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Of course there were. The kingdoms of Osroene (northern Iraq, tributary to Parthia) and Armenia (a buffer zone between Rome and Parthia, eventually partitioned) converted long before Rome did. You're not citing any of your sources. I doubt any of them say anything silly like "all" the...

You said Antiochus was 1/2 Persian, as if that was crucial. He and his descendants didn't marry any more Persians. What's your point? A small handful. Iran and Afghanistan have brutally suppressed anything non-Islamic for most of their histories. This all started the day before...

Are you keeping the Holy Grail in it? I've been looking for that too! Yep. Couldn't have said it better myself.

The reigns of Uzziah through Hezekiah were over two centuries before Cyrus. There are two different books of "Isaiah", one a collection of prophecies given at the courts of Judah (each prophecy in 1st Isaiah has its own heading), and the other a discursive essay written late in the Babylonian...

A piece of trivia: the answering machine was invented by an Orthodox Jew, who would not answer his phone on the Sabbath (there is some halakhah on the subject of electrical devices; to push a button, pick up the phone, etc. is "making a spark" and thus like starting a fire, illegal on Sabbath...

Yeah, same concept. Parents having children, gee nobody would ever have thought of such a thing, if you hadn't pointed it out!

I still owe radarmark a write-up on the Great Schism of the East. I will get to it.

Since Nestorius was generations later than Constantine, "Nestorians" could hardly have been part of his calculations. 5th century. And the Syriac Peshitta were used by all the Aramaic-speaking Christians, not just those of Nestorian theology. The comparisons which you cite were reasonable...

Yes. It's talking about what happens continuously from the creation of the world to its end. Yeah, found it now. I'm trying to figure out how early or late it is: well after Zoroaster, obviously; Mithra has been adopted into the religion as "the greatest of the gods created by Ahura Mazda"...

This is all sheer invention with no resemblance whatsoever to any actual stories ever actually told about Osiris or Mithra. There seems to be quite a cottage industry spreading this kind of rubbish.

You are repudiating the actual Zoroastrianism, in favor of a newly-invented version into which bits and pieces of Christianity are copied.

He has been advertising his book for years (I see the ads in Nation magazine). His hobby-horse is that some Roman named "Piso" wrote the Antiquities and Jewish War of Josephus, and all four canonical gospels, and the Gospel of Thomas as well. His "reasoning" for this claim consists of the kind...

It does not say anything whatsoever about a "last day"; men are being evil for evil and good for good in each generation and "thus creation fulfills its goal." Yasna 15 only has 4 verses. Zamyad Yasht is longer but not to verse 88. Can you cite some other way and show what text you are...

Just some corrections on your historical trivia, Amergin: the Church did have a long tradition of burning people alive, but Bruno is actually the only case of a Copernican being burned (and it was probably more because he was a secret agent for Elizabeth's government); Copernicus didn't "get...

Not to sound all psychoanalytic and shit, but the only reason anybody ever thinks their life sucks is because of their own chosen attitude. That WAS a literal translation: I show you the original text, which is not very complicated, three clauses of two words each, and tell you what it...

Actually, Divos, during those years in Palestine it was only Jews who were being burned out of their homes; and there was nothing even slightly coincidental about it, since the Nazis were arming the Arabs and the Palestinian leader was in Berlin making propaganda broadcasts about how all Jews...

No: it WAS the Sassanian Eran. After some confusion, I thought we had gotten it clear that the inscriptions de Sacy translated were from the Sassanian, not Parthian, period, and that he called the script "Parthian" because it was a holdover from the earlier time; another fuller script (with...

So are all these "emanations"; you were claiming that none of them "shared divine status" with Ahura Mazda, but that is not how the texts read. And Wright is of the opinion that these were regarded as separate gods??? No, as usual Wright is not understanding. There was a fragmentation of...

No. Vivid depictions of eternal suffering had been on cathedrals for centuries before, with public demonstrations of the concept by burning people alive, in case anyone was unclear about the concept.

That's the whole point. "VYRN" was pronounced "Eran" and is has since become pronounced "Iran". You want a word for the "Iranians" which excludes the "Indics": "Aryan" is not properly used in that sense, because that pronunciation was only used by the common ancestors (Proto-Indo-Iranians)...