his ideas were not welcome. And also the other problem was that in his teachings he saw mankind and people as equals.

I mean he did not see a for example difference between rich people and poor people and everybody on the last day of judgment came to salvation. So this was a very new idea. So it's an ethical, monotheistic deity that he is revealed to him. Yes.

All this light and shining and smiling and stuff is later. This is all his myth. Yes. Never mind. This was revealed to him. And there was an opposition, obviously. How did he overcome the opposition? Because these people believed in their own gods when they had investments in the intellectual and spiritual sense in their own gods.

How do we know anything about how he? overcame it. How is our a Austrianism, the religion based on his revelation, how that beat, as it were, the others? By sheer perseverance and also at the end he enjoyed

the support of the soul legend says the king of the time, Vistasper who then agreed to accept this religion, this good religion and introduce it at his court. Farok, Vajistva, can you

explains us the relationship of this new god, this Ahura Mazda, if indeed he was a new god, with first of all with the gods that he displaced or put down in the hierarchy, and then with his own system of hierarchy. Well, the precedence for his religious or his spiritual teaching were already two-hand in the Rigvedo, and many of the gods which the Indians had elevated to the status of devas, the shining ones, were in fact reduced by Zarathustra to the rank of demons. So whereas in India, in the old Indic text, you have Davar as a shining ones, in the Iranian text we have Daewar correspondingly,

but with exactly the opposite meaning in Zarathustra's mouth. He displaced all the old gods. He just generally put them onto the category of daivars. But he kept two, at least, behind. One was Mitra, and the other was Varuna. Now, I should say Mitra in the old Indic. He took the best of their qualities. Varuna was the creator god, the king of the gods.

Mitra had a twofold function. He was the enforcer of the solemnly given word, the contract. Also, the god, therefore, of friendship. Now Zarathustra incorporated these functions into this new, new ahura, the sole ahura, called Mazda, which as you quite rightly say means wisdom. And that basically is the being, the essence of Mazda. And this Mazda, this being was all wise, all competent, all responsible. We have that monotheistic ideal there then.

Is this the first time this has taken this revelation or around the first time? I don't be in competition with Judaism yet. I mean, is it around the first time that this monotheism has revealed itself in such a complete way? As I'm aware, yes, very much so. Can you tell us what relationship, the spirit world then, Bahra Mazda, has to the material world? We have a god, a spiritual god, presumably invisible, somewhere else, and yet he is to be revealed in the physical. So what is the relationship? How is this wise one revealed, wise master revealed? Well, the definition itself, wisdom is everywhere, if only we could seek it, reach for it, and use it.

I think he chose the name very carefully, very deliberately. He could have easily said, all-powerful, all-seeing, which he was, in fact, or, well, he made it out to be in his Gothass. As far as the monotheistic aspect... I must just tell the listeners that Gathas are the hymns, the 16 or 17 hymns, said to have been... I beg a pardon, yes, there's the 16 or 17 hymns. actually are his own compositions. We know this because he tells us this. He says, this is Saratushra, and these are my, these are the revelations as I have received

them from Mazda. And here we go. But can you just explain how we see Mazda, how we, as it were, the people in the 12th century BC, were told that they could see the wise master. So this is a radical idea. There's one invisible person, all competent, all benign, and his manifestation is on earth, because I think one of the things is as above so below. So can you give us some examples of what's happening materially that tells us what's happening spiritually?

Well, there is no conflict between the material and the mental or the spiritual worlds. In fact, they have been described quite rightly, I think, as two opposite poles of a unitary whole. so man is in fact a product of the physical form and the spirit they are combined within man can I tell you Alan Williams what do you find the relationship there well it's a complex one for Westerners to understand people with a theological background from Western monotheism I mean I'd like to just flesh this out a little bit

because what you've been talking we've been focusing on Ahura Mazda but in fact Ahura Mazda is the sort of sort of figurehead, he is the focus of the Lord, he's the Lord of Wisdom, but he's surrounded by a pantheon of six other beings. Now, I hesitate to use this word beings because they're spirits and their wills, they are entities in some sense, but we don't know, they're spiritual beings. And these are aspects, if you like, if you're a monotheist, do you think of these as aspects of God, but in fact, they're sort of, they work with God, they collaborate. One of them, a very important one, is the idea of Shathra Vairya, which means good governance, the best governance.

