13 thoughts on “Zoroastrianism”

1. For the record: It was the state religion of the ancient Persian Empire, and to varying degrees right up to the defeat of the Sassanians by the Arabs in the 7th century.

2. I’m pretty sure Cyrus the Great didn’t try to imposed Zoroastrianism on his subjects. He allows the Babylon Exiled Jew to return to their homeland earned him a spot of honor in the Bible.

   1. Absolutely, it was – generally – quite tolerant, and Jews were not the only people allowed to return to their homeland. I was just reading an on-line reference about one of the greatest of the Sassinid kings, and he had wives who were Christians, Jews, etc. (Not to mention the Book of Esther in that context, though set at a much earlier date.)

      The Jews generally were treated well in Persia not only under the Zoroastrians, but pretty much even after the Islamic takeover, though there was apparently more frequent persecution then.

      So the present murderous attitude of Iran towards the Jewish people is ironically out of character for the vast stretch of history in the region.

3. Aren’t the Zoro freaks just an earlier version of the modern Jedi cultists?

   1. No, not at all. No history of forced conversion.

      1. Yeah, but Star Wars fans don’t do forced conversions either. Sometimes people get sucked into it, but it’s easy to deprogram them by propping their eyelids open and making them watch the prequels.

         I’ve never watched any Zoro movies, except I think “The Gay Blade”, so I’m not sure if there’s really anything to it.

4. I thought you had to be born into Zoroastrianism, but I imagine they would make an exception in this case since many ancestors of the Kurds were Zoroastrian.

   1. I wonder if some of that is just Indian culture, where you are what your parents were (caste, religion, etc) because that’s the way their world works.

5. Perhaps this is similar to the Deist movement in the early United States, as a reaction against sectarian lunacy (or religious lunacy in general) back in the old world.

6. FWIW, religious media are reporting that Muslim conversions to Christitianity (previously very rare) are now occurring by the thousands. I don’t expect to see the mainstream media giving much play to that story, unless they can somehow spin it as an example of Christian intolerance.

   1. They had been followers of the religion of peace. but US bombing and Western intervention has catastrophically radicalized them!

7. “No history of forced conversion.”

   That, I’m afraid, is incorrect. As the Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. IV: Eastern Roman Empire (1936, pp. 154-156), notes with regard to the history of Armenia:

   During the triumph of Rome and for many generations of Rome’s decline Armenia was ruled by a national dynasty related to the Arsacidae, kings of Parthia (B.C. 149 − A.D. 428). The country had been for many years a victim to the wars and diplomacy of Persia and Rome when in A.D. 386−7 it was partitioned by Sapor III and the Emperor Theodosius. From 387 to 428 the Arsacid kings of Armenia were vassals of Persia, while the westernmost part of their kingdom was incorporated in the Roman Empire and ruled by a count. […]

   When Ardashes, the last Arsacid vassal-king, was deposed in 428, Armenia was governed directly by the Persians, who already partly controlled the country. No strict chronology has yet been fixed for the centuries of anarchy which ensued (428−885), but it appears that Persian rule lasted for about two centuries (428−633). Byzantine rule followed, spreading eastward from Roman Armenia, and after two generations (633−693) the Arabs replaced the Greeks and held the Armenians in subjection until 862.

   In this long period of foreign rule, the Armenians invariably found a change of masters a change for the worse. The Persians ruled the country th{r}ough a succession of Marzpans, or military commanders of the frontiers, who also had to keep order and to collect revenue. With a strong guard under their own command, they did not destroy the old national militia nor take away the privileges of the nobility, and at first they allowed full liberty to the Katholikos and his bishops. As long as the Persians governed with such tolerance, they might fairly hope to fuse the Armenian nation with their own. But a change of religious policy under Yezdegerd II and Piroz roused the Armenians to defend their faith in a serious of religious wars lasting until the end of the sixth century, during which Vardan with his 1036 companions perished for the Christian faith in the terrible battle of Avaraïr (454). But, whether defeated or victorious, the Armenians never exchanged their Christianity for Zoroastrianism.

   On the whole, the Marzpans ruled Armenia as well as they could. In spite of the religious persecution and of a dispute about the Council of Chalcedon between the Armenians and their fellow-Christians in Georgia, the Armenian Church more than held its ground, and ruined churches and monasteries were restored or rebuilt towards the opening of the seventh century. Of the later Marzpans some bore Armenian names. The last of them belonged to the Bagratuni family which was destined to sustain the national existence of Armenia for many generations against untold odds. But this gleam of hope was extinguished by the fall of the Persian Empire before the Arabs. For when they conquered Persia, Armenia turned to Byzantium, and was ruled for sixty years by officials who received the rank of Curopalates and were appointed by the Emperor (633−693). The Curopalates, it appears, was entrusted with the civil administration of the country, while the military command was held by an Armenian General of the Forces.

   Though the Curopalates, too, seems to have been always Armenian, the despotic yoke of the Greeks was even harder to bear than the burden of religious wars imposed by the Persians. If the Persians had tried to make the Armenians worship the Sacred Fire, the Greeks were equally bent on forcing them to renounce the Eutychian heresy. As usual, the Armenians refused to yield.

   (/endQuote)

   It’s a sad history, of which that’s only a small part; but the upshot is that the Sassanian Zoroastrians did indeed attempt to force conversions, to such an extent that it resulted in bloody wars.

   1. OK, let me amend to “No recent history of forced conversion.” Which is pretty much true for every religion other than Islam.

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