How has Zoroastrianism greatly influenced judaism, and thus christianity?
There is no doubt in the mind of religious scholars that Zoroastrianism, being the religion that first introduced the concepts of heaven and hell, of the great judgment, and several concepts of guardian angels and such spiritual characters, but can someone fill me in a little more? I also know that the Zoroastrians where of the opinion, even in those ancient times, of the equality of every gender, age, and race. As it was, there were people for whom this belief was inconvenient, and i suspect that for this reason they incorporated, very clearly, into their Testaments, the superiority of the man, along with several other adjustment for their purpose to control.
so where does the creation of the world or Adam and Eve come before your big Z word? Everything you said is garbage....most of it doesn't make sense dude.
and the first monotheistic religion,
my philosophy of ancient religions is rough but i know that many of the fundamental principles in all three major monotheistic religions are borrowed from Zorastrianism, which is believed to have originated in Persia
It seems more plausible to me that the Egyptian Land of the Dead had a direct influence. After all, the concepts were introduced in the writings of Moses.
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I think its most obvious influence was in the polarization of God/Satan.
Before that, God (Yahweh, etc.)was EVERYTHING. Good, evil, motion, passivity...the yin and the yang all in one Divinity.
Zoroastrianism introduced the idea of a "perfect, benevolent" Deity--and since light cannot exist without dark, its opposite, a being of perfect evil. A rebellious angel thus became the ultimate Adversary, and then we have the concept of the eternal struggle between the two...and, well, I simply wouldn't have time to show you all of the conclusions of that if I sat here and typed for a week. I think you can take it from here.
Superb Question !!! Zorro was from Persia and did speak to the three issues that you addressed. It did attempt to teach, one god, but; was absorbed into pantheism, as another sun god. Before the absorption, there was a stage of Mazda ism. This all happened around 600 b.c.
Now, what is highly significant is: around 500 b.c. in Edom, poor Job had been tortured to the point of demanding that God Himself either convince him that he deserved what was going on or to back off. In his agony, Job asked some very probing questions: One was, if not You doing this to me, then who God? Job, in his rage, told God that he would just as soon go down to Sheol; and when God wanted to talk to him, he was going to give him the silent treatment. LOL..God bless this great man !!! Job didn't speak to a post life judgment as his plate was full with 'here and now' issues. But, the salient point is: God tried to introduce 1. the adversary, the invisible world and a war that was raging. And it failed!!! It failed because some scribe added the last 10 chapters and all of the illogical and off the mark arguments of Elihu. At the end of like Chap. 38 it reads...'the words of Job are ended'. IF we had been left with THAT. We we supposed to (the Hebrews and teachers) extrapolate and evolve the concepts and come to a better understanding of this world and how things work. We failed to do this and the evil one picked a chief demon (Zorro) and promulgated the ideas you have learned about.
About 600 years later, Jesus walked the earth and taught how things really worked.
Then, about 600 years later, 'something' started communicating with Mohammad, he dictated what was said and voila....Islam was started. Full circle to what the hebrews had been saying..One God !!
Fast forward to 19th century, and a half baked philosopher named nietzsche. He channeled zarathustra who added to the islam teaching (albeit, indirectly) about the super man and the super race and made an flawed case for: God is dead, our rationalism has killed him. Why do I bring up this last tidbit? zarathustra is zoraster and vice versa. And nietsche himself said that zarathustra is a 'chief demon'...n's so called work, btw, was in a manic state over a weekend at a bed and breakfast and is gibberish...for the most part. Its title, you ask? 'Thus spake zara'.....LOL
How has Zoroastrianism greatly influenced judaism, and thus christianity?
