Zorastrismo Giudaismo

The Question of Religious Influence: The Case of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity Author(s): James Barr Source: Journal
of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Jun., 1985), pp. 201-235 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1464919 Accessed: 20/04/2009 04:24
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Academyof Religion,LIII/2 Journalof the American
THE QUESTION OF RELIGIOUSINFLUENCE: THE CASE OF ZOROASTRIANISM, JUDAISM,AND CHRISTIANITY BARR JAMES
It is customaryto connect certain phenomenaof the later Old Testament and of postbiblical Judaismwith Iranianinfluence.The development within Jewishreligionof such mattersas angels,dualism,eschatology,and of the body is commonlyattributedto the impact of Iranthe resurrection ian religion.This would not be surprising,at least in theory;for the Jews
lived about two centuries under the Pax Persica, and some of their most important books were written in that time. It therefore is striking that, on the whole, biblical and Jewish studies have remained very much aloof from the study of Iranian language, literature, and religion. For most biblical scholars, the "Oriental background of the Old Testament" has meant the Semitic background, perhaps also the Egyptian and the Hittite, but much less the Iranian. The energetic effort invested in work on Akkadian and Ugaritic parallels stands in surprising contrast to the absence of similar attention to Persian materials. Part of the explanation for this circumstance lies in the attraction of novelty. The Avesta was known in the West from the end of the eighteenth century, and it therefore provided materials for exploration long before Akkadian, and still longer before Ugaritic, evidence was known. As usual, some of the theories built upon Avestan evidence came to seem highly unlikely, and it was doubtless felt that the resources of this literature had been fully exploited. Much of Old Testament scholarship in the 1980s shows little greater consciousness of the Iranian sources than existed before the mid-nineteenth century. One also must consider the problem of linguistic difficulty. For the student starting from Hebrew, the natural path of expansion is that opened up by Semitic linguistics, and the passage from Hebrew to Ugaritic or even Akkadian is a fairly easy and natural one. But Hebrew has practically nothing in common with Avestan or Pahlavi, and Iranian and Indo-European linguistics are unfamiliar and difficult for the Hebraist. There are, of course, scholars who have studied both Hebrew and
James Barr is Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University.
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Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Iranianmaterialstogether. Scandinaviain particularhas a traditionthat linked the two and related them to the historyof religions;the names of Soderblom,Nyberg, and Widengren come particularlyto mind. Among to biblical study, one who have made significantcontributions Iranianists thinksof H. H. Schaederand, more recently, M. J. Dresden. Yet comparativelyfew Old Testamentscholarsseriouslystudy Iranian materials.Bookslike I. Scheftelowitz,Die altpersischeReligion und das Judentum, are now little read. That bible of the oriental environment, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, containsno Iranianmaterials.It Pritchard's of Cyrusand Xerxes,but, characterisdoes include one or two inscriptions tically, these are translatedfrom their Akkadianversion,not from the Old I know of no fresh examinationof Persian,and handledby Assyriologists. the questionof Iranianinfluence by any majorOld Testamentscholarin recentyears.Actually,more has been done by some New Testamentscholars (Reicke:1960). Moreover,a number of new studies of Zoroastrianism have appeared,some of which make reference to contacts with the Old Testamentand Judaism.I think particularlyof the work of Mary Boyce, whose scholarshipis enhanced in profundityand in interest because her derivesnot only from booksbut alsofrom her knowledgeof Zoroastrianism living in the midstof the Zoroastrian community.The significanceof these studies has still to be noticed by many biblical scholars.There is room, therefore,for a freshlookat the subjectby an Old Testamentscholar.1 The purpose of this paper is not to offer any precise answer to the on Judaism (and thereby question of the influence of Zoroastrianism Christianity).Rather,it aims to investigate the problems,and the kinds of evidence and argument,that are involved in studying the question at all. In particular,it seeks to addressthree issues.First, what sortsof comparativeargumentsare effective when it is not certain that the religions concernedhave actually influencedone another?Second,to what degree is detailed linguistic evidence effective in solving these more general problems?Third, can we arrive at any statementof a kind of perception of another'sreligion that can help to explain the sort of interactionsthat may have taken place? It may be useful at the outset to say something about the impact of theologicaland other ideologicalpositions.On the whole, the questionof Iranianinfluence upon Judaismappearsless affected by ideology than do some other questions of the same kind. Many scholarsof the "biblical theology"period, for example, were very anxious to make it clear that biblical thought was entirely distinct from, and owed nothing to, Greek
1 The lack of expert knowledge in Iranianmatterswill be sufficientlyevident in what follows. I can only say that I have done what I could to gain some slight competence in the languages concerned and to take advantage of discussion with Iranian specialists where I could do so.
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thought. The absence of Greek influence was for them almost a matter of principle.But these same scholarswere often willing to admit Iranian influenceupon Jewishand biblical eschatology.For them, Greekthought was closer and more real, and the idea of its influence upon the biblical tradition representeda sort of challenge and danger. Iranian influence, however, seemed more remote and less of a threat;it thereforecould be freely discussed and, if necessary, acknowledged.2In this respect the questionof Iranianinfluenceseems to be a more open one ideologically. Nevertheless,this is not always so, and the effect of ideological considerationsupon our questioncan often be traced. Scheftelowitzhas been criticized on the ground that he could not bring himself to admit, despite his long studies of the question, that Judaism, his own religion, really owed anything to any foreign religion.3 J. H. Moulton, better known among biblical scholarsfor his work on the Greek papyri and the vocabulary of the New Testament, had a complicated set of religious evidence.4 values, which much affected his handling of the Zoroastrian R. C. Zaehner(1970:1-39, especially 30-31) displayed in his later works
2 0. Cullmannis an obviousexample. As I pointed out (1969:165n.),Cullmannstrongly insistedon the complete contrastbetween the biblical view and "all religiousand philoYet he found it possibleand even naturalto admit that Iranian religion sophicalsystems." agreed with biblicalin seeing time "asa line." 3 Accordingto Duchesne-Guillemin (1958:87),Scheftelowitz,if he finds the same fact on both sides, "refuses to deduce from it an Iranianorigin even if it is attestedmuch later on the Jewishside." 4 Duchesne-Guillemin(ibid.) says that Moulton found it difficult, as a Christian,to admit a large Iranianinfluence on his religion. It is doubtful, however, that Moultonis type of liberalChristianity(accomrightly assessedby him. As I understandit, Moulton's panied by missionaryzeal!) worked in a different way from what this suggests.Moulton had an extremelyhigh opinion of Zoroastrianism and assignedit a sort of validity close to that of his own Christianity.Zoroastrianism properly understood,and taken at its best, had thereforea positive role in relation to Christianitysimilar to that which-on traditional Christianunderstandings-the Old Testamenthad had. Nevertheless"Israel learnta profounderlessonstill"(Moulton,1913:331).If Moultonwas cautiousin recognizingclear Zoroastrian influencesupon Israel and thereby upon Christianity,therefore,this was not because he was unwilling to assign Iranian religion a position of comparabilitywith his own religion. The contrarywas the case. Moultonwanted to accord to Zoroastrianism a greater degree of comparabilitywith Christianitythan was historicallyjustifiablethrough the influence of latish Iranian religion upon latish Judaism.He makes this clear in his disagreementwith Bousset(ibid.: 321). If Iranianinfluence was to be explained through historicalchannels, it would mean practicallythat "Zarathushtra himself is to be struck out of the list of the prophetswho contributedto the development of Israel'sreligion" own work was for Moulton of primary significance;but it was not (ibid.). Zoroaster's accessiblethroughhistoricalchannelsto Jews of the last four decades B.C., who knew Iranian religiononly throughthe distortedforms producedby the Magi,the villainsof Moulton's drama.Hence the relationof Zoroastrianism to Christianity for Moultonhad to be a relationof essencesratherthan one of historicalderivation.Moulton's case is a good example of the complicationsinvolved in relating the religion of the modern scholar to his of ancient religiouscomparison. understanding
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a deep hostility toward the Old Testament, which he contrasted with Christianvalues. Such a gradation of values could easily have induced him to assign to Iranian influence, rather than to inner development starting in the Old Testament, elements he judged to be of positive importancein later Christianity. Theological and other ideological convictions, then, do have a certain influence on people's judgment of the probabilityof Iranian influence on Judaismand Christianity.Nevertheless,for many the question remains a fairly open one; they do not feel that their religious convictions will be compromisedif Iranianinfluence is admitted, or if, on the contrary,it provesnot to have been effective after all. If these remarksmay sufficeas preamble,we may turn to the discussion of our question itself. The argumentsfor Iranian influence on the later Old Testamentand on postbiblicalJudaismproceed on two levels, one particularand one general. The particular argument depends on detailed pieces of evidence, such as the name of the demon Asmodeusin Tobit. We shall consider it later on. The general argument works from wide probabilities. On one side, it comes from the general feeling that a simply must have had an religion as great and noble as Zoroastrianism effect on Judaismand Christianity.Mary Boyce expressesit thus: "So it was out of a Judaismenriched by five centuriesof contact with Zoroastrianism that Christianityarose in the Parthian period, a new religion with roots thus in two ancient faiths, one Semitic, the other Iranian" (1979:99).Similarly,Zaehner(1961:57),writing about rewardsand punishments,heaven and hell, says that "the similaritiesare so great and the historicalcontext so neatly apposite that it would be carryingscepticism altogethertoo far to refuse to draw the obvious conclusion"that, in this area at least, Judaismand Christianityare dependent on Zoroastrianism. Accordingto this viewpoint, the importanceand the influenceof Zoroastrianismare so obvious that, on these quite general grounds,it is unreasonable scepticism to doubt that important elements in Judaism and had their ultimateoriginsin Iran. Christianity However, the general argument also commonly depends on another factor, the confidencethat the developmentknown in the later Old Testament and in Judaismis not intelligible except on the basis of external influences. In other words, it implies that the internal dynamics of Israelite-Judaic religion could not possibly alone have led to the phenomena we find in the later sources.A good example of this is the influential and widely esteemed article of K. G. Kuhn, "Die Sektenschrift und die iranische Religion."5 Of it Martin Hengel (1974: I, 230) writes, "The Iranian derivation of this conception [i.e., that of two spirits, the
5 Cf. similarlyDupont-Sommer.
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evil spirit and the spirit of truth] has been demonstrated since the fundamental studies of K. G. Kuhn."6 Kuhn works in a simple way. He lines up the marked similarities between Iranian texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls and then argues that the conceptions shared by the two could not possibly have developed out of the earlier Old Testament religion. He indicates the differences and thus, as he sees it, shows how these conceptions, borrowed from Iran, were developed in a peculiarly Jewish way. But his claim that the conceptions could not possibly derive from a purely Jewish origin is, of course, easily subject to challenge. All that is required is a hypothesis that could account for the same facts on an inner-Jewish basis. Such an argument would not have to prove that its hypothesis is right; it would need only to show that there is a reasonable hypothesis that can provide an explanation through internal Jewish development. Such a hypothesis would make it impossible to claim that the phenomena can only be the result of
Iranian influence.7 6 But Hengel goes on at once to note the prevalenceof similar"dualistic" traditionsin the Hellenisticworld;and this in principleopens up the possibilitythat the Qumranideas derive from other channelsthan direct contactwith Iran. 7 The discoveryof the Dead Sea Scrollshas had an ambiguouseffect on the entire discussion of our question. On the one hand it has, in the minds of some scholars-Kuhn, Dupont-Sommer, Gaster-greatly confirmedthe idea of Iranianinfluenceon Judaismand therebythe validityof the comparativeapproachbased upon it. The same time, however, saw an increasein the degree of doubt about such influenceand cautionin the assessment of evidence alleged to exemplify it. Among Iranianspecialists,Widengrenand Zaehner appear to take the evidence as clear confirmationof active influence; Frye (1962), by contrast,is very negative on precisely this question. He points out that precise textual are lacking;that the analogies,like the pair "childrenof light and children of darkness," occurrenceof Iranianloanwordsprovesnothingabout religiousinfluences; and he ends up with the question,"Maynot the unorthodox Jewish beliefs of the Essenesbe traceableto the soil of Palestine,to the Judaismof that period with the apocryphalbooks,and above all to the Zeitgeist?"Similarly,Colpe had assertedthat the Iranianand the Jewish evidence in both cases restedupon a spontaneous so that there was processof hypostatization, no transferencefrom one circle of religion and tradition to another. Among less wellknownscholars,if D. Winstonaffirmsthat Persianliterarysourceshad alreadymade their markon 2 Isaiahand on Daniel, that "a spate(!)of Iraniandoctrinesfound their way into the apocrypha" (187), and that the Qumranmaterialis definitely of Iranianorigin, even though "the Iranian impact seems to have been along the periphery of Judaismonly" if it was as pervasiveas he himself maintains!), R. G. Jonesat (210:surelya contradiction, about that same time was arguing mainly in favor of caution and and against what he called a prioriacceptanceof externalinfluence.Duchesne-Guillemin (1958:93)makes the further point that, if the Dead Sea documentsderive from Iranianreligion, it is strange that they shouldreflectso clearly the very early Zoroastrianism of the Gathas,considering the great changes that Iranian religion had undergone since then-a point similar to Moulton's sentimentsmentionedabove. "Thesurvivalof a pure Gathicdoctrine up to the time of the Manual [of Discipline] would be something of an enigma, knowing what changeshad intervenedin Iranianreligionsince the days of the prophet." Kuhn,however, had sought to defend himself against this argumenton the groundsthat the Gathaswere
