Zoroastrian Saviour Imagery and Its Influence on ... - Kaveh Farrokh

<strong>Zoroastrian</strong> <strong>Saviour</strong> <strong>Imagery</strong> I85
What Professor Neusner here writes of the Mesopotamian valley may
therefore be extended to a much wider area. And a further implication
could arise from this. The Parthian culture was firmly established in
centres into which the Early Church moved, <strong>and</strong> it had been there for
a long time. Hence is is historically possible that, contrary to the usual
assertion, <strong>Zoroastrian</strong> influence may have been conveyed directly to
early Christian Apocalyptic without the mediation of Jewish thought.
This may be important in the case of the Book of Revelation, <strong>and</strong> other
elements of the saviour imagery, but this requires a further study.
To sum up: the influence of <strong>Zoroastrian</strong> Eschatology on the Judaeo-
Christian tradition is likely to have included the influence of the sav-
iour figure. This influence is to be seen particularly in the saviour's
defeat of the demons, his gathering of men for the judgement scene,
his raising of the dead, <strong>and</strong> his administration of the judgement. It is
noteworthy that these elements occur for the first time in the Jewish
tradition at a date later than Daniel 7, i.e. in the Inter-testamental
literature <strong>and</strong> more clearly in the New Testament. This suggests that
influence took place at a later date than is usually suggested, <strong>and</strong> that
the occasion for it lay in the Jewish-Parthian contacts which began in
the second century B.C., but which came to a climax in the middle of
the first century B.C.The conditions of this period, the raising of Apo-
calyptic hopes first by the Seleucid <strong>and</strong> Roman oppression <strong>and</strong> then by
the Parthian liberation, would explain why the answer to the Jewish
anxieties was given in a developed mythological form under the in-
fluence of a sympathetic ally.