Zoroaster
A priest on the steppe reframes religion as a cosmic struggle between good and evil.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 400 years
- Known to
- ± 300 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Zarathushtra composes the Gathas in a language closely related to Vedic Sanskrit, teaching worship of a single supreme god, Ahura Mazda, opposed by a hostile principle, with human beings obliged to choose sides and history moving toward a final resolution. His date is genuinely unsettled, with linguistic arguments favouring somewhere between 1500 and 1000 BCE and later tradition placing him much later. Zoroastrian ideas about dualism, judgement, heaven and a final saviour influence Judaism, Christianity and Islam.