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It seems, in fact, that the tendency to offer inner-Jewish explanations is increasing,so that developmentsin Jewish apocalypticare understood as, shall we say, reactivationsof ancient Canaanitemyth rather than as productsof late and Iranian influence. Thus Paul Hanson writes, "The basic schema of apocalyptic eschatology has evolved in Israel and the whole development is perfectly comprehensible within the history of Israel'sown community and cult. Hasty recourse to late Persian influence is thereforeunnecessaryand unjustifiable" (60). This may be right or wrong in itself, but obviouslythe merely general argumentthat Iranianinfluence must be invoked is insufficient.At this point the general argument necessarilybecomes dependent on the particularargument,that is, on the provisionof some detailed evidence to show that Iranianinfluencereally did take place. To put it in another way, the general argument that Iranian influence must have taken place needs to be supplementedby information about mechanism and motivation. What was the mechanism through which Iranianreligiousinfluence worked upon the Jews? And what was the motivation that led Jews to suppose that Iranian religion and its categories had something positive to offer them? At least some sort of hypothesis about mechanism and motivation is required if the bare bones of the argument for Iranian influence are to be filled out with flesh. Conversely,it seems that in these comparativediscussions the character of Iranian religion has often been presented selectively, in a way that emphasizesthe elements that people deem most relevant for Jewish (or Christian)religion. But such a proceduredoes not well explain why these elements were selected from the totality of the Iranian religious world-pictureand why other elements within that religioustotality were neglected and ignored. It is possible that Old Testament studies may offer some suggestionsin these regards,and to these we now turn. We begin with the example of a biblical passagethat might, at least in theory, benefit from explanation against an Iranian background. I refer to the story of creationas told in Genesis 1. Iranianreligion, as will be suggestedagain below, appearsto have a stronglycosmologicalcharacter. Could aspects of Genesis 1 be understoodas reflecting this background? Mary Boyce (1979:52; 1982:43-47) suggests that the idea of creation in the Old Testament arose through contact with Iran.8 The
the only text concerningwhich there was agreementin dating (310, n. 1). 8 The second volume of her History became availableto the writeronly after the argument of this paper was complete, and it was possible to take account of it only in the notes and in minor modifications. She supposes(46f.) that a Zoroastrian of Cyrus "agent" may well have travelledto Babylonto conversewith Second Isaiahabout these religious matters,which were of political importanceto Cyrusin his campaigns.In this she follows in part MortonSmith. The main point of MortonSmith'sarticle, indeed, is not the demonstration of Iranianreligiousinfluenceas such, but the use by 2 Isaiahof Persianliterary
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liberal acts of Cyrus meant that the Jews afterwardsentertained warm feelings for the Persians,and "thismade them more receptive to Zoroastrian influences." The evidence is in Deutero-Isaiah: Cyrus was hailed as a abnormal "Messiah"-certainly highly procedure in Jewish religious she "the same practice-and, prophetcelebratesYahwehfor the goes on, first time in Jewishliteratureas Creator,as AhuraMazdahad been celebrated by Zoroaster." As soon, therefore, as the Jews came into contact with Iranian religion, this new encounter served as a catalyst for the doctrineof creation. ProfessorBoyce does not discuss Genesis 1, but it is an obviouscontinuation of her ideas to do so.9 It is at least arguable that Genesis 1 representsa later stage of thought about creation and a responseto the questionsraised in Isaiah 40-66 (Barr, 1968-69, 1974?). I do not doubt that the main originsof the ideas of Genesis 1 lie in Mesopotamia on the one hand and in indigenous Jewish problems and discussionson the other. Nevertheless,there are aspects of this important and impressive passagethat are not fully explained on these bases. For example, is there any Mesopotamianprecedent for the tightly schematized and numerically controlled account of creation in Genesis 1? If the account came from the Persianperiod, certain aspects of it could have been framed in responseto Iraniancosmologicalideas. In standardZoroastrian conceptions, AhuraMazdathroughSpenta Mainyu (AugmentativeSpirit)brings into being the six "entities": 1. Vohu Manah(GoodMind),2. Asa Vahista ([best] Truth),3. Xsathra(Dominion),4. Armaiti(Devotion),5. Haurvatat (Wholeness),6. Ameretat (Immortality).These, the Amesa Spentas,have respective connections with the series of creations, namely, (1) cattle, (2) fire, (3) metals, (4) earth, (5) water, (6) plants (Boyce, 1979:21-24). There may be, behind the scheme, a seventh;Gershevitchconsidersthat Ahura Mazda himself had his own special creation, that of man, who comes at the beginning of the series (11-12). Thus we have a clear numerical grouping around the figures six or seven. This could have suggestedthe clear numericalclassificationof creation in Genesis.If this were so, then the Israeliteaccount could have respondedto the Iranian plurality of creations, each under its separate entity, by organizing all underone finite and complete creationby the one God. Moreover, consider the conspicuous absence of angels from Genesis 1. In this carefully organized chapter, there is only God and the created world. The existence of what we call angels seems to be there on the margin and to be assumed;but angels do not create anything, and their own creation is not related. Could this be a negative reaction
forms. Nevertheless, by implication his article also supports the idea that the cosmological interest of 2 Isaiah comes from Persian sources. In that case the motivation comes through the rhetorical effects caused by political needs. 9 But see now, briefly, Boyce (1982:192).
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against the idea that each stage of creation was presided over by a particularmediate superhumanentity? Finally, why is there emphasis, so evident in Genesis 1, on the fact that the creation was good-an element for which, so far as I know, no close Mesopotamianparallel has been found, and which is so strongly emphasizednowhereelse in the Old Testament-and why is there strong interestin the difference between the "kinds" of animals?In the Zoroastrian conception, not all things are good; some are good, some are mixtures of good and bad, some are really bad. Among animals, some, like the dog, are ahuric and belong to the realm of the good. Indeed, to this the dog receives not just the leavings of human day in Zoroastrianism food, but the best of the food before the humansget any.10On the other hand there are the daevic animals,which belong to the side of darkness, the so-calledxrafstra (Boyce, 1979:44).Somethinganalogouswas known to the Greeks already through Herodotus (with Plutarch it is "water the more one kills of such animals, the better, for the physical rats"):11 destructionof such animalsliterally reducesthe total power of evil in the world. Could this furnisha reasonwhy Genesis 1 showsan interestin the for Jews to eat, are expressly "creepingthings,"which, though "unclean" stated to be "good" creationsof God? Thus it is not difficult for the imaginative interpreterto think of ways in which creation passagesin the Old Testamentcould be illuminated if they were seen againstan Iranianbackground.If this were to be accepted, however, it would not necessarily mean that Jewish religion "took over" large elements from Iranian;rather, it would suggest that Iranian religion acted as a catalyst and caused the Jewish religion to define itself by contrastas much as by imitation. Such an interpretation would follow ProfessorBoyce in agreeing that the presence of Iranian religion affected the formulation of developed Jewish literature about creation, but without suggesting that there was no Jewish idea of creation before that time.
10 On this, see the vivid portrayal of Boyce (1977:139-46 and passim, along with Plate Ib). 11 Herodotusi. 140 reads: "The magi with their own hands kill everything except for dog and man, and make great rivalrytherein, killing alike ants, snakes,and other creepconsiders ing things and flying things."Cf. Boyce (1979:76). Moultoncharacteristically this to be an aspect purely belonging the the Magiandeformationof the religion:"It is purely Magian, alien alike from genuine Persian religion and from Zarathushtra's Reform"(398). Plutarch,De Iside et Osiride 46 (Griffiths, ed.: 192), expressesmuch the same idea, but clearly relatedto Zoroastrian dualism:"Theybelieve that among plantstoo some belong to the good god and others to the evil daemon, and that among animals some, such as dogs, birds,and land hedgehogs,belong to the good god, whereaswater rats belong to the bad deity, and for this reason they regard as happy whoever kills a great number of them." For the killing of such creatures,notably of frogs, in more modern times, see Boyce (1977:179).
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As an imaginative exercise, such an interpretationmay be quite stimulating.Before we go farther with it, however, we should stop and face a body of Old Testamentevidence that points in the oppositedirection. Whatevermay be the case with the creationstory, we have to consider the strikingindifferenceof other partsof the Old Testamentto the religionof Iran.12 The rise of the PersianEmpire brought into the Middle East a religion that in structureand type was entirely different from the religions, of basically Semitic peoples, with which the Hebrews were reasonably familiar.But it is very difficultto find in the Bible any recognitionof the fact. What is noticed, and clearly referred to, is the change of power that affected the position and destiny of the Jews. Belshazzarwas slain and Darius the Mede took the kingdom; Cyrus came to say that Jerusalem would be rebuilt and the temple re-founded. Clearly the rise of Persia proved fortunatefor the Jews, and for this reasonit is noted that the blessing and favor of the God of Israel rests upon the Iranian
monarchs.13
But this does not mean that the Old Testamentis interestedin their religion.Indeed, it manifestlyis not. Nowhere does the readerof the Old Testament learn that these monarchsare worshippersof Ahura Mazda and derive their power from him. Nehemiah was the cupbearerof ArtaxerxesI and presumablyin a position to know, in the colloquial phrase, what made him "tick,"but he gives no indication of the king's religion. What was Nehemiah's reaction to the emblem of Ahura Mazda prominently displayed on the palace walls of Persepolis(Zaehner,1961: plate "Allthat was built by me 2)? What did he make of the king's inscription: was built by the favor of Ahura Mazda. Me may AhuraMazda together with the gods protect, and my kingdom, and what has been built by me...." (Kent: 153, A'Pa = 148,XPb, 26-30)? Moreover, the Zoroastrian calendar appearsto commence in 441 B.C.,three years or so after Nehemiah'sconversationwith the king, but again Nehemiah's memoirs leave no hint of such a development.14 And what would Nehemiah, presumablya monotheisticJew, have said had he seen the following inscription of Artaxerxes II at Susa,where he himself had served:"By the favor of Ahura Mazda, Anaitis and Mithras this palace I built. May Ahura Mazda, Anaitis and Mithrasprotect me from all evil, and that which I have built may they not shatternor harm"(Kent:154)?
12 This aspectseems to have received much less attentionin scholarship. 13 Dandamaev (1976:233)says that the biblical writers exaggerate the goodwill of the Persianmonarchstowardsthe Jewish religion, wishing to encouragetheir own people by telling them that the great kings of Media and Persiahad recognizedtheir God and given protectionto those who believed in him. 14 On the calendar see Duchesne-Guillemin(1962:120-25) and Boyce (1979:70-74, 92-93; 1982:243-50).
