The Buried Debt: What Judaism Took From Zoroaster
Article 3 of 6 Resurrection of the dead. A final judgment. Heaven and hell as the wages of a life. A cosmos split between light and darkness, good and evil. Ranked armies of angels against a single great adversary. A world remade at the end of time, and a savior to bring it. Even the word paradise . Most of the machinery the Western world files under "biblical" did not begin in Israel. It came in from Iran, during and after the two centuries the Judeans spent under Persian power — and the lender's name was filed off the loan.
What this resource contributes
Article 3 of 6 Resurrection of the dead. A final judgment. Heaven and hell as the wages of a life. A cosmos split between light and darkness, good and evil. Ranked armies of angels against a single great adversary. A world remade at the end of time, and a savior to bring it. Even the word paradise . Most of the machinery the Western world files under "biblical" did not begin in Israel. It came in from Iran, during and after the two centuries the Judeans spent under Persian power — and the lender's name was filed off the loan. This is the most under-credited inheritance in the history of Western religion, and the case for it does not depend on overstatement. The honest debt is damning enough. Before and after Open the pre-exilic material and the apparatus is barely there.
Topics and source signals
Primary sources detected
Gathas · Avesta · Dead Sea Scrolls · Hebrew Bible · New Testament
Scholars detected
Mary Boyce · John J. Collins