[mountainbunny]

Amazing.

Good to see.

[kingu]

Hard to follow how old this religion is... 6th century BC, 1500 BC, he was a Kurd, he was Iranian... Has Islam so totally destroyed the region so many times that basic history has been lost? A 7-8 hundred year spread for when someone lived is a pretty wide gap.

All that said, kudos to those who have somehow kept the faith alive after hundreds of years of Islamic oppression.

[cotton1706]

John Adams spoke of Zoaroaster in his works.

[Terry L Smith]

I applaud these folks.

Christians should surrender a nod to them,
since the gifts given, and what the gifts were
for, were brought to the prophesied child
by those of Zoroaster.

[Organic Panic]

Thus spoke Zarathustra

[odds]

fyi

[Shadow44]

IMHO, since there are such similarities to Zoroastrianism and the Judeo-Christian tenets, I consider Zoroaster a prophet of God as well.

Jesus as the Saoshyant is a good way to evangelize to traditional Iranians.

I too would love to see Zoroastrianism return as the faith of the Iranian peoples, much better than the bloody heresy of Islam.

[vladimir998]

I rather would see them become Christians, but less Muslim believers would do the world some good!

[Cronos]

this is good news. very, very good news

[metmom]

I’ve met some Iranians in my life and they were wonderful people and did not consider themselves muslim.

What those people told me was that the regular people of Iran were not muslim. That was the group that has currently seized control of their country but true Iranians are Zoroastrians.

Zoroastianism never was eliminated, it just went underground.

[PGalt]

Very interesting, odds. Thanks for the post/ping (scrolling back through my pings while I was on vacation the 1st week of June). BTTT!

[Cronos]

Zoroastrianism most likely dates from the same period as the other great Indo-European philosophers: Mahavira and Buddha

Kingu -- the early history is not lost due to Islamic conquest, but was never really noted down -- Zoroastrianism dates to before the Achaemenids, so in a pre-historical sense to the Farsis. It may have been 1700 BC or it may have been 700 BC

I personally believe that the latter date makes more sense because:

1. The Mitanni and the Hittite -- two Aryanic peoples who lived in what is now "Kurdistan" worshipped "Hindu" rather Aryanic gods: both the devas/daevas and the asuras/ahuras -- Indra, Varuna, Mitra. This was as late as 1400 BC
2. there is no animosity between the two families of divine beings (the daevas/devas and asuras/ahuras) in the Rig Veda bu this appears later,
3. There is no mention of Zoroaster until the 6th century.
4. The Shahnameh talks about the conflict, but it dates to a later time

[Cronos]

hi — Baghdad dates to the Islamic era, approx 8th century AD, not to Zoroastrian times

[mikeIII]

The Kurds emphasize that they are not Arab and have descended from Persia.