Zoroastrianism: The World's First Monotheism and the Sacred Fire of Truth
Before Moses received the Ten Commandments. Before the Vedas were compiled. Before the Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree. Before Plato contemplated the Good. An Iranian prophet named Zarathustra — or Zoroaster , in the Greek rendering — proclaimed a vision of the cosmos that would change the history of Western religion forever. Zoroastrianism is the world's first great monotheistic religion, founded by Zarathustra in the Iranian plateau sometime between 1500 and 600 BCE (historians continue to debate the exact period). At its peak, it was the state religion of three Persian empires that ruled the ancient world from Greece to India. Today, it survives in two small communities: the Parsees of India (descendants of Zoroastrians who fled to India after the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century CE) and the Zartoshti of Iran who remained in their homeland. Despite this numerical smallness — fewer than 200,000 Zoroastrians remain in the world — the tradition's influence ...