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If Nehemiah knew about this sort of development,or about the religious structurethat undergirdedit, he said nothing about it. In the Bible the Persianemperorsspeak in terms not of the actual name of their own but of "themost High god, AhuraMazda,and still less of the other gods,15 God"or "theGod of Heaven,"termsreadilyassimilableto Jewishreligion. It was open to Jewsto understand this as if it referredto the one true God, the God of Israel.This was no mere fiction of biblical style, for the EleFor phantinelettersshow that it was actualand normalin correspondence. the letter to of addressed reads "The Health 302, example, your Bigvai, lordshipmay the God of Heavenseek after exceedinglyat all times"(Cowley: 111, 113)). This usage concealed ratherthan disclosedthe actual perof the emperor's own religion. sonalityand structure the biblical writers about the Persian empire was What impressed not the religion that it believed and practiced but its court ceremonial and its means of power. Cyrus writing his decree for the rebuilding of the temple, Darius digging it out of the archives and confirming it (Ezra 6), Nehemiah taking wine to the king and being frightened when asked why he was sad, Darius wanting to support Daniel but unable to do so because he had been tricked into making his decision unalterable, Ahasueruswith his 127 provincesand his court rules, that a woman had to have a beauty treatmentof great complexity, that petitionersmust be instantlyput to death unless the king stretchesout his sceptre to themall these are the sort of thing that interested the biblical writers when as we they wrote about the Persianempire. Its actual religiousstructures, know them from Iraniansources,are left largely unnoticed.Daniel talks in the same civil way to Nebuchadnezzarand to Darius,and there is no recognitionor comment that Darius' religion is a world apart from that of ancient Babylonia.Of course, all these stories of good relationswith foreign potentateswere stylistically modeled on that one great pattern, Joseph'srelations with Pharaoh in Genesis. The fact remains that the Daniel traditions,which doubtlessgo back to memoriesof Persiantimes, show no vivid interest in the religious peculiarity of the Iranian world. The main impact made by life in the Persianempire is that it provided colorful pictures of how things were at the imperial court, from the viewpointof power and ceremony. This is not to say that the religiousatmospherehad no effect at all, for it may well have generated some legends and motifs of the tales. Take, for instance,the idea that the laws of the Medes and Persianswere There seems to be no evidence that their laws were any "unchangeable." more free from amendment and adjustment than those of any other
15 Anaitisor Anahitaand Mithrasmay be construedas older Indo-European deities who had been thrustinto the background monotheisticimpulse,but by the originalZoroastrian who were now coming back into recognitionwithin the religion.
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people. The motif may be a legend ratherthan a reflectionof the realities of life in Iran. It might be a relic of older Indo-Iranian myth, for the God Varuna, one of the greatest of the Veda, was dhrtavrata 'whose laws are established'; his ordinancesare constantlysaid to be fixed (Gershevitch:6; Boyce, 1979:23).A feature of mythology may thus have been transferredto the actual Persian constitutionby the Hebrew storyteller or the traditionbefore him; for him it hardly matteredwhether or not it was an accurateaccount of Persianlife. In any case, Darius in Daniel 6 was dealing not with a law, but with an administrativeruling only just made by himself. The point was that ill-wishersinveigled the innocent monarch into a position from which, even when his policy produced unintended results, absolutely no reversal could be considered. Such a legend may have a religiousbackground,but it tells us nothing about the actual religionof Darius'stime.16 To this considerationof literary content in the Old Testament we may add the more detailed evidence of loanwordsfrom Persian.These occur in both Hebrew and Aramaic,but within the Bible there are probably more in the Aramaicsections,depending on how one counts them. Naturally,even if a word of Persianorigin appearsin Hebrew, this does not necessarily mean actual contact of Jews with Iranians;for many Persianwords may have been adopted first into Aramaicand then from there into Hebrew. In adopting them, Jews may not have known anything of their origin or their context and meaning within Iranian society.17Even without this caution, it seems that Persianloanwordsin Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic of this earlier period are seldom terms of the Iranianreligiousworld and seldom show signs of acquaintancewith the major ideological systems of the Iranian people. Thus, there is no loanword,so far as I know, from ahura 'lord',or from drug 'lie', or from
16 If it should be true that the relation of the four world-empiresto a scheme of four differentmetals (Daniel 2) came from a Persiansource,I would tend to class it also in this way. The scheme was a literary figure, hardly an actual element in Persianreligion. In any case, it seems still uncertainin what way the authorof Daniel came upon this figure. In an impressivearticle, Momigliano (1980: especially 161) judges that the scheme of metals, as applied to a series of reigns or historicalperiods,may be Persian,but that the scheme of four world-empiresis Greek, and that there is no Persian precedent for the attachmentof the metals to world-empiresas distinct from Persianinternal events. The connectionwas more probablythe originalidea of the authorof Daniel. Also see Flusser, and Collins.Collins takes the Persianparallelsas good illustrations for the Daniel material but seems to imply that Iran is not the basic sourceof the imagery. 17 Frye seems to have a different emphasis in his article in the Eilers Festschrift showsthat ideas and conceptsare (1967:78)where he says that "theadoptionof loanwords often borrowedalong with the words"and his article on Qumran(1962:26)where he says that "Iranianwords in the Dead Sea Scrollswould not be extraordinary and then would prove nothingabout religiousinfluence."The latter point of view is on the whole followed here, except where there is a special reasonto the contrary.
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arta, asa 'truth', or from magu 'Magian',18 or from fravasi 'guardian spirit'. The element arta- is found in names like Artaxerxes, 'artahsasta, which occurs in the Bible, but there is no evidence that anyone knew what the arta- element represented. It is quite likely that Hebrew din at Esther 1:13, kol yodece dat wi-din, is from Avestan daena 'religion' and therefore distinct from the Semitic din 'judge, judgment'.19 But even if so, it is an isolated example, and the actual meaning of the word continued to be 'judgment' in Hebrew; the Syriac cases with the sense 'religion' are much later. As for dit itself, this is certainly a Persian loanword in Hebrew and later became the dominant Jewish word for 'religion'. In this it corresponds to Arabic din, but in the Bible it does not mean 'religion' but 'law, decree', even 'practice', and so in the "laws" of the Medes and Persians; this was, of course, the actual Persian meaning. So it was not borrowed with a specifically religious meaning. In later times, by contrast, borrowings directly dependent on Zoroastrian religion appear in Aramaic/Syriac. A striking example is the Syriac daywa 'devil', daywana 'demoniac', found in the Gospels, for example, Matthew 4:24. This comes from post-Christian times and is readily explicable as such; the Syriac-speaking church sought for a term for the demons and demoniacs of the Gospels and found one that was intelligible in their milieu. Thus the evidence of loanwords, for what it is worth, seems to show no strong evidence of Jewish awareness of the Iranian religious structures. Conversely, loanwords do demonstrate the point already made on the basis of literary content, namely that Jews knew a lot about the administrative workings and court procedures of the empire. Thus we have words for 'satrap', for 'magistrate' (detabraya [Daniel 3:2], from data- 'law' and bar- 'bear'), for heralds and for assorted astrologers and the like; there are also phrases for legal sanctions and punishments, like having one's limbs removed (Daniel 2:5) or having one's house made a dunghill (Daniel 2:5). Tirshatha, a title used in the Nehemiah cycle, is another administrative title or mark of respect ('venerable, reverend' or the like); although the Iranian basis for it does not seem very clear, it can
18 The term rab-mag of Jeremiah 39:3, 13 is certainly not Iranian, and is related to Akkadian rab-mugi (von Soden: 667b), as is obvious from the fact that the reference is to Babylonian functionaries. It was in fact used, nevertheless, by Moulton as evidence of the presence of Magi (187f., 230, 430). 19 So G. R. Driver (1955:90, n. 2). The suggestion is one of Driver's best, and is doubtless followed by The New English Bible with its "all who were versed in law and religion." The idea was doubtless suggested by Syriac din 'religion', dinig, 'ascetic', both from this Iranian root, and cited already in Brockelman (151b), as acknowledged by Driver, and perhaps also by still earlier discussions, such as Scheftelowitz (1901: 82ff.), which discusses diniye' at Ezra 4:9, and implies the same Iranian root for it.
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hardly be anything else.20 Some other words are rather general terms: raz 'secret' in the Aramaic of Daniel,21 zan 'sort, kind' (Psalms 144:12, 2 Chronicles 16:14?), pitgam 'word' (Qohelet 8:11, Esther 1:20), nahsir 'pursuit, persecution, battle', or the like (1QM 1.9).22 All this suggests that linguistically, at least, Persian contact with Jews was slow to take effect and in the long run rather slight. It is interesting to think again of Nehemiah in this connection. Presumably he could speak Old Persian,23 since he could hardly have carried on his conversation with Artaxerxes without it. But there are few Persian words in Nehemiah's own memoirs. Perhaps he is the first to use pardes 'park' in Hebrew; and he was not using the word generally but speaking of an actual Persian pairidaeza, the king's enclosed forest (Nehemiah 2:8; the word occurs also in Canticles and Qohelet, once each). The technical terms used by Nehemiah tend to be Akkadian rather than Persian. Tirshatha is used of him, but not by him in his firstperson memoir. On the whole Nehemiah's speech and writing is rather pure Hebrew. So far, then, these arguments suggest that, at least in the first century
20 The word is usuallyexplainedas related to a form that would in Avestanbe tarsta-, passive participleof the root 'fear', cognate with Sanskrittras-, and hence the meaning would be 'reverend,venerable'or the like; so, for instance,Scheftelowitz(1901:93), who has been generally followed by lexicographers, though his actual argumentationis far from convincing:the putative Iranianform is not at all similar to the Hebrew, and the analogousSanskrittrasta means 'frightened',not 'reverend'(Macdonell:112). But until somethingbetter is suggested,Scheftelowitz's suggestionmay have to be allowed to stand. 21 Frye (1967:79)raisesquestionsabout the meaningof raz, which he translates as 'Mysterium'. He says that the originalsense in Avestanis 'loneliness,remoteness,hiddenness', that the transitionto 'mystery'is still unexplained,and that the real meaning of the word in the Scrollsis still unclear. Since 'secret'is the Pahlavi meaning (Mackenzie:71, 132), however, one may question whether this doubt is justified.Widengren (1960:55)says it form. goes back to a non-Persian 22 Frye (ibid.) discussesthis word and appearsto hold that, even if adopted from Iranian, it is no sign of profoundinfluenceof the thoughtof Iran upon the Qumrancommunity. He seems to favor Rabin'ssuggestion(132) that the word is of Hittite origin, saying that the sense thus arrivedat, 'terror,panic', fits better than the Iraniansense 'hunt, hunting'. Nevertheless,the Hittite derivation seems a very remote and unlikely suggestion. The term seems clearly Iranian,and perhapsonly a developmentof sense at Qumranhas to be supposed.OtherJewishsourcesuse it with the sense 'hunt',e.g., TargumOnkelosto Genesis 25:27, here in the form nahsirakan or nahsirkan (so pointed in the Targum) 'hunter'. See, against Carmignac (363), who doubted the existence of this word, de Menasce (213-14) and Yadin (260). Syriac has, for instance, nhsyrtn' 'hunter' (Peshitta Genesis 10:9), cf. the Syriac senses in general (Brockelmann; 424). The most interesting study is by Asmussen.He thinks that the word indicatesan ecstatic and almost orgiastic devotionto the hunt, quite unlike the biblicaltraditionof thoughton the subject,and that for this reason the term was adopted into Hebrew; it was evidence of a "HellenisticParthianinfluence" in Palestine. 23 It is often said that Aramaicwas the lingua franca of the PersianEmpire,but this can hardlymean that the emperorsthemselvesspoke it in their own palace.
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or so of Persian rule, Jews who were in contact with Iran paid rather little attention, favorable or unfavorable, to the religion of the dominant nation. If they knew the peculiar characteristics of that religion, they kept them to themselves and said nothing about them. The picture is not much different in the Elephantine community. These Jews had come to Egypt with Cambyses in 525 and had been there as soldiers of the Persian power for about one hundred and twenty years when the letters were written; and they had to deal with Persian governors with names like Bagohi and Waidrang. But, though religious problems arose in several ways, there seems to be little influence of Iranian religion on Jews: the difficult problems for religious interpretation in the names containing elements like Bethel, Herem, 'Anat, and the like are problems within Semitic and Canaanite religion. There is nevertheless certainly contact with Iranian religion. We have a broken piece in Elephantine 37.6 (Cowley: 133) which comments that a certain man, appointed over a province, is a mzdyzn, a word identical with the Persian mazdayasna 'worshipper of [Ahura] Mazda'.24 A break in the letter unfortunately leaves us ignorant what more was said about him, though the impression given is not favorable and rather suggests that, because he was a Mazda-worshipper, the governor could not be relied on to support Jewish interests and property. The evidence is compatible with the supposition that in general Jews liked best to know very little of the religion of the imperial authorities and to keep only very limited contact with it. At this point we may introduce the evidence of the book of Tobit, both one particular piece of evidence and the general purport of the book as a whole. A citation from T. W. Manson may be a good starting point: The clearest evidence of Persian influence on Jewish theology, apart from the general similarityof the two systems,is the use of the name Asmodeusfor the chief of the demons. This name is borroweddirectly from the Persian 'AeshmaDaeva, the demon of violence and wrath in the later Avesta'.(154) In Manson's case, this argument serves to demonstrate that the organization of many evil spirits into a spiritual kingdom of evil is mainly due to the influence of ideas taken from Iranian religion. The "general similarity of the two systems" is a major point that will be considered later. First, however, we may concentrate on the detailed argument from the name Asmodeus. The philological problems are complicated, and not every detail can be treated here. In particular, it should not be assumed that all Iranian
24 For more recent comment, which, however, does not speculate about the religious judgements involved, see Porten (55).
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specialistsaffirm the Iranian derivation of the name Asmodeus;on the