And this is symbolized by the sky. Each of these divine beings has a physical correspondent. So the sky looks after the earth, which is the next Amishisbenta or blessed immortal. And the Spenta are mighty is the earth and represents holy piety, translated as benevolent, piety. So we have the sky and the earth, and these are the manifestations of these divine beings. And then water is spiritualized in the concept of Horvatat, which means perfection or wholeness. And then the next divine being is represented in the plant, in plant life, Amrata, immortality, immortality. So you can see the connection between purity and wholeness, perfection and water, and immortality and plant life.

life. And the next very important divine being in this Heptad or this group of immortal beings is the good mind, Vaumanah, which is represented by the beneficent animal that is tended by mankind. And then man himself is the representative of God, Ahura Mazda. The Lord Wisdom is also known as the Spenishtamainu, the most holy spirit, and it is man who is the physical embodiment of that most holy spirit. And then lastly, we have the notion of supreme truth, Ashavahistah, which is symbolized by, or which is embodied in the physical creation of fire.

And that's where we come to this very important religious symbol of serastrianism. So we've set out almost, under Haru Ramasda, who is the wise one, are seven, as it were, they seem to me almost like the transformations of the old gods into something much better, to use that word. It's a search for good and the uncovering of the good, as Farak was saying, isn't it? They're the realities that mankind can approach God through, if you like, and they are embodiments in the physical universe.

Now, Ahura Mazda is known primarily as the creator god, He created the universe in order to contain the evil spirit and to defeat him ultimately. The world has a purpose. But it isn't the idea is not there yet. It isn't a dualistic idea. The monotheism is not dualistic, is it's not good versus evil.

This is very difficult to understand, but I can make it clear in this way. This is not ditheism. This is not two gods. Plutarch understood this in the first century BC. very clearly and he says, you know, the Zoroastrians have one God and one demon. And this is how Zarathustra understood the universe that there were two spirits or two wills and that they're in conflict with one another. And these are not two beings, not two gods, but one

god, one monotheistic God, and one force of total negativity, which is resisted by man on earth. Vesta, would you say that Zoroastrianism, the main purpose is to seek out the good and that everyone is reaching for good all the time? Absolutely. To follow the path of righteousness, to seek the good, and by seeking the truth to overcome evil. So it's a very good, positive religion. Farok, how do you think, why do you think I'm coming back? I'm nagging away at something that I asked earlier. Why do you think that such a benevolent seeming from what you three have said

are spiritually based, as from what Alan has pointed out in detail, and what you refer to, why do you think that was taken on in society which was engaged in all sorts of military struggles, difficulties of survival, where these musselie gods bashing everybody up was more like the society we think living at the time? Well, I think we've just covered an enormous leap in history when Alan explained this brilliantly, if I may say. The point is that these are not Zarathustra's original teachings. These six Amisha spenters, as you call them, they are part of Mazda himself.

They are, in fact, you use the word, hypotheses. So there is no hierarchy there, but there is certainly a conflict of the two primordial spirits, one of which chose to do the worst things. These are from the teachings of Zarathustra himself. And the other one allied himself with Mazda through truth, an aspect of Mazda. So he reaches Mazda through an aspect. Are you saying that as Zoroastrianism developed, it became not only more complicated, but rather more corrupted and it went away from Lee?

Can you give us an example of how that happened? by the time by the child. I'm not an example as just the way it unfolded in history. Now, Alan has mentioned Plutarch, for example. Plutarch, for goodness sake, was situated well in the west. He may have visited Persia, I'm not sure, but the religion originated in the East, in a society of pastoralists.

The military aspect, yes, that's rather becoming to New Zealand, the military aspects of the religion were really minimised. In other words, you use force only to counteract deceit and certainly in self-defense, but there is no militarism involved in it. It's one aspect we're actually leaving out here, which is so important in answer to your question

about the sort of compelling nature of Zarathustra's revelation. I prefer to call it a reformation. He was reacting, and he was a radical reformer. And it is, I mean, Farah, and I probably differ in an analysis. interpretation as erastrianism to some extent that's inevitable because we're really this is still work in progress the point I'd like to make is that what we're leaving out here is the what what Zarathust's real contribution was I think we could say is that he introduces the idea of an ethical and a soterological

plan an eschatological plan is a long word which simply means a whole line of history which ends in a judgment a judgment which he explains is in terms of our own choice. If we choose, the great classical passage in the Garthas, it talks about choice. If I may just quote one short verse, he says, listen with your ears to the best things, reflect with a clear mind man by man for himself,

upon the two choices of a decision, being aware to declare yourselves to him before the great retribution. And it's this idea that we kind of build our own destiny by making choices for good or choices for evil, in following the good spirit or the evil spirit. And there is a soterology here, which is extremely attractive that we can actually build our future, and that we'll be judged on that. And then there's a promise of heaven or paradise or hell, domination.

