Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [75]
Zoroaster/Zarathustra
As they do concerning the founders of other religions and sects, many people have believed that Zoroaster was a single, real person who spread the Persian religion around 660 BCE. However, Zoroastrianism is asserted to have existed 10,000 years ago, and there have been at least "seven Zoroasters . . . recorded by different historians." 10, Thus, it is clear that Zoroaster is not a single person but another rendering of the ubiquitous mythos with a different ethnicity and flavor. Zoroaster's name means "son of a star," a common mythical epithet, which Jacolliot states is the Persian version of the more ancient Indian "Zuryastara (who restored the worship of the sun) from which comes this name of Zoroaster, which is itself but a title assigned to a political and religious legislator." Zoroaster has the following in common with the Christ character:
• Zoroaster was born of a virgin and "immaculate conception by a ray of divine reason."102
• He was baptized in a river.
• In his youth he astounded wise men with his wisdom.
• He was tempted in the wilderness by the devil.
• He began his ministry at age 30.
• Zoroaster baptized with water, fire and "holy wind."
0 He cast out demons and restored the sight to a blind man.
• He taught about heaven and hell, and revealed mysteries, including resurrection, judgment, salvation and the apocalypse. 103
• He had a sacred cup or grail.
• He was slain.
• His religion had a eucharist.
• He was the "Word made flesh."
• Zoroaster's followers expect a "second coming" in the virgin-born Saoshyant or Savior, who is to come in 2341 CE and begin his ministry at age 30, ushering in a golden age.
That Zoroastrianism permeated the Middle East prior to the Christian era is a well-known fact. As Mazdaism and Mithraism, it was a religion that went back centuries before the purported time of the "historical" Zoroaster. Its influence on Judaism and Christianity is unmistakable:
When John the Baptist declared that he could baptize with water but that after him would come one who would baptize with fire and with Holy Ghost, he was uttering words which came directly from the heart of Zoroastrianism.104
"Zoroaster" considered nomads to be evil and agriculturalists good, and viewed Persia, or Iran, to be the Holy Land. Like his Christian missionary counterparts, he believed that the devil, Angra Mainyu or Ahriman, "sowed false religions," which his followers later claimed to be Judaism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Islam. cos And, like its offspring Yahwism, Zoroastrianism was monotheistic and forbade images or idols of God, who was called in Zoroastrianism "Ormuzd" or "Ahura-Mazda." Thus, religious intolerance may also be traced to its doctrines. Larson relates the influence of Zoroastrianism on Christianity:
Among the basic elements which the Synoptics obtained from Zoroastrianism we may mention the following: the intensely personal and vivid concepts of hell and heaven; the use of water for baptism and spiritual purification; the savior born of a true virgin-mother; the belief in demons who make human beings impure and who must be exorcised; the Messiah of moral justice; the universal judgment, based upon good and evil works; the personal immortality and the single life of every human soul; the apocalyptic vision and prophecy; and the final tribulation before the Parousia. . . . In addition, Paul, Revelation, and the Fourth Gospel drew heavily upon Zoroastrianism for elements which are absent from the Synoptics: e.g., the doctrine of absolute metaphysical