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In Search of Zarathustra: The First Prophet and the Ideas That Changed the World, by Paul Kriwaczek

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From Publishers Weekly

Hidden by the looming shadows of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Zoroastrianism seems a largely forgotten religion today. Yet this ancient tradition so powerfully influenced these other three faith groups that they would not exist in their present state if not for the teachings of Zarathustra, the prophet of Zoroastrianism. Kriwaczek's lively and fast-paced study offers a unique view of Zarathustra's impact on Western religious history. Beginning in present-day Iran (the Persia where Zarathustra first began his teaching around 1200 B.C.), he participates in New Year festivities that demonstrate that pre-Islamic Iranian mythology and religious customs exist in uneasy alliance with contemporary Islamic practices. Kriwaczek then sets off on a backward travelogue, examining the significance of Zarathustra for Nietzsche in the 19th century, the Cathars of the Middle Ages and Hellenistic and Jewish thought from the third through the first centuries B.C. The prophet's teachings, recorded in the Avesta, offer a dualistic view of the world, a dualism that can be seen in the apocalyptic visions of the Book of Daniel and in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Zoroastrianism also featured divisions of heavenly beings, each lined up on one side or the other, supporting either darkness or light. In both Christianity and Islam, the influence of Zoroastrianism can be clearly seen in the pantheon of heavenly beings arranged in hierarchical fashion according to degrees of goodness or evil. This is the best and most thorough survey of Zoroastrianism, and its prophet Zarathustra, to date. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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From Booklist

The ancient prophet Zarathustra, founder of Zoroastrianism, was a "deeply radical figure" who believed in "one true God," saw the world as a "battlefield between good and evil," and predicted the coming of a messiah and the end of time, convictions that became the foundation for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. So intrigued did Kriwaczek, formerly a Central and South Asia expert for the BBC, become with Zarathustra's largely overlooked legacy, he launched an original, exacting, and many-faceted inquiry into the Iranian visionary's deep, abiding, and remarkably universal influence. Working backward in time and blending vivid accounts of visits to historic Zoroastrian sites with a fresh and consistently perceptive and surprising analysis of religious history, Kriwaczek weaves an enticingly complex tapestry. He seeks and finds evidence of Zoroastrianism in twentieth-century Iran and Afghanistan, parses Nietzsche's adoption of the prophet as muse and conduit, tracks the puzzling history of the Cathars, discerns Iranian elements in Gothic art and feudalism, and discusses how the prophet Mani nearly turned Zoroastrianism into a "world faith." Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product details

Hardcover: 272 pages

Publisher: Knopf; 1st American ed edition (February 11, 2003)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0375415289

ISBN-13: 978-0375415289

Product Dimensions:

6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.0 out of 5 stars

69 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#1,376,994 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

This was an extremely disappointing book. I had just read Kriwaczek's "Babylon", which I thought was truly fantastic, so I had high hopes for this. I knew that this book wouldn't be a strictly history, but I didn't expect it to be a rambling, research-free, travel journal. I suppose if you know absolutely nothing about Zarathustra, you might find this book sort of interesting (although you will be getting some truly bad history), but if you have even a Wikipedia level understanding of the subject, it will probably be a frustrating waste of time. First, the structure of the book: It is laid out starting from the present and working backwards, finding Zoroastrian influences in different parts of the world at different times in history, as if the author is following a thread back in time to Zarathustra himself. Sounds good. But the author seems to find meaning in seemingly meaningless trivia, and some of his sources are untrustworthy to say the least. He notices that the shape of a hat in one carving is similar to the structure of a building somewhere else. He retells information he gets from a cab driver, a tour guide, and some guy who he was standing next to at an archeological site. And all of it is tinged with mystery and wonder. Give me a break. He makes it sound like he's on a mystical journey, but he's just staying in hotels, taking cabs, and looking at tourist sites.And if you know anything about Zoroastrianism and have wondered about it's influence on our beliefs today, you might have a good idea of the first place to investigate: The Babylonian captivity of the Jews and their restoration to Jeruselem by Cyrus the Great of the Persians. This is the point at which we see the biggest crossover of beliefs between Zoroastrians and the Judeo-Christian world. This is when Yahweh transforms from a standard Mesopotamian one war god among other gods, into THE one and only God. And yet, the book doesn't get there until the second to last chapter, after a lot of meandering and finding Davinci Code type "connections". One of the few parts of the book worth reading was on the prophet Mani and Manicheanism. But even here he fails to make one huge obvious connection: Saint Augustine, who was an enormous influence on the early Christian Church was originally a Manichean, and this greatly influenced his faith. I really struggled to finish this book. A huge disappointment.

May be the book should have in the cover a note warning there is little information about Zarathustra itself and his teachings. In that sense the title is a little too sales oriented. I was disappointed in this aspect...BUT this book is a great, exciting, marvelous travel through history, countries, and human culture. It widen the knowledge and opens the door toward a rich and alive past that made part of what the world is today. I learned and enjoyed each chapter to the point that I didn't care about not finding more about Zarathustra.I learned that Kriwaczek was BBC producer. Well, that is what the book is: a great BBC documentary.

This book reads just like a time-travel adventure, as Kriwaczek hops us from present-day iran all the way back in time to the year 1200 BC, when some scholars approximate that the prophet Zarathustra lived. Each chapter is just a little farther step back in time, as the events in each era have their roots in a previous era, to which Kriwaczek then takes us in the next chapter.What struck me in the end was how, ultimately, Zarathustra's actual teachings eschewed religious formality and rituality in exchange for attempting to only distill out a fundamental mentality and morality that really matters in the world. Yet, upon his death, all the old formalities and rituals flooded ride back in anyways, and the old fire worship was right back in full swing again.What Kriwaczek's book does is to show how rare and precarious the life of true virtue not only is, but has always been. Yet always will good ideas like Zarathustra's necessarily endure. Time and again, empires rise and fall as countless virtuous souls are oppressed and slaughtered, yet always the thin filament of true virtue endures.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Zoroastrianism, and Iranian culture generally. Nietzsche also happens to be one of my favorite philosophers, and this book explores the link between Nietzsche and Zarathustra; after all, I always wanted to know why Nietzsche chose Zarathustra as his mouthpiece. Nietzsche's own explanations on this point were pretty vague.The books takes you though each of the powerful Zoroastrian dynasties of the Persian Empire, and explains how the religion itself morphed over time during those centuries. I enjoyed his exploration of the link between Jewish and Iranian culture. The news these days would have you believe that the Iranians and Israelites are mortal enemies; however, there is a rich, shared past between these two cultures. The author, who is himself Jewish, also details the elements of Zoroastrianism that were imported into the Jewish religion.I've never been to Iran, but have a strong interest in its culture. The book entertainingly explains some aspects of Iranian culture, particularly as its relates to Zoroastrianism. It also shows how the brand of Islam in Iran today cannot help but show its Zoroastrian past, even though such expression is viewed by fundamentalist Muslims as heretical.Perhaps the only thing about the book I would change is to shorten the part about European history as it relates to Mithra. I think the section was just a bit too long for being about a topic that, by the author's own admission, may have no Zoroastrian link at all. Not that it wasn't interesting at times, but just a little too far off the subject I thought.

I was looking for a good basic intro to the Zoroastrianism faith, and grabbed this. At places it gets bogged down with too much "fluff", and at others the info is too "lite" to support what the book is about, a search & the discoveries of that search, thus 3 stars.Tho it is a good read with some fine info, it is NOT a decent introduction to the faith, so the search goes on...

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