PART TWO
4
Reconstitution of the Jewish State and Borrowed Institutions
SO FAR WE have traced Biblical traditions of the afterlife in the First Temple period, within its ancient Near Eastern cultural context: Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan. Now we turn to the far more articulated and manifold notions of the afterlife in the Second Temple period. To do so, we must trace the afterlife notions of two more cultures-Persia and Greece-which had an important effect on Second Temple Israel (539 BCE-70 CE). In some sense, the material for the innovative Jewish notions of the afterlife come from Iran and Greece, though Jewish culture tailored the cloth to its own measurements. On the subject of the afterlife, Persian and Greek influence become the most important two factors in the development of Jewish conceptions, from which they entered Christianity, and hence became the most important factors in the description of the afterlife in the religions of the West.
With the destruction of the First Temple, the end came to the first Israelite state. After a sojourn in Babylon of more than a generation (597-539 BCE), where the Judeans encountered Babylonian religion directly, the Jews returned to the land of Judah, due to the beneficence of a new conquering people, the Persians, who vanquished the Neo-Babylonian Empire by pouring down into Mesopotamia on horseback from the eastern high plateau steppelands and who ruled from the area today known as Iran.
Some Israelites-not all, but some-returned from Babylon to rebuild their state on their ancient model; but they returned to a whole new world, where the old models of the state fit less and less and the previous unity of people and purpose was irrecoverable. They were no longer an independent nation, living on their own with only their own internal ideological battles to fight. Rather, they were confined to a smaller and subservient state, called the district of Yehud (Aramaic for Judah; Hebrew: Yehudah) or the province of “Across the River,” in turn part of a larger Syrian satrapy whose official language was Aramaic, in turn part of a vast empire ruled by a people who spoke Persian. They were two languages away from their rulers who resided in faraway Iran at the other end of a well-developed imperial bureaucracy. Since they came from Yehud, a resident was a “yehudi”-a Judean, a term which eventually comes to mean “a Jew.”1 It took centuries before the religious implication of the name, which is so clear to us, became the primary meaning of the term.2
As member states of a large empire, they were aware of many different cultures with many different gods and many different ways of understanding our final ends. Ever wary of offending YHWH, especially after their terrible exile and punishment at His hands, they did not seek out the new ideologies: in fact, they tried, at first self-consciously, to reconstitute the previous state. But that proved impossible, as the Persians prefered to rule through the priests and not a king. The priests shortly became the ruling class in Judea while the kingship simply disappeared. In any event, their attempt imaginatively to reconstruct and record their past and their plans for the future is known to us today as the Bible, or at least the five books of Moses. The documents we understand as the core of the Bible were assembled in this period by the new aristocracy of Judea, the priests.
As the Jews heard about more attractive hereafters, they gradually revised their own conceptions of the afterlife in ways that give credit to their patient, long-suffering LORD. The result, which moved them toward a new Jewish synthesis of views of the afterlife, began as a group of tendentious and conflicted, but related, arguments about what the afterlife might be. The Jewish nation entertained, both accepting and rejecting, aspects of Persian and Greek thought. They did not accept these new notions uniformly but entertained them in various groups and classes of people. In a way, this shows that the reason for the polemic against Canaanite thought was not pure ethnocentrism but a reaction against something offensive in Canaanite culture itself, for the Jews readily accept notions of the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul, which came from Persian and Greek cultures respectively. This new synthesis would have far-reaching effects for our contemporary notions of the hereafter. At the beginning of the Hellenistic period (starting ca. 332 BCE), we have but hints of what the social and economic backgrounds of these concepts were. By the end of the period, we have very good ideas about the environment in which these notions grew and how they served society.
The Difficulty Studying Iran
IRAN’S INFLUENCE on Israel remains a true mystery. When the Iranian religious documents were first published in the West, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, a wave of interest began in all things Zoroastrian (from the Greek spelling, “Zoroaster,” of its principal figure Zarathushtra), not just because they were exotic and new expressions of wisdom, though that was certainly part of the attraction, but because Iranian imagery and especially its religious dualism seemed to mirror many things about Jewish and Christian thought in the first few centuries of our era. After a period of extravagent claims and intense polemical scrutiny, most of it hostile, the scholarly world has admitted almost nothing from Zoroastrianism as an influence on native Jewish tradition.3
But the counterreaction seems almost as mistaken as the prior enthusiasm.4 In its two-hundred-year rule of Israel and subsequent five centuries-long influence in the Middle East, Iran and Zoroastrianism had many chances to influence Jewish thought. The problem is that there is no easy way to date Zoroastrian texts, leaving us no clear, unmistakable settings for cultural borrowing.
The general rules of borrowing seem easy enough. There is one important rule-of-thumb: An idea will be accepted only if it can be fully incorporated into the life of the second people. After all, neither lox nor bagels are Jewish in origin. It is the special use that is made of them in Jewish society which accounts for their special place in Jewish cuisine. Furthermore, lox and bagels become Jewish ethnic identifiers in the United States, which gives them their even more special status. In short, knowing the origin tells us something about a cultural item but it falls far short of an adequate description of its meaning in any particular culture. Knowing Zoroastrian or Greek origin of particular notions of the afterlife are important data. But, to get the full picture we must see how the idea functioned in Jewish thought.
The Antiquity of Iranian Religion and Its Undatability
WITH A HISTORY of some three thousand years, Zoroastrianism ranks with Judaism and Christianity as one of the ancient living Western religions. But Zoroastrianism has fared much worse even than Judaism in numbers. If Judaism currently has more than 14 million adherents worldwide, then Christianity with more than 1.4 billion members is certainly one hundred times larger. On the other hand, surviving Zoroastrians number more than one hundred times less than Jews, with considerably fewer than 140,000 contemporary believers.5 One reason for the scarcity of Zoroastrians in the world is their hostility to intermarriage. Zoroastrians, except for a forward-thinking few, considered the children of all intermarriages non-Zoroastrians.
Zoroastrianism takes its name from that of its founder, Zarathushtra, who may have lived anytime between the eleventh and seventh century BCE but probably lived around the beginning of the eighth century BCE.6 Zoroastrianism became the major religion of Iran, which took its name from its inhabitants, the Aryans. Their earliest Persian document, the Avesta, lends us the name of their earliest written language, Avestan, which seems to have separated from Sanskrit in the second millennium BCE.7 The Avesta itself is made up of compositions, oral and written, from many different periods but started its process during this early period.
Earliest Zoroastrianism
THE ROOTS OF Zoroastrianism can be located in an eastern Iranian, tribal, pastoral society. Zoroastrianism should probably not be called a founded religion, as Zarathushtra was a prophetic reformer, who innovated in the original Mazdian Religion (“Wise” religion from the name of the supreme God Ahura Mazda “Wise Lord”). The religion developed yet further under the first Persian Empire, somewhat diluting Zarathustra’s contribution.8
R. C. Zaehner established the usual chronologies and periodizations of Zoroastrianism in the very title of his work, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism.9 Even though we know little of Zarathushtra himself, we do know something of the “dawn” of Zoroastrianism under the Achaemenids, who are so famous for their fearsome invasions of Greece, ended by Alexander the Great. It was by conquering the Acheamenid Persian Empire that Alexander became the conqueror of the world. We also know something about the “twilight” Sassanian phase of Zoroastrianism, which began around 250 CE and continued to the seventh-century-CE Arab conquest. The Persian dialect of this period is known as Middle Persian or Pahlavi, the successor to Avestan.
