“554. ZOROASTER—ISAIAH 45:5-6”

Zoroaster—Isa_45:5-6

There are manifest allusions in Isaiah’s prophecy to the leading principles of the Persian religion, as it existed in the time of the prophet, or at least in the time of Cyrus. It will, therefore, appear desirable to present the reader with some information respecting that religion, and concerning the man, under whose influence and teaching, it was reduced from grosser forms of idolatry into this better shape.

There are not wanting native accounts of the religious systems that prevailed among the Persians prior to Zoroaster, and these accounts are entitled to credit, so far as we find them in agreement with ordinary probabilities, and as they are corroborated from other sources of information.

Sabean, or Fire Worship

According to these accounts, the primeval religion of the Persians consisted in a firm belief in one supreme God, who made the world by his power, and governed it by his providence; in a pious fear, love, and adoration of Him; in a reverence for parents and aged persons; in a fraternal affection for all mankind; and in a compassionate tenderness towards the brute creation. This is manifestly a tolerably faithful picture of the old patriarchal religion, which all the races of mankind inherited from Noah, and of which all later symptoms were but different corruptions.

This purer belief, it is stated, eventually gave way to the adoration of the heavenly bodies, in the worship of which the religion called Sabaeism consisted. To this succeeded the worship of fire, which, however, is scarcely another religion, but a modification of Sabaeism, the fire being simply borrowed as a symbol or representation of the solar heat. Note: The cut is taken from a sculpture at Nakhsh-i-Rustam, supposed to be not later than the age of Cyrus, and represents a priest or king—most probably the latter, worshipping towards the sin, having immediately before him an altar, on which the sacred fire is burning. After this arose another form of Sabaeism, which consisted in the worship of the planets by symbolical images; and this appears to have been the form of idolatry which subsisted at the time Zoroaster appeared; before, perhaps, it had wholly superseded the fire-worship, but when it had become a wide-spread corruption existing together with it, and while the worship of fire was still probably the formal religion of the country, the worship of or by images being an excrescence superinduced thereon. Zoroaster rent away this excrescence; and although his doctrine did not involve fire-worship, he seems to have accepted it as a suitable symbol of the Divine essence—probably in the feeling common among the ancient speculators, that the people generally needed some sensible object of worship, and that the fire, to which they were accustomed, was better than any other that could be devised.

This man was Zoroaster, known in the East by the name of Zerdusht, of whose existence prior to the epoch usually assigned to him, we yesterday avowed our opinion.

The traditions of the Eastern Christians, of the Jews, and of the Moslems, regarding this remarkable man, might deserve attention, if only from the sort of doubt which has been felt, as to the place which might be with justice assigned to one, whose teachings were so superior to all that ancient heathenism knew and yet contained so much that was wrong in principle, and that involved the awful imposition of a pretended revelation from heaven. We know that Zoroaster had no such revelation. The pretension to it, therefore, stamps the system with a flagrant character, which averts the sort of respect that might be felt for it as a human system—bad indeed, but still the best that the mind of man had been able to devise. It puts Zoroaster on a level with Mohammed. Both make the same pretension—both exhibit books alleged to be obtained from heaven, and both taught much that was in itself good and true—and both are guilty of the dreadful crime of making the Almighty responsible for their doctrines, by alleging that they received them from his hand. Of the two, however, Zoroaster was less culpable than Mohammed. Zoroaster did not know—at least, we have no evidence that he knew—that there had been any previous revelation of God’s will to man, and he was far from intending to subvert any existing truth. But Mohammed knew that God had already revealed his will to man through Moses and through Christ; and, while admitting the truth of these revelations, he applied himself deliberately, with full purpose of mind, to subvert and stigmatize the most essential doctrines of the Christian faith—the divinity of our Lord, and the complete atonement for sin which his death upon the cross accomplished. He taught his followers not only to reject those doctrines, on which hang all the true hopes of man, but to regard them with hatred and abhorrence. This is a dreadful fact; and a due consideration of it, and of the too effectual bar which has been thus set up against the reception of Christianity by the followers of the false prophet, is enough to prevent our sharing in that dim respect for Mohammed, and for his teaching, which some thoughtless Christians have allowed themselves to entertain.