contrary, a number of them remark on uncertainties in it.25 The actual name of the Iranian demon is Aesma, and the element daeva 'demon' is another word. The supposition that the name in Tobit derives from this requires that the two words should be taken together, the d of daeva providing the d of Asmodeus. But, though Aesma is a daeva, it appears that in early Iranian sources he is usually called only Aesma, not Aesma daeva; the Pahlavi form of the name is, similarly, esm.26 The customary theory depends, therefore, on taking as one name two words, one of which is a name in the original and the other a description; but these two words in Iranian sources apparently do not normally occur together in this way. This is not an insuperable difficulty, but it makes the identity of the two terms less obvious than might at first be supposed.27 There is some phonological difficulty in tracing back the form Asmodeus (the Greek forms are BA Ao-AoSavs;S Aro-obaios; Tobit 3:8, 17) to an Iranian original Aesma. One would have expected the Hebrew/Aramaic form to have a first vowel e or i. If din is really 'religion' and derived from dapna in Esther, this would well illustrate the expectation of an i vowel here, while the -e- of pardes likewise comes from this diphthong (Persian pairidaeza). The initial a vowel is therefore puzzling.28 The uncertainties of the Iranian derivation have to be compared with the possibilities of a Semitic derivation. Asmodeus in Tobit must be the same demon who in Targum and Talmud is 'asmeday malka de-sede 'Ashmeday king of the demons'. He is associated particularly with King Solomon, whom he attacks and causes to be removed from his throne because of his overweening behavior. It was during this time of disgrace that Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, a good and rational explanation of how that happened. Therefore, if the name as found in Tobit is 25 Forinstance, Duchesne-Guillemin to explain the namein (1963:84) saysit is difficult that"lacorrespondance n'estpasrigoureuse, mais anyotherway,but admits phonetique cela est courant dansles emprunts." (1957:215) Widengren acceptsthe equation. Frye is "anexample of a direct,tangible influence fromtexts" (1962:266) saysthatAsmodeus and adds that "an Iranianetymologyis the most satisfying an explanation"-hardly enthusiastic support. 26 "Itis noteworthy thatin the Avesta, as we haveit, the actual collocation daeva AeSma doesnotoccur, it doesin the Bundahish, whichis based on a massof lostAvestan though matter"-soMoulton (251). 27 In anycase,onecanassuredly exclude the position takenby A. Wikgren (1962:661b), whodeclares the wordto be Persian because the latterpartcomesfromdaeva,but then leavesit vaguewhatthe restof the wordmightbe, whether fromIranian Aesmaor from the Semitic roots-m-d.Thereis absolutely no ground for the Iranian unless explanation thetwowords aretakenas onecollocation. 28 These considerations are no doubt what was intendedby Duchesne-Guillemin in hiscaution about the phonetic (1963:84) correspondence.
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derived from Persian, then the Talmudic/Targumic name must be derived from it too. But the latter form also invites considerationof the Semitic root s-m-d 'destroy',and all the more so since a demon with the name Shimadonappears in the Midrash,Genesis Rabbah36. Shimadon is explicable as deriving from s-m-d 'destroy' but hardly as deriving from the Iranian Aesma. The name Asmodeuscould be explained as a name built upon a verbal noun form belonging to the hiphil (aphel);the -ay ending might be as in names like Borqay. There is a difference between the o of the Greekform and the shewa of the Aramaic,but that differenceis there on any explanation.29 If the provenance of this name is somewhat uncertain, one might next ask if names given to demons in Jewishliteratureappearcommonly to be Iranian in origin.30 Such names will not necessarily be either Semitic or Iranian;in principle they could be Mesopotamianor even Egyptian. If many Jewish names of demons appearedto be Iranian,this would confirm the Iranianexplanationof Asmodeus.But I do not find, from limited soundings made, that Iranian provenance is probable for other such names. In the BabylonianTalmud, Pesahim 111, some terms like Zerada,Palga, Shide, Rishpe are obviously Hebrew/Aramaic, as is Qeteb, while some others,like Izlath, Asya, and Belusia,could be almost anything. Anotherimportantdemon is Agrath or Igrath bath Mahalath, the queen of the demons in the Talmud. It has been suggested that this name came from Angra (Mainyu) and thus from the principal evil If this were true, it would stronglysupportthe agency of Zoroastrianism. Iraniantheory of Asmodeus; but it does not seem very likely.31 The purely philologicalanalysisof the name Asmodeusseems, therefore, to be indecisive in its results.One might say that the Semitic and Iranian explanationsare roughly equally balanced in probability,with the Semitic rather more likely on the whole, and the possibilityremaining that it is neither. If the matter is not certain, then this name in itself is not enough to supportthe idea of a wide-ranginginfluence of Persian religion upon Jewishdemonologyor Jewishreligion in general. To this we may add features of the character of this unpleasant demon. His role and function seem remote from what might be derived
29 F. Zimmerman,in his edition of Tobit (63n.), simply dismissesthe Iranianderivation without argumentand declaresthe word to be Hebraic.Furtherfolkloreabout Ashmedai can be found in the encyclopaedias.The name of the demon in the Midrashis often given I follow the spelling of the Soncinoedition. For the o of the Greekform, one as Shamdon: might considercomparisonwith words like Sodom which have an o in the LXX (and at form has shewa. Qumran),where the Masoretic 30 For some general informationabout names of demons,see Gaster(1962) and Encyclopedia Judaica (V:1521-28). 31 Ta-Samasays that the Iranianexplanationof this name has been disproved,but does not say why or how.
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is the wrath and violence, often from Aesma, who in Zoroastrianism of those who do under intoxication, injury to innocent cattle and the structureof the world. The only thing Asmodeusdoes is to kill Sarah's husbandson their wedding-night, and such occasional evil-doing on a limited scale is all that we know about him. He seems to be more a Jewish devil than an Iranianone bent on underminingthe cosmos. He is a very demythologizeddevil, and a dose of fish liver paste, suitablyburnt, sends him off with his tail between his legs. It is, of course, to Upper Egypt that he goes, certainly a place for demons but not particularlyfor those from Iran. He evokes neither the ultimate war between evil and nor the deadly sin-related power of good powers in Zoroastrianism demons in the Gospels,but something closer to the world of spirits and demons in the Talmud-essentially trouble-makingbeings, but no serious threatto the stabilityof the religiousworld.32 Once we see this, we observe that the general cultural and religious atmosphereof Tobit does not necessarilyhave very much to do with Iran at all. Even if the book originated there, which is possible, and even allowing that it is set in Media and that Tobit had left his large deposit of money at Rages (now Ray, only a few miles from Teheran), there is no manifest reflection of any aspect of Iranian religion if the name Asmodeusis not such. If the setting is genuinely from Iran, it is the setting of Jewish life in Iran rather than a depiction of Iranian life and society for itself. Thus a numberof scholars,including the great Noldeke (Simpson:185), thought that the book came from Egypt, and this is the positiontaken in D. C. Simpson'scommentaryin the Charlesedition. In view of the Qumran fragments, this now seems less likely, and one would think ratherof a Palestinianprovenancein which folk tales coming from Jewish experience in Iran were used. In any case the motifs and features that have been connected with Iranian religion seem precariousevidence: the angel Raphael is a very Jewish angel; the fact that a dog goes with Tobias and the angel is hardly evidence of Zoroastrian honoring of the dog; the emphasis on the burial of Israelite victims of war or sicknesshas nothing to do directly with the peculiar disposal of the dead in Zoroastrian practice;that Raphael is "one of the seven holy angels"(Tobit 12:15)is hardly a hint at the system of the AmesaSpentas. At the most, one might suppose that the peculiaritiesof Iranianreligion had done somethingto suggestthese motifs;but the content of the motifs
32 Miss Erica Frank, a graduate student at the University of Melbourne, kindly called my attention to the artistic representations of Asmodeus which appear in Syriac manuscripts, with a legend such as hn' s'dy' 'smdy' 'this is the demon Asmodeus'. I am not sure whether this inclines the balance in favor of the Iranian or the Semitic explanation; on the whole, I think, in favor of the Iranian. On the general question, however, Frye writes (1962:266) that "none of the stories about this demon can be traced to either an Iranian prototype or even compared with an Iranian parallel."
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as developed in the book seems to derive nothing from Iranianreligion. An importantemphasis of the book is the insistence that on the day of the Lord'sanger Media will be a much better place to be than Assyria. So far as the text tells us, this seems to come not from any suggestion that Media has a better sort of religion than Assyria-nothing at all is said about that-but out of the denunciations of Assyria by certain Hebrew prophets.33 Besides, the intellectual source clearly specified by the book itself is the Sayingsof Ahikar,a Semitic document, whose hero turnsout to have been a Jew. To summarize:the Jewish evidence lacks any indicationof curiosity about the distinctive character of Persian religion. The Persians seem accepted in it as de facto authoritieswith whom one could negotiate on a basis of respect and even friendship, but the actual nature of their of the Persian religiousbelief and practiceis left aside. Jewishassessment on its but on the quite not understanding religion regime depended different criterionof the extent to which its actions favored the interests of the Jewish community. This kind of assessmentwas encouraged by the policy of the Persian emperors themselves, who generally did not seek to Iranicize the empire outside the Iranian lands. Affairs abroad were conducted in Aramaicand, on the whole, Iranianculture and religion were not for export. The contrastbetween the Jewish attitude to the Persiansand that of the Greeks is instructive. Unlike the Jews, the Greeks were intensely curiousabout Persianculture and religion. Herodotuspassed on a great deal of informationabout them. Consideringthe circumstances,in De Iside et Osiride Plutarch provides a remarkablywell-informedaccount of certain aspectsof Zoroastrianism. In particular,he mentionsthe opposition between AhuraMazdaand Ahrimanand the six "gods," as he calls But this materialdid them, the Amesa Spentas,created by the former.34 not come from Plutarch'sown experience;he got it from earlier sources like Theopompus,Eudoxus,and Hermodorus.35 That is, during the same century, Nehemiah, from the Persiancourt itself, revealed nothing about contemporarylocal religion, but Greeksin distant Europe could already
33 It must be noted that the places where the prophets call upon "Media" to assault a Mesopotamian power seem all to refer to Babylon rather than Assyria (cf. Isaiah 13:17, 21:2; Jeremiah 25:25, 51:11, 28); this is probably well covered by the fact of numerous anachronisms in the book. 34 Much the best source for study of this is J. Griffiths. The essential chapters are 46-47, with his annotation on pp. 470-82. 35 Theopompus of Chios was a historian, born about 378 B.C.; Eudoxus of Cnidus, a mathematician, lived about 390-340 and knew Plato; Hermodorus was a mathematician, from Syracuse, and also a disciple of Plato. This last is credited with the chronology followed by Plutarch, according to which Zoroaster lived five thousand years before the siege of Troy.