But our information sundial is in total eclipse at the “high noon” of Zoroastrianism, the Arsacid or Parthian Empire, which ruled after freeing Persia from the successors of Alexander around 250 BCE until the rise of the Sassanians in the mid-third-century CE.10 This largely unknown period is likely one of heavy influence of Persian and Greek culture on the land of Israel. Like the Jews, the Zoroastrians survived Alexander the Great’s Macedonian regime and Seleucid Greek rule from Antioch. The Jews additionally were ruled by the Ptolemies of Egypt, and the Zoroastrians by a shortlived Greco-Bactrian state. The Persian state, with Zoroastrianism resurgent, indeed eventually with Zoroastrianism as the official religion, was the major enemy of Imperial Rome. It was also a significant host country to Jewish culture. The Babylonian Talmud was written under the Parthian and Sassanian Empires in the third through seventh centuries. It was Persia that gave the Jews an attractive place to live after the Roman Empire became Christian and began enacting prejudicial laws against Jewish life, worship, and culture.
Because the Persians had a written Scripture, their Muslim conquerors considered them a “people of the Book” (’ahl al-qitab), just as Jews and Christians were, even though the Zoroastrians did not revere the Bible in any special way. So while they were called a “protected” (dhimmi) people like the Jews, they faced discrimination and heavy taxation as dhimmis under Islam, even as they were spared conversion to Islam. In this, they fared about as well as the Jews and Christians. Though Islamic tolerance might be judged imperfect by today’s more multicultural standards, it was considerably more pluralistic than Medieval European Christianity and, like the Jews and Christians, Zoroastrians were far more fortunate than the minorities of Europe.
Unlike those of Judaism and Christianity, however, many of the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism were lost in their original form. Even when glossed by commentaries during the Greek and Arab conquests, the texts are incomplete, full of contemporary interpretations, and therefore hard to reconstruct or date. After the Arab conquest, Zoroastrianism continued to be handed down amongst priests and laity from generation to generation, through the rule of the Mongols, the Turks, and Persian Islamic rulers. The Zoroastrians continue even today, in small and poor communities in Iran, where they are subject to local prejudice and periodically to overt persecution.
Generations ago, many Zoroastrians emigrated to the west coast of India. In India, Zoroastrians were called by the Gujurati and Hindi word for Persian: “Parsi.” They were also known as “fire-worshipers” because one of the major rites of the religion involves tending a sacred fire in the midst of a temple. The Parsis continue there today in small, sometimes affluent, endogamous, Indian-dialect communities in Gujarat, Bombay, the Deccan and in modern Pakistan.11 After the British Raj they also migrated to some large English-speaking cities-principally London, Toronto, Los Angeles, and metropolitan New York City-where there are well-established communities with prayer halls, if not fully-functioning fire temples. Their reduced numbers can be explained partly because of their minority and often persecuted status, partly because there is no way to convert to Zoroastrianism, and partly because progeny of intermarriage are considered non-Zoroastrian.
Dualism Versus Monotheism in Zoroastrianism and Other Western Religions
THE PRINCIPAL holy book of the Zoroastrians is the Avesta, written in an early dialect of Persian, often so abstruse as to be understandable only through its Sanskrit cognates. Linguistically, the most archaic writings of the Avesta are the Gathas of the Yasnas, containing our only certain evidence of Zarathushtra’s thinking and writing. The rest of the Yasnas and the Yashts, another hymnic part of the Avesta, are usually taken to be a bit later (perhaps as little as 200 years) in literary form, and may actually contain clues to the state of Indo-European religion in Persia before Zarathustra.
Zoroastrianism is famous for many beliefs and customs, but none more outstanding than its strong dualism. The high god is Ahura Mazda, who protects asha (wisdom and the good or truth, cognate with 
ta in Sanskrit) with his army of good ashovans but is opposed by a major opponent, Angra Mainyu, who advances the cause of druj (evil, perfidy, treachery, cognate with betrüben in German and “betray” in English) through his evil army of Dregvans. The good god, Ahura Mazda, is also the god of light, represented by fire, its purity and its light (ergo, the former trade-name of the GE lightbulb), while the bad god, Angra Mainyu, is the god of darkness. It is appropriate to pray to Ahura Mazda for guidance while Angra Mainyu should be addressed only in curses and exorcisms, to expel his presence, and to keep him far away and powerless. The Zoroastrian priests venerate fire as representative of Ahura Mazda, of sanctity, and of purity. At first, fire altars were always outside, only in open and elevated places, as mentioned by Herodotus. Probably during the reign of Artaxerxes II, the Zoroastrians began to pray in a fire temple (or ateshgah), in reaction to the building of temples to the Persian (but non-Zoroastrian) goddess Anahita throughout the empire.12
There are grounds for thinking that Zoroastrianism is also essentially monotheistic, as Zarathustra describes the good and evil forces as twin sons of Ahura Mazda (see Yasna 30, hereafter Y 30). In fact, several religions have taken to dualism as a way to explain how a good god could allow evil in the world. Though many think that dualism and monotheism are opposing phenomena, dualism actually seems to be a consequence of some difficulties with monotheism. From the perspective of ethics, monotheism is in opposition to polytheism, not to dualism. Once there is one god, he or she must be the author of all evil as well as all good. Indeed, one might argue that dualism is not a stage on the way to monotheism so much as a stage beyond it, a strategic retreat from monotheism governed by the recognition that monotheism makes the explanation of evil problematic.13 In these dualisms, good will eventually conquer evil.
The problem is so pervasive that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have episodically produced dualist solutions to the ethical problem. Apocalypticism, for instance, removes moral ambiguity in the character of God, both within Judaism and even more within Christianity, by externalizing evil as the demonic opponent to God. With a separate evil god who is the author of everything bad, sin and evil become easily understandable.
The dualistic, apocalyptic Jewish systems antecedent to Christianity are not well known, except for the Dead Sea Scroll community. Within apocalyptic Judaism, the satanic figure can be known by a variety of different names: Samael, Mastema, Belzebub, the Angel of Darkness, Malkirasha, and others. The power of the demonic opponent is temporary; after a time Satan’s rule will be ended. It seems certain that the portrayal of Satan in Jewish apocalypticism, the New Testament, later Christian writings and Islam has been affected by Zoroastrian imagery and thinking about Angra Mainyu (e.g. Y 30:3-6; 45:2).14 This influence came in several stages, including contact with Zoroastrianism, gnosticism, Manicheanism, and the Medieval dualist heresies. The same effect can be seen all along the silk road.15
There are other dualistic ways to resolve the problem of the high god’s omniscience. Among the Greek philosophers, Plato especially opted for a body/soul or spirit/flesh dualism. Plato thought that there is one high god, the good or the beautiful, but he (or it) cannot mix into a corrupt world. Therefore, all that is bad in life is merely the product of the corrupted nature of matter and flesh. Our imperfect life is an unfortunate result of the deterioration of material objects, not from divinity, which is pure and good. The kind of dualism that Zoroastrianism developed-a cosmic battle below a high god who determines its ultimate outcome-looks a great deal like apocalypticism in Judaism and not at all like Platonism. It has a certain formal similarity to the Qumran community too, and has a certain effect on the developing Christian church. In late antiquity one might say both types of dualism could be found in gnosticism (see Ch. 15). Gnosticism is characterized by the revelation of secret knowledge (gnōsis) that can lead to salvation from an irredeemable world by personal transformation.
The Social Background of Dualism
SOME SOCIAL scientists have been interested in defining the social conditions that produce dualism but it is hard to maintain that there is anything more than a correlation between some social situations and dualism. Dualism sometimes emanates from a relatively small group that feels in some way beset with difficulties. Quite often, some kind of dualism is related to a group’s feeling that their society is hostile towards them. Whether such dualism expresses itself in a generalized feeling of hostility against the larger group, as say fundamentalism in the United States, or a pariah cult like the Branch Davidians, depends on any number of historical factors, the moral schemes of the host and the sect, to say nothing of the unique historical circumstances. It seems unlikely that such a general explanation, developed out of studying minority groups in the modern world, could explain the development of dualism in Zoroastrianism, which becomes the state religion of the Persian Empire.
