Zarathustra's Time and Homeland
Abstract
Zoroastrianism, like any religion or cultural system, may be studied from either the internal or the external point of view. The internal, or emic, perspective arises from investigating the religion from within the system, as from the point of view of one of its adherents. From the external perspective Zoroastrianism is viewed in its relationship to the history and prehistory of the oldest Iranian languages and religions. Linguistic analysis shows that the Avesta is comprised of texts dating from different periods. The question of the date of the Old(er) Avesta is connected with that of its homeland if it is assumed that it originated in Proto-Iranian times when the Iranians were still one people and before they migrated southwards into Iran, presumably in the course of the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE (Schmitt 1987).
... Those who identify King Vishtaspa, the patron of Zarathustra mentioned in the Gathas with Vishtaspa, father of Darius I mentioned in the Bisitun inscription, naturally tend to favour the view that the Achaemenid kings considered themselves as the prophet's followers. Nowadays this hypothesis has lost most of its partisans, since linguistic considerations lend multi-pronged support to moving the composition date of the Gathas at least several centuries before Darius I (Hintze 2015). Nevertheless, one cannot a priori rule out that the rulers of Persepolis were orthoprax Zoroastrians even if their family was not historically connected with the prophet. ...
This article discusses the formation and meaning of the Avestan personal name of Zarathuštra’s father, pourušaspa -. Taking side with the current scholarly view on the etymology and meaning of the word, i.e., * pourušāspa - → pourušaspa - ‘one who has grey horses’, it is argued here that the shortening of the vowel can be explained by an analogical model in Wištāsp Yašt 1.2, where pourušaspa - m. is described as pouru.aspa - ‘having many horses’. The article also challenges the view that Wištāsp Yašt 1.2 is a recent text.
O Egito é uma nação do Norte de África com caracteres profundamente mediterrâneos [Cf. BAKOS, 2001, p. 11-16]. Um exemplo bastante notável desta relação entre egípcios e mediterrânicos é a paixão pelo vinho, algo ainda pouco disseminado, visto que o Egito é conhecidamente a nação da cerveja. De fato, o fermentado de cevada parece ter sido a bebida mais consumida entre os egípcios [PETRUSKI, 2015, p. 154], mas a antiga nação faraônica se mostrou fundamental para a difusão e consolidação da viticultura e enologia na antiguidade. Suas práticas e métodos foram tão relevantes que sobrevivem até a atualidade e permanecem ativos entre alguns dos principais produtores de vinho do mundo contemporâneo.
The name Zarathustra refers to a prophet or religious reformer of ancient Iran. He is believed to be the author of the Gathas , the linguistically oldest part of the Avestan corpus. Information relating to his life is extremely scarce: mentions in the sources are contradictory and there is no agreement among the scholars on the time in which he lived or the place where he was active. Some scholars believe that he was a mythical figure and never really existed. Even his name is problematic from a linguistic point of view and there is still no generally accepted etymology. He is a figure who had a deep impact both on the Classical world (particularly ancient Greece) and in the Middle Ages and in modern and contemporary Europe.
This book offers a comprehensive study of the legal material found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and its significance in the greater history of Jewish religious law (Halakhah). The study revives an issue long dormant in religious scholarship: namely, the relationship between rabbinic law, as written more than one hundred years after the destruction of the Second Temple, and Jewish practice during the Second Temple. The monumental discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran led to the revelation of this missing material and the closing of a two-hundred-year gap in knowledge, allowing work to begin comparing specific laws of the Qumran sect with rabbinic laws. With the publication of scroll 4QMMT—a polemical letter by Dead Sea sectarians concerning points of Jewish law—an effective comparison was finally possible. This is the first book-length treatment of the material to appear since the publication of 4QMMT and the first attempt to apply its discoveries to the work of nineteenth-century scholars. It is also the first work on this topic written in a style that is accessible to non-specialists in the history of Jewish law.
It belongs to the nature of the available evidence that the private beliefs of the Achaemenid rulers remain hidden from sight. In spite of this, this chapter attempts to shed some light on this very matter by proposing to recognize three different styles of religion – the imperial, the familial, and the dynastic. Through these lenses some glimpses of religion as practiced in the royal family can be obtained, and evidence for the role played by the kings in the development of Iranian religion can be made visible.