Are you going to hell...

[Drich]

Drippy, we have world class scholars on one hand and then we have a dumb-as-a-fucking-rock moron like you on the other. Guess who wins?

http://www.pyracantha.com/Z/zjc3.html

It was during the end of the Exile, among the Jews now living in the Persian Empire, that the first significant contact was made between the Jewish and Iranian cultures. And it is evident in the Bible that Jewish thinking changed after the Exile. The question is then: are these changes the result of the cultural meeting of Jewish and Iranian thinkers, or are these changes due to the shock of Exile? During the Exile, Jews had to change not only how they worshipped, since they no longer had their temple or the animal sacrifices which had been at the center of their faith, but also how they thought about God. The Jewish concept of God as their tribal protector, who would save them from being conquered or exiled, had to undergo revision.

I believe that both factors are present, inspiring the changes in post-exilic Judaism: not only the Jews thinking new thoughts about God and humanity, but also contact with the Zoroastrian religion of the Persian Empire. But then another question arises: how did the ancient Jews learn about Zoroastrianism? It is highly unlikely that Jewish scholars and thinkers ever directly encountered Zoroastrian scriptures such as the Gathas (the founding text of the Zoroastrian faith, attributed to the Prophet Zarathushtra himself) or the Yashts (hymns of praise to various intermediate deities and guardian spirits, adapted from pre- Zarathushtrian mythology). The priestly usage and archaic language of the Avesta scriptures would be a barrier to Jews. But most of Zoroastrianism, known and practiced among the people, existed in oral tradition: through word of mouth, not by the study of written scriptures. This oral tradition included stories about God, the Creation, the ethical and cosmic conflict of Good and Evil, the divine Judgment and the end of the world. The tradition would also include the well-known Zoroastrian symbolism of fire, light and darkness, as well as stories and prayers about the yazatas or intermediate spiritual beings and the Prophet Zarathushtra. These are all elements of what might be called "classic" Zoroastrianism (as it developed from the "primal" Zoroastrianism of the Gathas).

This is how the Jews encountered Zoroastrianism - in private dialogues and political and civic experience, rather than in formal religious studies. And as the Jewish religion was re-made after the catastrophe of the Exile, these Zoroastrian teachings began to filter into the Jewish religious culture.

As with anything else in life Minnie The guy who can provide the documentation and Provenaunce wins. I made a claim that zoro-ism while many scholars claim it to be much older, can only trace it back via historical texts to the 3 or 4th century.. Now minnie if you want to play this game, then find one of your 'scholars' to claim something different and make sure he quotes something a little more established than some random name no one has ever heard of. Like well respected book. Something that can be looked up. Otherwise your "appeal to authority" fails as badly as you do here old sport.

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fyi

http://www.ancient.eu/zoroaster/

Modern scholars believes that Zoroaster must have lived at some point between c. 1500 and c. 600 BCE. The 600 BCE limit is based on the fact that the Avesta does not contain a single reference to a ruler of the Achaemenid Empire, which was the dominant power in Persia beginning in 550 BCE. The Avesta is believed to have been composed in eastern Persia, which is why one would expect these texts to mention an Achaemenid ruler if its composition was later than 550 BCE. The earlier date in the range, 1500 BCE, is based on linguistic evidence found in the Avesta. This work is composed of several different texts and one of these texts, the Yasna, is considered to be the oldest of the Avestan texts. Its language is Old Avestan (sometimes called Gathic Avestan), which is grammatically comparable to the language of the Indian text known as Rig Veda, since the languages of Persia and India belong to the same language family (the Indo-European Languages family). It is therefore believed that the Rig Veda and the Avesta are about the same age, dating to c. 1500 BCE. The range of speculation for Zoroaster’s life is wide. Saying that he lived in around 1000 BCE, give or take a century or so, is an estimation that would be acceptable to most scholars.

Re-read your own source material brakeman... Too lazy? It says according to what is written in the zoro-ism book, the religion dates to the dates you quoted...

That doesn't mean that my source is wrong when it says the oldest zoro book is 4th century...

Do you understand how that works? It's like if you wrote a book today and claimed it was written under the rule Napoleon... Then buried the book, and two thousand years later d-bag diggs it up and dates the content of the book based on what you wrote.

Now just because you said the book was 400 years older does it make your book 400 years older? Same thing sport with zoro's/myth-ra.

Minnie and his scholars can date the religion based on context alone if they wish, but understand they do so in faith.. Faith is not the Achilles heel of Christianity, but it is the end of a 'fact' based system of belief.