Unfortunately, we have virtually no knowledge of the social conditions that may have encouraged the Indo-European Persians to turn to dualism, to listen to Zarathustra. Since we know nothing of Zarathustra’s biography, we know nothing of the time in which he lived. Whatever else Zoroastrian dualism may signify and wherever it may have come from, Zoroastrian dualism promotes a sense of the community of the redeemed. The Zoroastrians are those who seek the good and form a community of those who are protected by the high god Ahura Mazda. The evil forces will not participate in the heavenly community; they will be in hell being punished until the final consummation. Ultimately, credit must surely be given to the genius of Zarathustra himself and his intuition about how the universe and moral behavior were in dualistic congruence.16
The communal basis of the afterlife fits not only Zoroastrianism but strikes a particularly sympathetic chord with Judaism, as an ethnic and often a diaspora community, and with Christianity, as a growing sect after it, as well as with Manichaenism and Islam. We should look for the importance of a communal afterlife, with its implications for the community of the saved on earth, in all those communities who stress bodily resurrection, just like the Zoroastrians. Life in community was life with a body, it seems, at least in these historical instances; dualism was correlated with bodily resurrection. This seems so characteristic of Zoroastrianism and Jewish sectarianism that it is hard not to admit some kind of relationship. In Greco-Roman platonic dualism, on the other hand, matter itself is evil. Resurrection is therefore not desirable.
It is difficult to conclude more than this from the fragmentary evidence about Zoroastrian beginnings. There are no clear lines of causation between Zoroastrian dualism and the dualisms that grew up in Israel. On the other hand, several images taken from Zoroastrianism can be seen to influence Hebrew society. In Zoroastrianism, a notion of an apocalyptic end, the frasho kereti, was strongly articulated. Perhaps it is a specialized form of the Hindu concept of the many cosmic eras, the Yugas. But whatever the source, Zoroastrians believe that the world will come to an end and be reconstituted in a Frasho Kereti. This has certain affinities with the notion of apocalypse in Hellenistic Jewish thought as well as the ekpyrosis (cosmic conflagration) in Stoicism. In Israel there was already a notion that the Day of the LORD, originally just a national holiday, would not be joyful yet full of woe for the wicked. God was going to visit vengeance not joy on his sinful people.
Later apocalypses were influenced by Manichaeanism in its medieval period. Fairly quickly though, the influences can be seen going both ways: Were the crucial Christian and apocalyptic Jewish materials influenced by Zoroastrianism, or perhaps even the opposite, since we cannot date many Zoroastrian texts very well?17 The Christian imagery in the depiction of Satan certainly derives partly from the various portraits of Angra Mainyu. But the Christian Satan develops independently and very formidably on his own, perhaps giving back to Zoroastrianism a well-developed demonology and an apocalyptic chronology. And, of course, the depiction of individuals judged each for his or her own sin seems clearly in line with parallel movements in Zoroastrianism and the Hebrew movement towards otherworldly judgment, which we see in Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Second Isaiah, as well as the later prophets. So is it possible to say that one influenced the other exclusively? Probably not. On the other hand, if there has to be a standard-bearer for this kind of dualism, I would expect that Zoroastrianism would fit the bill best, even if we cannot demonstrate crucial stages in the dialogue.
The Early Traditions: Gathas and Yasnas
IN THE ZOROASTRIAN case, the Gathas allow for a God above all, Ahura Mazda, as well as his two twin offspring, Angra Mainyu (the evil spirit) and Spenta Mainyu (the good spirit). The choices made by the two spirits (Y 30.5) lie at the root of Zoroastrian dualism, and they act as a prototype (Y 30.2; 49.3) of the choices that face each of us as we decide whether to follow the path of truth or that of untruth.18
Though there may be an original unity, dualism pervades Zoroastrianism at several levels at once. There is a cosmic dualism between truth and deceit (or the lie), coupled with the opposition of day against night, light against darkness. On the human level, there are “the truthful” who must battle against “the deceitful,” which we can easily see as the social payoff of the cosmology and its expected parallel in the social world. One other convenient aspect of ethical dualism is that it makes for a clear-cut social system. In the divine realm, there are the ahuras and the daevas, the good and bad divinities. Between the divine and the human, there must be commerce through sacrifices; but there are good sacrifices and bad sacrifices.
The cosmic battle will end with the good triumphant. A final “turning point” is described as early as Yasna 43 and 51, but it is greatly elaborated in later writings.
May Lord Mazda, ruling at will, grant wishes to him whosoever has wishes. I wish that enduring strength should come, in order to uphold Truth. Grant this to me through Devotion: recompenses of riches, a life of good purpose…. And may that man attain the better than good, he who would teach us the straight paths of salvation-those of the material world and of the mind, leading to the truth heights where dwells the Lord; a faithful man, of good lineage, holy like Thee, O Mazda! Then I shall recognise Thee as strong and holy, Mazda, when Thou wilt help me by the hand with which Thou holdest the recompenses that Thou wilt give, through the heat of Thy truth-strong fire, to the wicked man and the just-and when the might of Good Purpose shall come to me. Then as holy I have recognised Thee, Lord Mazda, when I saw Thee as First at the birth of life, when Thou didst appoint rewards for acts and words, bad for the bad, a good recompense for the good, by Thy innate virtue, at the final turning point of creation. At which turning point Thou, O Mazda, hast come to the world with Thy Holy Spirit, with power through Good Purpose, by whose acts the people of Truth prosper. To them Devotion proclaims the judgments of Thy will-O Thou whom none deceives. (Y 43; Boyce 40)
In this passage a superior person is prophesied for the end of time. He will be the saoshyant (savior) of later Zoroastrian literature. It would be unreasonable to suppose that this figure is the basis for the Jewish messiah. “Messiah” is a Judean term used throughout the First Temple period. But nowhere in First Temple Hebrew Scripture does “messiah” refer to a future king, only the present one. A future king is addressed as “branch” or “scion of David.” It is remarkable how infrequently the term is used even in intertestamental Judaism before the first century CE, and immediately after a short second Persian stint as rulers of Jerusalem. The expectation of a messiah in Judaism is understandable on its own terms as part of native Jewish religion. On the other hand, some of the cosmic imagery that is sometimes attached to the reign of the Messiah in the Greco-Roman period, especially his supernatural qualities, may well have been borrowed from Persia where they originally applied to the saoshyant.
The same source may explain the accelerated interest in an apocalyptic end in Israel. There was a “day of the LORD” in Israelite thought but it develops quickly into apocalypticism under the influence of Persian thought. In Persia, it underwent some development as well. In Yasna 43, that day is merely a hinted “turning point.” It receives further development in Yasna 44:15-16 which alludes to the ultimate confrontation between Truth and Lie. Ahura Mazda is implored to “bring his impetuous weapon upon the deceitful and bring ill and harm over them.” Two great opposing armies confront each other. Which side will be victorious? Obviously, tradition answers that it is the good, the light, and the moral.
The apocalyptic end will also be characterized by fleshly resurrection of the body. In Yasna 54 we have a description of the end of time: “The dead will rise in their lifeless bodies.”19 The vocabulary is consonant with the Jewish usage as well. This is the most important and interesting candidate for borrowing by the Hebrews, for resurrection does not truly enter Jewish life until after they have made contact with Persian society. It does not become explicit in Jewish life until after the contact has been firm for centuries, though the hints start almost immediately. The parallel vocabulary is not much to go on, but gives us ideas about one possible source of Jewish notions of the afterlife.