How did Zoroastrianism weave its way into the first Persian Empire that took it up? It was taken up by three Persian empires. How did this? Yes. It must have seemed very strange. As Alan has said, very radical. and very pure as being put forward by Farak, religion came out of the deepest side of the way. How did that become a state religion?

Well, first of all, we have to remember that by the time it became a state religion, the Persian or the Iranian tribes had moved into the highland of Iran. They came from north of Central Asia, and in the second millennium, gradually moved into the highlands of Iran. So by the time you have the first Persian Empire, Cyrus, the Great, the Persians are well established in what we call now Iran. So they moved, and it's about, depending on how you date, of course, Zoroaster, I would like to say they are about 400, 500 years between, and the religion has also developed.

Now, we assume and we think that the Achaemenids, the Persians, the ancient Persians, were Zoroastrians, they do not mention Zarathustra in their inscription, but that is neither here nor there. They don't need to mention the name of the prophet. They certainly mention again and again Ahura Mazda. All the inscriptions open by the wish of Ahura Mazda. So, Achaemenides, then the Parthians. What does it do for them, for the Akimini and the Parthians, the first what does it bring to them as emperors, as leaders of state? What does Zoroastrian give to them. What do they take from it?

They take from it the truth, a religion, which is a friend of the person who tells the truth and an enemy of the person who tells lie. And this is, for example, said again and again by Darius

in his inscriptions in 422 BC. Sorry, 522 BC. They, follow the righteous path. They introduce a religion which is good.

And also, if you look at the, for example, the figure of Cyrus, the great, he followed a religion which also enabled other people to follow freedom. They were allowed to, the Jews were allowed to go back to their

homeland and take their cult statues with them. It was a very open religion. Forrest, can I ask you, about some of the rituals that developed later in Zoroastrianism at the time, which Edg Vesta has been talking about. If somebody went to a Zoroastrian temple, what would happen? What were the rituals and what were the funeral rituals? These, for instance, which were always very important in any religion.

All right. For a start, can we keep funerals away from the fire temples? Right, the cultus is based on fire. And again, it's a very ancient thing. It's nothing new. That I should not introduce the worship of fire. If anything, he used it as a symbol of truth. He tells us so, this spiritual fire is strengthened through truth.

That is the main connection. Now, in a fire temple, the fire is maintained by priests in the sanctum-sanktum-sanghtarum. The worshippers can view it, certainly, from outside. They say their own prayers in conformity with said prayers, which have been taught to them since childhood and so on. So there's nothing very special. And again, there is no congregational worship in that sense. You do your own thing and pray to whichever aspect of the divinity you wish.

Is this fire a perpetual fire for? In certain temples, yes. The highest grade has a permanently burning fire. It's constantly maintained by priests. I understand it, it has to be unpolluted, so even the priests themselves were a mask, so they don't polluted the fire. Yes, that's the old, yes, a mouth veil. and that was exactly the idea, yes, so that they wouldn't pollute the idea of fire.

Fire had its purity, heavily symbolic, of course, but purity nevertheless extended to fire as well. It had to be kept free of anything extraneous to the wood itself. You say that this wasn't new, but was it at the time and in that place distinctive these fire temples? Were they particular to the Zoroastrians? Well, if we follow Herodotus, he says that the Persians initially had no fire. temples, the Magus, who was a freelance priest, he was not necessarily a Zoroastrian at the time, he would, presumably for a consideration, he would pray to any God of your choice. And later when they embraced Zoroastrianism, then of course they took over in a big way,

and we're very grateful to them because they were the ones responsible for the faithful transmission of Zarathustra's words. Regarding the practices of fire, there is of course always ritual purity within the person as well, within the worshipper and the priest. The priest has to isolate himself at such times through a very complex ritual. Can we talk about the funeral rituals of the Little Island? So we just get to know when people were around at that time, what were they coming up against with Russianism? There are fire temples. You go and worship at the fire temple.

