This classic account of Zoroastrianism is the most comprehensive survey of the religion available. The study's two sections correspond to the two periods of Zoroastrian greatness in its homeland, Iran: the first occurred around 588 BC, during the Achaemenian Empire, and the second during the Empire of the Sassanians (225-652 AD), which long rivaled the might of Rome.
| ||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
R.C. Zaehner was born in 1913 and educated at Tonbridge School and Christ Church, Oxford where he gained first class honours in Persian and Avestan. In 1936-37 he studied Pahlavi with Sir Harold Bailey at Cambridge where he began work on his monumental ZURVAN, A ZOROASTRIAN DILEMMA. During and immediately after the war he served at the British Embassy in Teheran. Appointed Lecturer in Persian at Oxford in 1950, he returned to Teheran in 1951 with the rank of Counsellor for a period of one year. On his return to Oxford he was elected Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics. R.C. Zaehner died in 1974.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent exposition of the Zoroastrian faith,
By
This review is from: The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism (Phoenix Press) (Paperback)
Zaehner is probably the most respected Zoroastrian scholar around. If you want a clear and concise exposition of the Zoroastrian faith and historical experience, this is the work to consult. This book requires a modicum of understanding in order to comprehend the development of the faith, however, so I wouldn't recommend it as a first read. Mary Boyce's `Zoroastrians' is a good first book, as is Nigosian's `The Zoroastrian Faith'. I began reading this book first and couldn't get through it. Once I had some background, I was able to come back to it and read it with ease.Zaehner goes to the very beginning: Zoroaster himself. He dates him to the traditional, but mostly now discredited, time of about 250 years before Alexander's conquest. The evidence for this comes from a single unreliable source, and most of the evidence indicates a time between 1600 and 1300 BCE. The primary line of evidence comes from the language and manner in which the Gathas, the songs of Zoroastrianism and the Avesta, the first scriptures are written: they indicate an undeveloped pastoral culture that had not yet begun to coalesce into a dominant Persian culture. The inaccuracy is not a big deal for this work. Zoroaster's ideas were truly revolutionary, to have a most dramatic impact on history in his singular development of the binary dualism of the cosmic sphere and metaphysical reality. He claimed there was one God worthy of worship, Ahura Mazda, who had one primary adversary, Angra Mainyu, who embodied the Lie and all that was evil. These beings were primal and respectively chose, according to the true natures, good and evil before the dawn of creation. Later to also be incorporated into certain sects of second Temple Judaism and in Christianity, these two beings were engaged in a cosmic battle for control over the world that would one day be finalized in an eschatological drama in Ahura's favor with the devil forever consigned to misery and torment. The prophet reduced the daevas, beings worshipped by the original Indo-Iranians to demons; they were the gods of the cattle raiders and symbolized cosmic chaos. The former benevolent deities were changed to the status of Amesha Spenta, emanations of the one God. Most likely, Zoroaster is also responsible for turning Indra, an important warrior-god, into a malevolent deity. In so doing, Zoroaster created the first unequivocally dualist religion, embodied by the strict separation of the good and the true from the bad and the false into two distinct beings, a religion which every man was to choose which side he was on. The world was created by Ahura Mazda in order to help defeat the forces of evil, and was subsequently despoiled by Angra Mainyu who constantly attempted to thwart Ahura's will, an example being his sullying of glorious fire with smoke. Gaining the patronage of Vishtaspa, a northeasterly king, Zoroaster's message spread throughout the Iranian plateau. By the time Cyrus the Great conquers Babylon, the new religion had become the dominant one, although having been altered subsequent to his death, most likely by Magi, by a lessening of the strictness of the monotheistic claim. It became the official religion of the Persian Empire and there is clear evidence that at least by the time of Darius, it was the one that was faithfully adhered to by the nobles and general population. This ascendancy represents Zaehner's "dawn" of the religion. Zaehner discusses various strains within Zoroastrianism in extensive detail: hard monotheism, Zurvanism, of which there were at least two distinct types, and Manichaeism. All of these represented misunderstandings or syncretistic alterations of the original faith. Orthodox Zoroastrianism was marked by an eschatological fervor, the first religion to exhibit such qualities. The present world would one day end, after the appearance of one of Zoroaster's miraculously conceived descendants, called the Saoshyant, the forces of the Lie would be defeated, and humans would be bodily resurrected into a new paradise that