In the afterlife, the “soul” or “self” (Avestan: uruuan; Pahlavi: urvan) was to enjoy the fruits of its trials on earth. “Soul” is, of course, a very awkward way to translate this term. We can see here a parallel relationship between envisioning the afterlife and evaluating the notion of “self” in this world. As in all other cultures we have so far discussed, the narrative of the person’s journey after death was a particular way of meditating on who we are, whether we are those who inhabit these bodies or whether we are these bodies, and what the meaning and process of our maturation is. By talking of the urvan’s final disposition and the way to attain it, the Persians were expressing that part of our lives on earth is transcendent, that part of our earthly life lives on after us. For the Zoroastrian, it is the ethically good part of a person’s deeds and self. The person survived death as transformed into his urvan and achieved a happy afterlife through moral behavior.
An interesting subject for speculation is how the Zoroastrian notion of the resurrection of the earthly body affects notions of the “self.” One obvious answer to the question comes from comparing the Zoroastrian notion of the resurrection of the body to its converse: the Greek notion of the immortality of the soul. The Greek philosophical notion functions in part to validate a battle against unbridled sexuality, making the freedom from our sexual urges one of the transcendent values of human life. Zoroastrianism contains no such ascetic impulses, though it does say that in the “fresh creation” people will naturally give up the corrupting process of eating, digesting, and excreting.
Thus, we can frame a hypothesis to be tested as we move into this period: The notion of resurrection, by comparison to immortality of the soul, tends to valorize and validate fully functioning sexual life in this and the next world, while immortality of the soul will valorize and validate intellectual life at the expense of sexuality. Our sexual lives are important and fulfilling to the Zoroastrians in ways that impressed Greek philosophers as decadent and distracting to intellectual life. We shall have to keep this in mind as we look at the various choices for afterlife in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious life.
The reward of the good person is transcendent because it will be with Ahura Mazda in the “House of Good Thought” (Y 32:15), whereas the deceitful will in the end come to the “House of the Lie” (Y 51:14) or even the “House of Worst Thought” (Y 32:13). To arrive in paradise, the truthful cross a famous bridge, the Chinvat bridge (Avestan: cinnuuato peretush, Y 46:10, lit. “the Account-Keeper’s Bridge” also called “the Bridge of the Judge,” or “the Bridge of the Mason.”) The souls of the deceitful will be repulsed when they reach the bridge, from which they will be dispatched to the “House of the Lie” forever (Y 46:10-11):
Whosoever, Lord, man, or woman, will grant me those things Thou knowest best for life-recompense for truth, power with good purpose-and those whom I shall bring to your worship, with all these shall I cross over the Chinvat Bridge. Karapans and Kavis by their powers yoke mankind with evil acts to destroy life. But their own soul and Inner Self tormented them when they reached the Chinvat Bridge-guests for ever in the House of the Lie!
An ordeal waiting to prove the righteous is hinted at in Yasna 51:9:20
What reward Thou hast appointed to the two parties, O Wise One, through Thy bright fire and through the molten metal. Give a sign of it to the souls of men, to bring hurt to the wicked, benefit to the righteous.
Zarathushtra submits himself in advance and will survive the ordeal unharmed. However, not so those who are wicked. Furthermore, anyone who tries to destroy him will himself be destroyed.
The Yashts and the Younger Avesta
THE YASHTS are usually regarded as slightly younger than the Yasnas and of various ages but their date is hard to fix because they remained in constant flux; some may even be older than the Gathas, but many are considerably later than the Gathas. They were not canonized to the same degree as the Gathas so, over time, they evolved into a mixture of Avestan and Pahlavi. Other than noting the language glosses, it is hard to tell how many new notions from later times crept into the text. In this respect, they are quite like the Rabbinic literature of the Midrash, some of which developed under Persian auspices.
Yasht 19 gives a detailed description of resurrection. It says: “When the dead will rise, the one who restores life, the Undying (i.e., the Saoshyant) will come.” Later in the same Yasht, we find: “When the dead rise, the Living Incorruptible One (the Saoshyant)will come and life will be transfigured” (19.11). Note that the process is described very simply, with the verb “arise,” which is parallel to the terminology which will come into use in the Jewish case as well.
The moral aspect of a person not only lives afterwards, it can be depicted in quite vivid terms, as a woman psychopomp (“leader of the soul”). In another part of the Younger Avestan writings, the Videvdat or Vendidad 19 (“Against the Demons”), we get a longer description of the daena, (lit. vision but, in context, the personification of conscience) of the just man. First, we see the same consistent story that the dead stay near the body until the dawn of the third day when, with the help of various gods, the dead start on their way to judgment.
After death, each urvan (“soul” or “person,” later also identified with fravashi or fravarti), goes heavenward. It stays around the corpse for three days and then travels on to its reward.21 It meets the daena, who is a comely maid for a righteous person, and who leads him over the Chinvat Bridge. The daena is explicitly the personification of a person’s moral qualities, hence a representation of the person as well. The sinner, on the other hand, is led away by the Demon Vizaresha. In later tradition (but perhaps Zarathushtra himself suggested it), the soul (urvan) must stand on trial. The tribunal will be composed of Mithra, flanked by the two gods Sraosha and Rashnu.22 Thus, these originally independent pre-Zoroastrian divinities are integrated into the pantheon of good gods supporting Ahura Mazda. The just “soul” is led before Vohu Mana on his golden throne and from there to an audience with Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spentas, who also have their own golden thrones. A great many of these images recur in Jewish apocalypticism, and it is hard not to conclude that they are related. This story must have offered a very powerful tug on the imagination of the Zoroastrians. As time went by, the story became more and more elaborate. The next step came in the Hadhokht Nask, an Avestan liturgical piece, that, unfortunately, survives only in fragmentary form.
Some early texts discuss an ordeal at death and others at the end of time. But eventually, the story becomes completely symmetrical with both the good and the bad meeting their daena. The good pass on to paradise over the wide bridge with the daena as their guide or “psychopomp” (soul leader). But the sinners find that the bridge gets as thin as a knife blade and they fall into the abyss of hell, being grabbed by their daena, who has become a wraith. The Persians concentrated on the story of the soul’s travels to its heavenly home. The Jews tell a similar story, though they invent their own details, so the influence will be limited to fairly small details.
The Disposition of the Body
THE EVENTS affecting the soul according to the Persians begin with the disposition of the body. In early Persian texts, there is a significant reference to the quite famous Zoroastrian practice of having a corpse rent by birds of prey and other scavengers as the preferred mode of disposition of the dead. Originally the Persian tribes appear to have practiced cremation, as the Indians did, but after the rise of Zoroastrianism, with its strict rules about keeping fire pure, the custom changed to exposure of the dead (usually for a week to a month), sometimes by gathering the large bones of the leg and skull afterwards, which were often put in special ossuaries, called dakhma and preferrably placing them high in the mountains.23
Exposure of the dead is a relatively rare practice in world religion, the most obvious analogy being Tibetan Buddhism, where the explanation is not hard to find. Since many Tibetans live in a treeless, permafrosted land, where neither cremation nor inhumation is easy, having bodies eaten by birds of prey seems the most efficient way to dispose of the deceased. No similar, simple cause suggests itself as a parallel explanation of Persian customs.
However there is another explanation. The parallel comes again from looking at Hindu practice. The reason the Zoroastrians expose their dead seems quite close to the ancient Indian practice of purifying the bodies of the dead on funeral pyres. Fire and light are both agents of purification and compare quite closely as formal operations. It seems as if the Hindus and the Iranians used two different technologies of burial to accomplish the same religious end, the purification of the final remains of the dead. Zoroastrian views of the purity of fire contribute to their abandonment of cremation. Perhaps also the lack of trees on the high Iranian plateau contributed to the Persian practice, but the explicit reason was to avoid polluting the fire or earth with a corpse.
