Zarathushtra

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Zarathushtra

ZARATHUSHTRA. Zarathushtra (known in the West under his Graeco-Latin name of Zoroaster) is seen by all Zoroastrians and by most modern scholars as the founder or the prophet of Zoroastrianism, the dominant religion in the Iranian world up to the ninth century CE. Since modern scholarship dates the earliest texts of Zoroastrianism (attributed to Zarathushtra himself) to the beginning of the first millennium BCE and there is broad agreement over the fact that these texts were not written down before the fifth century CE, it is not surprising that the historicity of Zarathushtra has been doubted by several modern scholars. Two different approaches are available for an introduction to this pivotal person in the development of one of the oldest and most influential of all religions. The first is based on the Zoroastrian traditions concerning his life and mission and the second on the findings of modern scholarship. These two approaches, which often interlock in both religious and academic writings, need to be discussed separately here not only to avoid anachronisms but also because modern assumptions about Zarathushtra's activities tend to distort the image of the prophet in premodern Zoroastrianism itself. Modern scholars agree on the fact that Zarathushtra can only count as the author of a tiny portion of the corpus of the Avesta.

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