Posted on 09/05/2006 8:40:08 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
BURR RIDGE, Ill. — In his day job, Kersey H. Antia is a psychologist who specializes in panic disorders. In his private life, Mr. Antia dons a long white robe, slips a veil over his face and goes to work as a Zoroastrian priest, performing rituals passed down through a patrilineal chain of priests stretching back to ancient Persia.
After a service for the dead in which priests fed sticks of sandalwood and pinches of frankincense into a blazing urn, Mr. Antia surveyed the Zoroastrian faithful of the Midwest — about 80 people in saris, suits and blue jeans.
“We were once at least 40, 50 million — can you imagine?” said Mr. Antia, senior priest at the fire temple here in suburban Chicago. “At one point we had reached the pinnacle of glory of the Persian Empire and had a beautiful religious philosophy that governed the Persian kings.
“Where are we now? Completely wiped out,” he said. “It pains me to say, in 100 years we won’t have many Zoroastrians.”
There is a palpable panic among Zoroastrians today — not only in the United States, but also around the world — that they are fighting the extinction of their faith, a monotheistic religion that most scholars say is at least 3,000 years old.
Zoroastrianism predates Christianity and Islam, and many historians say it influenced those faiths and cross-fertilized Judaism as well, with its doctrines of one God, a dualistic universe of good and evil and a final day of judgment.
While Zoroastrians once dominated an area stretching from what is now Rome and Greece to India and Russia, their global population has dwindled to 190,000 at most, and perhaps as few as 124,000, according to a survey in 2004 by Fezana Journal....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Zoroastrians share many common traditions and values with the ancient Hindu Vedic traditions. Their religion was mostly destroyed during the Islamic invasion of Persia and most remanants live in Western India.
The Zoroastrians, also called Parsees, make up one of the most successful communities in India. They also have a proud military tradition.
Quite an overstatement. The author of the article is forgetting that the ancient Greeks defeated Persian invasions twice. The Persians never conquered the Greeks in the west, and certainly never made it to Rome.
“We were once at least 40, 50 million — can you imagine?” said Mr. Antia, senior priest at the fire temple here in suburban Chicago.
I am not sure the figure is correct, but let's assume that the Persian Empire numbered 50 million people. The Persians did not force conquered people to convert to Zoroastrianism, so the number of practicing Zoroastrians would have been much smaller that that figure.
It is an interesting religion. I particularly like their towers of silence. They did not bury their dead because that would pollute the earth. And they didn't cremate them either because that would pollute fire. They put their dead on top of a tower and let the vultures eat away the flesh from the bones.
Why is it that Zoroastrians influenced Judaism? Wouldn't it be the other way around?
It depends on who's writing the history books. I had a Old Testament professor in college, who taught that the Egyptian pharoah Akhenaton "invented" monotheism. He claimed the Israelites first "discovered" monotheism from the Egyptians during their captivity, and then retroactively took credit for it when writing the Pentateuch.
The wisemen were thought to be Zoroastrians(more than likely at least one of them was). It is quite an interesting religion and is far closer to Christianity and Judism than it is to Islam.
No. Most theological history puts Zoroastrianism as a sort of pre-cursor to Judaism from which Judaism acquired many of its modern characteristics, arguably the conceptual grandfather of the major Semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). The arguments are not whether Zoroastrianism influenced Judaism, but to the extent that Judaism is directly descended from Zoroastrianism in the same way that Christianity is descended from Judaism. It is well-established that many parts of Judaism were acquired from the Persians, but the exact relationship in pre-history is uncertain.
Zoroastrianism is an extremely old religion, older than recognizable modern Judaism for sure, though Islam pretty thoroughly eradicated it. Most major modern religions are at least partially descended from it.
My mother is a Zoroastrian by birth. As the article mentions, traditionally, conversions aren't allowed but that has been changing in recent times due to diminishing numbers.
"Zoroastrianism is an extremely old religion, older than recognizable modern Judaism for sure,"
You are right. It is much older than Judaism and has had many influences on all major and so-called 'religions of the book' as well as even 'Feminism'.
"The wisemen were thought to be Zoroastrians (more than likely at least one of them was)."
The Magi were the wisemen you are referring to who travelled to Bethleham for the birth of Jesus Christ. Actually, the Magi weren't originally Zoroastrians but adopted the faith after it spread widely throughout Western Persia (Iran). The Magi became the so-called priests of the faith in ancient Persia.
Here is an interesting article on Zoroastrianism.
http://www.zoroaster.net/indexe.htm
Also, the site below has many interesting English Articles about Zoroastrianism.
http://www.derafsh-kaviyani.com/
According to the Scriptures, the people of the Fertile Crescent and surrounding areas are descended from one group that worshiped the Almighty. As time passed this people group spread out and evolved into different nations and cultures. Likewise, many of these new groups allowed their worship of the One True God to evolve into fertility cults, polytheism, etc. Genesis and Exodus describe how the Lord called Abraham out of this religious quagmire and taught him and his descendents to walk in His ways so that they may be an example to the rest of the world.
The reason Zoroastrianism looks similar to Judaism is that it did not stray from the the Truth as far as the Egyptians and Canaanites did.
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