advancedatheist

I've run across the claim, even on the Internet Infidels site, that essential christian beliefs merely retread what the ancient Zoroastrians taught, assuming that the later versions of Zoroastrianism preserve what the Persians believed before Alexander the Great and later the Muslim conquerors destroyed Zoroastrian writings and murdered many of the priests. The continuity of the Zoroastrian tradition from before Alexander is plausible considering that religious inscriptions from the Achaemenian period sound almost like later christian ones if you just replace "god" or "christ" for "ahura mazda."

In other words, if Zoroastrians taught christian-sounding beliefs centuries before christianity proper came along, then for the past 2000 years the West has really been dominated by a heretical interpretation of an ancient religion from Central Asia. So are we really arguing with christians about the validity of a religion that most people haven't heard of?

PoodleLovinPessimist

Zoroastrianism is an explicitly dualistic theology with a "good" deity (either Ahura Mazda or Spenta Mainyu, depending on your source) and an "evil" deity (Ahriman). While canonical Christianity specifically disclaims this sort of dualism (calling it the Manichean heresy), many christians seem to give an inordinate amount of attention to Satan, attributing to him, if not divine power, certainly quite a lot of power.

The case for Christianity evolving from Zoroastrianism is certainly superficially plausible. According to Wikipedia, "It is widely believed that the Three Wise Men said to have borne gifts for Jesus of Nazareth were Zoroastrian Magi."