SOURCE: “Scriptures and Doctrines” in Zoroastrianism: A Beleaguered Faith, Advent Books, 1983, pp. 13-49.

In the following essay, Pangborn analyzes the development of Zoroastrianism from the qualified monotheism of Zoroaster's Gathas, through the ritual polytheism of the Later Avesta, to the controversy between the purist reform movement and the orthodoxy of modern Zoroastrianism.

We have now identified the Zoroastrians and those composing their largest single—and, in recent times, modestly dispersed—community, the Parsis. Meanwhile, little has been said about the substance of the faith which, after all, enough people having embraced it, sets Zoroastrians apart as a distinctive religious community. This substance, composed initially of the beliefs and convictions of the prophet Zoroaster but also of both older and later ideas added by his followers, found expression in Scripture, the Avesta, the composite work that became for subsequent generations the principal source of their inspiration, renewal, and regulation...