Zoroastrianism and Judaism/Chapter 3

It is natural that the idea of deity should claim first attention. Everywhere in Iranian scriptures the supremacy of Ahura Mazda is recognized. So characteristic is this supremacy that Mazdaism ts the name sometimes used for the religion. Ahura Mazda is invoked as “the creator, the radiant and glorious, the greatest and the best, the most beautiful, the most firm, the wisest, and the one of all whose body^[1] is the most perfect, who attains His ends the most infallibly, . . . who sends His joy-creating grace afar; who made us and has fashioned us, and who has nourished and protected us, who is the most bounteous spirit.”^[2] There are passages in the Avesta that indicate the divine unity,^[3] yet the unity is incomplete.^[4] At times Ahura Mazda seems to be but one of the seven Immortals,^[5] (Amesha Spentas) who govern the universe. His power is limited, too, by the presence of Angro-Mainyu,^[6] else the Persian reasoned he would not permit the existence of evil. ​This means that his omnipotence is in doubt, though it is sometimes implied and even asserted.^[7] The spitituality of Ahura Mazda is a high conception often expressed. He is the bountiful and holy spirit.^[8] This ideal of spirit is implied in other attributes. He is Lord-Wisdom which may he said to be the chief characteristic of Ahura Mazda. In a chapter of the Avestan ritual, which was recited daily, Ahura Mazda says of himself, “My sixth name is Understanding. My seventh is the Intelligent One. My eighth name is Knowledge. My ninth is Endowed with knowledge. My twentieth name is Mazda (the All-knowing One). I am the Wise One; my name is the Wisest of the Wise.”^[9] He is omniscient^[10] He is everywhere represented as creating with intelligence,^[11] while his antagonist Angro-Mainyu creates with ignorance. Holiness and goodness are attributes of Ahura Mazda.^[12] His relation to men is represented in the Gathas as personal,^[13] though it may be the personal relation was confined to the prophet Zarathustra. He is the friend and helper of men, and deeply interested in their welfare. He is declared to satisfy their “ ​spirit's need.”^[14] Anthropomorphic ideas are more rare in the Gathas than in the Bible. Those that occur must be regarded as symbolical or a result of poetic license. Ahura Mazda was not to be thought of as having a human body.^[15] To Zarathustra he was a spiritual, incomprehensible being, as Yahveh was to the poets and prophets of the Jews. Because Ahura Mazda is said to sustain a fatherly relation to some of the Amesha Spentas, does not detract from the purity and ideality of his conception.^[16] It is as though he were affirmed to be the father of all goodness. Out of some such a conception perhaps came the idea of the fatherhood of Yahveh which later reached a high development.

On the great Behistun rock near the old Median boundary, three hundred feet from the base of the rock, is the inscription of Darius which reads: “The great Ahura Mazda which is the greatest of the gods has made Darius king. He has delivered the kingdom to him. Through the grace of Ahura Mazda is Darius king. This saith Darius the king. This land of Persia which Ahura Mazda gave me, and which is beautiful, rich in herds, rich in men population, through the grace of Ahura Mazda fears no foe. May Ahura Mazda grant me aid, together with the clan gods,^[17] and may Ahura Mazda protect ​this country from hostile hosts, from evil developments and from the plotting lie, and this favor I beseech of Ahura Mazda with the clan gods.” In the inscription at Nakhs-i-Rustem Darius is represented as saying, “A great God is Ahura Mazda, who made this earth and yon heaven, who made man and provided the happiness of home for him, who made Darius king, the alone ruler of many. . . . I am king through the gracious will of Ahura Mazda. O man think no evil. The command of Ahura Mazda is this: think nothing evil, leave not the right way, sin not.” Other inscriptions, those of Xerxes and Artaxerxes, those at Alwand and Persepolis, are as striking in their praises of Ahura Mazda. The words vasna Auramazdâha, (by the gracious will of Abura Mazda) occur again and again throughout the inscriptions. The inscriptions as well as the literature indicate the high idea of deity held by the Persians.^[18] The kings mentioned in these inscriptions ruled during the Persian period of Jewish history.

Before going further, it is well to inquire at this point what was the idea of God held in earlier times? No fully satisfactory answer can be given. A stage of primitive animism with all its spiritism, and ancestor-worship is assumed by students of religion. An advancing step would be natural religion, with the personification of natural ​phenomena, and merging into polytheism. Traces of these stages may be found surviving in the Avesta. Herodotus says^[19] that from early times the Persian people worshipped the sun, moon, earth, fire, water and stars. These were all Indo-Iranian divinities. In the inscription of Darius quoted above, he appeals not only to Ahura Mazda but also to the clan-gods. The clan was a recognized institution in Iran, and under the protection of the religion. Zarathustra would only have to exalt Ahura Mazda and ignore the lesser divinities, and the step from polytheism to monotheism would be taken. If this was the step taken by Zarathustra it certainly was not taken immediately by the people. The new faith could not have sprung up suddenly. There must have been an antecedent stage. There may have been a decadent faith. The Pahlavi Dinkard and portions of the Avesta imply that Zarathustra had to contend with superstition, sorcery, and devil worship. Zarathustra declares he longs to purify the religion,^[20] and he will be a guide to all who will turn from their evil ways.^[21] Mithra, “the lord of wide pastures,” the Yazatas of light and truth, has been thought by W. Geiger to come from a pre-Zoroastrian nature worship.^[22] The Iranian Mazdaism, as it was before the reform of Zarathustra and the Gathas, was probably the ​religion of Cyrus, so much as he had; though that reform was undoubtedly earlier than his reign. This would easily allow him to recognize Merodach, or Yahveh. He was a polytheist or whatever suited his immediate purpose. The Magi were in Media and Babylonia perhaps in the seventh century. They are mentioned in Jeremiah^[23] and Herodotus.^[24] Their religion was non-Aryan, but its presence should be recognized at least. The idea of deity in pre-Zoroastrian times must have been in accord with a nature worship and an existing polytheism. Zarathustra was a prophet of a new faith.

