Zoroaster and the Sacred Fire: The Religion of Ancient Persia
HISTORY 360
M. Muñoz
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143
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About this ebook
Inside certain fire temples in Iran and India, a flame is said to have burned continuously for over a thousand years, tended without interruption by generations of priests. Zoroaster and the Sacred Fire tells the story of the religion behind that flame, one of humanity's oldest continuously practiced faiths, and the shadowy prophet credited with founding it somewhere on the Iranian plateau at a date historians still cannot pin down with confidence, anywhere from 1500 to 600 BC. The book examines the Gathas, seventeen difficult, poetic hymns traditionally attributed to Zoroaster himself, and the theological revolution they represent: a single wise creator god, Ahura Mazda, and a cosmic struggle between truth and the lie that shaped how Zoroastrians understood ethics, death, and judgment. It follows the faith's uncertain relationship with the Achaemenid kings Cyrus and Darius, its full institutionalization as state religion under the Sasanian Empire centuries later, and the serious scholarly debate over its possible influence on later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic ideas about heaven, hell, and a final judgment day. It traces the faith's gradual decline in Iran after the Arab conquest and its remarkable survival among the Parsi community of India down to today. Written with honesty about what remains genuinely uncertain, this is a history of ideas about good and evil, purity and fire, that shaped religious thought across three continents.
Inside certain fire temples in Iran and India, a flame is said to have burned continuously for over a thousand years, tended without interruption by generations of priests. Zoroaster and the Sacred Fire tells the story of the religion behind that flame, one of humanity's oldest continuously pract...
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