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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2012
This article fits into the general picture of investigations on meta-historical thinking in Antiquity, as well as possible links between Persian apocalyptic literature and early Christian literature. The paper also explores the long-standing debate on the influence of Zoroastrian thought on Jewish–Christian apocalyptic – or whether it was rather the other way round.
This article originated from a lecture given at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, as part of the Study of Religions Research Seminars, on 14 October 2010. I would like to express my gratitude to some of the scholars who helped to shape many of the ideas developed here: to Professor Almut Hintze and her PhD candidate, Mr Rastin Mehri (SOAS, London) and to Professor John Hinnells (Robinson College and Clare Hall, Cambridge). Without the leave granted by CAPES, Brazil and the support of FINATEC, the research of which this article is just a part would not have taken place; my debt towards Mrs Mariana Magalhães goes far beyond scholarship and support.
1 The Oracle of Hystaspes will be abbreviated “OH”. Other abbreviations used here: DI = Lactantius' Divine Institutions; SibOr = Sibylline Oracles; ZWY = Zand-i Vohuman Yašn (the late commentary on the Bahman Yašt); GrBd = Greater Bundahišn; Bd = “smaller” Bundahišn; JN =Jamasp Namag; AWN = Ardā Wirāz Nāmag.
For Old Testament pseudepigrapha, I have used Charlesworth, James H. (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (New York: Doubleday, 1983–85, vol. 1)Google Scholar (henceforth OTP 1). For the Hesiodic text I have used the edition by Evelyn-White, Hugh G. (Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation. Works and Days, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press/William Heinemann Ltd., 1914)Google Scholar together with the critical edition established by West, Martin L. (Hesiod Works and Days. Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary by West, M.L., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978)Google Scholar. Translations follow Evelyn-White compared to West's remarks, unless otherwise stated. Hesiod's Works and Days is abbreviated as Works throughout this article. For Lactantius' OH, I have followed Hinnells' translations whenever possible (cf. next footnote), compared to those of Windisch, and checked them against my own observations. No complete (i.e. commercially available) edition of the OH exists. For the ZWY, I use the edition by Cereti, Carlo G. (ed.), The Zand i Wahman Yasn: a Zoroastrian Apocalypse (Rome: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1995)Google Scholar.
2 Cf. Windisch, Hans, Die Orakel des Hystaspes (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, 1929)Google Scholar; Hinnells, John R., “A study of the oracle of Hystaspes” in Sharpe, Eric J. and Hinnells, John R. (eds), Man and His Salvation: Studies in Memory of S.G.F. Brandon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; and finally Flusser, David, “Hystaspes and John of Patmos” in Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988)Google Scholar. The section devoted to Hystaspes might be of interest to the general reader of Cumont, Franz and Bidez, Joseph, Les mages hellénisés. Zoroastre, Ostanès et Hystaspe d'après la tradition grecque (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2007Google Scholar, a single volume reprint of the original two-volume set of 1938).
3 Hinnells made the same point – this level of knowledge could hardly be mere coincidence on the part of the compilers or users; on the contrary, it betrays the eyes of commentators acquainted with detailed information. Cf. Hinnells, “A study of the oracle of Hystaspes”, 139–42.
4 The argument that we are dealing with written material now lost rather than oral traditions is strengthened in the testimonies of Clement of Alexandria (who mentions the OH together with the apocryphal Peter's Teaching in his Stromata 6.5) and Justin the Martyr (who mentions capital punishment for those who read “the books of Hystaspes, or the Sibyl, or the Prophets” in his Apologia 1.44).
5 Works, 110, 150, 175 ff.
6 Cf. Cohn, Norman, Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come. The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993, pp. 60, 90 ff.)Google Scholar. For the very important rule of PIE (Proto Indo-European) hospitality, cf. Benveniste, Émile, Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européenes (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1969)Google Scholar, and for a more generic approach, IVFortson, Benjamin W., Indo-European Language and Culture. An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010), esp. pp. 21 ffGoogle Scholar.
