it [the Avesta] actually mentions an "Aryan" homeland.
Actually, no. As I have pointed out to you many many many times, the Avesta never has any form ending in "n" without extra letters (I wouldn't think the precise form of the adjectival ending important, but you seem to), and the vowel is already "ai" pronounced "EYE"; by the time the adjectival ending is "n", the pronunciation is "AIR-on" becoming "EER-on" well over a thousand years ago. The particular ugly word that you insist upon is not the name of your people, which is
IRAN.
Second of all according to convention the common ancestor's of the Avestans and the Vedic people worshipped both the Ahura/Asuras and Daevas to begin with, and both rejected one of them.
By the time we get any information, both are worshipping the Daevas only. Zoroaster is quite clear about this situation, which he is asking them to reverse.
every translation of the OT, even the non-literal translations, but yours confirms Wrights point
??? They all say the opposite, and I cannot comprehend how you are failing to read.
how can you be so sure that Isa. 10:5-15 is an example of monotheism
Because I read what it says.
why would the authors of Deutro-Isaiah need to explain that there is only one god and no other?
They are surrounded by, and still ruled by, polytheists.
I thought you said that the Jews threw the intertestimentary material out.
They did.
the Zoroastrians have always believed that they themselves were monotheists.
But they conceived of monotheism differently than the Jews did.
Angels in the original sense of the word "messenger" is true to Aryan (Irano-Afghan) concept of the Amesha Spentas.
No, the Amesha Spentas are addressed as divine.
They were hypostasis or rather states of being.
"States of being"
of God, not separate entities from God, like the "angels".
Spenta Mainyu or holy spirit [world] who is the only Amesha Spenta identified with God, but also distinguished from God.
He is never "distinguished" from God, nor are any of the others. You are rejecting the real Zoroastrianism, in favor of a fake version crafted to resemble the Abrahamic faith more closely than the reality.
a God that controls everything sounds more like an emanation because, unlike the Zoroastrian concept of God's role in the universe, it means that there is no separation between God and his creations. No Free Will. No disconnect. Same mental force.
In Isaiah, YHWH has the
power to control
anything whenever He chooses to do so; he is not controlling everything all the time, but leaves humans free to do right or do wrong. But when YHWH decides to intervene, rewarding or punishing (in this world, not any afterlife), none can resist, because there is no other power like YHWH (the "idols" are nothing, just images which do not represent any real powers).
Wouldn't it be kind of hard to do that considering a dragon, called satan, and the Devil is mentioned in the NT?
This is obviously metaphorical (no-one thinks Satan is
literally a "dragon"); the question is how metaphorical, whether "Satan" is an actual entity or is entirely a metaphor for our internal urges to evil.
Of course you shouldn't mention the Jews, in connection with "the devil", a concept they don't accept.
I'm talking about the Logos in the sense of a Word made Flesh and there is no doubt about that that there is a similarity between the Logos and the tano-mathro "embodiment of the Mantra" in this sense.
It's totally different. Zoroaster needs to
seek the truth and be
taught.
We are discussing the
actual history, whether well-known or not.
When most of you hear the word Messiah these days you think of it in the Zoroastrian sense, Cyrus, Jesus, superman, etc....
"Most" people think of Cyrus???? Uh... no, I don't think so.
The Soul is called Urvan and it's mentioned in the Avesta. It's almost identical to the Egyptian concept, but it applies to everyone and not just the Pharaoh, just like in Christianity.
Everyone, not just the Pharoah, had a soul in Osirianism also.
Yes it is. It's a hypostasis. A state of being, or mind.
A state of
God's being, not a state of ours.
Both the Resurrection and Judgment Day are Zoroastrian expressions. I already cited Zam Yasht
And you cited a contradictory text, in which each individual goes to judgment three days after death. Even in very late Zoroastrianism, these concepts were not well-established, and their borrowings into late Zorastrianism
from the Abrahamic faiths therefore looks much more likely than the reverse.
The Irano-Afghans were/are the original "Aryans."
You can say that as many times as you like, but it doesn't get any truer. "Irano-Afghan" is a reasonable term, if "Iran" by itself sounds too confusingly like it only refers to the post-1936 state of Iran, but "Aryan" was never used by your people until the day before yesterday.
a group of people who only recall using it in the Spiritual sense.
The Indics have used the word in numerous senses. The Iranians used only the related but distinct name "Iran".
Everyone who's not Greek for one.
