Jason Reza Jorjani is a philosopher and faculty member at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is author of Prometheus and Atlas.
Here he reviews scholarship that places Zarathustra more than eight thousands years ago, at a time when Indo-European culture had not divided into Vedic, Greco-Roman, and European branches. Zarathustra himself was a religious reformer who endeavored to invert the older relationships between the gods and titans. Jorjani suggests that the spread of Indo-European culture was an effort to avoid the reforms of Zarathustra. Nevertheless, Zarathustra’s teachings survived intact through the order of the Magi he created. Eventually, Zoroastrianism became the state religion of the Persian empire. It also exerted a significant influence on Mahayana Buddhism and Christianity.
(Recorded on June 26, 2016)
Published on November 7, 2016
