Mazdeans and Christians Facing the End of the World: Circulations and Exchanges of Concepts

Antonio Panaino

doi:10.46586/er.11.2020.8441

Abstract

This contribution offers a conspectus of the parallel treatment of some eschatological subjects in the comparative framework of Mazdean and Christian sources. Although some impact of the Judeo-Christian tradition on Iranian apocalypticism has been fittingly detected in previous studies, the author insists on evidence showing a sort of circular exchange between Christians and Mazdeans, where, for instance, chiliasm presents some Iranian (and not only Babylonian) resonances, while the well-known Zoroastrian doctrine of universal mercy and of the *apokatastasis* shows impressive correspondences with the Origenian doctrines. What distinguishes the Iranian framework is the fact that millenarianism, apocalypse and *apokatastasis* did not directly contrast, as it happened in the Christian milieu. These Christian doctrines played a certain influence in Sasanian Iran, although their diffusion and acceptance was probably slow and progressive, and became dominant among Zoroastrians only after the fall of the Sasanian period, when the Mazdean Church was no longer the pillar of the state and the social and legal order. The diffusion of the doctrine of universal mercy was a later acquisition, as shown from the evidence that earlier Mazdean doctrines did not assume a complete salvation for the wicked but prescribed a harsh and eternal punishment for them. Furthermore, the author focuses on his own research on these subjects and summarises some results concerning a new and original presentation of the Mazdean concept of evil as a manifestation of suffering, comparable to a state of mental 'sickness.'

Highlights

In the present contribution I would like to develop some considerations which began in the [1] last years about the complexity of the relations between Mazdeans and Christians in late Antiquity.1 I would like to insist on the importance of this subject because it gives us the PanainoEntangled Religions 11.2 (2020)opportunity to focus on the multicultural dimension of the pre-Islamic Iranian world and its richness beyond the traditional borders of Christian and Medieval Studies, which sometimes forget the relevant role played by the Ērānšahr on the neighbouring countries; it is important that a community of scholars as ours might share its views about these problems, avoiding the risks of a certain isolation that could confine our research interests to a sort of esoteric limbo
The relations and the connections between these two numbers are evident because of their patent similarity, and considering the millenarian arguments adopted by Irenaeus of Lyon in order to explain the cosmic meaning of 666, which, mutatis mutandis, result in basically the same endorsed by Zādspram some centuries later
It is true that the Zoroastrian cycle in its complete duration was of 12,000 years, divided in two distinct sub-periods of 6,000 each, one mēnōg, the latter gētīg,6 while Judeo-Christian chiliasm insisted on the role of an additional millennium, the seventh, to be attached after the first six millennia in order reader will forgive these self-quotations, but I desired to avoid any heavy repetition of a full apparatus of sources and notes which have already been offered elsewhere

Summary

Antonio Panaino

ଈ୪ഌഝ೶ଈ୽ഝ This contribution offers a conspectus of the parallel treatment of some eschatological subjects in the comparative framework of Mazdean and Christian sources. Some impact of the Judeo-Christian tradition on Iranian apocalypticism has been fittingly detected in previous studies, the author insists on evidence showing a sort of circular exchange between Christians and Mazdeans, where, for instance, chiliasm presents some Iranian (and Babylonian) resonances, while the well-known Zoroastrian doctrine of universal mercy and of the apokatastasis shows impressive correspondences with the Origenian doctrines. What distinguishes the Iranian framework is the fact that millenarianism, apocalypse and apokatastasis did not directly contrast, as it happened in the Christian milieu. These Christian doctrines played a certain influence in Sasanian Iran, their diffusion and acceptance was probably slow and progressive, and became dominant among Zoroastrians only after the fall of the Sasanian period, when the Mazdean Church was no longer the pillar of the state and the social and legal order.

Introduction

The Millenaristic Problem

Circulation of Ideas and Multilateral Exchanges

The Zoroastrian Idea of Evil as a Mental Dimension

Conclusions