Zrstrn

“Meanwhile, under Zoroastrian influence, the many deities of the Vedic tradition may have moved toward the Oneness of All, a monism inclusive of creator and creation, an Eastern development seemingly opposite to related monotheistic developments in the West, requiring further discussion. While Zoroastrianism may have facilitated the spread of monotheism as an increasingly dominant belief throughout the Persian Empire and toward the west, the fact that this seminal belief had flourished for hundreds of years in the Jewish community almost next door to Zoroaster’s birthplace can hardly be mere coincidence. We may regard the revelation to Zoroaster at the river as genuine, but monotheism, or something approaching monism was not exactly new to him at that moment. His worldview was Vedic, but Zoroaster’s inspiration with respect to the Oneness of God was almost certainly Jewish. The exceptional Zoroastrian influence on Judaism during the Persian years of Israel’s Exile in Babylon may now be understood as but the closing of the circle. A belief in the Oneness of God came to Zoroaster and to the world from the Jews, and the Hebrew Torah was facilitated and financed by Zoroastrian monarchs in Babylon. Through the return to Jerusalem it was passed[…]”