The Zoroastrian Gathas

 

Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, was a prophet of the sixth century BC, according to most scholars, though there is school of research that puts him at 1400 BC and a much smaller school that puts him about 5500 BC. I will assume he was part of the great melting pot of thought and representation in language and culture and religion that was the greater Arabian region in the 6^th-5^th centuries BC.

 

Zoroaster was not a doctor, but he is important in our history. He is credited by many scholars as originating or accelerating the development of certain abstract spiritual ideas, including a notion of God (Ahura Mazda) that did not rely upon material things, a world of good and evil, of right and wrong behaviour, with worlds for judgement and reward or punishment, the hint at an indeterminate world of waiting (a limbo and purgatory concept). He also preached the vision of an apocalypse of fire, the good shepherd as a practical way of spiritual life, ideas that made their way into the Bible among other places.  He stresses the rightness of an agricultural life of decent behaviour; that right work and right personal action leads directly to heaven. His thought was highly influential for such famous leaders as Cyrus, Xenophanes the philosopher, and King Darius.

 

It is in the poems and hymns, believed to be by the prophet’s hand, that make up the Gathas, that concern us here. Inside Zarathustra’s god concept, Ahura Mazda, were six sub-properties, also abstract. Haurvatas (translated as health, or wellbeing) and Ameretat (Immortality) were paired, and were the results of obeying the precepts of the others:

 

By his blest Spirit, and by the Best Thought

and deed and word, according unto the Right,

the Wise, joined with Dominion and Devotion

shall give to us Health and Immortality.             (1)

 

(translation slightly altered for 21^st century readers)

 

Here we have an early definite statement that right living, defined as an agricultural life as opposed to a violent nomadic one, together with right behaviour in the community and before the prophet’s abstract conceptual god, together with reciting poetry, will lead to godlike qualities of health and immortality.

 

Here is not the place to enter into detailed debate on a subject we must only touch peripherally. As time went by, and power politics of other religions took their toll, the faith had to be consolidated by allowing the abstract concepts some physicality, so that these entities became gods in themselves, and objects of worship were allowed, such as the bunch of sticks held before the face that is condemned in Ezekiel 8:17. The degenerate religion became known as Magian, their proponent the Magi, who had ‘mantras’, or spells (such as that in the fourth Yasht), and rituals. It is said these Magi sent representatives to Jerusalem foretelling the birth of Jesus: these were the ‘three wise men’. In this way we can see that the Bible both relies upon, and tries to diminish the impact of, the individual thought of a great sage (2).

 

The following fragments demonstrate the perseverance of prehistoric magical thinking from Yasht 10; and the basic expression of social conflict and justice upon the body from the first yasht. Yasht 4 contains fragments of spells.

 

from Yashta 10:

 

Backward lo! The spear is flying

That the foe of Mithra hurleth,

For the mass of magic mischief

That the foe of Mithra worketh.

 

Yea, though well he throws and truly,

Though he reach his foeman’s body,

Yet to wound the strokes avail not,

For the mass of magic mischief

That the foe of Mithra worketh.  pp138-9

 

…

 

For him Mazda the creator

Reared a Palace on the  Mountain,

Alburz, with its hills encircled,

Glorious, where nor night nor darkness

Climbs, nor blows the chill, the searching

Wind, nor sickness comes death-dealing,

Nor the devil-born pollution;

Nor upon that Mighty Mountain

Are the dark clouds seen ascending. p139

 

Yashta 1

 

By the holy Aramaiti

All their malice break to pieces,

Bind their hands and tear their ears off,

maim their knees and bind (them) in fetters.

  

 

References

 

1. Moulton J.H. (1911) Early Religious Poetry of Persia  Cambridge, pp 58- 59 The Amesa Spenta, called the Ameshas; 63 bottom to 64 Haurvatat; also 124 Yasht 4; 108 3^rd Gatha  verse quoted, 2^nd 99
2. as in the old solar deities, see Psalm 19 in King James then in the Gideon’s version.