Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [120]
Since the Zoroastrian view of the end of time is paralleled by similar notions in the apocalyptic Jewish and Christian traditions, it is tempting to see Zoroastrianism as the source of them. But the dating is too problematic for surety. It may even be that Zoroastrian ideas were influenced by Hellenistic Jewish and Christian ones, as there were both Jews and Christians living in the Persian Empire. One can even find modern Zoroastrians who want to reestablish the connection between Iranian and Indian thought, and who feel that the notion of resurrection itself was borrowed from Judaism, rather than the other way around.39
The Dâstân-i Mēnōk-i Krat contains the final judgment awaiting all in the Frasho kereti, frashkart or frashgird. There, everyone will be forgiven, much like the later Rabbinic view of God’s grace at the end of time. And they will be resurrected, yet not into physical bodies, rather into newly prepared “spiritual” or “future” bodies. It seems safest to say that during the Parthian and Sasanian periods all three religions-Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity-cross-fertilize each other. But it also seems likely that the kernel notion of resurrection was a Zoroastrian notion first, since it appears to be there right at the beginning of Zoroastrian literature. The Persian Empire, with all its far-flung satrapies, would not have borrowed such a major notion, which is, or becomes a critical notion in their religion from an otherwise almost unknown, insignificant little district in the far western parts of their empire, especially when it is first witnessed surely in Judaism and only in the second century BCE, when both the land of Israel and the Persian Empire had already been conquered by Alexander and was enjoying rapid Hellenization. If the end of the world is characterized by a cosmic battle, and there is a historical development, which all three religions admit, then there should be an end when good prevails over the threatening evil of the days of the writer. No one needs to borrow that notion from the other, but all three seem to trade motifs and details freely back and forth.
Still there are important differences between Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian apocalypses. In the earlier Jewish sectarian material and Christianity, the world ends with the certain destruction of the evil people. Zoroastrianism (and Rabbinic Judaism) find such lack of mercy impossible for God. For Zoroastrians, hell becomes a kind of purgatory, as not even dead sinners are condemned there for all eternity. Only the demons have bought property there; the others are merely renters. Perhaps the Rabbinic notion comes from the long association between the Rabbinic academies and Sasanian Zoroastrianism. However, later in our study, we will have adduced enough information to show social and political reasons why Rabbinic Judaism would imagine a heavenly world of forgiveness of sinners when the two host cultures in which it lived in the medieval world-Christianity and Islam-continued to believe in a heaven exclusively for believers. Briefly, to anticipate the argument: Intolerance is the luxury of victors while tolerance is characteristic of minorities who hope for toleration in a country that someone else controls.
Second Isaiah and Early Influence on the People of Israel
THERE ARE FEW certainties in the story of Zoroastrian-Jewish interaction, but it looks as if 2 Isaiah (or Deutero-Isaiah), especially Isaiah 44-47, polemicizes against Zoroastrianism and some of the claims of the Shahan-Shah, the King of Kings, as well as welcoming him as the savior of Israel.
Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus,
whose right hand I have grasped
to subdue nations before him
and strip kings of their robes,
• • •
so that you may know that it is I, the LORD,
the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
For the sake of my servant Jacob,
and Israel my chosen,
I call you by your name,
I surname you,