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7/9/2025, 10:40:52 AM
>>509904415
>The principle sources on Zoroaster’s teachings consist of the Avesta, the Zoroastrian scripture, which contains the Yasna, Visparad, Videvdat, and the Yashts, and a collection of later religious documents, such as the Bundahishn, Denkard, Zadspram, and many more. While the Avesta may retain a few of the features of the original teachings of Zoroaster, it is believed to have derived its authority from “faithfully preserved” older traditions. However, these sources were mostly compiled after the eighth century AD, and as Nigosian comments, “how much of its contents date from the earliest period, and how much of it was rewritten to make the past agree with the realities and beliefs of the time in which it was composed is, of course, open to question.” Therefore, a number of non-Zoroastrian ancient sources are important to an understanding of the early Zoroastrianism, mainly from Greek and Roman writers
>However, those ideas attributed to the Magi by the ancient Greeks and Romans, are not reflected in the Zoroastrian texts. This has puzzled scholars and led them to believe that the Greeks invented the ideas they attributed to the Magi. However, a perusal of their accounts shows that the ideas attributed to them were consistent. The problem was solved by Franz Cumont and Joseph Bidez, in Les Mages Hellenises, of “The Hellenized Magi”, but the work remains untranslated. Also useful is the world of RC Zaehner, Zurvan, A Zoroastrian Dilemma. Essentially, these scholars have discovered that those with whom the Greeks had become acquainted with were not orthodox Zoroastrians, but heretics, who had altered Zoroaster’s original teachings, and among whom we find the first indication of what would later comprise the teachings of the Kabbalah: a ritual of death and rebirth, a divine trinity associated with the Sun, Moon and Venus, dualism, pantheism, numerology, astrology, and the belief in reincarnation
>The principle sources on Zoroaster’s teachings consist of the Avesta, the Zoroastrian scripture, which contains the Yasna, Visparad, Videvdat, and the Yashts, and a collection of later religious documents, such as the Bundahishn, Denkard, Zadspram, and many more. While the Avesta may retain a few of the features of the original teachings of Zoroaster, it is believed to have derived its authority from “faithfully preserved” older traditions. However, these sources were mostly compiled after the eighth century AD, and as Nigosian comments, “how much of its contents date from the earliest period, and how much of it was rewritten to make the past agree with the realities and beliefs of the time in which it was composed is, of course, open to question.” Therefore, a number of non-Zoroastrian ancient sources are important to an understanding of the early Zoroastrianism, mainly from Greek and Roman writers
>However, those ideas attributed to the Magi by the ancient Greeks and Romans, are not reflected in the Zoroastrian texts. This has puzzled scholars and led them to believe that the Greeks invented the ideas they attributed to the Magi. However, a perusal of their accounts shows that the ideas attributed to them were consistent. The problem was solved by Franz Cumont and Joseph Bidez, in Les Mages Hellenises, of “The Hellenized Magi”, but the work remains untranslated. Also useful is the world of RC Zaehner, Zurvan, A Zoroastrian Dilemma. Essentially, these scholars have discovered that those with whom the Greeks had become acquainted with were not orthodox Zoroastrians, but heretics, who had altered Zoroaster’s original teachings, and among whom we find the first indication of what would later comprise the teachings of the Kabbalah: a ritual of death and rebirth, a divine trinity associated with the Sun, Moon and Venus, dualism, pantheism, numerology, astrology, and the belief in reincarnation
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