Zoroastrianism and Revealed Religion

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It is unlikely that religion will ever disappear from human culture, so it has a long future ahead of it - but it also has a long past, and we can learn quite a lot about religions by taking a closer look at where they come from and at some of the sources for a religion's diverse traditions. Although many may already be familiar with the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism, they may not be aware of just how much influence it continues to exert today, for good and for ill.

Although more generally about the nature of religion itself, much of Laina Farhat-Holzman's book Strange Birds from Zoroaster's Nest is about the development of Zoroastrianism in ancient Persia and how its doctrines continue to shape religious behavior and religious belief even today. A first-hand observer of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and specialist in militant religions, her focus is on the doctrines a religion espouses but also on how those doctrines "touch the human heart" - how they move hearts, change minds, and affect social behavior.

Unlike most people, Farhat-Holzman has had personal experiences with some of the few remaining Zoroastrians in Iran, and it is appropriate that her study of revealed religions keeps returning to the ideas spread by Zoroaster thousands of years ago. Much of what we consider fundamental to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were originally Zoroastrian, even though our knowledge of early Zoroastrianism is unfortunately limited.

Zoroaster (also called Zarathustra) taught that there were two opposing forces, one good and one evil, and that each person must freely choose between them. If they follow the righteous and good path, they will achieve salvation. His basic teaching was rationalized, anti-ritual, anti-sacrifice, and to an extent even anti-clergy - he encouraged others to come to personal terms with God. Zoroaster also predicted that both the world and time itself would one day end in a final conflict between good and evil, with good finally victorious over the forces of evil, ultimate salvation for the good, and eternal damnation for the wicked.

All of this - choosing good over evil, salvation, a radical division of the world, and a final conflict in which good triumphs - continue to animate religious beliefs today. Farhat-Holzman seems to believe that this first revealed religion was ultimately a positive influence on people and that it later degenerated when it was made an official state religion. It is indeed true that there were many positive aspects to Zoroaster's teachings and it is also true religion can be corrupted when combined with the power of government; however, I'm not convinced that the seeds of its own downfall weren't present right from the beginning.

For example, there can be benefits to teaching that people can choose good over evil, that those who choose evil will be punished, and that individuals can be responsible for their own salvation. On the other hand, there can be very negative consequences to dividing the world into absolute good and absolute evil. Zoroastrianism doesn't provide much of a way to moderate such a vision, and when taken to an extreme, it proved very harmful both politically and socially.

Much of the mischief wrought by revealed religions can be traced to the attitude of "we are on the side of God, they are on the side of evil... therefore, whatever we do to stop them is justified." It would be unfair to blame Zoroaster too much for such dualism - if he had not codified it into an organized theology, someone else probably would have, which means that it's probably a natural inclination in humans. Still, it would be a mistake not to hold Zoroaster and his religion accountable on this matter. Extreme dualism is an original feature of Zoroastrianism, not a corruption that stems from it being made the official state religion of Persia.

One interesting point that this book raises and which is worth considering closely is how different religions today stress different aspects of their Zoroastrian inheritance. There are religious groups which may pay lip-service to the battle of good and evil, but which prefer to stress other things like human responsibility. Other groups focus almost entirely upon the idea of a battle between absolute good and absolute evil in which their members are foot soldiers for God.

These latter groups seem to be those which cause the most problems in modern society - being involved with overt acts like terrorism or more subtle actions to destabilize or undermine civil, democratic society in the pursuit of a more theocratic regime. If these groups were to try and reclaim the more positive, humanistic portions of Zoroastrianism, they might stop trying to undo the last several hundred years of social progress.

I wouldn't say that Laina Farhat-Holzman's book breaks any new ground in terms of religious scholarship - if you are already very familiar with religious history, you may not get much out of it. On the other hand, if you don't already have a lot of experience with comparative religions and with tracing the connections between various religious faiths, this should prove to be interesting. She takes you on a highly readable and very informative journey through time and culture, bringing together different strands of doctrine and behavior in a manner that make the connections easier to understand.