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providea reasonablyrecognizableaccount of at least partsof it. This was partly a result of their naturalcuriosity,well exemplified by Herodotus, and partlybecausethey thought it might be philosophically important. Thus the Greeks,and not the Persians,may have been the missionaries who made the Iranianreligiousworld known to non-Iranians, includin the In this worked two different Greek respect, Jews. thought ing directions.Throughits own curiosity it spread the knowledge of Iranian traditiondisseminatedthese ideas conceptions.The Hellenized Zoroaster and the very widely, Judaismof Alexandriaapparently Greek-speaking knew of them. There were people who identified Zoroaster with Ezekiel, with Nimrod, and with Balaam.36The evidence for this, of course, comes from a later time, but it is the resultof a long process. The Iranianmaterialwas significantnot only because of the Greeks' curiosity, but even more because of the oriental reaction against Greek culturalexpansionism.Indeed, it may have been as part of this oriental anti-Hellenisticreaction that the Jews came-if they did-to find Iranian conceptionsuseful for the expressionof their own religion. I do not claim that this is certain, but such a suppositiondoes fit many of the facts. The featuresthat can most plausiblybe understoodto derive from Iranianreligious influence emerge not in the Persian period but in the Greek. For the usual list of supposedly Persian ideas-periodization of the world'sduration, resurrection,angels, and demons-the most likely evidence is in Daniel, Enoch, Jubilees,and variousDead Sea Scrolls.But we find very little sign of the same ideas in the material generally assignedto the Persianperiod that Persianitself. The same is true of the loanwords.It is in the Greek period that Persianloanwordsbecome more common, just as it is in the Persianperiod that Akkadianloans are frequent, and in the Roman that Greek loans are most obvious, and not earlier.I do not seek to prove that Iranianinfluenceactually operated in this way, but, supposingsuch influence, to supply a plausiblehypothesis for its transmission. Moreover,this hypothesisis by no means novel. Kuhn thought that Iranianinfluence could not have come earlier than the latter half of the Persianperiod, ca. 430-330 B.C.,and he thought that it must have been mediated by Babylonian culture.37Hengel, commenting on this, says
36 I here follow Hengel (11:154,n. 777). For a detailed problem in this see Neusner (1965)and Winston(213-16). 37 Kuhn (310) actually specified the time "roughlyfrom the fifth to the third centuries." He thought (309) that the influenceof Iranianreligion was not suddenly brokenoff with the beginning of the Greek domination but continued thereafter to work for some time-in contrastto our own suggestionthat the Greek period was the real time of Iranian influence. Hinnells (1969) carries us to a still later point of time. He considersthat there is no substantialevidence of contact in Achaemenidtimes, that the real time of influence was during the Parthianinvasionof Palestine-Syria in 40 B.C., and that Iranian
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that the mode of communicating Iranian influence remains an open question. In his view, the Babylonian intermediary is hypothetical, and its existence remains to be demonstrated. Furthermore, he suggests that "we might consider the possibility that an Alexandrian Jewish source was involved" (i:230). Whether or not we have to be so specific as to look for an Alexandrian Jewish source, we may perhaps consider that Hellenism as a whole provided the channel through which this sort of knowledge of Iranian ideas was diffused. This brings us to the deeper questions of religious comparison. T. W. Manson (above, p. 214) regarded the name Asmodeus as the particular evidence for Iranian religious influence and "the general similarity of the two systems" as the general reason for its acceptance among the Jews. But is it true that the two religions had a similar structure? If Jews thought they perceived something akin in the Iranian religious world-and we hardly have found clear evidence that they did-did they correctly discern the structure of that religion and the lines of dependence and causation that connected one element with another? It is here, I suggest, that arguments for Iranian influence upon Judaism have often suffered from the gross fault of much comparison between religions, the isolation of similar elements and the ignoring of the structural reasons why these elements are important within one religion as distinct from another. It is one thing to make a list of things that seem similar in Judaism and Zoroastrianism-dualism, hell, resurrection, and so on-and quite another to say that the structures and internal dynamics of the two religions are similar. The structural question does not merely ask if both religions have a resurrection, or a hell, or angels, or whatever it may be. Rather, it seeks the reasons within each religion why a resurrection, or a hell, or angels, or dualism, is significant. To approach this question we must attempt a sort of holistic description of some elements of Iranian religion, a depiction that highlights their interdependencies and interconnections. The description that follows reflects the perspective of a biblical scholar and will obviously be vulnerable to the criticism of a competent Iranologist, but that risk must
be run.
One also has to take account of the substantial differences among Iranologist. Those who despair the inability of biblical scholarship to produce consensus on anything will find their spirit lifted when they turn their attention to ancient Iran.38 The date of Zoroaster himself is symptomatic. Although most Iranologists seem to place him about the seventh
influence might have acted directly on Christianity without having to pass through Judaism. 38 The wide divergences in the understanding of Zoroaster are well illustrated in W. B. Henning's critique of the ideas of E. E. Herzfeld and H. S. Nyberg, conveniently accessible in Zaehner (1961:349-59).
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to sixth centuries B.C., Nyberg treated him as a sort of "prehistoric man,"39 and Mary Boyce elevates him to the hoary date of 1500 B.C. Numerous other differences emerge at every turn. In addition, one must be clear at the outset that there is no single "Iranian religion." Five different stages or sets of phenomena may have to be considered: (1) the ancient inheritance of pre-Zoroastrian IndoIranian religion; (2) the religion of Zoroaster himself; (3) the religion of the Achaemenid emperors, from Cyrus to the coming of Alexanderwhich at least has the advantage of tangible and datable inscriptional evidence; (4) the later Zoroastrianism, in which-as many see it-deities and mythological elements thrown out by Zoroaster found their way back into the religion; (5) the religion of the Magi, if that is something different. There may be further later stages, but these fall into a period too late for the purposes of this essay. The obvious question for our purposes is: if the Jews had actually known the nature of Iranian religion (in any or all of its forms), would they have regarded it with sympathy? Would they have seen in it something in common with their own religion? Might they, for instance, have perceived it as another basically monotheistic religion, largely aniconic, with one single prophet comparable to Moses, and with a strong emphasis on ritual cleanness? The answer to such a question depends, among other things, on the stage of Iranian religion under consideration and the forms of it that were available to the consciousness of the observer. For example, there could well be a difference between a time at which Ahura Mazda appeared clearly as sole, supreme god and a period in which his association with other gods such as Anahita and Mithra was more manifest. One final historical remark is apposite. This essay deals primarily with contacts between Iranian religion and Judaism before the rise of apocalyptic and the coming of Christianity. Contacts as late as Sasanian and Talmudic times have been well surveyed and have produced much interesting evidence. It is possible that these later contacts resemble those of several centuries earlier, but caution is necessary in supposing that this is usually the case. By the time of the Sasanians, the various religions concerned, including Christianity, appear to have fixed themselves into rather clear and distinct forms, and their interrelationships presupposed
39 Frye (1952:48-54)seems similarlyvague about the time when the prophet may have lived: "Afterso many years of researchwe do not know when or where he lived or even is not a figment of preciselyhis teachings"(48f.); "It is highly probablethat Zarathushtra the imaginationand that he did exist.... To determinethe date of Z. we have no historical data to help us, and we can only say that most probably he lived before the Achaemenid empire" (49). Again: "From the Greek sources, a date of, say, 1000 B.C. than 600 B.C., but this is speculative" might seem a shade more reasonablefor Zoroaster (50).
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these forms. This is particularly evident for Judaism; by 200 A.D. the shape of Judaism was much more firmly established than had been the case in 350 B.C.Moreover, even in this much later period the extent of contact with, and real understanding of, another religion seems not to have been very much greater than it was earlier.40 Let us now return to the questions we posed above and consider some significant features of Iranian religion. The first obvious feature is the aspect of abstraction and intention that attaches to the great Amesa Spentas. Wholeness or Immortality are abstract qualities, at least when compared with concepts known from the Old Testament. 'Good Mind' and 'Dominion' seem close to mental attitudes. This is important because the system of the Amesa Spentas is often taken to have been part of the model upon which Hebrew angelology developed. But the names and functions of the Amesa Spentas, and the nature of the entities as revealed by them, are very far removed from what counted as angels in most stages of Judaism. The Jewish angel develops from the side of being a man sent by God: just as it was three men who came to Abraham in Genesis 18, so even in Tobit Raphael is a man from God who walks with Tobias; and when angels have names they have human names: Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel. The more developed angelology of Enoch may come closer to the Iranian style, in that each of the "watchers," the fallen angels, controls a science, like astrology or the making of swords. The names, though extended from the style of human names, become names that no humans would ordinarily have: Shamsiel, Kokabiel, Barqiel. Neither the total structure of the Enochic angelology, nor the style of the names, shows great similarity to the system of the Amesa Spentas. The idea of angels is also sometimes traced back to another aspect of Iranian religion, namely the fravasis or 'guardian spirits' that attend individuals and maintain the bounty and prosperity of the world. Certain New Testament passages seem to come close to this Iranian conception, in particular the word of Jesus in Matthew 18:10 about the angels of the children looking continually upon the face of the heavenly father (cf. also Acts 12:15). This idea of the guardian angel attendant upon the individual is, however, less characteristic or typical of the major Jewish and Christian ideas of angels.
40 Cf., for example, Neusner (1976). He finds certain significant signs of contact but nowhere a great deal that is very definite. "The rabbis do not seem to have known much about Iranian religion and culture" (148)-a position rather in line with what we have said about the Old Testament. "The rabbis give evidence of knowing what they should have known: those few aspects of Iranian culture, law and religion, which impinged upon the practical affairs of the Jewish community" (149). Also see Neusner (1982), which appeared after this essay had been completed. Similarly, Frye seems to place the main locus of contact and influence in this later period, but even here finds rather little that is both central and definite (1952, 1967).
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In general, then, there seems to be no manifest relation between the underlying structure of Iranian thought, whether about the Amesa Spentas or about the fravasis, and the underlying structures of Hebrew ideas about angels. This does not make impossible the idea that Iranian angelology influenced Hebrew, but it means that, if this did happen, the ideas must have been seen quite out of their Iranian context and detached from it. The result must have been that the ideas were formalized. A second main characteristic that, I suggest, seems manifest to the biblical scholar when he looks at Zoroastrianism is the strongly cosmological character of its nucleus.41 The six or seven main entities on the side of truth are related to the various major elements of the universe. The other main structure is the opposition between Truth and the Lie, with the supporters, human and superhuman, of each. Thus the elements of the universe are related not to personal, if irrational, beings like the gods of many pantheons, but to entities that in a way are qualities, purposes, and abstractions and that because of this character provide a sort of rational interpretation of the universe. The problematic and changing nature of the universe is accounted for by a mixture of contraries; for the creations were made good but forces from the opposition side managed afterwards to make their way in. Fire is pure and ahuric, but smoke is daevic. Similar interpretations of the universe in terms of mixture and separation are known to us, of course, from early Greek philosophy. The idea that Zoroaster was a philosopher and therefore to be aligned with Pythagoras and Plato is not completely fanciful; indeed, it is less fanciful than the alignment of Moses with the same company. The features of Iranian religion most often identified as influences on Jewish religion appear to be meaningful within this Iranian cosmological context and, therefore, are not intelligible apart from it. The belief in resurrection is a good example, which I illustrate from the writing of Zaehner. It is certainly not enough to say, as he does (1961:57), that "both Jew and Zoroastrian regarded soul and body as being two aspects, ultimately inseparable, of the one human personality."42 In the Old Testament and earlier Judaism, even if soul and body were two aspects
