“I’ve seen speculation several places that the Magi who visited baby Jesus with gifts, (Matthew 2), were Zoroastrians.”
I have as well. It is a long-standing belief.
Marco Polo claimed to have seen their graves in Persia.
The wise men were apparently monotheistic (since God directed them), from the East, and not Jewish, or at least not under the Law of Moses, so Zoroastrian is one of a few possible candidates.
I know nothing about zorastrian, other than it would apparently qualify as a Noahadic religion, and thus would be a valid relgion, pre-Christ.
Exactly.
I've also seen claims that it is older than Judaism. Much older, in fact. Some say that this is it; the original, Zoroastrianism goes all the way back to Noah, Enoch, even Adam.
Neat!
Some cultural anthropologists say that the Jewish concept of the yetzrim - the good and evil impulses in each person - is a cultural borrowing from Zoroastrianism during the Babylonian captivity, since there is evidence of Zoroastrian presence in Babylon.
I don't buy the theory.
Manichaeanism owes something to Zoroastrianism, but it involves an importation from the Greek mystery religions: the demiurge.
In Manichaeanism and in Marcionism, we have the notion imported from Zoroastrianism of an evil power vying against a nearly-matched or equally matched good power, and the evil power is identified with the Greek demiurge: the creator of the physical world, while the good power is the creator of the spiritual world.
In Manichaeanism and Marcionism the evil demiurge is the God of the Hebrew Scriptures.