Jesus Mortal |
|
 |
 |
|||||
Zoroaster Zoroaster seems to have been historical, an Aryan priest who converted his king and reformed his tribal religion to the worship of one god only, c. 600 BC. Born into a warrior family in an urban, agricultural civilization, and his religious teaching denounces the thieving nomads as followers of the lie, and more generally exhorted people to do right. Zoroaster taught that the “wise lord” (ahura mazda) had created heaven and earth, and that one day he would set everything right. After death, each person would be judged and either damned to a punishing hell or welcomed into a paradise, clearly a motive for good behavior. At the end of time, evil would be done away with, and the good would share in the wise lord’s immortal kingdom. Zoroaster’s monotheism and his dualism would both have pervasive influences on Jewish and Greek beliefs, so Jesus was getting a dose of Zoroastrianism both from his own culture and from the Hellenic culture that was kicking the Galileans off their own land. The evil spirits that Jesus contended against, for example, can be traced back to Zoroaster’s daevas, the old divinities that Zoroaster recast as malignant spirits.
Monotheism and dualism Zoroaster is credited with inventing monotheism and teaching it to the Persians, who taught it to the Israelites in exile. Zoroaster’s monotheism was not the pure sort of monotheism we think of today. He taught that only the wise lord, the creator of heaven and earth, was worthy of worship, but he didn’t rule out the existence of other gods. The old Indo-Iranian gods he portrayed as evil beings, the daevas. The wise lord was accompanied by “beneficent immortals,” such as holy spirit and truth. These archangels are the wise lord’s ministers on earth. While the wise lord had created heaven and earth, much of what happened on earth originated with the prince of darkness, known as the lie (druj) or destructive spirit (ahriman). This embodiment of chaos led his willing followers against the wise lord’s social order. Zoroaster’s monotheism is dualistic, whereas Yahweh doesn’t need some punk devil to be the source of evil in the world. Yahweh does good and evil both. This “evil” that Yahweh does is the natural, material evil. Think of it as calamity or destruction, not as moral evil. For the children of Plato (including you and me), the term “moral evil” is almost redundant. There can’t be physical evil, after all. Hurricanes and plagues are now understood as natural events, not the “evils” that they used to be. For the Hebrews, evil could very well be physical. What do you think a flood is, good? It’s destruction, it’s calamity, it’s evil. So of course Yahweh is the lord of creation and destruction. He’s a bad-ass. He’s not some Aristotelian prime mover with a halo. He’s not love. So when Zoroaster says there is one true god, that’s the god of only good and no bad. Gradually, the Jews started to listen. By the time of the Essenes, Jews had adopted the imagery of divine forces of light waging cosmic battle against the infernal forces of darkness.
Urban religion On some level, Zoroaster was really onto something. He was a warrior-caste priest, and he could see both how much agricultural civilization could accomplish and how fragile those accomplishments can be. Agriculture and city living give people dramatic rewards provided they can cooperate and no one ruins everything. And here come the nomads. For the bad guys, farmers and city dwellers are sitting ducks. How easy it was to let the farmers do all the work and then raid, burn, and pillage. Farm life depends on hard work paying off, and it was easy for nomads to moot all the work that the farmers had done by robbery or fire. Here the stakes were higher than in nomad versus nomad warfare. Zoroaster must have seen how prosperous civilized life could be if only people would cooperate instead of fight, and he campaigned for that virtuous obedience to cooperation. The glorious prosperity of of post-Christian civilization is a testament to Zoroaster’s vision, of urban people working peacefully together with no evil nomads stampeding our goats or burning our granaries.
This world, that world Zoroaster succeeded largely on the basis of describing another world that explained why this world looks so screwy. Zoroaster said that the wise lord was large and in charge even when it looked as though his enemies had it made. A common sense view of Zoroaster’s world would have matched a common sense view today: there’s both good and evil in the world, good is often punished, and evil is often rewarded. Zoroaster’s message is that in the big picture that’s not how the world is at all. In the big picture, evil-doers will be punished after death and virtuous people will be rewarded eternally. Once the afterlife and future dominion are factored in, the world proves to be overwhelmingly and definitively in favor of the good. In other words, Zoroaster invented unseen things to correct the mismatch between his beliefs and everyday experience. Such is the stock in trade for priests, to invent unseen things to support beliefs that would otherwise be inexplicable.
