The Avesta

AVESTA The Scriptures of Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism, like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is a religion of a book or rather a religion of texts. From the beginning, Zarathushtras prophecies were embodied in words, though they were not written down until more than a millenary later. Zoroastrians have three thousand years of words in their heritage. The Avesta is the analogue of the Bible for Zoroastrians. Like the Bible, it is a collection of umpteen another(prenominal) texts from many eras, in different languages. The texts come from times that may be as early as 1700 BC and as late as 400 A.D. Until recently, the Avesta was known in the west as the Zend-Avesta. This is a misnomer and was caused by the misinterpretation of the word Zend. This part commentary in middle Persian (Pazand). The word Avesta is brunet in origin. The German scholars of the late 19th century (Geldner, Bartholomae, etc.) get it on that it is from the ancient Iranian word upasta meaning shelter or support. The Avesta scholar Dr. Ali Ja uttermostthestey has a different idea. He says that it is from the Indo-Iranian word a (not) and the root vid (know). That is, Avesta means unknown, which describes how the language of the Avesta - also known as Avestan - became unknown to the Zoroastrians of later centuries.

Jafareys interpretation is, as far as I know, original to him. We must remember that the Avesta as it has come down to the modern Zoroastrian world is nevertheless a collection of fragments and texts maintain from a far huge whole. Zoroastrianism, unlike Judaism, has suffered greatly from the destruction of its texts - first, in the conflagration bent by Al exander the invader in 330 B.C. which destro! yed the library at Persepolis, and later by invading Arabs and Mongols. Zoroastrianism had its Torah, its Talmud, its historical books, and its wisdom literature - and most of it is gone now. What we have is what could be uphold in priests memories and in precious manuscripts preserved by...If you want to have a full essay, order it on our website: OrderEssay.net

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