[Liberal Classic]

Three Kings bump.

[freedom44]

on or off iran ping.

[Guillermo]

Rohinton Mistry wrote a couple of books which touches upon the Zoroasters in India...interesting reading. "A Fine Balance" is an excellent novel.

[GeronL]

Muslims are scratching their heads.... wait... it was not a Zionist Conspiracy afterall... it was a Zoroastrian Conspiracy!!

[WackyKat]

Zoroastrianism had a tremendous impact on both Judaism and Christianity-especially on Christian ideas about the end of the world.

The Parsis leave the bodies of their dead on the top of towers to be eaten by vultures.

Cool, and very-eco-friendly!

[jocon307]

Great post, thanks! I've always wondered about this religion, I'm glad to hear it isn't completely defunct. Maybe once the Mullahs get tossed in Iran it will have a revival.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Zoroastrians, and Parsis in particular, are a fascinating people. Many of them are not particularly religious... and they tend to be smart as all get-out. This makes them ideal marriage partners for people of other cultures... contributing to the decline problem.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[SedVictaCatoni]

General information: The "Three Wise Men" who journeyed to Bethlehem were of course magi, Zoroastrian priests and scholars.

Our word "magic" comes from magi.

[Dionysius]

Isn't Rosicrucianism somehow related?

[Post Toasties]

I'm sure the world would be a better place if all Muslims converted to Zoroastrianism. But, aside from that, I suppose I don't have a whole lot to say about this :)

[Centurion2000]

He bitterly complains that evil rulers attacked just and innocent people, that the rich robbed the poor, that judges produced false decisions in order to aid their benefactors.

Sounds like he met Clinton and the democratic party.

[tortoise]

Cool article. I always took Zoroasterianism to be a fairly sane religion as such things go, and with many ideas that would be very familiar to most modern monotheistic religions. As the article points out, nobody really knows precisely how old the religion is, but it is one of the older religions currently practiced and easily pre-dating both Christianity and Islam by a wide margin.

[Cogadh na Sith]

Good one...

I've studied the Parsees for quite a while and have incorporated the Zoroastrian concept of God (YHWH--brought back to to Israel by the Hebrews after the 1st Exile) into my own Christian faith.

This is the 'Old Faith', the Faith of Kings. The first belief in the One God once revealed: It is no wonder that these guys were the first to recognize Christ as the Messiah. I'm actually planning on celebrating The Epiphany this year in honor of this...

Furthermore, some speculate because of the extraordinary age of Zoroastrianism that Judaism is a heretic sect of it.

I'll have you know that I have strict instructions with both my friends and my physician that I wish to be excarnated when I die in the Parsee fashion rather than interred or cremated.

That should be some trick to do in this over-regulated world, but I'm sure they will figure it out....

[RightField]

True story ...

My daughter had to do an oral report on Zoastrianism in her college history class Spring semester, 2002. Her report included a post-sized drawing of Zoaster, and the poster ended up looking quite like Osama bid Laden. She also made posters with Arabic writing on them, and a big diagram/design of some sort.

Now her best friend is the wife of Marine, and they live on the base nearby here. Not thinking that her class report materials might be significant, she put them into her trunk after class and drove to her friend's house later that night. As luck would have it, she was pulled over for a random search by the guards at the gate to the base. They opened her trunk, then she said all of a sudden she was surrounded by about 8 Marines with weapons at the ready, and told to get out of her car now! She was quite frightened until she was able to explain that the materials were NOT terrorist related. Needless to say, that stuff was burned in the fireplace the next day!

[browsin]

The opening bars of Richard Strauss’ composition “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” became famous as the theme for Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Strauss' Thus Spoke Zarathustra was inspired by the work of the same name by Nietzsche.Nietzsche's Zarathustra was the prototype Superman,the ultimate 'individualist' whose goal was to destroy religion and collectivism and establish a new 'super' race of individualists(Hitler misunderstood and thought of it in biological instead of philosphical terms).The score was applied to 2001:A Space Odyssey because it was a story about the evolution from ape to man to Superman.Quite the opposite of Zoroastrian philosophy,though ofcourse they claimed the name first.

[F14 Pilot]

Bump!

[Beck_isright]

If you're a history nut, read up on this subject. You'll find the basis for Christianity and Islam within the writings of this religion.

[Beck_isright]

If you're a history nut, read up on this subject. You'll find the basis for Christianity and Islam within the writings of this religion.

[KevinDavis]

Dying Religion Ping!

[greenwolf]

But apart from academics and some 300-thosuand believers, few people know much about ancient Iranian prophet Zarathustra and his teaching. “Yet only one thousand years ago, millions, millions espoused Zarathustra’s monotheistic percepts in nations which stretched from (the ancient Chinese city of) Sian (western China) to the Eastern China across central Asia, northern India, Iran, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia up Greece in the west and Arabia, north Africa and Ethiopia in the south,” says Adi Davar, a board member of the World Zoroastrian Organization. Mr. Davar spoke at a recent seminar on Zoroastrian religion at the Library of Congress in Washington.

That would appear to offer some hope in the case of I-Slam; maybe it can go away too...