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Zoroastrianism - The World of the Wise Lord [Religion of the Persian Empire]
Persian Journal ^ | May 21, 2005 | Nazar Khan

Posted on 05/31/2005 9:59:31 PM PDT by freedom44

click here to read article


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1 posted on 05/31/2005 9:59:32 PM PDT by freedom44
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To: SunkenCiv

GGG


2 posted on 05/31/2005 9:59:53 PM PDT by freedom44
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To: freedom44

They need to begin marrying outside their faith?

The Jewish experience would suggest the opposite. Actually, the easiest solution -- a revolution in Iran -- would probably bump up their ranks overnight.


3 posted on 05/31/2005 10:09:07 PM PDT by TFine80
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To: freedom44

This is interesting, but news it ain't.
The Persian Empire was destroyed.
Why worship an impotent god?


4 posted on 05/31/2005 10:28:06 PM PDT by ppaul
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To: freedom44

bumping for morning reading time!


5 posted on 05/31/2005 10:31:32 PM PDT by jocon307
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To: freedom44; blam; FairOpinion; Ernest_at_the_Beach; StayAt HomeMother; 24Karet; 3AngelaD; ...
Thanks Freedom44 for the ping. Welcome all new GGG members.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest
-- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

6 posted on 05/31/2005 10:39:17 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (FR profiled updated Tuesday, May 10, 2005. Fewer graphics, faster loading.)
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To: ppaul

The roman, greek and british empires were also destroyed, do you complain about such posts?

Your consistent anti-Persian posts are amusing.


7 posted on 05/31/2005 10:40:27 PM PDT by freedom44
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From the "Would You Like Fries With That?" Department...
All Consuming Faith
by Debora MacKenzie
5 August 2000
New Scientist magazine
Griffon vultures are dying across India, apparently succumbing to a mysterious illness. Wildlife experts are becoming increasingly concerned about the viability of one species in particular. But for India's ancient Parsee religion the vultures' decline poses a more practical problem. Parsees, the religious descendants of the Zoroastrians of ancient Persia, rely on vultures to dispose of their dead, and the bodies are piling up.
Earliest Civilizations of the Near East
by James Mellaart

1965, LOC 65-19415
Library of Early Civilizations
"The people of Catal Huyuk buried their dead below the platforms of their houses and shrines only after the flesh had been removed, probably for the sake of hygiene. The primary process of excarnation may have taken place in light structures, built of reeds and matting as depicted on the wall of a shrine, or by means of vultures." [p 86]

"In this book we see the first beginnings of agriculture from somewhere around 9000 BC, continuing in cultures in which at first pottery, long thought to be the main criterion of a 'neolithic' culture, was not in fact made, and then before many centuries have elapsed, the first use of metals -- copper or lead or gold, cold-worked from the native metal from the sixth millennium BC. The old technological-evolutionary stages of Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic and so on are rapidly losing their crisp outlines, but only because we are now able to perceive something which, because it is more muddled and imprecise, is more human." [Stuart Piggott, general editor's preface]
It's amazing the things which have survived, and particularly in this case considering that this particular faith was not necessarily well thought of by the ancient Hindu.
Dancing with Siva:
Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism

by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

[pp 558-559, "Zoroastrianism"]
"Asceticism and celibacy are condemned; purity and avoidance of defilement... are valued... Zoroastrianism stresses monotheism, while recognizing the universal sway of two opposite forces... Man's life... is a moral struggle, not a search for knowledge or enlightenment. He is put on the earth to affirm and approve the world, not to deny it, not to escape from it... Man has but one life. He also has the freedom to choose between good and evil... At death, each is judged and consigned to his deserved abode... Though there is resurrection of the dead, a judgment and a kingdom of heaven on earth... all sins are eventually burned away and all of mankind exists forever with Ahura Mazda. Hell, for the Zoroastrian, is not eternal."
Regarding their ancient scriptures, Mary Settegast wrote:
Plato Prehistorian
by Mary Settegast

[pp 212-214]
Perhaps three-fourths of the original Zend-Avesta... is believed to be lost... The Avesta was not written down until the Sassanian period (the third to seventh centuries A.D.)... Zarathustra's Gathas are particularly obscure... Not only do the Gathas appear to be a good deal older linguistically than even the oldest parts of the Younger Avesta, but the same characters who speak and act with immediacy... are represented in the Younger Avesta as belonging to a remote past... The Fravardin Yast [of the Younger Avesta] ...contains references to Iranian peoples who were apparently unknown to the earliest Achaemenid records of the sixth century B.C. And with the single exception of "Ragha," believed to be ancient Rayy near Tehran, no allusion is made to a known Iranian city or village... A generic use of the prophet's name might also explain the occasional indications in ancient literature that there was more than one historical Zarathustra. Pliny, for example, when referring to the Zarathustra born 6,000 years before Plato, remarked that "it is not so clear whether there was only one man of this name, or another one later on."
Luciano Canforra wrote:
The Vanished Library
by Luciano Canforra

[pp 24]
The translation of the Iranian writings attributed to Zoroaster, amounting to more than two million lines of verse, was remembered centuries later as a notable feat...
The followers of Zoroaster were persecuted by the hierarchy of Zervan. The worship of Zervan was largely abandoned in favor of Zoroastrianism, but may have hung on here and there until Islam arrived. Zervan temples are not known to me; maybe a search will turn up something. My guess is that Zervan was worshipped in shrines at geographically significant places (foot of the mountain pass, ford over the river) and on the outskirts of villages and towns. I think now of Petra, with its high places where great bonfires were built to worship their now-obscure deities.