There are also clues in Sanskrit and Avestan which point to a deeper structural parallel of Indian and Persian ritual. Paradise is considered a place of light and knowledge in both religions. Indeed, it appears as if many surrounding cultures thought that Ahura Mazda was the sun because in Assyrian inscriptions, Ahura Mazda appears, identified with the sun.24 It appears, therefore, that the original reason the Persians layed out their dead on dakhmas (an open air walled enclosure) was to expose the corpses to the purificatory powers of the sun, in the same way as fire purifies the corpses in Indian thought. Furthermore, one wonders whether the very obvious and visible rending of the body did not itself stimulate a notion of bodily resurrection in Zoroastrianism, as a way of expressing a renewed wholeness in the apocalyptic end of time. In any event, after a year, the Persian texts declare that the body was resurrected.25
The rending of the dead eventually took a more refined form. At first, the Zoroastrians exposed the dead on a stony outcropping. But when they were conquered by Islam, the place of exposure was walled around and called a “tower of silence.”26 This too, Zoroastrians have termed a dakhma-a high enclosure, inside of which corpses are exposed to be dismembered by vultures. Dakhmas were impressive features to all travelers to Persia in Muslim times and continue to attract attention to Parsi communities in Gujurat in modern times. Indian sensibilities, however, are shocked at this practice and the Indian government has been pressuring the Parsis to stop it.27
In some crude way, burial practices themselves parallel the direction that the soul or self takes after death. The Egyptians entombed their mummified dead but the apex of their pyramidal tombs were meant to point the way to the stars. Usually cultures that practice inhumation tend to depict the dead as going underground, as we have seen in the Mesopotamian, Canaanite, and Israelite burials. They usually retain an image of the body when they imagine the posthumous self. The cultures that practice cremation seem to prefer the notion that the dead go to the sky. They may or may not retain a notion of the image of the body of the individual. Zoroastrians (and Tibetans), who have a rather unique way of disposing the dead, should be seen as practicing a variation of cremation. Exposure becomes, in effect, a slower form of cremation.28
Particularly revealing in this regard is the Zoroastrian sense that one should keep a corpse from being buried in the ground. We get the following interesting ruling in the Videvdat (Law against the Demons), a compendium of religious ordinance roughly contemporary with and resembling the Talmud:
Let no man alone by himself carry a corpse. If a man alone by himself carry a corpse, the Nasu [corpse-demon] rushes upon him, to defile him, from the nose of the dead, from the eye, from the tongue, from the jaws, from the sexual organ, from the hinder parts. This Druj [falsehood or disorder], this Nasu, falls upon him, stains him even to the end of the nails, and he is unclean, thenceforth, for ever and ever.29
The correct place for the body is not the ground, with its connections to druj, but the air, with its connection with asha. People who bury the dead (who include virtually all the Zoroastrians’ significant enemies) are perpetually cursed with demons.
Later Zoroastrian Texts
LATER ZOROASTRIAN texts give a much more detailed view of the final events of history than the earlier texts do. The Bundahishn text is said to be zend, a Pahlavi gloss and commentary on an earlier text. Some zend commentaries are quite close translations while others are far-reaching commentaries. The Bundahishn bears some relationship to the Bahman Yasht, one of the hymnic texts which, in turn, takes its form from the Avesta. It captured the imagination of the Zoroastrians and continuously needed revision in view of new events. It outlines a terrible apocalyptic end constantly forecasted and constantly being reforecasted based on the latest current events, just as we can hear a new interpretations of Daniel and the Revelation of Saint John every week by televangelists who constantly read the newspaper as confirming prophecies.30 The journey of the soul, or urvan, after death has a long and special place in Zoroastrian tradition. The apocalyptic end, the frashkart, or frasho kereti in Avestan, is a final “rehabilitation” rather than the end of the world because it takes place on earth and earth continues eternally: “non-aging, immortal, non-fading, forever living, forever prospering” (Yt 19:89).
In the Zoroastrian tradition, as humanity progresses, it loses interest in food and other earthly things. The gradual abandonment of eating becomes symbolic of the ascending path to immortality. Eating was paired with dying among the Zoroastrians, since everything that lives and dies needs to eat and digest. As humanity progressively gives up food, it gives up digestion and corruption, becoming perfected. This in turn deprives Az (concupiscence), a bad goddess or demon, of her normal sustenance so she threatens to devour the other demons. In the Zātspram, she threatens to to eat up Ahriman but this version may have been influenced by a Zoroastrian monistic heresy known as “Zurvanism.” At any rate, in the Bundahishn, Ahriman survives long enough to see Āz’s weapons smashed, whereupon they both go hurtling into the deep darkness.
The Resurrection
ZOROASTRIANS begin with the bones when speaking of the resurrection. Since they practice exposure of the corpse, only the bones are left after the disposition of the dead. The same would be true had the body been buried and the flesh decayed in a sarcophagus, so we may expect that this imagery can be borrowed or reinvented in Judaism and Christianity in Hellenistic times when they both practice this form of burial.
The great day of general resurrection is called in “Pahlavi,” Ristaxez (“raising of the dead”), just as it is in Judaism and Christianity. Notice that the Zoroastrian text says that resurrection is not nearly so difficult for God as creation itself, which is accomplished ex nihilo, from nothing. In chapters 6 and 9, we shall run into the same argument in 2 Maccabees, where it is argued in the converse way: The mother exhorts her children to keep the faith in resurrection in the face of their martyrdom because God, who made heaven and earth from nothing, can surely resurrect the martyrs. This is a most important parallel between Persian and Jewish notions of resurrection and suggests that the Jews could have been influenced by their Persian overlords, though we have no direct evidence of borrowing and no hint at what could have been the channel of transmission. On the other hand, Zoroastrian and Muslim heaven is bodily, as sexual congress is one of the joys that continues into the next world. Christian heaven is not sexual (though eventually sex comes back during Renaissance),31 and Jewish notions are equivocal.
The resurrection body for Zoroastrians, however, is not exactly the body of this life, but a body which has entered a more perfected, spiritual state, called “the future body” (tan i pasen). It is somewhat like the spiritual body (soma pneumatikon) that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians Ch. 10, as we shall see. Gayomart, the primal man in Zoroastrianism, will be the first to be resurrected, followed by the primal couple, Mashye and Mashyane (the Zoroastrian Adam and Eve), then everyone else, every righteous person and every sinner having already been punished sufficiently in the interim. Zoroastrians are not unitarians, but they are universalists: Everyone will be saved.
Rudolph Bultmann and his students expressed the idea that a Persian myth of a “redeemed redeemer” is the background for Christianity, especially in the Gospel of John. For Bultmann, Jesus was fit into the story of an original man who becomes the final savior. Here, that notion can be shown to be quite mistaken. Gayomart and the Sayoshyant are two different characters and so there is no single myth of a “redeemed redeemer” in Iranian thought at all. It is even dubious that the notion that the primal man, Adam, is Christ can be found in Christianity; 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 expresses an antithetical relation but not an identity. In the Gospel of John, it is the logos and the savior who are united for the first time in the incarnation of Jesus. These are Hellenistic Jewish and later Christian notions, explainable and understandable because of the special constraints of Hellenized Judaism and later of Christian conceptualizations of Jesus’ role. The logos of the Gospel of John is best understood as a Greco-Jewish notion Christianized, not a Persian one Judaized.32 On the other hand, many motifs from the Persian notion of resurrection have entered Judaism, to be domesticated in a slightly different way. Furthermore, the cosmic battle and the description of the demonic forces has had an enormous influence on Christian apocalypses, even on The Revelation according to John, as well as on Christian iconography.