Men and women can worship equally. and enter in the same entrance and so on. So that's one thing. Another thing that we used to actually get a fix on religions are the death ceremonies. So can you talk briefly about the funeral ceremonies here? Well, funeral ceremonies arise out of the problem of what do you do with the body when it's no longer animated when it's alive. In Zoroastrian terms, the body, when the person is alive, the body is a sacred thing.

It is, as we say, you know, the body is a temple. It's not considered to be something filthy or something to be spurned. But when the spirit, when the Urvuan leaves the body... Now the spirit's supposed to leave the body after three days, isn't it? That's in Zoroastrian belief. When the spirit leaves the body, then the body itself is shed like a sort of a shell that is no longer... I interrupt you just quickly. Is the idea of the spirit leaving the body?

Is that new to Zoroastrianism, has that come in? I don't think so. I think that's as old as the hills. I mean, the idea that this is the idea of animatism, isn't it? That the spirit inhabits the body. But certainly when the, what comes out of the body, the spirit as it comes out of the body, is the person. And this is another of Zahathustra's insights,

which is that the soul lives on. and therefore it is judged on the life it has led. But the body itself must be dealt with. It's actually balance, isn't it, on the bridge? You're good that is on one side and your bad days or another. There are all sorts of explanations. They have belt and braces here. Judgment is a narrow bridge, and if you've been good, it's a wide bridge.

If it's a narrow bridge, it's the widthful razor, then you'll fall to hell. Or there's another one that you meet your conscience, you meet your dina, you meet the very vision that you've created in your life. to that and it's very of course it's very male-dominated religion in a sense that this is a beautiful woman or it's an ugly hag there is a I'm sure a female version of this but the point is that I'm sure there is a feminist reading of Zoroastrian thing there is in fact parties of have many feminists so but you're going back to your original question the problem of what to do with a with a with a dead body in the on the Central Asian steps, in the Iranian desert, and even to this day in the city of Bombay, Zoroasins have to confront the problem of what to do with a corpse. And so we have the fire, we have the idea of the Tower of Silence, which is a form that's crystallized, that is it's developed, out of the idea of putting a body on top of a hill

and allowing wild animals to dispose of it. This sounds unhygienic to modern Western ears, but in fact it's a relatively hygienic way of disposing the dead. You want to say something for a... Alan, if I may interrupt, not wild animals, I must stress this. These have to be raptors. Raptors. Because the bodies are exposed on open towers. Animals cannot get in.

Not wild dogs, no wolves, or any of the... You're absolutely right to correct me on that in the modern practice, but in ancient times this idea may have come from the idea. The earliest, and then, forgive me reminding you, but the body was actually weighted down so that the wild creatures could not drag it to a nearby stream or onto arable land. This is one of the reasons, in fact, why we had towers of silence. The principle of this is that the body should not pollute the earth, so it should be raised above the earth. It should not pollute the waters.

And above all, distinct from the way that Indians dispose of the dead, for example, the cremation of the corpse is totally forbidden because it would pollute fire. Can I turn now to this oral culture, Bester, with which when we started the program, the assumption was, and Farok has told us that Tarasrister's words and Agatha's were transmitted orally. Now, there's a suspicion in the culture which we're addressing at the moment, the people listening to this program.

There is a suspicion about it, not because, it's because we have lost contact with it, in a way. the idea of an oral culture being as accurate as a written culture is, quite frankly, outside our ken, and yet we know it happened with the Celts, we know it happened to pedically, and we know it happened here. Now then, the real problem is, how can you work out how accurate it is? Well, you can work out, first of all, I think I have to say

that this oral tradition that is so alien to us in the West still to this day exists in countries like Iran for example and many parts of the Middle East where people learn to really recite stories and poetry again

and again and keep alive traditions. Now we know that it was very important according to later text to recite the Avesta in the original language. This is the Holy

book of the Zoroastrian, which is a sort of general part of it. Part of it, the words of the prophet himself. And therefore, it was very important for these priests to preserve this tradition. And they also recited these prayers in the original language, which is exactly like the language of the Gartas and Zoroaster. It's very odd that we have this resistance to it. When we take it for granted, the great act. can learn massive plays by heart and keep them in their heads for many years. And if they had to do it again and again again, they'll keep in their heads and pass it on forever.