In saying that Zoroaster was unconscious of any existing revelation, we are not ignorant that the contrary has been urged in the traditions to which we have referred. But we attach no credit to them, only finding in them evidence that the authors of those reports were perplexed how to account for the good that was to be found in his system, otherwise than by supposing that he had availed himself of such of the Hebrew Scriptures as had then been written. Whatever probabilities might have been alleged in favor of these conjectures under the account which places the time of Zoroaster so late as the reign of Darius Hystaspis, disappear when he is placed, as we are constrained to place him, before the time of Cyrus, if not before the Hebrew captivity.

It is, then, affirmed, particularly by the Mohammedan writers, that Zoroaster was either a Jew, or that he went very early into Judaea, where he received his education under one of the prophets, with whom he lived as a servant, and, emulous of his master’s glory, set up afterwards for a prophet on his own behalf. One account seems to apply to him the Scripture history of Gehazi, for it states that, having deceived and cheated the Hebrew prophet whom he served, his master prayed to God to smite him with leprosy, which accordingly took place. Another account, grafted on this, says that Zoroaster had, by his great skill in astrology, discovered that another prophet like unto Moses was to arise, whom all the world was to obey. This Old Testament prophecy, which we know applies to Christ, the Moslems apply to Mohammed; and it forms a reason for the peculiar enmity with which they treat the memory of Zoroaster, that he, as they allege, attempted to anticipate the mission of Mohammed, by setting up for himself a claim to be regarded as that prophet whose coming he had discovered. Under this notion he withdrew, the account states, into a cave; and, revolving these things in his mind, a light suddenly appeared, which was no other than an illusion of the devil, who, conversing with him out of the midst of the fire, Zoroaster no longer doubted that he had received his mission of prophecy, and forthwith commenced composing a book, containing a system of diabolical doctrine, which he called Zend. Having completed this performance, he left his retreat, and went about the world teaching his doctrines, and erecting temples for the sacred fire.

All these are idle tales, founded upon some parts of the known history of Zoroaster. We know that astrology could not have taught him what he is alleged to have discovered by its means; and even if it were for a moment admitted that he did possess some knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, he is exonerated from opposing (like Mohammed) the essential principles of the antecedent revelation; and the most that could be said is, that he adopted so much of it, as he thought he could render acceptable to his countrymen. In point of fact, there is hardly anything new in the doctrinal part of his system; and these parts which seem to bear resemblance to Judaism, are no more than resemblances to those parts which the latter had in common with the primitive patriarchal religion. It seems, in fact, to have been the object of Zoroaster to exhibit a combination of all that he supposed to be good in the previous systems whether Patriarchal, or Sabean, or Magian, purged of the more grossly idolatrous innovations of recent times. This system he produced, as having received it from the inspiration of heaven. Whether in this he was an impostor or not, it is hard to say. There are marks of sincerity about his writings—so far as extant—affording some countenance to the belief, that he really conceived himself divinely inspired, and that what he penned were divine oracles. That such a delusion was possible, we know—and the more possible in the case of a man who devoted many years of his life to solitary contemplation. That Zoroaster did withdraw from the haunts of men to a cave, is true; and that he there gave himself up to meditation and prayer, is acknowledged. But how long he remained in the cave, or how many books he wrote there, is not very certain. We are told, indeed, that he brought twelve volumes to the king, each composed of a hundred skins of vellum; but this is doubtless an exaggeration, although the fact, as stated, is less surprising than it may seem to the inexperienced. Even with our small written character, it often takes many pages of manuscript to make one page of print, and the ancient Persian character took up a good deal of room. It is to be remembered, also, that Zoroaster—who was certainly one of the most gifted men of his time—not only wrote down the principles of his religion, but also his own history, and the principles of most of the sciences then cultivated—in this and in some other respects reminding one of Emmanuel Swedenborg, between whom and Zoroaster there seems to have been nearly as much resemblance as the difference of age and country rendered possible. Zoroaster met with wonderful success in establishing his religion, although not without considerable opposition from the upholders of the old idolatries, so that in the course of a few years it became paramount in Bactria, Media, and Persia. Balkh, in the former country, was made the head-quarters—the metropolitan city of the system; and there Zoroaster fixed his residence, assuming himself the office of Archimagus, or high-priest, and spending his remaining days in teaching those who were to be the teachers of others. But his labors here were not of long duration, he having been slain, with all his priests, at Balkh, when that city was taken by storm by a fierce enemy of the Persian power.

Autor: JOHN KITTO