Page Text
________________
VENDIDÂD.
we are obliged, for want of any Chaldaean remains, to let the Bible and the Avesta alone stand face to face.
If the Mazdean Genesis rests on a Chaldaean basis, the date of the loan remains indefinite, as it may virtually have taken place at any date between the time when Iran came into contact with Chaldaea and the time when the Chaldaean mythology died out. If it rests on the Biblical tradition, the loan can hardly have taken place earlier than the time when Judaism began to spread beyond Palestine, that is to say, the first century before Christ and the first after. There were at that time Jewish communities in Media, Parthia, Susiana, and Mesopotamia ; the king of Adiabene, Izates, was converted to Judaism about 58 A.D.; and Jewish schools were flourishing in Babylonia and in the Greek towns. So the Magi could meet with doctors of Judaism as well as with teachers of Platonism.
CHAPTER VII. ACHAEMENIAN AND EARLIER ELEMENTS. $ 1. From the preceding disquisitions we assume that the Avesta doctrine is not one and self-sufficient: but it contains elements borrowed from foreign systems, from India, Greece, and Judaea. It directs its polemic against India and borrows from her, though in a hostile spirit. It owes to Greece some of its teaching, and to Judaea its historical views. And all these foreign elements were borrowed in the Parthian period.
But these elements, however important they may be, do not constitute the whole of Zoroastrianism, for there are essential doctrines in it, the existence of which can be
traced back far beyond the Parthian period and the Greek | conquest, with historical evidence. One may, with certain i accuracy, distinguish in Zoroastrianism what is old, pre
Alexandrian, or Achaemenian from what is late, or post| Alexandrian.
$ 2. The fundamental basis of Mazdeism, the belief in a supreme God, the organiser of the world, Ahura Mazda,
Digitized by
Digitized by Google
| SR No. | 007671 |
| Book Title | Zend Avesta Part 01 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | James Darmesteter |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1895 |
| Total Pages | 2695 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 49 MB |