Zoroaster, Zoroaster

Supported by this historical evidence, the Traditional date can be conclusively ruled out, and the discreditation can to some extent be supported by the texts themselves: The Gathas describe a society of bipartite (priests and herdsmen/farmers) nomadic pastoralists with tribal structures organized at most as small kingdoms. This contrasts sharply with the view of Zoroaster having lived in an empire, at which time society is attested to have had a tripartite structure (nobility/soldiers, priests, and farmers).

The Greek and Latin sources are divided on the birth place of Zarathustra. There are many Greek accounts of Zarathustra, referred usually as Persian or Perso-Median Zoroaster. Moreover they have the suggestion that there has been more than one Zoroaster.

Coming from a reputed scholar of religions, this was a serious blow for the various regions who all claimed that Zoroaster originated from their homelands, some of which then decided that Zoroaster must then have then been buried in their regions or composed his Gathas there or preached there.

They also describe familial events such as the marriage of his daughter, at which Zoroaster presided.

However, this text has been lost over the centuries, and it survives only as a summary in the seventh book of the ninth century Dnkard . Other ninth to twelfth century stories of Zoroaster, as in the Shhnma , are also assumed to be based on earlier texts, but must be considered to be primarily a collection of legends. The historical Zoroaster, however, eludes categorization as a legendary character.

He and his wife Hvvi had three daughters, Freni, Pourucista and Triti; and three sons, Isat Vastar, Uruvat-Nara and Hvare Cira. Zoroasters great-grandfather Hachataspa was the ancestor of the whole family Spitma, for which reason Zoroaster usually bears the surname Spitma. His wife, children and a cousin named Maidhyoimangha, were his first converts after his illumination from Ahura Mazda at age 30.

Zoroaster is almost always depicted with a beard, usually brown. His complexion is pale, and this along with other factors bear similarities to nineteenth century portraits of Jesus.

The figure is standing on a lotus, with a baresman in hand and with a gloriole around his head. Until the 1920s, this figure was commonly supposed to be a depiction of Zoroaster, but in recent years is more commonly interpreted to be a depiction of Mithra.

In it, Zoroaster and Ptolemy are having a discussion in the lower right corner. The prophet is holding a star-studded globe.

The alternate Greek name for Zoroaster was Zaratas/Zaradas/Zaratos ( cf.

The Suda's chapter on astronomia notes that the Babylonians learned their astrology from Zoroaster. Lucian of Samosata ( Mennipus 6) decides to journey to Babylon "to ask one of the magi, Zoroaster's disciples and successors," for their opinion.

Pliny's 2nd/3rd century attribution of "two million lines" to Zoroaster suggest that (even if exaggeration and duplicates are taken into consideration) a formidable pseudepigraphic corpus once existed at the Library of Alexandria. This corpus can safely be assumed to be pseudepigrapha because no one before Pliny refers to literature by "Zoroaster," and on the authority of the 2nd century Galen of Pergamon and from a 6th century commentator on Aristotle it is known that the acquisition policies of well-endowed royal libraries created a market for fabricating manuscripts of famous and ancient authors.

This notion (like that of "two million verses") also appears in the 9th-11th century texts of genuine Zoroastrian tradition, and for a time it was assumed that origin of those myths lay with indigenous sources. The Iranians were however just as familiar with the Greek writers. The provenance of other descriptions are clear, so for instance, Plutarch's description of its dualistic theologies: "Others call the better of these a god and his rival a daemon, as, for example, Zoroaster the Magus, who lived, so they record, five thousand years before the siege of Troy. He used to call the one Horomazes and the other Areimanius" ( Isis and Osiris 46-7).

Though almost nothing was known of his ideas until the late 18th century, by that time his name was already associated with lost ancient wisdom. Zoroaster appears as Sarastro in Mozarts opera Die Zauberflte , which has been noted for its Masonic elements, where he represents moral order ( cf.

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