I'm not Greek. And I don't give a rat's ass either what the square-mileage count of the two empires were: the Persians only held their area loosely, and had lost a good chunk of it before Alexander, who took everything they had left very quickly because their state was a hollow shell; Alexander, on the other hand, could not create any lasting unified state either.
I'm totally confused here. What are you trying to tell me?
That both of those big areas were transitory anyway, so who cares?
Well I'm not well read on all Acheamenid contributions
There isn't much to read. It was not an intellectually productive period.
I'm not sure what range of time you're speaking of when you talk about Greek contributions
The "Hellenistic Period" from Alexander to the Roman takeover. It was enormously influential (the Achaemenid period was not).
what about Zoroastrianism's influence on the Abrahamic religions
They were what they were, and they weren't what they weren't. "Angels" and "devils" and "hell" are certainly Zoroastrian imports (not very healthy additions to the religions in my view) but there isn't much else, despite your constant exaggerations and distortions to force-fit things that really weren't much alike.
and Zoroastrianism as a psychology
What about it? I know of no authors who were influenced by "Zoroastrian psychology" at all.
Zoroastrian medicine attested as early as the Vendidad
Your source says that the Vendidad, like texts from practically every religious tradition in the world, mentions miraculous faith-healings, and describes magic rituals to chase away demons, and wolves, and make the rain fall. It says nothing whatsoever about any Zoroastrians knowing anything about the actual practice of medicine; until Ibn Sina, that field was developed almost entirely by Jews and Greeks, as Ibn Sina acknowledges.
electoral monarchy (which I think is just another way of saying "prototypical democratic council system" despite the despotism which you speak of and more advanced than an oligarchical system of government like the Eupatrids)
You think wrongly. Not only did the "electors" not really have any say (besides ratifying the preponderant military force), they were a
smaller oligarchy than the eupatrids (a handful of people from the highest-ranking families
across the whole country, not the ranking families in each city). The Greeks had moved well beyond that kind of oligarchy at a time when the Persians were just moving
into that system.
inclusion of the zero (the Greeks didn't do that)
Neither did the Persians. India gave us the zero (although Babylonians had also had the concept).
a proclamation of religious tolerance
It was better than the Assyrian or Babylonian system; but it was nothing like individual freedom of conscience: rather, by birth you were assigned to a particular tyrannical religious authority which you could not escape, as in the Ottoman
millet system. This does have continuing influence on the poisonous politics of the modern Middle East, but thankfully has nothing to do with modern Western systems.
What are you talking about here?
Far from the "first", just the largest to date. Yeah, yeah, you were big once. It was a long time ago. Get over it.
What the hell are you talking about? People noticed that fingers were useful for counting, and that we have ten of them, long before the Indo-European language group existed.
mathematical architecture
They did build some nice things, but I don't know anything about them having any special talent for "mathematics"; or any lasting influence from their architectural styles.
widespread use of iron smelting
That started LONG before the Persians.
The post-roads were only for the king's men. The Romans were the first to have a postal system that delivered private letters. This is a perfect example of the limitations of the Persian state: all it did was collect money, and maintain military forces; it did not even provide a court system (leaving things up to local religious authorities) and did no public works. The Sassanians were the first Persian state to understand the importance of building harbors, public roads, irrigation works, aqueducts etc. as the Romans had been doing.
??? I have never heard of anything like a "bank" from such a period. If such an institution did exist back then, it had no lasting influence, since banks had to be re-invented much later.
Yes, I've heard about the discovery of electroplating in Sassanian Mesopotamia. That was a very interesting development, but again: it had no lasting influence; nobody remembered it after the Muslim conquest, and it would not be re-discovered until the 19th century.
Sure I know what Christianity is all about.
You don't have a freaking clue. Leaving out the whole part about self-sacrifice is like re-writing "Moby Dick" to leave out any reference to whales.
no wonder there is no legal regime like that in the US.
Because there would be no possible justification for it. We wish to have as many ideas in widespread circulation and use as possible; therefore, ideas are freely exchangeable, except that inventors are rewarded for a limited time with exclusive usage, so as to create an incentive for more ideas to come into the public domain. Such systems in America and Europe have made us the technological leaders of the world. What you are proposing would, if it had been carried out from the beginning, have left the Irano-Afghans as Stone Age (since they would not have been allowed to use the idea of "metals") hunter-gatherers (since they would not have been allowed to use the idea of "domestic animals").
Of course not. They need to have a positive, rather than negative, effect on the society or they shouldn't be there. The only justification I have seen from you is that you have some bizarre belief that you have money coming to you, even though you recognize that in every other respect except MONEY FOR YOU the results of what you are asking for would be disastrous.