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

<strong>Zoroastrian</strong> <strong>Saviour</strong> <strong>Imagery</strong>
holds one must begin by looking for a common stock of ideas on to
which branches might be grafted.
There was certainly a common stock of ideas lying behind the figures
of the <strong>Zoroastrian</strong> saviour, Sosyant, <strong>and</strong> the Messiah. As the Messiah
was born of the line of David, so Sosyant was born of the seed of the
great prophet Zoroaster; in each case the saviour came to establish the
true faith <strong>and</strong> God's own nation; both, as it were, were God's 'trump
card' against those who opposed his will, <strong>and</strong> both effected the renewal
of the earth <strong>and</strong> of mankind. Whether there was anything more than a
common stock of ideas worked out independently can only be decided
after a study of the development of the two figures <strong>and</strong> a consideration
of the historical factors involved.
THE ZOROASTRIAN
SAVIOUR, SOSYANT
What has to be established is not what the teaching of Zoroaster was
concerning the saviour, although this may be one step on the way, but
rather what was the teaching of the <strong>Zoroastrian</strong>ism of the pre-Christian
period. In other words attention need not be confined entirely to Zoro-
aster's own hymns, the Gathas, but must also include the <strong>Zoroastrian</strong>
scriptures, the Avesta. Unfortunately the extant Avesta is but one
quarter of the original. Inevitably one seeks to reconstruct, as far as
possible, the remaining three-quarters, <strong>and</strong> does so on the basis of the
later Pahlavi texts, that is to say the <strong>Zoroastrian</strong> religious books written
in Middle Persian, or Pahlavi, whose final redaction belongs to the
ninth century A.D. <strong>and</strong> later. The dangers here are too obvious to need
emphasizing, <strong>and</strong> New Testament scholars in particular have expressed
doubts about bringing the Pahlavi texts into any discussion of the Zoro-
astrian origins of the New Testament imagery. 4) Yet it is an old
dictum that the value of a text lies not in its date but in its sources. It
is important to remember the motive for the compilation of these books,
<strong>and</strong> the word 'compilation' is used advisedly. The original Avesta was
of enormous proportions, <strong>and</strong>, to help laymen underst<strong>and</strong> its teachings,
the priests made summaries <strong>and</strong> compiled selections in Pahlavi trans-
4) See for example C. Clemen, Primitive Christianity <strong>and</strong> its non-Jewish
Sources, E. T. by R. G. Nisbet, Edinburgh, 1912, pp. 122 f. 139; Le P. E. B. Allo,
Saint Jean 'iApocalypse, Paris 1933, p. 196; R. H. Charles, I.C.C. Commentary
on Revelation, vol. II, p. 142.
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