Zoroastrianism

Zarathustra (Greek: Zoroaster) lived somewhere on the Iranian plateau in the late second millennium BCE. Against a pantheon of warring deities he proclaimed Ahura Mazda — the "Wise Lord" — as the sole uncreated creator of all that is good. The world, Zarathustra taught, is the stage of a cosmic struggle between Asha (truth, order) and Druj (the lie); every human being is born free and bound to choose between them.

"Hear with your ears the highest truths; consider them with illumined mind. Let each one choose his creed with the freedom of choice each must have on great occasions."

From this premise unfold the world's first articulated doctrines of heaven and hell, of personal moral responsibility, of bodily resurrection, of a saviour (Saoshyant) born of a virgin at the end of time, and of a final renewal (frashokereti) in which evil is annihilated and the cosmos is made perfect.

When Cyrus the Great freed the Jewish exiles from Babylon in 539 BCE, Jewish thought absorbed a Zoroastrian vocabulary that had no Hebrew precedent: an adversary called Satan, ranks of angels, the end-of-days saviour, the resurrection of the body, the final judgement and the new creation. These ideas travelled forward into Christianity and Islam.

The Magi who, in the Gospel of Matthew, follow a star to Bethlehem are Zoroastrian priests. The word "paradise" is Old Persian — pairi-daēza, the walled royal park. Even Nietzsche placed his prophet's voice in the mouth of Also sprach Zarathustra.