The hero of the final battle is Sōshyans, or Saoshyant, sometimes called “the Savior,” with which our English word it is cognate. It is hard not to interpret this name in a Christian context, but in Persia, the kind of “salvation” meant is “benefit” or “profit,” not a remedy to our fallen sinful state. The Saoshyant is the last of Zarathusthra’s posthumous children, arising in the last three millennia to bring about the “rehabilitation,” the “fresh creation,” the frasho kereti. The Saoshyant’s function is to raise human bodies and separate them from the constituent elements into which they have decayed and reunite them with their “souls.” After this they have to endure three days of molten metal to refine them. In historical tradition, there are actually reports that Zoroastrians underwent similar ordeals on earth to demonstrate their religious integrity or their honesty. Zoroastrians have walked between fiery piles of wood or had molten metal poured on them as a way of showing their faith would allow them to triumph.33
In the imaginative eye of Bundahishn, this future ordeal will be safely and easily passed by the righteous. They will feel as though they are in a warm, milk bath. Not so with the sinners, of course, who will undergo excruciating pain. But after the ordeal is over, everyone is purged of sins and malfeasances and everyone enters the newly reconstituted earth. Sōshyans himself brings one last vicarious sacrifice in behalf of humanity and then all enter the newly recreated world, in which eating has no more use and so contains a complete and unthreatened complement of animals. The one exception is that one last bull sacrifice is necessary for preparing the drink haoma,34 the sacred and sacramental drink of the Zoroastrians, which here becomes like drinking from the grail to gain immortality. This haoma will be white, rather than the usual yellow (as it is purified from bulls’ urine), suggesting that it will be higher and purer material. The ritual of taking this psychotropic drug is one of the central features of early Zoroastrianism, though precisely what haoma was has been lost. It seems, however, linguistically related to the Soma of the Vedas.
Orthodoxy in Sasanian Iran and Ascent
SHAUL SHARED suggests some of the religious effects of the establishment of orthodoxy in Sasanian Iran (225 CE until the Muslim conquest).35 The Sasanian period is usually represented as a period of great cultural stability, as it is the period in which Zoroastrianism becomes not just the personal religion of the rulers but the established religion of the whole Sasanian Empire. The Arsacid or Parthian period (ca. 225 BCE-ca. 225 CE) had featured great religious and cultural pluralism, matching a period of great Persian conquest and rule. The empire not only contained a host of indigenous, local cults, it also contained several rival religions to Zoroastrianism-Judaism, Christianity, and Manichaeanism, all offering a significant cosmology and alternative route to salvation. They were all mobile and identifiable by their particular rituals. To make matters worse for Zoroastrians, Christianity and its stepchild Manichaeanism, which had been founded by Mani out of a Syrian Christian ascetic movement, were explicitly missionary religions and were making considerable headway in the late Arsacid Empire.
A great innovation of this period, in the Roman Empire as well as its arch-enemy the Persian Empire, was the possibility of individual choice in matters of religion. Everyone participated in the cult of his own city in times past and was theoretically free to give such other worship as time and pocketbook allowed. But the choices were greatly limited by the local nature of village life. All that changed in imperial cities. And the bigger the empire, the more available choices. Cosmopolitanism was greatly stimulated by the conquest of Alexander the Great, who conquered the Persia as well as the Eastern Mediterranean Basin. By enforcing the spread of Greek language, Alexander and his successors brought everyone into communication in an unprecedented way. This was a tremendous opportunity as well as a tremendous threat to ancient religions. All over the known world, religions, including Egyptian religion, Judaism, Babylonian religion, as well as Christianity, Manichaeanism, and the philosophical schools of Greece, became open and attractive to people who lived far from the original home of the religion due to the ease of communication and travel. Each religion developed a “diaspora,” or portable form, that first helped its own adherents while they lived far from home and later could and did attract people from all over the empire. Christianity and Manichaeanism had particularly formidable missionizers.
The early Sasanian Empire took action against this rampant multiculturalism. The result was the emergence of a Zoroastrian orthodoxy and suppression of a variety of alternative Zoroastrianisms. Competing religions were targeted even more for suppression. The first Sasanian kings, with their famous chief priests, Kartir and Tansar, began a systematic repression of the missionary religions within their empire. Judaism suffered from this persecution but perhaps, in retrospect, it was sheltered by its small numbers, restricted ethnicity, and lack of missionary zeal.
The results were more catastrophic for Christianity and Manichaeanism. They were immediately perceived as threats and persecuted severely, as Zoroastrian, Jewish, Manichaean, and Christian sources all attest. Zoroastrian orthodoxy emerged therefore partly as a defense against the perceived threat of Christian and Manichaean missionizing. Within the Zoroastrianism of the period, philosophical literature, which had already taken on the characteristics of a quest, began to treat other religions with skepticism. The Dâstân-i Mēnōk-i Krat, “the Law of the Spirit of Wisdom,” begins in the following way:
He went forth in the world in search of wisdom, from kingdom to kingdom and from province to province, and enquired, examined and comprehended concerning the several faiths and beliefs of those people whom he considered foremost in knowledge….36
The start is a concession to open-mindedness and cultural pluralism, which is part of the history of Zoroastrianism. It subjects many faiths to scrutiny with a standard perhaps a bit too Zoroastrian for current tastes in comparative religion, but it expresses the hope that faiths will teach the relationship between wisdom and the moral achievements of every person. This kind of writing would be impossible in a missionizing faith.
At the same time, we find Zoroastrian tracts explicitly designed to defeat the thought of other religions, as in the Škand gumānig-wizār (“A Trenchant Resolver of Doubts”), a tractate against Manichaeanism written by Mardan Farouk. It makes instructive reading when compared and contrasted with Augustine’s tractate against the Manichaeans. Augustine disliked Manichaean dualism, which Mardan Farouk found tolerable if impaired, while Augustine liked Manichaean asceticism, though he found it extreme, while Mardan Farouk found insufferable any ascetic practices at all. No wonder Manichaeanism disappeared, leaving us the silhouette of orthodox intolerance in the symmetrical tractates of opposition it left behind. In spite of this, Augustine was himself accused of having absorbed too much Manichaean asceticism, with some justification, for Augustine had been a Manichaean in his youth. Mardan Farouk, no doubt (had we the documents to prove it), would have been criticized for absorbing too much Manichaean-style asceticism. Such is the fate of heresiologists: They are invariably tarred with the same mixture they mix up for use against the heresies.
During this period, we find a new method for gaining religious surety in the ambiguous Sasanian world of religious competition. That was a heavenly journey, undertaken ritually and by means of psychotropic drugs to help the adept travel to the next world for the purpose of gaining firm faith. These were not undertaken casually but were well prepared ritual experiences in which visions were deliberately sought in a public context. For instance, the high priest Kartir (third century CE) left us a report concerning the existence of heaven and hell. Since this document was carved into monumental rocks on a public highway, we can be sure that it represents an official demonstration of the truth of Zoroastrianism. Unfortunately, the inscription is fragmentary, leaving us in doubt about many of its most important details. In the course of his ecstatic journey, Kartir was represented by his “likeness,” accompanied by a woman, who seems to represent his daena (Pahlavi: dēn). His spirit-self “likeness” journeyed up to the throne of judgment, undergoing adventures with “deadly ones” and helpers. Kartir invoked humata, hukhta, and hvarshta to ward off the dangers of the journey. There is in the “Zoroastrian book of common prayer” a text called the Vispa Humata, which concerns this triad and which is praised as having the power of salvation from hell.37 This ritual mantra resembles the prayers which the rabbis and hermetists used to protect themselves in their heavenly journeys. It seems likely that Persian religion influenced these Rabbinic traditions. There was apparently a cup in the throne of some of these rulers, a “pit” or “cave” in front of another one, and scales in front of a third ruler. The account was promulgated in a public place, obviously because it demonstrated the truth of the Zoroastrian religion though some of the details are very peculiar to this vision.