41 I feel somedoubtin thispoint,for it mightbe argued thatcosmology is not pressing so centralto the Iranian to a biblical scholar. Is it rather a conceptof Godas appears account of deity,whichis thenprovided withcosmological connections? sophisticated Yet, evenif the latter is the case,it seemsto support a cosmological character forthe system as a whole.In seeingit in thisway,I am influenced of it givenby Mary by the presentation one mighthaveto thinkdifferently if one followed the account Boyce; clearly, givenby someotherIranologists. 42 Considering thatthe idea of resurrection is oftenregarded as the mostobvious area for Jewish fromIran,it is disconcerting thatZaehner, whileinsisting on such borrowing in the doctrine of rewards andpunishments, that"wecanborrowing saysof resurrection notsaywithanycertainty whether the Jewsborrowed fromthe Zoroastrians or the Zoroastrians fromtheJewsor whether eitherin factborrowed fromthe other."
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of the human personality,this was not an adequate reasonfor a belief in resurrection; indeed, over long centuries it had not led to such a belief. Even in the time of Jesus it was still uncertain that resurrectionwas a was convalid and necessarypart of the religion at all, and resurrection the rootsof these sidered to be a very surprisingthing. In Zoroastrianism ideas seem to have been quite different: the different aspects of the materialworld are different creationsderived from the variouscreating saw the spiritualand material principles.As Zaehnerputs it, "Zoroaster of a worlds as being the opposite poles unitary whole intimately linked of the life" (1961:47).Thus, if I understandhim rightly, the resurrection body is the corollaryof the fact that the spiritualreality shouldand must manifest itself in the physical reality, a doctrine that much later, in the Pahlavi books, was systematizedin the distinction between menog and getig, the spiritual and the material (Boyce, 1979:25; Zaehner, 1961: 200f.; and especially Shaked,1971). If this is right, the basis of the resurrection idea is cosmological:spirit strives to manifest itself in created matter. But, if this is the frameworkwithin which resurrection operates in Iranianreligion, it is quite different from that in which it operatesin Judaism. And this must mean that, if the resurrectionidea was taken over from Iranianreligion,it can have been taken over only on a basisof inner-Jewishreasoningsand motivations,adopted formally, but with no idea of the underlyingreasonswithin Iranianreligion.43 The same seems to be the case with the periodizationof the world's duration,an importantpart of eschatologicalschemes. The traditionthat the world existed for a fixed time divided into periods is old; Plutarch has it from Theopompusin a form that fits quite well with the Pahlavi books (Griffiths,ed.; 192-93, 480f.).44There are three or four periods, each of 3,000 years. If there are four, then one belongs to the gradual manifestationof the creations;the next is dominated by Ahura Mazda; the next is a mixture in which Angra Mainyu is interfering;and then there is a final one in which we are led up to the Rehabilitationof the cosmos. Zoroasteris understoodto have come along at the beginning of
43 G. F. Mooreexpressedhimself somewhatsimilarly.Acceptingan "unmistakable affinity" between Iranian and Jewish ideas in the area of eschatology and resurrection,he concludes, "The Persianscheme must have been most strongly commended by the fact that it seemed to be the logical culmination of conceptionsof retributionwhich were deeply rootedin Judaismitself"(11:395). 44 For some other remarkson periodizationsee Winston (197) and Russell (224-29). Some of the features listed, e.g., by Winston, may well be too late to count for preChristiantimes, e.g., the idea found in the Talmud that the total durationof the world will be 7,000 years. 2 Enoch is also probablymuch too late (cf. below, n. 48). Moreover, even where Jewishschemesof periodization are early, the questionremainswhether they too are not explicablefrom inner Jewishdevelopment,for certain aspectsof chronological interestrun back to an early stage within the Bible itself.
together . . .physical life in its perfection is the mirror of the divine
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the final period of 3,000 years. The system is a cosmological one, dominated by the principle of expressing how evil got into the cosmos and has to be got out again, and the very round figures express this cosmological character. In the Hebrew apocalyptic schemes the content is provided by indigenous Hebrew tradition, with important periods like the time from the creation to the flood, the period of the kings, the duration of the exile. Hebrew chronologies are on the whole much less rounded, and their figures are commonly jagged and uncomfortable blocks, like the 1,656 years from creation to the flood, or the Danielic numbers of days to the end, 1,290 and 1,335 (Daniel 12:11-13). Scholars have often attempted to make sense of the Hebrew figures by suggesting that they are really based upon some round number, like 4,000, and that the various detailed figures are attempts to bring the date into conformity with such a total. But all such attempts depend either on shifting between one text and another (e.g., the Masoretic and the Samaritan) or on forming a hypothesis about the original intentions behind the scheme of numbers, intentions which are not realized in any of the texts that we have. Moreover, where clear examples of round numbers can be discerned, they sometimes represent not a round number for the duration of the world, but a round number for a particular period of history. An obvious case is the chronology of Jubilees, with 2,450 years, i.e., 50 jubilees of 49 years, from creation to the entry into Canaan. On the whole, biblical chronology was most positively and clearly worked out as a statement of the times from the beginning down to the events of early history, especially, of course, the flood, but also the Abrahamic migration, the Exodus, and the like. Once it got farther down into biblical times, after Solomon's construction of the temple, it became distinctly more vague and uncertain. No express and clearly stated doctrine of the total duration of the world in years existed in late biblical times. Once again, then, if the idea of the periodization of the world's duration came to Israel from Iran, it seems to have come in a way that greatly altered the scope, character, and motivation of that idea. Again and again we find that the supposition of Iranian influence behind Jewish notions, though entirely conceivable and possible, remains intangible and undemonstrable. Sometimes scholarship has really been more favorable towards that supposition than the evidence, carefully examined, warrants. It has been widely accepted that the Qumran documents display some effect of the dualistic Iranian opposition between 'Truth' and 'the Lie'. I have already pointed out that the essential Iranian concept drug or druj 'the Lie' was not borrowed as a loanword into Hebrew. It would be possible, however, that the Iranian contrast Truth/ Lie was indeed borrowed but was expressed in Hebrew words; these Hebrew words would then enjoy a sort of semantic growth into a pattern formed by the Iranian ideas. This is exactly what T. H. Gaster, a
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devoted comparativist, says of 'emet 'truth': "Asha, [the principle] of truth and normalcy [represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls as 'emet]" (1962a:134). The facts of the texts, however, make it seem unlikely that Iranian metaphysical dualism is being reproduced here. Although 'emet 'truth' is common in the Scrolls, the obvious contrary terms do not occur in anything like the same distribution, nor do they stand in the abstract and absolute sort of syntactical position that would satisfy the conditions for a clear semantic borrowing from Iranian religion. Among the Hebrew terms, seqer 'lie' is not very common: Kuhn lists 10 places, including one of the verb; of kazab he lists 15, including two of the verb. On the other hand, 'emet occurs far over 100 times. Most cases of the noun kazab are in collections like "the man of lies," "the speaker of lies," and similarly with seqer. The placing of 'truth' and 'lie' in central thematic positions of opposition, e.g., in antithetical parallelism, is actually rather rare. This means that the traces of genuine Iranian dualism in these terms are fainter than has generally been recognized.45 The position is not altered much if we take into consideration the terms for 'deceit' like mirmah, remiyyah. The basic opposition in the Dead Sea Scrolls seems to be that between 'truth' and 'iniquity' rather than that between 'truth' and 'lie': cf. the central passages about the two Spirits (1QS 3:18: rwhwt h'mt wh'wl). In the Scrolls, as elsewhere, evil men tell lies, and the evil opponents of the Qumran sect had told a lot of them. The lie as such, however, does not seem to have been a quasi-independent metaphysical entity as in Iran. Again, when the opposite of truth is Belial or Mastema or the like, the similarity to Iran is again less clear. Taking the question as a whole, with openness towards either possibility, one is inclined to conclude that the dualism of the Two Spirits at Qumran, with the accompanying paraphernalia of light and darkness, truth and iniquity, could have evolved from inner-Jewish developments. Moreover, it is possible to consider that the Qumran phenomena can be explained as part of a common process of hypostatization that similarly affected a number of religions at the same time, rather than as a process of "influence" beginning in one and then passing from it to another (Colpe: 480). The place of fire furnishes another interesting case. The veneration of fire in Zoroastrianism is something that might perhaps have escaped the censure of Jews as falling short of idolatry; it would be comparable with the Greek perception of the Persians as setting up no statues or images of the gods, nor worshipping them in temples. An interest in fire
45 This is essentially the same point on which Frye has already been quoted, n. 7 above: the textual evidence very often fails to provide the exact systematic analogies that are required if a real agreement of concepts between Iranian and Jewish sources is to be proved. Neither do the Iranian sources offer us 'children of light and children of darkness', nor do Jewish sources offer us the same systematic opposition of 'truth' and 'lie'.
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could also have been linked with the importantfunction of light, which, whether coming from Iranian sources or not, is very evident in the In Iranian belief, fire was the purest element and belonged Scrolls.46 especiallyto the supremegod; the maintenanceof it was a cosmic necessity and a duty laid upon believers. In the Scrolls,however, there seems to be no sign that fire was so conceived;as in the older biblical tradition, it is a threateningforce, used as a symbol for divine judgment and destruction. The same is the implication of a phrase like "Our God is a consumingfire"in the New Testament(Hebrews12:29). There are yet other aspects of Iranianreligion that invite consideration, even if the resultsare likely to be negative in the end. The importance of ritual purity has not been noticed as much as other aspects. Scholarshave been quick to fasten attentionupon the more philosophical features, such as dualism, or the more eschatological,such as resurrection, so that the importanceof complicated measuresof ritual purification may well have escaped many biblical scholars.The recent worksof Mary Boyce have brought these vividly to attention. It is a common position in Old Testament studies that the texts about Levitical purity,
46 Winston,who like MortonSmith sees substantial Iranianinfluencein 2 Isaiah,considers (187) the referencesto fire in Isaiah50:10-11 to apply to Jews who had turned to the Persiancult of fire. The phrase qodehe 'es 'igniters of fire' is, he tells us, a "verbatim of puraithoi,the designationof the Magi in Strabo15.3.15 and equivalent to translation" Avestanathravan.This whole interpretation seems very unlikely. A more rewardingcase for discussionis 2 Maccabees1.19, 22, 33-34, the story of the concealmentof the temple fire and its rediscoveryin the form of a thick liquid, which proved to be naphtha.Winston(199f.) quotes Brownleeas saying that "thisis a clear case of identifying the sacred fire of the Persianswith the exiled fire of the temple altar in Yes, but this is somethingother than 'Iranianinfluenceon Jewish religion';it Jerusalem." is more like a Jewishtake-overof Iranianreligion. The Jerusalemtemple fire was hidden in Persia and eventually discovered with impressive results. When the king of Persia heard of this and had verified it, he enclosed the site with a wall and declared it sacred. The effect of the legend on the readerwill be, among other things, the following:if there is somewhere in Iran a sacred fire, authorized as such by the emperor and carefully walled off as a holy site, it is actually, if one only knew it, a Jewish fire, taken originally from the Jerusalemtemple. This all-importantfeature of Iranian religion is thus an unknowingand secondaryobservanceof a central feature of Jewish religion. There is some analogy with Paul'spicture of Greek religion:"Whomthereforeye ignorantlyworship, him declare I unto you" (Acts 17:23). This entire aspect of the story, however, is evident only to such readersas are interestedin Iranianreligionat all, and one cannotsay that that interest is pressed upon the reader by the author of 2 Maccabees.The Iranian religious backgroundcould easily be entirely missed by the reader. The story is set in Persiabecause Nehemiah was in Persiaand because the Persiaof the time containedthe territory(originallyBabylonia)to which the exiles had been sent. The idea of a hidden fire, eventuallyregained,could perhapsequally well have had a Jewishor a Greek background. Even if the semi-etymological word-play on naphtha through nephthar, explained as 'purification',should have some sort of Iranian basis, the allusion and its meaninghad almostcertainlybeen lost from an early time.
