Sacred Texts of Zoroastrianism (beliefs, worship, Abraham, God, religions)

[Green Gaia]

Sacred Texts of Zoroastrianism

[kiwimac]

Thanks for the link. Remember too there are Gathas only Zoroastrians who consider much of the Avesta as ok to read but not scripture.

Try this link: http://www.zoroastrianism.cc/

See where that takes you!

Kiwimac

[anders]

Originally Posted by kiwimac

Thanks for the link. Remember too there are Gathas only Zoroastrians who consider much of the Avesta as ok to read but not scripture.

Try this link: http://tinyurl.com/4gpjj

The link didn't work for me, but I sure will dig into Zoroastrianism from that angle. Thanks! I know too little of that source of many beliefs in the Abrahamic and probably other religions, like the sacred fire in the OT, and perhaps the Hindu god Agni (or is he the source of the Zoroastrian fire worship?).

[Damien Bishop]

Great Resource Maize!! Though the link provided by Kiwi, with the cool Ahura Mazda Av didn't work for me. If you can access them, I find universities have alot of ancient texts online.

[alowyn]

Thanks, guys, great links.

here's another one i found which seems pretty good...
http://www.avesta.org/avesta.html

[michel]

Hi alowyn,I note that this is your first post on the forum, and I wanted to welcome you;

You might like to have a look at :- Articles for New Members ; from there, there is a link to the forum rules, which you ought to see.

You might also like to post on:- Are you new to ReligiousForums.com? to introduce yourself.

I look forward to seeing you around.

[ashai]

Ushta guys

As kiwimac says, there are Gatha only Zarathushtrians. In fact, I am one of them. But the problem with that name is that its historically innacurate. If you guys wish to research by reading Zaehner , Boyce and others, there is little question, but that, the Gathas are the only extant works of Zarathushtra and what came after was a compromise with Polytheism , and, a misrepresentation/misinterpretation of Zarathushtra as preaching Cosmic Dualism.

So its not Gatha only as in Gospel only. Rather ,to comapre it to Christianity, it would be a Jesus and Apostolic only version versus Gnostic Heresies/Christian interpretations, Except that, even that, is not quite right. For you see, what we know of Jesus is strictly second and third han , because we do not know if he wrote or composed anything ,and what we have is what others say he said. In the case of Zarathushtra we have his composition.

Therefore when he condemns, for example, Haoma and Mithra and the compromised religion that followed and inherited the mantle of "Zoroastrian" makes both into accepted liittle gods (yazatas) we have problem If we are to seek the truth, that is, we have a serious problem, if we acceppt as normative the compositions of this latter compromised version of Zarathushtra's teachings.

That is the issue. So Gatha only, to us, is Zarathushtra only. In addition, there is no Zarathushtrian teaching tradition. The books of the Latter religion , except the Sassanian ones who no one claims as sacred or authoritative, have no authors! That is, their authors are unknown. There are no Pauls, Peters, John's etc; in Zism; there is only Zarathushtra.

Ushta Ve
Ashaii

[kiwimac]

About sums it up really.

Is it possible to have a discussion thread set aside where we could post things like the Gathas so that they could be a site-wide resource? Or would that take up to much bandwidth?

[bartdanr]

Ushta Ashaii,

I've read Zaehner & Boyce, but I'm more of the opinion that Zarathushtra did, in fact, teach "cosmic" dualism rather than merely "ethical" dualism.

I guess I'm a quasi-"Gathas-only" Mazdayasnian. I think the Gathas are the original words of Zarathushtra, and I don't view the Younger Avesta as his words. However, I accept some of the traditions, practices and beliefs of the Younger Avesta (certainly not all). I think it is clear that the original vision of Zarathushra did eventually become corrupted into a religion little different than the pre-Zarathushtra religion of Iran that he condemned. However, I believe that there are elements preserved in those traditions that are authentic (even if not directly from Zarathushtra, there are elements that are natural outgrowths of him.)

Of course, I bear no ill-will towards the non-Cosmic dualist Mazdayasnians, even if I disagree with them.

Originally Posted by ashai

Ushta guys

As kiwimac says, there are Gatha only Zarathushtrians. In fact, I am one of them. But the problem with that name is that its historically innacurate. If you guys wish to research by reading Zaehner , Boyce and others, there is little question, but that, the Gathas are the only extant works of Zarathushtra and what came after was a compromise with Polytheism , and, a misrepresentation/misinterpretation of Zarathushtra as preaching Cosmic Dualism.