The God Zarathustra proclaimed represented a very high and pure conception. His throne was in the heavens, in the abode of endless light.^[25] Around him stood the angels. These were the Amesha Spentas.^[26] The evil spirit alone disputed his authority. If an angel seemed for a moment to be his peer, he was not eclipsed. Ahura Mazda was “the great God, the greatest of the gods,” as he is called in the Achaemenian inscriptions. He was the being of infinite moral light, truth and purity. He was truth, and holiness, the All-knowing One. The loftiness of the conception was not paralleled anywhere save in the sacred writings of the Jews. The dignity, the spirituality, the privity of Ahura Mazda is well worthy of comparison here.

​In the earlier days, Yahveh was to Israel what Chemosh was to Ammon.^[27] He was the tribal God. He was the storm God. He was not the only existing God, but the exclusive God of Israel. This conception continued for centuries. The Hebrews could serve only Yahveh, to serve another God would be for them a wrong. This was henotheism. National misfortunes were regarded as tokens of Yahveh’s displeasure.^[28] Success was a proof of divine favor. If therefore, the Hebrews were the one people of Yahveh, His glory was dependent on their national prosperity. He would surely vindicate Himself.^[29] Yahveh was served by ceremony and offering, and little emphasis was put upon social and private morality. Idolatry continually menaced and marred the faith.^[30] While Yahveh continued the tribal God, the conception of Him became broader and nobler in the minds of many of the nation’s leaders. Amos emphasized that Yahveh was righteous, and hinted He was the God of the universe. Hosea announced that Yahveh was just because his love was supreme. But these prophets were far in advance of their time. Isaiah, too, exalted the holiness of Yahveh as a moral perfection. He was the ​“Holy One of Israel.“ The prophets of the eighth century do not expressly declare, though their teachings may imply it, that Yahveh is God alone. It is in the age of Deuteronomy and of the later writers that Yahveh’s sole Godhead is emphasized. This conception as well as the movement toward universalism was aided by contact with the great empires. The exile purified to a large degree the popular half-heathen idea of Yahveh. The people were made to feel their dependence on Yahveh who rules supreme in the universe. From this time there developed the truth that Yahveh rules in human affairs, which is strongly expressed in Job, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Zechariah, and some of the Psalms.^[31] Yahveh was no longer a tribal God, but the universal God and Ruler, and His house was to be “called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Yahveh was supreme above all other gods.^[32] The post-exilic writers emphasize the attributes of Yahveh. The wisdom,^[33] omnipotence,^[34] holiness,^[35] justice,^[36] love,^[37] are frequently ​mentioned. The personal^[38] and spiritual^[39] relation between Yahveh and His people, between Yahveh and the individual worshipper are definitely and strongly represented. There was a gradual giving up of old anthropomorphisms and a growth in the idea of Yahveh as pure spirit.

We are not to suppose that Zarathustra borrowed the conception of Yahveh directly or indirectly. The cult of Ahura Mazda has a national stamp in spite of resemblances to the worship of Yahveh. Besides we have placed the reform of Zarathustra and the Gathas, earlier than the period of Persian rule over the Jews. And it is in the Gathas that we find the highest and most spiritual conceptions of Ahura Mazda. In later times these conceptions degenerated, rather than were elevated by contact with ether people. On the other hand the Hebrew idea of Yahveh immediately after the exile took on a richer and broader content. How shall we explain it? In part by foreign influence. That infltence was certainly not Babylonian polytheism, save as it operated negatively. The intimacy between the Jews and the Persians, when we remember the exclusiveness of Jewish religious feeling, can be explained only by recognizing the similarity between the two creeds. The Jews would have been attracted by the lofty conception of Ahura Mazda. In ​accounting for some of the attributes, the personal and spiritual qualities which Yahveh had from this time, it seems probably that for them the Jews were indebted to the worshippers of Ahura Mazda; that through Zoroastrian influence the Jews were led to grasp attributes and qualities of Yahveh which previously had been latent. To the new ideas of Yahveh the Jewish people gave a loftier and purer, and more human meaning than their foreign neighbors had done. Worshippers of Ahura Mazda did not cenceive such truly personal and spiritual relations, as devout Jewish writers of the time declared existed between Yahveh and His followers.^[40] Yahveh was supreme, the one Lord in whom they trusted, the God of heaven.^[41] They were never tempted to surrender Him. In one striking particular He always had been above the Iranian deity. He was omnipotent. Ahura Mazda was constantly assailed by the power of evil. In a future millenium he would gain the victory and be supreme, but he was not now. The Jewish faith had no such device to explain the presence of evil. Yahveh was supreme over all. It is not unlikely that the author of Deutero-Isaiah may have had the Zoroastrian faith in mind, when he represented Yahveh as saying, in an address to Cyrus, “I am the Lord, and there is none else; beside me ​there is no God. I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I am the Lord, that doeth all these things.”^[42]