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mainly in the books of Leviticus and Numbers, belong to the Persian period. If there was reason, therefore, on other grounds,to believe that Iranianreligion deeply affected Jewish,then one would have to consider
the possibility that it stimulated some of the interest in ritual purity.47 Once again, however, it may well be that the Jewish ritual texts rest entirely on inner Jewish tradition. Perhaps comparative studies of the details of the rituals might lead to some useful conclusions. That the name Mithra means 'contract', 'covenant', will hardly fail to attract at least the momentary notice of Old Testament specialists, especially at a time when it is argued that the covenant terminology of the Bible itself comes from a rather late stage, and when we have seen (above, p. 000) that the deity Mithra receives recognition from Artaxerxes II in the early fourth century. Perhaps, however, this is no more than mere coincidence. Rather more convincing is the idea that an Iranian source lies behind the role of the fallen angels, the "watchers" of apocalyptic. In Zoroastrianism the dethroned gods seem to cast a constant shadow. In India the devas became the great gods and the asuras sank to the rank of demons; in Iran the cognate term, ahura, was the name of the supreme god, and the daevas became demonic anti-gods. The fallen angels of the Bible have a basis in older Hebrew story: in Isaiah 14:12 Lucifer is fallen from heaven, and in Ezekiel 28:12-19 the king of Tyre had had a sort of angelic existence in Eden before he was thrown out. It is not clear, however, that these angelic falls and expulsions had always been the beginning of quite catastrophic evil. Even in Genesis 6 the same is true of the angelic marriages as described in the earlier sources, for it is not expressly stated that the offspring of these unions were great sinners, as they were later to become: they were "mighty men of old, men of renown," which could be taken, if alone, in a rather praiseworthy sense. It could be the Iranian influence that identified all this as a uniquely bad breakdown of the cosmic order, with the ancient evil and daevic powers getting back in, where they were supposed to keep out. This conception would lead to the reading of the passage in a totally unfavorable light, as suggested by our text of Genesis 6:5-7, and still more clearly expressed in apocalyptic.
47 Boyce (1982:189f.,200) says that Nehemiah, in orderto serve as cupbearerto the king of kings, must have had to keep the Zoroastrian purity laws, so as not to bring pollution upon his royal master.After years of this it would not be surprisingthat he, returningto concernedhimself with questionsof purity among the Jews. It is therefore"not Jerusalem, overbold"to supposethat it was Zoroastrian example that led to the gradualtransformation of the Jewishpurity code so that it came to be a set of laws applicableto every individual in his daily life. As the reader of this article will have realized, ProfessorBoyce's reconstructionsof what may have happened on the Jewish side are often highly adventurous.
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This very tentative and uncertain survey must now come to an end.48 The question, whether Jewish religion was really influenced by Iranian, has not been answered. On the whole, the most probable thing seems to be the suggestion that Iranian religious influence, if it did come in, came in through the admixture of Oriental ideas in the Hellenistic world and was adopted because it was part of the anti-Hellenistic reaction: if so, then in Judaism this did not occur until the second century B.C. and really after 170 or so, with the later sections of Daniel, with Enoch, and with other comparable works. Substantial and convincing evidence of Iranian influence on earlier strata of the Old Testament seems to be lacking. As for the mental operation of this influence, we may perhaps consider the following model. Faced with a religion quite different from one's own, one may react in two or more ways. One way is to say that, since this is a different religion, no points in common and no points of comparison exist at all. One may deny, or one may ignore, but there is nothing to discuss and no point in seeking to understand. The second way is to recognize that there are certain common concepts and elements, even if their place and function is quite different in one's own religion and in another. One can then say, "yes, we also have one supreme god, we also have a resurrection, we also have one great prophet back in the beginning of time." This second way is not necessarily one of accceptance of another religion or of submission to its ideas; but it is a recognition that there are certain comparable elements. This is of interest to our question in two ways. First, it may suggest how another religion can influence one's own without one's making any actual surrender to the other's claims. By accepting that there is some sort of comparability, one may begin to cast the expression of one's own
48 There are indeed a number of other features of Iranian religion that deserve to be taken into consideration in a full account;but some of these seem more marginal,or else are probablytoo late in date to count for the questionas here posed. One strikingpassage is 2 Enoch 58:6, which tells how the beasts will not perish, nor all souls of beasts which the Lord created, until the great judgment,and they will accuse man, if he feed them ill. This is remarkablylike Zoroastrian conceptions (cf. Videvdat 13, and, among modern Winston(197) says that this is "perhaps the most scholars,Duchesne-Guillemin [1963:84]). Iraniandoctrinein the Apocrypha." This is right, but of course it strikinglycharacteristic is equally striking that no other so completely characteristicIranian doctrine is to be found in them. This leads on to the questionof the date of 2 Enoch. Althoughit is built upon early Jewish tradition, much of it is Christianand very late. Milik, in a highly learned argument,maintainsthat this document originatedas late as the ninth or tenth century, while its longer text is even later (109-112). The strikingnature of its doctrine arisesthereforefrom the fact that it is much too late for our period. More probabilitymight attach to the idea that the interest in the calendar, so obvious in Enoch and Jubilees, had something to do with the Persian calendar (as also, no doubt, with the Greekcalendars)-if only in the sense that the awarenessof foreign calendars might have made more clear to Jews that there was a real question what the true calendarwas and how it operated.
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religion in part in terms intelligible in that other, or in imagery meaningful in that other, even while resisting all the time the actual claims of that other. Jews in the Greek world, one may suggest, were doing this much of the time; Philo of Alexandria is the chief example. Secondly, comparison of this kind may help to explain how one religion can influence another even if the inner connections and causations of the source religion are neglected or unknown.49 Through this model of comparison, it is intelligible that Jews might find stimulus in an element or pattern of Iranian religion, such as its dualism, its idea of resurrection, or its picture of the dethroned powers penetrating back into the cosmos, even if they did not take over or even understand the inner bonds of cause and meaning that held these same things together within Iranian religion itself.50
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"Die Sektenschriftund die iranische Religion."Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche49:296-316. Macdonell,ArthurAnthony A Sanskrit-EnglishDictionary. London:Longmans,Green 1893 and Co. David Neil MacKenzie, A Concise Pahlavi Dictionary. London:Oxford University 1971 Press. Walter Thomas Manson, The Teaching of Jesus. Cambridge:The UniversityPress. 1951 Mayer,Rudolf Die biblische Vorstellung vom Weltenbrand:eine Unter1956 suchung uber die Beziehungen zwischen Parsismus und Judentum. In Bonner Orientalistische Studien, vol. 4. Seminarsder UniBonn: Selbstverlagdes orientalistischen versitatBonn. in Israel und in der Religion Zarathustras." "Monotheismus 1957 In BiblischeZeitschriftNeue Folge 1:23-58. 1961 "Iranischer Beitrag zu Problemendes Daniel- und EstherBuches."In Lex Tua Veritas, pp. 127-36. Ed. by H. Gross and F. Mussner.Trier:PaulinusVerlag. Milik,JosefTadeusz The Booksof Enoch. Oxford:The ClarendonPress. 1976 Arnald( Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization. Cambridge: 1975 CambridgeUniversityPress. "The Fault of the Greeks"and "EasternElements in Post1977 Exilic Jewish, and Greek, Historiography." In Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography, pp. 9-35. Oxford: Blackwell. 1980 "Danielee la teoriagrecadella successione degli imperi."AccademiaNazionaledei Lincei,Rendicontiser.8,35:157-62. Moore,GeorgeFoot 1927 Judaism. 3 vols. (1927-1930). Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress. Moulton,J. H. 1913 London:Williamsand Norgate. Early Zoroastrianism. Neusner,Jacob "Note on Baruch ben Neriah and Zoroaster."Numen 1965a 12:66-69. A History of the Jews in Babylonia. Vol. 1: The Parthian 1965b Period. Leiden: E. J. Brill. A History of the Jews in Babylonia. Vol. 2: The Early 1966 Sasanian Period. Leiden:E. J. Brill.
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Archives from Elephantine. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bennett Pritchard, James Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testa1969 ment. Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress. Rabin,Chaim "HittiteWordsin Hebrew."Orientalian.s. 32:113-39. 1963 Reicke, Bo In Die "IranischeReligion, Judentumund Urchristentum." 1959 Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 3d ed. Vol. iii, pp. 881-84. Tubingen. Russell,David Syme The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic.Philadel1964 phia: WestminsterPress. Schaeder,H. H. Esra der Schreiber. Beitrage zur historischen Theologie, 1930 vol. 5. Tubingen. Scheftelowitz,Isidor 1901 Arisches im Alten Testament. Inaugural Dissertation. Konigsberg. Die altpersische Religion und das Judentum. Giessen: 1920 Topelmann. Eduard Schweizer, 1964 "Gegenwartdes Geistes und eschatologischeHoffnung bei Zarathustra,spatjudischenGruppen, Gnostikernund den In The Backgroundof the Zeugen des Neuen Testaments." New Testament and Its Eschatology, pp. 482-508. Ed. by W. D. Davies and D. Daube. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press. S. Shaked, 1971 "The Notions menog and getig in the Pahlavi Texts and their Relationto Eschatology." Acta Orientalia33:59-107. 1972 Israel Orien"Qumranand Iran: Further Considerations." tal Studies 2:433-46. Simpson,D. C. "Tobit." In The Apocryphaand Pseudepigraphaof the Old 1913 Testament, vol. 1, pp. 174-241. Ed. by R. H. Charles. Oxford:ClarendonPress.
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Soden,Wolframvon AkkadischesHandworterbuch.Vol. 2. Wiesbaden:Harras1972 sowitz. Israel Mos es Ta-Shma, In EncyclopediaJudaica, vol. 2, 374. 1971 "Agratbat Mahalath." P. Wernberg-Moller, "A Reconsideration of the Two Spirits in the Rule of the 1961 Revue de Qumran 3:413-41. Community." Widengren,George "Stand und Aufgabe der iranischen Religionsgeschichte." 1954 Numen 1:16-83. 1957 "QuelquesRapportsentre juifs et iraniens a l'epoque des parthes." Vetus Testamentum Supplements 4 (Strasbourg CongressVolume),pp. 197-241. 1960 Iranisch-semitischeKulturbegegnung in parthischerZeit. fur Forschungdes Landes NordrheinArbeitsgemeinschaft Westfalen: Geisteswissenschaften, Heft 70. Koln and Opladen:Westdeutscher Verlag. A. Wikgren, 1962 "Tobit, Book of." In The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 4, pp. 658-62. New York:AbingdonPress. Winston,David 1966 "The Iranian Component in the Bible, Apocrypha, and Qumran:A Review of the Evidence."History of Religions 5:183-216. Yadin,Yigael 1962 The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness.London:OxfordUniversityPress. Zaehner,R. C. 1961 The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism. London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1970 ConcordantDiscord. Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress. Frani k Zimmermann, 1958 The Bookof Tobit. New York:Harper.