With the difference that they have short-term memories, our priests, are taught from the earliest, and they retain this right through their lives. And crucially, what we don't understand as non-oralists, although we're going over orally now, we do live in a sort of oral culture in a sense. But in ancient oral cultures, orality is accompanied by ritual action. And this is crucially important to understand that every word of the Yasna, that is the sacred liturgy of the Zoroastrian rite, is accompanied by actions. It's framed by actions, and these are sacramental actions. And so the words are empowered by mental force, but also by the ritual action that's performed contemporaneously.

Farah, just to come to a final little question on this. There was, I read, that the idea of the spoken word was superior to the written word because it was less likely to be corrupted. Can you just develop that a little? Well, it's not possible to develop that except to ask why they consider it necessary to commit the Gathas and the Yasna, the rest of the Amistar, to writing. And of course the answer must be that they were losing touch with the original language. and they had to fix it.

Again, I must mention this. The Gathas, they do display a firm grammatical structure, and we can compare this with the old Indic texts in the Rig Veda. So we have stylistic configurations, and also the syntax. It helps us a lot to understand the Gathas. Also, there is a question of why it was this alphabet inventive? because it was invented.

It was based on an earlier consonantal alphabet. And the answer must be, again, this is conjecture perhaps, the religion came from the east where the pronunciation of the original Gothic words were rather different to the southwest where it emigrated as a state religion. And so before they lost touch, they felt they had to commit this to writing.

And this is, I think, around about the 5th century, perhaps. Sixth century. Yes. Sixth century. Can we talk about the influence now? We are told that Plato had been a Persian consul and one way to have a conversation with another country

is to go to war with it, I presume, and the Greco-Persian wars brought the two together. We know that Greek scholars travelled into Persia and Persian scholars travelled to Greece and they also travelled to Rome. So there's a huge intellectual intercourse there and for a long, many centuries, Persia was the place you went to

to meet to great minds. So can you give us some idea? of the flow for a rock of ideas there because we tend to think it all starts with the group curiously most of these people that were the big names anyway in Greek philosophy and so they all began with the P for some reason start off with Pythagoras he's supposed to have visited or wanted to visit Iran and then we continue Plato did not go beyond the limits I think he might have been to Syria where he met some of the major but he was coming back to this he was the honorary

counsel, the proxenos. And of course, as a kind of a vice-unery counsel, he did meet the Magi in Athens. They visited him, and there is a story. I can't quite place, perhaps Alan knows this. He was supposed to have visited, Amegos is supposed to have visited Plato in the last evening of his life. And of course, before then, there were interchanges with them. Now, the curious thing is why did they all wish to go to Iran, right up to the times of Plotinus, the Neoplatonist, the founder of Neoplatans, Porphyry, all these people? Why Iran, again, they tell you, it was to meet either the successors of Zarathustra or in the earliest cases, perhaps to meet with Zarathustra himself.

Can I just actually just read a couple of lines from a very fine quotation by a classicist? May I do that? Yeah, as long as it's, I don't be rude, but as long as it is just a couple. Well, it's rather, anyway, they... No, no, no, no, no, this is just... This has to do with the visits of the Greeks. And here, it says we cannot afford to minimize the significance of the continual exodus of highly intelligent and talented Greeks to Iran.

They were there in search not just of career opportunities or political asylum, but also of a wiser civilisation. So we have that and we can see the ideas of the persons coming to the Greeks and Plato's ideas that can... Let's talk about the influence of Zoroastrianism as it might have been on Judaism and Christianity.

Now, which came first Judaism or Zoroastrianism? People are going to argue about that outside this studio for a very long time. But the interconnections between the two, Alan Williams, seem to me to be very striking. They may have come, as reading for this progeny, they may very likely have come from

the time when Nebuchadnezzar took the leading members of Jews to Babylon. They stayed there for 60 years, and then Cyrus let them go back here. Cyrus, the anointed one in Jewish literature, and taken a lot of ideas with them or passed a lot of ideas on. Can you talk about that? What are the connections there?