Arda Viraf Nama
EVEN MORE graphic is the Arda Viraf Nama (The Book of Arda Viraf or alternatively, his name can be figured Arda Wiraz), a ninth-century text, written after the Muslim invasion. It takes as its subject the arrival of Alexander the Great, the previous great crisis in Mazdayasnianism (based on the Pahlavi word for the religion of the followers of Ahura Mazda, essentially Zoroastrianism). After a great ceremony of lot-casting, Arda Viraf (“Truthful” Viraf) was elected to travel to heaven to find out how to resolve the crisis. He was given a special potion, evidently a dose of mang, the drug that the prophet legendarily gave to Vishtaspa to enable him to behold his future victory over the Hyaonas, probably hensbane. From this point onward in our study, the heavenly journey can in itself indicate that the subject has achieved a certain altered state of consciousness. That is not always important to the narrative but it is sometimes the most important aspect of the story, especially when prophetic authority is claimed for religious innovation. When the experience itself is emphasized in this way, we should look for explicit statements about the validity and composition of the self. In this case, as the Persian story of the soul’s journey develops, we see a more and more consistent view of the self emerging. The Zoroastrian notion of the transcendant self is the one that carries the moral deeds of the individual, the daena, the urvan, and the tan i pasen.
Furthermore, Arda Viraf’s travels through the hells and heavens of Ahura Mazda show that the heavenly journey is undertaken because that is where the righteous dead were believed to go. This is the first time we have seen the ultimate destination of the righteous and sinful dead differ. Along the way, Arda Viraf saw terrible punishments waiting for sinners and unimaginable bliss awaiting the righteous. He saw horrors of hell in detail, raising the possibility that his readers just liked to hear about the terrible punishments awaiting sinners. Thus, the trip to heaven to visit the gods to find wisdom and truth is the same journey undertaken by the dead at the end of life. According to Viraf, when living people do it, they are practicing for the final flight after death and, at the same time, confirming that the world assumed by their religion was real and actual. It was travel narrative used as a proof-text for the cosmos.
In form the Arda Viraf Namah is quite a bit like the parts of Jewish hekhaloth literature and the Christian apocalypses, also containing heavenly journeys which function in the same way to confirm the religious universe of the participant. The hekhaloth texts also contain instructions on how to meditate (rather than rely on a drug) and how to make certain rituals magically operant (theurgy). Like the Persian document, the Jewish material also begins with a crisis, usually the famous martyrdom of ten prominent Jewish rabbis, called “The Ten Martyrs,” a Midrashic tradition based on an historical tragedy perpetrated by the Romans at the end of the Second revolt or Bar Kokhba revolt (135 CE). The story always raises the issue of theodicy: Why whould God require martyrdom? But it does not face the possible destruction of the whole people and thus lacks the fearful emphasis on the specific and terrible punishments of hell that Arda Viraf Namah has. In content, the Arda Viraf Namah resembles Dante’s descriptions of hell in The Divine Comedy and is likely one of the remote sources of Dante’s work.
Besides the final disposition of the sinners and the righteous, Arda Viraf tells us that there are a whole class of people who are neither good nor bad but equally balanced in their good and evil deeds. These people will remain in a kind of limbo called the Hammistagan (place of the Motionless Ones) until the moment that they get their future body (tan i pasen):
I came to a place and saw the souls of a number of people who were in Hammistagan. And I asked the victorious, just Srosh and Adar Yazad, “Who are these and why are they here?” Just Srosh and Adar Yazad said: “This is called Hammistagan, “The Place of the Motionless Ones;” and until the future body these souls will remain in this place. They are the souls of those people whose goodness and evildoing were equal. Say to the people of the world: “Do not consider the most trifling good act to be ‘trouble’ or ‘vexation,’ for everyone whose good acts outweigh his bad ones goes to heaven, and everyone whose bad ones weigh more, to hell, even if the difference is only three tiny acts of wrongdoing; and those in whom both are equal remain until the future body in this hammistagan. Their punishment is cold or heat from changes in the atmosphere. And they have no other affliction.” (Boyce, 86)
The Soul’s Journey, the Whole Story, in Later Zoroastrianism
AFTER GIVING some of the early traditions, it is appropriate to acknowledge that the full story comes only from a much later source. The complete story of the soul’s journey from death to the afterlife is most easily seen in the Middle Persian, or Pahlavi text, Dâstân-i Mēnōk-i Krat, probably datable to the ninth century, which contains the most complete narrative of the soul’s journey to the afterlife but also contains a great many traditions that we have seen as early as the Gathas.38
While there was considerable development in Zoroastrian thinking, unfortunately this development is not yet entirely datable in any easy or convincing way. Any time we assert Persian influence we must understand that we have few agreed-upon ways of distinguishing the most sophisticated, medieval traditions from the earlier traditions which are more important for our purposes. The core of the tradition, the rising of the dead, however, was documented early enough to have affected Jewish thought directly in the second century BCE.
Since the Zoroastrian view of the end of time is paralleled by similar notions in the apocalyptic Jewish and Christian traditions, it is tempting to see Zoroastrianism as the source of them. But the dating is too problematic for surety. It may even be that Zoroastrian ideas were influenced by Hellenistic Jewish and Christian ones, as there were both Jews and Christians living in the Persian Empire. One can even find modern Zoroastrians who want to reestablish the connection between Iranian and Indian thought, and who feel that the notion of resurrection itself was borrowed from Judaism, rather than the other way around.39
The Dâstân-i Mēnōk-i Krat contains the final judgment awaiting all in the Frasho kereti, frashkart or frashgird. There, everyone will be forgiven, much like the later Rabbinic view of God’s grace at the end of time. And they will be resurrected, yet not into physical bodies, rather into newly prepared “spiritual” or “future” bodies. It seems safest to say that during the Parthian and Sasanian periods all three religions-Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity-cross-fertilize each other. But it also seems likely that the kernel notion of resurrection was a Zoroastrian notion first, since it appears to be there right at the beginning of Zoroastrian literature. The Persian Empire, with all its far-flung satrapies, would not have borrowed such a major notion, which is, or becomes a critical notion in their religion from an otherwise almost unknown, insignificant little district in the far western parts of their empire, especially when it is first witnessed surely in Judaism and only in the second century BCE, when both the land of Israel and the Persian Empire had already been conquered by Alexander and was enjoying rapid Hellenization. If the end of the world is characterized by a cosmic battle, and there is a historical development, which all three religions admit, then there should be an end when good prevails over the threatening evil of the days of the writer. No one needs to borrow that notion from the other, but all three seem to trade motifs and details freely back and forth.
Still there are important differences between Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian apocalypses. In the earlier Jewish sectarian material and Christianity, the world ends with the certain destruction of the evil people. Zoroastrianism (and Rabbinic Judaism) find such lack of mercy impossible for God. For Zoroastrians, hell becomes a kind of purgatory, as not even dead sinners are condemned there for all eternity. Only the demons have bought property there; the others are merely renters. Perhaps the Rabbinic notion comes from the long association between the Rabbinic academies and Sasanian Zoroastrianism. However, later in our study, we will have adduced enough information to show social and political reasons why Rabbinic Judaism would imagine a heavenly world of forgiveness of sinners when the two host cultures in which it lived in the medieval world-Christianity and Islam-continued to believe in a heaven exclusively for believers. Briefly, to anticipate the argument: Intolerance is the luxury of victors while tolerance is characteristic of minorities who hope for toleration in a country that someone else controls.
Second Isaiah and Early Influence on the People of Israel
THERE ARE FEW certainties in the story of Zoroastrian-Jewish interaction, but it looks as if 2 Isaiah (or Deutero-Isaiah), especially Isaiah 44-47, polemicizes against Zoroastrianism and some of the claims of the Shahan-Shah, the King of Kings, as well as welcoming him as the savior of Israel.
Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus,
whose right hand I have grasped
to subdue nations before him
and strip kings of their robes,
• • •
so that you may know that it is I, the LORD,
the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
For the sake of my servant Jacob,
and Israel my chosen,
I call you by your name,
I surname you, though you do not know me.
I am the LORD, and there is no other;
besides me there is no god.
I arm you, though you do not know me,
so that they may know, from the rising of the sun
and from the west, that there is no one besides me;
I am the LORD, and there is no other.
