The Prophet's Own Voice: The Gathas of Zarathustra
A standalone piece Most of the world's scriptures come to us at one remove — laws set down by later hands, narratives written about a founder, sayings remembered and arranged by disciples. The Gathas are different, and the difference is their glory.
What this resource contributes
A standalone piece Most of the world's scriptures come to us at one remove — laws set down by later hands, narratives written about a founder, sayings remembered and arranged by disciples. The Gathas are different, and the difference is their glory. They are seventeen hymns in the oldest layer of the Avesta, and the tradition holds them to be the words of Zarathustra himself: not a code, not a story about him, but him — a single human being, speaking in the first person, three and a half thousand years ago, thinking aloud toward God.[^1] Set aside for a moment everything about their age and their influence. What remains is one of the most intimate and searching voices in all of religious literature.
Topics and source signals
Primary sources detected
Yasna · Gathas · Avesta
Scholars detected
Mary Boyce · Prods Oktor Skjærvø