Zoroastrianism

• religion of morals

5:4.7The Zoroas­tri­ans had a re­li­gion of morals; the Hin­dus a re­li­gion of meta­physics; the Con­fu­cian­ists a re­li­gion of ethics. Je­sus lived a re­li­gion of ser­vice. All these re­li­gions are of value in that they are valid ap­proaches to the re­li­gion of Je­sus. Re­li­gion is des­tined to be­come the re­al­ity of the spir­i­tual uni­fi­ca­tion of all that is good, beau­ti­ful, and true in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

• Zoroastrianism

92:6.86. Zoroas­tri­an­ism.

• religion of action and work, not prayers and rituals

95:6.3And this new re­li­gion was one of ac­tion—work—not prayers and rit­u­als. Its God was a be­ing of su­preme wis­dom and the pa­tron of civ­i­liza­tion; it was a mil­i­tant re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy which dared to bat­tle with evil, in­ac­tion, and back­ward­ness.

• spread by the sword

95:6.4Zoroaster did not teach the wor­ship of fire but sought to uti­lize the flame as a sym­bol of the pure and wise Spirit of uni­ver­sal and su­preme dom­i­nance. (All too true, his later fol­low­ers did both rev­er­ence and wor­ship this sym­bolic fire.) Fi­nally, upon the con­ver­sion of an Ira­nian prince, this new re­li­gion was spread by the sword. And Zoroaster hero­ically died in bat­tle for that which he be­lieved was the “truth of the Lord of light.”

• militantly opposed Mithraism

98:5.2The cult of Mithras arose in Iran and long per­sisted in its home­land de­spite the mil­i­tant op­po­si­tion of the fol­low­ers of Zoroaster. But by the time Mith­ra­ism reached Rome, it had be­come greatly im­proved by the ab­sorp­tion of many of Zoroaster’s teach­ings. It was chiefly through the Mith­raic cult that Zoroaster’s re­li­gion ex­erted an in­flu­ence upon later ap­pear­ing Chris­tian­ity.

• influence on Christianity

98:7.63. The Zoroas­trian con­cep­tion of the strug­gle be­tween cos­mic good and evil, which had al­ready left its im­print on both Ju­daism and Mith­ra­ism. Through pro­longed con­tact at­ten­dant upon the strug­gles be­tween Mith­ra­ism and Chris­tian­ity, the doc­trines of the Ira­nian prophet be­came a po­tent fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing the the­o­logic and philo­sophic cast and struc­ture of the dog­mas, tenets, and cos­mol­ogy of the Hel­le­nized and La­tinized ver­sions of the teach­ings of Je­sus.

• no religion contained more Salem teachings

131:5.1Zoroaster was him­self di­rectly in con­tact with the de­scen­dants of the ear­lier Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies, and their doc­trine of the one God be­came a cen­tral teach­ing in the re­li­gion which he founded in Per­sia. Aside from Ju­daism, no re­li­gion of that day con­tained more of these Salem teach­ings. From the rec­ords of this re­li­gion Ga­nid made the fol­low­ing ex­cerpts:

131:5.2“All things come from, and be­long to, the One God—all-wise, good, righ­teous, holy, re­splen­dent, and glo­ri­ous. This, our God, is the source of all lu­mi­nos­ity. He is the Cre­ator, the God of all good pur­poses, and the pro­tec­tor of the jus­tice of the uni­verse. The wise course in life is to act in con­so­nance with the spirit of truth. God is all-see­ing, and he be­holds both the evil deeds of the wicked and the good works of the righ­teous; our God ob­serves all things with a flash­ing eye. His touch is the touch of heal­ing. The Lord is an all-pow­er­ful bene­fac­tor. God stretches out his benef­i­cent hand to both the righ­teous and the wicked. God es­tab­lished the world and or­dained the re­wards for good and for evil. The all-wise God has prom­ised im­mor­tal­ity to the pi­ous souls who think purely and act righ­teously. As you su­premely de­sire, so shall you be. The light of the sun is as wis­dom to those who dis­cern God in the uni­verse.

