Great Religious Traditions: Zoroastriainism


Figure 1.--The school boys were photographed at Yezd, in modern Iran about 1908. Most of the boys were Zoroastrian.

Zoroastriainism is one of the world's great monotheistic religious traditions. The religion was centered in ancient Persia. Although the adherents today are relatively small in number and under attack by the Islamic mullahs in Iran. Zoroastriainism has had a major impact on important modern religions, especiially Christianity, Islam, and Judiasm. Zoroastriainism may be as old as Judiasm and thus lat claim to the oldest monothesistic religion. There are many shared traditions with Christianity. The central theme in both religions is the conflict between good and evil. The symbols in Zoroastriainism was light and dark. Zoriatrians believed in a last judgement, life after death, the coming of a mesiah, a savior, and the triumpoh of good over evil. There are many ways in which these concepts could have been incorporated into the Judeo-Christian tradition. Jews would have come into contact with Zoroastrians during the Babalonian captivity. After the Jews returned to the Holy land, many stayed and as a result there were Jewish merchant communities in trading centers on most important trading routes throughout Mesopotamia. The sharing of a common language (Aramehic) meant that religious and other ideas could easily be exchanged. Many scjolares believe that the YThree Magi (wisemen) from the eadt were actually Zoroastrian priests. (Often refeered to as the Three Kings--this is an inaccurate translation.) We have little information about Zoroastrians in our modern world. We do have some information about Zoroastrians in India who are called Parsis.







HBC





Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Teturn to the Main religion page]
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Satellite sites] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]




Created: December 29, 2003
Last updated: 9:02 AM 2/18/2007