[MikeSteelBe]

Thanks, that was interesting.

I find it fascinating that all major religions have some aspects of Christianity in their teachings. Examples would be self denial in Buddhism and fidelity in Islam.

They just all lack a God that would make a supreme sacrifice for his creation.

[Cronos]

True. though the ties of Zoroastrianism to Christianity are closer -- the Jewish concept of hell and a Messiah began to be emphasized only post the Exile when they were freed by the Persian King Cyrus the Great who defeated the Babylonians. And the "fleshing" out of angels is more post this period (Zoroastrianism too has angels)

Also, the Magi who came to visit Jesus were Zoroastrian priests (Magi is a term for a priest of Mazda)

Finally, Christianity spread the most in the Persian Empire in the first 300 years after Christ due to the Assyrian Church of the East (which is now the Chaldean Catholic and Assryaisn Church of the East) -- this Church spread right from Ctesiphon (in modern day Iraq) right up to Mongolia (a mongol tribe, the Naimans were Nestorian Christians -- today the Naimans are part of the Kazakh federation and Sunni Moslems) and even the Uighurs (in China's Xinjiang province -- but they had a vast empire from the time of Christ right up until the Mongol Empire and then again until conquest by the Ming and now destruction by the communist Chinese) were Christian, Nestorian Christian until a few 100 years ago -- now they are all Sunni Moslem