I form light and create darkness,
I make weal and create woe;
I the LORD do all these things. (Isa 45:1a, 36-7)
Notice that 2 Isaiah declares Cyrus to be Mashiah-the anointed of God, messiah. This is the first time the term has been used to designate anyone other than a Jew. And it is the last time within Scripture. It demonstrates that the term was not nearly as well fixed as some today think; indeed, “messiah” could describe not just Judean kings, prophets, and priests, but Saul’s shield and a number of other objects set up for an official purpose by the rite of anointing. But 2 Isaiah clearly means it in the political sense-appointment by God for a holy purpose which in turn, demonstrates his support for the new Persian regime that has just overthrown the Babylonians, who carried the Israelites away into exile. Second Isaiah’s support will turn out to be well placed, because the Persians allowed the Israelites to return home from exile. Second Isaiah goes out of his way to show that Cyrus was appointed by God, even though Cyrus does not know Him. When the return actually takes place, the book of Ezra reads as if Cyrus were actually a worshipper of Israel’s God:
In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in order that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the LORD stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia so that he sent a herald throughout all his kingdom, and also in a written edict declared: “Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of those among you who are of his people-may their God be with them!-are now permitted to go up to Jerusalem in Judah, and rebuild the house of the LORD, the God of Israel-he is the God who is in Jerusalem; and let all survivors, in whatever place they reside, be assisted by the people of their place with silver and gold, with goods and with animals, besides freewill offerings for the house of God in Jerusalem.” (Ezra 1:1-4)
This is an exaggeration; the Persians had their own gods (even if they appeared not to be fully Zoroastrians yet) and there were good political reasons why they let exiles return and granted religious freedom to their subjects. They wished to run their empire through priestly rather than royal bureaucracies. Israel was no exception.
However, the vision of the religious life described is not necessarily inaccurate for Cyrus’s time.40 Cyrus’s new regime wanted to be known as a restorer of the old order so he supported the priesthoods of a number of peoples who had been subjugated by the Babylonians. Israel was not alone. Also under Cyrus began the Israelite priestly rule that we associate with the redaction of the Pentateuch. Native Israelite Messianic candidates-that is, royal descendants of the Davidic Dynasty, Sheshbezzar and Zerubbabel-are mentioned in the early Second Commonwealth records. But they do not assume kingly power. Shortly afterward we stop hearing of a legitimate heir to David.41 Meanwhile, the priests took over the government in earnest.
On the other hand Isaiah 45 does not give Cyrus absolute free rein. Isaiah does polemicize against Cyrus in the first few verses and against dualism in the last few verses. At the beginning of the quotation we note that Isaiah clarifies that God is doing all these things, not Cyrus. And these great world events are not random clashes of armies; they are part of a divine plan for the purpose of rescuing YHWH’S tiny people, Israel.
When Isaiah says that God makes darkness and light (v 7), he is actually risking a contradiction with Genesis 1, in which God makes light but not darkness. This merely begs the question as to whether Genesis ch. 1, the P prologue in heaven, was in existence at this period. It is quite possible that it was written later, whereas Genesis 2-4, the J epic was certainly in existence and may have served as the only creation story. This clarifies that the Hebrew God is not merely Spenta Mainyu, the good god of Zoroastrianism, for instance, who is inferior to Ahura Mazda. The whole passage makes most sense as a polemic against the newly arriving Zoroastrianism. Does this suggest a time when Zoroastrianism was rising in Persia but before it became a state supported religion? Yes, that would be the best bet but, as with many things chronological in the study of Zoroastrianism, we cannot be sure from these few clues alone.
The Sociology of the Return from Exile
A FASCINATING summary of sociological models for exile and return are to be found in Daniel L. Smith’s, The Religion of the Landless.42 We should particularly pay attention to the development of a concept of ethnicity in diaspora and its subsequent utility for this small, separate people in the world empire. Both the exile and the return to the land of Israel can in some ways be compared to the forced marches of a number of other peoples in world history, though the return of the Israelites was voluntary.
The need for people to return to devastated Israel was shortly to bring new prophets to the fore, prophets whom we know only because their prophecies have been appended to the book of Isaiah, perhaps merely to give it a happier ending. The very last chapter of Isaiah provides us with the beginnings of an apocalypse which will right a world where infidels appear to have gotten the upper-hand forever. The remnant of God did, however, have a task. They would return to the land of Israel and worship God there, even before the Temple was reconstructed, because He did not need a Temple: “The heaven is His throne; the earth his footstool” (Isa 66:1). And they would have the “Glory of the LORD” at their head, a warrior God who, like Ba’al, would protect them. The people would conceive and bring forth a new child, a new commonwealth. It would be a miracle, born in a day, testifying to the power and the “Glory of the LORD.”
The exiled in Israel would return and even some of the nations would arrive as well. Even the old priesthood would be constituted from those who came back, a new unity from the old remnants. Those who ate swine and otherwise violated the ancient commandments would die terrible deaths for the “Glory of the LORD” himself would even arrive there with his heavenly hosts, all in their chariots. By such events God’s miracles would be made manifest to the entire world. He would even make a new heaven and new earth so that the covenant could be reconstituted, as they were the witnesses to the breaking of the previous ones. The world would come to worship YHWH in Jerusalem, and the corpses of the dead would testify to the evil that overcomes those who disobey Him. His faithful remnant, Israel, however, would see His Temple, even though it could not and did not need to contain His Glory. All it needed was patience. Those who were faithful would see even Israelite bones flourish. These images became extremely important when the resurrection of the dead was prophesied in Daniel.
Thus says the LORD:
“Heaven is my throne
and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house which you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest?
• • •
For thus says the LORD:
“Behold, I will extend prosperity to her like a river,
and the wealth of the nations
like an overflowing stream;
and you shall suck, you shall be carried upon her hip,
and dandled upon her knees.
As one whom his mother comforts,
so I will comfort you;
you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.
You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice;
your bones shall flourish like the grass;
and it shall be known that the hand of the LORD
is with his servants,
and his indignation is against his enemies.
“For behold, the LORD will come in fire,
and his chariots like the stormwind,
to render his anger in fury,
and his rebuke with flames of fire.
For by fire will the LORD execute judgment,
and by his sword, upon all flesh;
and those slain by the LORD shall be many.
• • •
“For as the new heavens and the new earth
which I will make
shall remain before me, says the LORD;
so shall your descendants and your name remain.
From new moon to new moon,
and from sabbath to sabbath,
all flesh shall come to worship before me,
says the LORD. (Isa 66:1, 12-16, 22-23)
This prophecy begins with God reminding the Jews that he does not need a Temple. Then, it prophesies that Israel will regain its prosperity. God will be like a woman nursing her children, giving Israel suck, a very daring metaphor. Then he will “make their bones flourish like the grass,” an extraordinarily portentious phrase for the notion of resurrection, whose importance has been all but ignored in scholarship. Immediately thereafter, the prophet saw the end of the world; God would protect his righteous and deliver the sinners to perdition. He would come in fiery chariotry with his angelic hosts to accomplish it. Then would come the new heaven and the new earth. Within this passage is the scriptural root of Israelite notions of the resurrection of the dead, though the atmosphere in which it developed was Persian. It took centuries before the root produced a plant-the book of Daniel, in which the concept of bodily resurrection finally flowers.
If there are further Babylonian, Canaanite, and Persian elements to this vision of judgment, they have been so well-incorporated into the historical description of the plight of Israel and the special providence of its God as to be inseparable. This vision serves as the basis for the apocalyptic end of time in which resurrection is promised. But that interpretation developed only in 168 BCE. In that vision, we shall see that the remnant of those who returned, as well as those who remained true to the covenant with YHWH, will serve as the community of those who are saved, just as in the paradisial vision of the Persian Empire.