The major sites, language, history, and king lists of the Elamites remain mostly unknown except for references in the annals of their ancient neighbors (and the Elamite king who temporarily ruled Mesopotamia in the book of Genesis) and short inscriptions found in some Persian sites (Susa for example was an Elamite town before the Persians came along). This has significance because Elam lay mostly in what is modern Iran, the wellspring of Zervanism and Zoroastrianism.

[reprised from another FR topic, I just don't know which one]

8 posted on 05/31/2005 10:44:16 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (FR profiled updated Tuesday, May 10, 2005. Fewer graphics, faster loading.)
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To: parisa

ping for later read.


9 posted on 05/31/2005 10:52:11 PM PDT by parisa
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To: freedom44
Here you can listen to Strauss's interpretation http://class-midi.com/ALSO.MID
10 posted on 05/31/2005 11:01:52 PM PDT by AdmSmith
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To: ppaul
The Zoroastrians belief is of one Supreme Entity, the Wise Lord, Ahura Mazd, who is invisible and formless, is a source of goodness, energy and light.

Some Christians also consider God to be "one Supreme Entity," "invisible and formless," as well as the "source of goodness, energy and light".

11 posted on 05/31/2005 11:03:20 PM PDT by Jess Kitting
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To: freedom44
Your consistent anti-Persian posts are amusing.

?

Besides the one post on this thread, where are the other alleged
"anti-Persian" remarks I have been so consistent in posting?

12 posted on 06/01/2005 12:09:12 AM PDT by ppaul
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To: ppaul

About a year ago you attacked SMCCDI - The Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran [www.daneshjoo.org a radically pro-US, pro-Bush website] claiming they had the Iranian anthem and flag on their website when their anthem and flag were both pre-1979 both banned by the current dictatorship and in support of democracy in Iran.

On a post regarding pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran you posted a picture of Islamist students in 1980 flying the 'down with the Shah' banner from the Statute of Liberty in New York - as if there was some kind of correlation.

A third time you'd claimed that since radical fundamentalist usurped the 79 revolt that the Iranians got what they deserved.


13 posted on 06/01/2005 12:17:10 AM PDT by freedom44
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To: ppaul
This is interesting, but news it ain't.
The Persian Empire was destroyed.
Why worship an impotent god?

Zoroastrianism is the base of the Jewish faith (see Ezra) and therefore the proto-Christian religion.
The Persian god 'Ahuramazda' is the Jewish 'Yahweh' and the Christian 'Jehovah'.

Which one of those is an impotent god?

14 posted on 06/01/2005 12:29:48 AM PDT by dread78645 (Sorry Mr. Franklin, We couldn't keep it.)
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To: freedom44
A third time you'd claimed that since radical fundamentalists usurped the 79 revolt that the Iranians got what they deserved.

I did?
Your memory seems better than mine.
I do not recall ever saying that.
As for the Iranian student thing, I am willing to admit that I may have gotten the new Iranian students mixed up with the nut-jobs who took over the Statue of Liberty in the 1970's.
Now, then, please tell me again how your post on Zoroaster is in any way "News."
It makes for a good read - but it's not news.
And, how is my pointing out such an obvious fact "anti-Persian"?

15 posted on 06/01/2005 12:30:48 AM PDT by ppaul
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To: dread78645
The Persian god 'Ahuramazda' is the Jewish 'Yahweh' and the Christian 'Jehovah'.

Says who?
I am open to learn more.
Fill me in.

16 posted on 06/01/2005 12:44:43 AM PDT by ppaul
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To: dread78645
Zoroastrianism is the base of the Jewish faith

Actually, Zoroaster is associated with Nimrod and Ishtar and the founding of Babylon, not Judaism. He is the counterfeit seed, not the true seed.

17 posted on 06/01/2005 12:51:40 AM PDT by bluepistolero
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To: freedom44

I met some Parsi's in India when I was traveling there for seven and a half months in 1991. They took me to the Parsi funeral place. You can't see the actual top of the tower, but the deceased are picked clean apart by the local vulture. It is part of the Parsi death tradition apparently.


18 posted on 06/01/2005 1:03:31 AM PDT by Red Sea Swimmer (Tisha5765Bav)
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To: freedom44
"A new religion and culture was imposed"

Amend that to read" "A new false religion..." If not for this, Zoroastrianism might have continued to surivive and even flourish, and the Middle East might be a saner place today.

19 posted on 06/01/2005 1:15:13 AM PDT by WestVirginiaRebel (Carnac: A siren, a baby and a liberal. Answer: Name three things that whine.)
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To: freedom44
"A new religion and culture was imposed"

Amend that to read "A new false religion..." If not for this, Zoroastrianism might have continued to surivive and even flourish, and the Middle East might be a saner place today.

20 posted on 06/01/2005 1:15:45 AM PDT by WestVirginiaRebel (Carnac: A siren, a baby and a liberal. Answer: Name three things that whine.)
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