would last forevermore. In the end, grace would be universal: after punishment and purification of the followers of the Lie, all human beings would eventually participate in this blessed existence, a true and lasting victory for Ahura Mazda, while Angra Mainyu would be reduced to ruin for eternity. Zoroastrianism thrived in Iran, competed with Christianity and Manichaeism, and eventually gave in to Islam, after holding out respectably. Today it is a minority faith with less than one million adherents, mostly in India and Iran. Its effect was to last to this day, however: Christianity, via Judaism, and Islam would adopt much of its teaching, primarily reflected in their ethical dualism and eschatology. This is the seminal work on the faith and is an excellent resource and must own for the history of religion enthusiast.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Reprint of a Magisterial work on Zoroastrianism,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism (Phoenix Press) (Paperback)
When I first read this book I was still in high school. I found it on the shelves of the library of the University of Montana. Since I was not, of course, a University student at that time, I could not check it out. So I spent hours upon hours reading it in the library, returning day after day. I simply could not put the darn thing down. For here was a book on an ancient and hardly known prophet of Iran who taught an ethical monotheism centuries before the birth of Christ. Though Zaehner's work has been, in some respects, superseded by others who have followed him (such as Mary Boyce), no work on the subject before or since conveys so vividly, profoundly, and movingly the religious genius of Zoroaster. Furthermore, there has not appeared any work which deals so thoroughly or so sympathetically with the scholastic theology of the Zoroastrian priests during the Sassanian empire. Zaehner demonstrates, by means of hundreds of quotes (which he explains in a masterly fashion) that the Sassianian philosopher priests proposed a powerful solution to the problem of evil, a solution that still ought to be carefully studied by theists of any religious tradition. The final chapter, dealing with Zoroastrian eschatology, is still unrivaled, as a recent Zoroastrian scholar, Shaul Shaked, has confessed in print. Mary Boyce may think the work is "basically unsound", but such a sentiment is unworthy of her (for it is a kind of patricide), and it smells to me of "sour grapes". The reprint of this book after so many years is welcome indeed to any person who takes faith in a personal God seriously.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Magesterial Study,
By Steven Herrmann (California, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism (Phoenix Press) (Paperback)
Steven B. Herrmann
Author of "Walt Whitman: Shamanism, Spiritual Democracy, and the World Soul" As the Zoroastrian scholar R. C. Zaehner (1961) tells us in his magisterial book The Rise and Fall of Zoroastrianism: the first prophet of Iran, the ancient Persian poet Zarathushtra, taught that every person is born with the freedom to choose between Good conscience and Bad conscience, the Good Mind and the Evil Mind, Right-Mindedness and Wrong-Mindedness, Truth and the Lie. From a Zoroastrian standpoint, there are two consciences within humans, as well as two wills that emanate from a pair of hostile twin Spirits, Spenta Mainyu and Angra Mainyu, the Holy Spirit and Destructive Spirit. Both Spirits are believed to have originally emanated from Ahura Mazdāh, the Wise Lord of the Gāthās (pp. 33-50). The Gāthās consist of five books of `hymns' or `songs' in the Avesta, a volume generally considered to have been written by Zarathushtra himself. In Zoroastrianism the twin Spirits are not one entity, they are split into a pair of warring opposites within conscience: a pair of hostile twin brothers that form an ethical dualism similar, but not identical to, the dualistic thinking of the Rig-Veda, yet unlike the oldest Hindu scriptures, Zarusthushtra thrust the dualistic conception of conscience directly into the forefront of his religious teaching (p. 40). It is a basic tenet of Zoroastrianism that sooner or later every person is faced with an ethical dilemma, a moral decision of having to choose between the two consciences. Ahura Mazda gave humans freedom to choose between the two consciences and twin wills and the Wise Lord of the Gāthās was not exempt from having to make ethical decisions Himself. He had to choose between Good and Evil and this choice was transferred to humans who must ultimately decide between absolute opposites. Zaehner is a master at his art. When I first read this book I was in the midst of reading C. G. Jung's massive 1544 page study of Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra, where he traces the split in the monothsistic conception of conscience to the Persian archetype. Finding this book by Zaehner is just what I was looking for to illuminate the origins of the problem of Good and Evil. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in theology, morality, ethics, the history of religious ideas, or analytical psychology. It may be the best book on the subject yet.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
