Acceptance – Never Ever. - Traditional Zoroastrianism: Tenets of the ...

It is the misrepresentation and misinterpretation of the Avesta and Pahlavi-Pazend works
by some naive Western and Parsee philological scholars in the past that first raised the spectre of
"Conversion" or "Proselytisation" among the Zoroastrians.
As Edward Rice aptly summarises, it is in his "Eastern Definitions", "the return to
original sources, and the mordenising movements were not entirely beneficial to the (Parsee)
community as a whole. The Parsees were soon divided over basic issues into reformists and
conservatists, a split that has been deepened today by the rejection of younger Parsees of
ancient rituals and rites, such as exposing the dead in the Towers of Silence". Again, “much of
the doctrine is highly esoteric, it’s origins, development, and interpretation lost in antiquity”.
"Western scholars, many of whom have been extremely fascinated by Zoroastrianism, often tend to
interpret it in terms of their own disciplines and interests".
Here, Rice gives the examples of Nyberg who referred "to the Prophet himself as a
‘psychopomp’- i.e. a form of Shaman" and of Zaehner, who in his, "The Dawn and Twilight of
Zoroastrianism" read "The Prophet in the light of seeming but not always consistent, parallels to
postexilic Judaism and to Christianity."
Readers, therefore, are requested to be wary of superficial translations done even today,
particularly by foreign scholars, be they Christians or Muslims, as "they have become more immersed
in the problems of linguistics than of interpretation and doctrine" (Edward Rice, q.v.)
(Concluded)
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