Aryan connection Zoroaster was Aryan, a member of the population that spread out from the Iranian plateau northwest into Europe and southeast into India. Is it just coincidence that the term “Aryan” got abused by Hitler and given a bad name? Or is there something built into Aryan culture that makes Hitler a predictable result? Zoroaster painted a world of stark contrasts: us versus them. He exalted ethnic conflict between farmers and nomads to the divine level and put his enemies definitively outside God’s graces. Does Zoroaster’s influence make western civilization more likely to commit enormous atrocities against outsiders, such as the Atlantic slave trade or the Holocaust? I think it is true that there is something built into Aryan culture that leads pretty directly to gas chambers, but I think it’s the same thing built into every other culture: human nature. We have evolved a tendency to eliminate the outsiders so there’s more left over of for “us,” whoever “us” is. One might go further and say that there’s something in Zoroaster’s vision of cosmic opposition that allowed genocide to be taken to such extremes, but it’s more like the 20th century was the first time that it was feasible to kill millions with such mechanical efficiency and precision. Given the chance, countless previous conquerors and despots would have done the same.
Read comments or make a comment here. |
|||||
contents table of contents you're already looking at it introduction for the inquisitive reader biographical overview who he was and wasn't
afterlife not Jesus' concern animal sacrifice bloodless religion apocalypse did Jesus preach hellfire? baptism sin wash for Jesus and others beatitudes Jesus' words and others' words beloved disciple witness for the un-gospel bible scripture old and new bishop the unjesus body focus on the physical Buddha Jesus' close kin charity key Christian virtue and legacy of Jesus The Da Vinci Code secret (and false) messages divorce women's status dreams convenient literary device Elijah Jewish prophet with his own second coming equality ancient source of modern egalitarianism exorcist Jesus and demons failure reinterpreting Jesus as a failure faith from trust to blind belief father Jesus on titles of honor Francis of Assisi the most Christlike Christian Gandhi the 20th century's most Christly holy man Galilee Jesus' inauspicious homeland gentiles Jesus' inadvertent audience god how Jesus became god golden rule key to Jesus' success gospels competing accounts heaven from sky to spiritual home hell revenge fantasy humanism Jesus' legacy inerrant Christian treatment of scripture Thomas Jefferson ethics of Jesus Jewish guilt Christian libel John's gospel the un-gospel John the baptist, see John the washer John the washer Jesus' apocalyptic mentor Judaism libeled religion of Jesus kingdom of god what Jesus promised Lao Tzu poet of the cosmic way logos jesus as the word of god C. S. Lewis famous, flawed trilemma little drummer boy Luke beats Matthew logos Jesus as the divine word LORD Yahweh transitioning to the one god of all Luke's gospel the all-around best gospel Mark's gospel the gospel that lost its point Mary of Magdala women, visions, and sex massacre of the innocents bloodshed starts early Matthew's gospel best gospel for church reading Mormon, see Joseph Smith Moses Jewish lawgiver Muhammad a prophet who got it right mystery Orpheus and transubstantiation oppression origin of Jesus' compassion The Passion of the Christ Luke as buzzkill Paul revealer of the revealer private and public public Jesus and secret Christ relativism the secret power of the golden rule sacrifice Jesus' death and Christian sacrament Albert Schweitzer Jesus as a failure sheol dark pit of death show Jesus' deeds as put-ons slavery abolished by Jesus' efforts Joseph Smith flesh-and-blood Jesus Socrates secular Jesus son of god on close terms with the man upstairs soul, see body synoptics three gospels that agree temple center of Jewish religion trinity unifying and divisive doctrinre vision, see dreams Yahweh, see LORD Zoroaster Persian dualistic holy man
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|