Zorastrismo Giudaismo

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The Question of Religious Influence: The Case of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity Author(s): James Barr Source: Journal

Academyof Religion,LIII/2 Journalof the American

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Barr: Religious Influence

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Barr: Religious Influence

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Barr: Religious Influence

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Barr: Religious Influence

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Barr: Religious Influence

specialistsaffirm the Iranian derivation of the name Asmodeus;on the

Journalof the AmericanAcademy of Religion

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Barr: Religious Influence

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Barr: Religious Influence

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Barr: Religious Influence

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together . . .physical life in its perfection is the mirror of the divine

Barr: Religious Influence

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Barr: Religious Influence

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Barr: Religious Influence

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

1969 1974? Boyce, Mary 1975 1982 1977 1979

Vol.I: Introduction: The Persian Period(W.D. Daviesand bridgeHistory of Judaism.

Barr: Religious Influence

The Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel. Missoula,

Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. Oxford: The

Persien unter den ersten Achdmeniden (6. Jahrhundertv.

de Menasce, J. P. 1956 Dresden, M. J. 1962

Israel and the Ancient Near East, presented to Professor E. J. Brill.

Aramaic Documents. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Kent, RolandG. 1953

Barr: Religious Influence Kuhn,K. G. 1952

234 1976 1982

Barr: Religious Influence Smith, Morton 1963

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