131:5.3“Praise God by seek­ing the plea­sure of the Wise One. Wor­ship the God of light by joy­fully walk­ing in the paths or­dained by his re­vealed re­li­gion. There is but one Su­preme God, the Lord of Lights. We wor­ship him who made the wa­ters, plants, an­i­mals, the earth, and the heav­ens. Our God is Lord, most benef­i­cent. We wor­ship the most beau­teous, the boun­ti­ful Im­mor­tal, en­dowed with eter­nal light. God is far­thest from us and at the same time near­est to us in that he dwells within our souls. Our God is the di­vine and holi­est Spirit of Par­a­dise, and yet he is more friendly to man than the most friendly of all crea­tures. God is most help­ful to us in this great­est of all busi­nesses, the know­ing of him­self. God is our most adorable and righ­teous friend; he is our wis­dom, life, and vigor of soul and body. Through our good think­ing the wise Cre­ator will en­able us to do his will, thereby at­tain­ing the re­al­iza­tion of all that is di­vinely per­fect.

131:5.4“Lord, teach us how to live this life in the flesh while prepar­ing for the next life of the spirit. Speak to us, Lord, and we will do your bid­ding. Teach us the good paths, and we will go right. Grant us that we may at­tain union with you. We know that the re­li­gion is right which leads to union with righ­teous­ness. God is our wise na­ture, best thought, and righ­teous act. May God grant us unity with the di­vine spirit and im­mor­tal­ity in him­self!

131:5.5“This re­li­gion of the Wise One cleanses the be­liever from ev­ery evil thought and sin­ful deed. I bow be­fore the God of heaven in re­pen­tance if I have of­fended in thought, word, or act—in­ten­tion­ally or un­in­ten­tion­ally—and I of­fer prayers for mercy and praise for for­give­ness. I know when I make con­fes­sion, if I pur­pose not to do again the evil thing, that sin will be re­moved from my soul. I know that for­give­ness takes away the bonds of sin. Those who do evil shall re­ceive pun­ish­ment, but those who fol­low truth shall en­joy the bliss of an eter­nal sal­va­tion. Through grace lay hold upon us and min­is­ter sav­ing power to our souls. We claim mercy be­cause we as­pire to at­tain per­fec­tion; we would be like God.”

• Rimmonites embraced beliefs of

146:1.1The small city of Rim­mon had once been ded­i­cated to the wor­ship of a Baby­lo­nian god of the air, Ram­man. Many of the ear­lier Baby­lo­nian and later Zoroas­trian teach­ings were still em­braced in the be­liefs of the Rim­monites; there­fore did Je­sus and the twenty-four de­vote much of their time to the task of mak­ing plain the dif­fer­ence be­tween these older be­liefs and the new gospel of the king­dom. Pe­ter here preached one of the great ser­mons of his early ca­reer on “Aaron and the Golden Calf.”

146:1.2Al­though many of the cit­i­zens of Rim­mon be­came be­liev­ers in Je­sus’ teach­ings, they made great trou­ble for their breth­ren in later years. It is dif­fi­cult to con­vert na­ture wor­shipers to the full fel­low­ship of the ado­ra­tion of a spir­i­tual ideal dur­ing the short space of a sin­gle life­time.

146:1.3Many of the bet­ter of the Baby­lo­nian and Per­sian ideas of light and dark­ness, good and evil, time and eter­nity, were later in­cor­po­rated in the doc­trines of so-called Chris­tian­ity, and their in­clu­sion ren­dered the Chris­tian teach­ings more im­me­di­ately ac­cept­able to the peo­ples of the Near East. In like man­ner, the in­clu­sion of many of Plato’s the­o­ries of the ideal spirit or in­vis­i­ble pat­terns of all things vis­i­ble and ma­te­rial, as later adapted by Philo to the He­brew the­ol­ogy, made Paul’s Chris­tian teach­ings more easy of ac­cep­tance by the west­ern Greeks.