• DOI:10.1086/371754
• Corpus ID: 161954467

Zoroaster's Own Contribution

@article{Gershevitch1964ZoroastersOC,
  title={Zoroaster's Own Contribution},
  author={Ilya Gershevitch},
  journal={Journal of Near Eastern Studies},
  year={1964},
  volume={23},
  pages={12 - 38}
}

• I. Gershevitch
• Published 1 January 1964
• Philosophy
• Journal of Near Eastern Studies

nominator of these two apparently irreconcilable viewpoints is in Zoroaster's system Truth. For Truth is one of the organs, aspects, or emanations of Ahura Mazdah through which the god acts and becomes accessible. Two religions, therefore, appear to have been syncretized by the prophet: a monotheism centered in a god of whom Truth is an emanation, and a dualism in which Truth is primordial.3 The prophet himself refers to God's aspects or emanations by expressions which we may translate as "Entities" (cf. below, p. 17), but in the post-Gathic parts of the Avesta they are called Ama•a Spantas, that is, "Holy Immortals."4 One of these Immortals, in fact the chief one, since he is God's creative organ, is Sp~nta Mainyu, the "Holy Spirit" (cf. AHM, pp. 11 f., 165 f.). This 1 Revised text of a lecture delivered at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago on 18 May, 1961. Several paragraphs have been replaced by references to my book, The Avestan Hymn to Mithra, here abbreviated as AHM. I have, however, abandoned the reconstruction proposed in that book, of an Avestan divine name * (Ahura) Vouruna. Whatever I wrote about the god * Vouruna should be understood as applying to a god called simply Ahura. This means a return to A. Hillebrandt's derivation of both the Iranian Ahura (who partly survived in Zoroaster's Ahura Mazddh) and the Vedic Asura (who was generally referred to by his epithet Varuna) from an Indo-Iranian god whose name was Asura without further qualification: see WZKM, XIII (1899), 320, ZII, IV, 212, and his Vedische Mythologie (2d ed., 1929), II, 9; cf. also P. Thieme, JAOS (1960), 308 f. Hillebrandt's theory accounts better than any other for the co-existence of a close resemblance on the one hand, and a basic difference on the other, between the Avestan Ahura Mazddh and the Vedic Asura Varuna, cf. AHM, pp. 44 f., 321. A further divergence from AHM, which arises from an observation of F. B. J. Kuipers (see n. 30), will be found below, pp. 18 ff. 2 See Appendix I, p. 32. 3 On the dual role of Truth in Zoroaster's system cf. AHM, p. 45 f. One may conjecture that the two components of the name of Zoroaster's god reflect the two religious systems which the prophet had syncretized, one in which a chief god, Ahura, guarded primordial Truth against primordial Falsehood, the other in which a sole god, Mazdah, had Truth as one of his aspects or emanations. 4 On the name "Immortal" see Appendix VI, p. 34. I retain here the usual translation "holy" of spanta-, although the meaning of the adjective would be better rendered by a t~erm conveying the idea of increase, such as "incremental."