Well, the connections, undoubtedly, we're talking about a milieu in the ancient world when the Jews were tremendously grateful to Cyrus and to the Eccanians for liberating them and allowing them to go to Jerusalem to build a temple. And I don't want to get into, in a nutshell, the post-exholic books of the Bible

shows signs of having incorporated many ideas that are there in their own context in ancient Iranian religion, and in Zarathustra's revelation. I've mentioned good and evil, we've mentioned heaven and hell, but also the idea of... This is our rational ideas that are taken into the...

which come into the prophetic books and into the post-exhiliac books, yeah. This is indisputable. It's taken a long time for scholars of Judaism really to come to terms with the amount of extraneous influence that seems to be there. But I think now it's generally accepted that the way in which the post-exilic books have changed is that they're distinct and also the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Qumran community, and then we can see these ideas in Christianity filtering through this idea of eschatology, ideas of judgment, ideas of future.

life, these then take on a much larger role in both Judaism and Christianity. What about the idea of the Savior? The idea of the Savior is there in the Gothas, in the sense that Zarathustra talks about himself as one who comes to heal the world. And there's no disputing the idea that the Savior is there in the most ancient texts, and of course the most important idea in Christianity. And how does this flow through it? And how does this flow through Judaism into Christianity? Can you just detail that a little for us, rest of you?

Well, I mean, the fact that Zarathustra and his teachings talk about the Sausiant, the savior of the world, who rules at the end of the world, according to the Zoroastrian or Zarathustra's doctrine, the world comes to an end, and then there are 3,000 years, the last thousand years are ruled by one of the sons of Sarathustra Sausian. So he's the saviour. He's the one who raises the bones,

the bones of the dead. And he is the one who helps Ahura Mazda give them back their life. So this is the idea of raising the dead and saving mankind certainly comes into Zoroast.

We haven't mentioned it. yet but I'm going to. I'm just about to come to it when I was waiting, I was politely waiting for the Professor to finish as we're about to come towards the end of the program. This great religion which went through so many centuries and was went through three Persian empires was heavily challenged by the

invasions of the seventh century and Muslim invasions and then quite soon afterwards, as I understand it, about 95% of the Austrians converted to Islam and a few of the others went to India to Gujarat where the Parsis still practice their Australianism what comment do you make on the sort of

the way in which Islam simply swept this great religion aside after all it had deep roots, it had lasted through three great empires it had been challenged by Alessander the accursed and so and so forth how has it swept away so? Well, it was certainly accepted by a large number of people, whether by sheer force, whether it was imposed of them or people embraced it. I mean, there's no question about it. A lot of Zoroastrians converted, but a lot of people also remain Zoroastrians.

I mean, to this day, you do have a very small minority in Iran, in southern Iran, who follow this faith. But what I find most fascinating is the way Shia Islam. created a similarity, created a branch of Islam, which to me shows strong parallels with Zoroastrianism. So you think that Zoroastrianism influenced Islam in the same way? Yes. Yes, I do think. And I think the...

Can you give us a specific example? I think the greatest influence of Zoroastrianism or the Iranian religion came to Shia Islam. This is the branch of Islam which believes that after the Prophet Muhammad there are 12 imams, and the 12th Imam is the Savior. He disappears and he reappears on the last day of judgment. And you yourself are Shia. I'm Shia Muslim, yes. And so you take that on board as well, do?

I think this whole idea of Shia Islam, I would like to think, has very Zoroastrian nuances. The whole idea of creating this line. And also in Shia Islam, we legend has it and we believe that the wife of Imam Hussein, the daughter-in-law of Imam Ali, was an Iranian princess. Farrak, your family's paris. and a good number of Zoroastrians went from the Persian Empire into Gujarat and were settled there and developed there and so on. What form of Zoroastrianism are they practicing now? Is it recognizably the same to that which we've been discussed?

I think it would be safer to call it Parsisism. It has certainly Zoroastrian roots, but they were certainly heavily influenced by Hindu ideas, Hindu customs, which is inevitable, but they're long. stay. I just wish to have one last point on this conversion in Iran. It took centuries after the fall of the Sasanian Empire.

It took absolute centuries before this was really achieved as 95% you speak of because there were rebellions. The Sasanians did Sarastrianism no favour. They did no favours to Zarashton. They were a very repressive regime and this is perhaps why Islam

caught on. Absolutely. I think that absolutely we'll have to conclude this conversation. Thank you all very much indeed. Next week I'll be discussing particle physics and the Higgs bosom, also known as God's particle, and the billions of dollars being spent at CERN on the new Collider. Thank you for listening. Good morning. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast.

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