Carl LaFong

Excellent responses all around. Thank you everyone. I’ll be looking into the books by Kriwaczek, Boyce and Cohn and I like the quotes by Gray, Campbell, the Britannica excerpt and Plutarch.

I was curious to see some differing opinions. Scholars will probably never know the extent of influence, but it’s generally acknowledged that the influence was there. If we change the question to: what was the type of influence and how would you summarize it? Sounds like they absorbed the basic idea of an antagonistic dualism (and made it more extreme? or literal?) and it has ended up having a powerfully divisive impact as it spread through the Abrahamic religions.

Magdlyn

Yahweh appeared as a burning bush, and a volcano, and required burnt sacrifices, and accompanied the wandering Israelites in the wilderness as a column of fire by night and smoke by day. YHWH was a fire god.

Resurrection of the dead appears in Tanakh only in Daniel, which was written after the Babylonian conquest and exile, and Persia's subsequent overcoming of Babylon.

Jewish religion and Israelite culture was influenced greatly by both Babylon and Persia.

andrewcriddle

There is a recent translation of Adamantius by Pretty
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeII...iusReview.html

Andrew Criddle

Ray Moscow

The influence was very significant and would include minor elements like angels, Satan (as portrayed in the NT), and an afterlife with heaven and hell -- in other words, most important elements of Christian doctrine.


Ray

robto

In Christian writings, too, we find that the forces of evil are currently in control. But Satan will be defeated and bound in the abyss:
Finally, Satan is destroyed completely and the blissful realm is established.
It's hard to say how much of this is due to Greek influence and how much to Persian. (I'm sure Roger would say it's all a matter of opinion anyway.) According to Jack T. Sanders, the binding of the arch-demon for a preliminary period before his final defeat, the arrival of the savior, and the time of eternal salvation – is “replicated almost exactly in Zoroastrianism and nowhere else.”


I haven't been able to find any references to the Persian savior (the Saoshyant) during or before the 1st century AD, though.

Ray Moscow

I would think the god-man saviour motif is more from the mystery religions, like Mithraism.

mountainman

Its all well and good to be cognisant of the grand heritage
of culture, but it must be placed into sharp perspective with
the histocally real boundary events which effected
these separately heritaged cultures.

In 70 CE the Jewish religion and Israelite culture underwent
a massive boundary event in the form of the Roman army.
Their temple was destroyed. Their writings destroyed.

In 220 CE the Parthian (ancient Persian) religion and culture
underwent a massive boundary event from within. Ardashir
destroyed -- according to some ancient historians -- every
written line of writing in the Parthian language.

ie: Hello? We dont have any source documents.
The source documents were (Hello!) purposefully burnt.

In 325 CE (this is my claim) the Graeco-Roman (Hellenic)
culture underwent a massive boundary event from within.
Constantine inititiated the destruction of the Egyptian/Greek
heritages; the replacement of Greek with Latin; and the
replacement of all existent (and previously relatively tolerant)
religious traditions, with a new and strange Roman religion.

It is interesting that everyone looks at the hypothetical grand
staircases of ascencion of traditional beliefs, whereas in the
reality of ancient history, progress appears to be continually
punctuated by destructive boundary events.

Perhaps this is just the way evolution actually works?

mountainman

Writings concerning the Parthian pantheon of gods
were all burnt c.220 CE. by Ardashir. See above.