If every religion have some note more dominating than the rest, dualism is the prominent factor in the religion of ancient Persia. The dualism does not exclude other elements, for there is a strongly marked monotheistic tendency as we have seen. The dualism was an attempt to solve the problem of evil. Abura Mazda or Ormazd makes what is good in the world, Angro-Mainyu or Ahrinan mars it. The good god dwells in endless light, the evil deity in infinite darkness. The home of the blessed is in the south, of the damned in the north. The most striking passages of the dualistic scheme of the world are found in the Gathas, Vendidad and the Bundahishu, and are easily found in other Pahiayi literature.^[43] In the “Iranian sermon on the mount,”^[44] the antithesis of the two primordial spirits is definitely given, and their contrasted natures pointed out. In the Gathas Ahura Mazda is God with Spenta Mainyu as his “Holy Spirit;” the Druj, “Lie, Falsehood,” is the devil, with Angro Mainyu as his “Evil spirit.” In the opening of the Vendidad the action and counteraction of Ahura Mazda and of Angro Mainyu are ​described. The dualism dominates the cosmogony, the cultus, the entire view of the moral order of the world. Not only does Angro Mainyu spoil by his counter-creations all the good creations of Ahura Mazda, but he brings death into the world, seduces the first pair to sin, brings forth noxious animals and plants, and surrounds man by evil spirits. The dualism is clear; whether it was pre-Zoroastrian may not be answered so readily. Dualism may be claimed to be earlier Iranian or even Indo-Iranian in origin, but in its characteristic Persian form, in its moral and ethical aspect we may believe it originated with Zarathustra. Zarathustra’s dualism is a monotheistic dualism, and an optimistic dualism, since Ahura Mazda will be finally victorious and good will triumph. It has been argued that because no dualism is recognized in the inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings, that therefore they were not Zoroastrians or did not believe in dualism. But the reasoning is based upon e silentia grounds. The absence of dualistic elements in those inscriptions is not more marked than the non-mention of the devil in a royal edict or presidential proclamation of our time. It is also to be noted that Drauga, (Falsehood, Lie), is almost as much a satanic personage in the Achaemenian inscriptions as is Druj in the Gathas.

The modern Parsees claim that in Spenta Mainyu of the Gathas there is a phase of Ahura Mazda’s being which is the antithesis of Angro Mainyu; and ​they conceive of Ahura Mazda as comprising within himself the two spirits, the good and the evil. There is no question but that Spenta Mainyu, or Holy Spirit, is often conceived in the Gatha as an emanation from Ahura Mazda. In such cases it becomes personified; it sometimes plays the role of intermediary, especially in creative activity. As Spenta Mainyu is of the same nature and substance with Ahura Mazda, the subtle relation between the two is almost as hard to define as that between the Holy Spirit and the Father in the New Testament. The natural drift of the system, however, was to dualism. The monotheistic tendencies of its theology could not withstand the dualism of its philosophy. But the theology made the dualism optimistic as has been indicated.

Only a few sentences need be given to dualism in Judaism. The subject will be involved later in our discussion of angels and demons. In the earlier days Yahveh, though only the tribal God was sole and supreme in the tribe. Yahveh was the author of every phenomenon, good or evil. After the exile the Jews awoke to a realization of the spiritual, antagonistic powers of evil, as they had not known them before. It is not unlikely that the author of Deutero-Isaiah may be rebuking Persian dualism in the words, quoted above,^[45] “I form the light and create darkness,” etc. An instance in the development ​of these ideas may be indicated in the books of Samuel and Chronicles, the former compiled several centuries before the latter. In Samuel,^[46] Yahveh is angry with Israel and moves David to number them. In Chronicles,^[47] Satan “provoked David to number Israel.” The conception of Satan in Zechariah,^[48] Psalms^[49] and Job^[50] we probably may attribute to foreign influence. He is represented as planning man’s ruin, causing ills and disasters, and even exercising a sort of government. But the Jewish dualism is different from the Persian in this, that Yahveh is never eclipsed or held in subjection even for a time. He is always supreme. The work of Yahveh’s creation, as it is told in the early allegorical parables of Genesis, may be marred by the presence of evil,^[51] but neither here nor elsewhere is Yahveh's power limited. He is always stronger than Satan and all the powers of evil. Yahveh, too, existed before the evil came into being. The Jewish dualism was not complete.