7 For the Persian sources, I have used the following editions: for the zand, or “commentary” of the Bahman Yašt (an apparently lost hymn to Vohu-Manah, the Zoroastrian deity related to the “Good Thought”), Cereti's editions (The Zand i Wahman Yasn) and the old but still insightful commentary at the end of Eddy, Samuel K., The King Is Dead. Studies in the Near Eastern Resistance to Hellenism 334–31 B.C. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961)Google Scholar; for the JN, cf. Bailey, Harold W., “To the Zamasp-Namak. I”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies VI, 1930–32, 56–68 and ibid.Google Scholar, “To the Zamasp Namak. II”, 581–600; Modi, Jivanji J., Jamaspi: Pahlavi, Pazend and Persian Texts, with Gujarati Transliteration of the Pahlavi Jamaspi, English and Gujarati Translations with Notes of the Pahlavi Jamaspi, Gujarati Translation of the Persian Jamaspi, and English Translation of the Pazend Jamaspi (Bombay: Printed at the Bombay Education Society's Press, 1903)Google Scholar. Of interest is also Olsson, Tord, “The apocalyptic activity. The case of Jāmāsp Nāmag”, in Hellholm, David (ed.), Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East (Tübingen: Mohr, 1983)Google Scholar (Olsson follows Bailey's division of the text) and finally Menasce, Jean-Pierre de, Une encyclopédie mazdéenne: le Dēnkart. Quatre conférences données à l'Université de Paris sous les auspices de la fondation Ratanbai Katrak (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958)Google Scholar. While the Jāmāsp Nāmag only survives in late manuscripts (of which the Pahlavi is the most fragmentary), it takes the form of questions and answers between Vištasp and Jāmāsp, traditionally considered to be Zoroaster's first disciples. The Dēnkard, on the other hand, is a tenth-century compilation and has survived almost in its entirety (exceptions are books 1–2 and part of 3), and book 8 is of particular interest since it preserves Avestan material. These three texts were the main souces Hinnells used in his 1973 article and are arguably the most important. For the purpose of this article the Arda Wiraz Namag (The Book of the Righteous Wirāz) can be discarded, since its dating can be rightfully established as very late and it features few, if any, of the themes analysed here (cf. Vahman, Fereydun, Ardā Wirāz Nāmag: The Iranian “Divina Commedia”, London/Atlantic Highlands: Curzon Press/Distributed in the USA by Humanities Press, 1986, especially p. 11Google Scholar: “We can therefore conclude that that AWN must have been written in the later period of the Sassanian era […] It is probably one of the 9th or 10th century literary products of the province [of Pārs, after the Arab conquest]”. A linguistic analysis supports this view).
8 Boyce, Mary, “On the antiquity of Zoroastrian apocalyptic”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 47, 1984, 57–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohn, Cosmos, 79–80, 96, 105 ff.; Geo Widengren, “Les quatre ages du monde”, in Geo Widengren et al., Apocalyptique iranienne et dualisme qoumrânien (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1995)Google Scholar; John J. Collins, “Persian apocalypses”, in John J. Collins (ed.), Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre. (Semeia 14. 1979), 207–18; Eddy, The King is Dead, 20; Anders Hultgård, “Mythe et histoire dans l'Iran ancien. Étude de quelques thèmes dans le Bahman Yast”, in Widengren, Apocalyptique iranienne, 67 ff.; and above all Windisch, Die Orakel des Hystaspes.
9 For most of these objections, cf. Duchesne-Guillemin, Jacques, “Apocalypse juive et apocaplyps iranienne?”, in Bianchi, Ugo and Vermaseren, Maarten J. (eds), La soteriologia dei culti orientali nell'Impero romano: atti del Colloquio internazionale su la soteriologia dei culti orientali nell'Impero romano, Roma, 24–28 settembre 1979Google Scholar. Leiden: Brill, 1982, 753; 759. Gignoux is, it would seem, the most outspoken proponent of the view that Persian apocalyptic is either too late to be taken as an effective influence on its Jewish counterpart, or is to be considered a response to the Arab invasion. Cf. “L'apocalyptique iranienne est-elle vraiment la source d'autres apocalypses?”, Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 31, 1–2, 1988, 67–78 (esp. pp. 71–6)Google Scholar. It should be noted in passing that there are serious works, besides those of Gignoux and Duchesne-Guillemin, that defend a Syrian–Mesopotamian origin for the mythical complex of the ages of the world; of note among these are: Kvanvig, Helge S., Roots of Apocalyptic: The Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Figure and of the Son of Man (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1988)Google Scholar; Walter Burkert, “Apokalyptik im frühen Griechentum: Impulse und Transformationen”, in Hellholm, and Caquot, André, “Les enfants aux cheveux blancs”, in Mélanges d'histoire des religions offerts à Henri-Charles Puech (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974)Google Scholar.
10 Foremost among these are Plutarch, De Isis et Osiride 46 (citing Theopompus), 47. But one should not forget Diogenes Laertius 1.6–9 and Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 30.2. The AWN mentions the destruction of Persian scriptures at the beginning of the narrative, but here we are definitely dealing with a late text.
11 Gignoux, “L'apocalyptique iranienne”, 69–71.
12 The volume of manuscripts for Works and Days is around 260, but most of them date from later than 1480 (when the first printed copies of the Works appeared). “C”, Paris gr. 2771 should be dated from the middle or second half of the tenth century. Cf. West, Works and Days, p. 79.
13 Momigliano, Arnaldo, “The fault of the Greeks”, in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 12–13Google Scholar.
14 Herodotus, Histories, 2.99. Herodotus claims to have heard things from the priests and to have added some things he saw by himself, but never things he read.
15 At some point in his life Bardesanes probably began to consider himself a Christian. Tim Hegedus, “Necessity and free will in the thought of Bardaisan of Edessa”, Laval Théologique et Philosophique 59, 2003, 333. For more detailed information on the life of Bardesanes, see Drijvers, Han J. W., Bardaisan of Edessa (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1966)Google Scholar.
16 For a depiction of the statue the most useful translation can be found in Nalattinputtur Ramaswami, S., Indian Monuments (New Dehli: Shakti Malik Abhinav Publications, 1979), 43–4Google Scholar.
17 In Greek, σκεδὸν κατὰ μέσον τῆς γῆς, where γῆς may mean “earth” or “land”, in the latter case implying a more limited strech of territory but in any case opposed to “sea” Cf. also Ramaswami, Indian Monuments, 43.
18 Fr. Kern 168. In the passage by a drunken Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium 189e–190b, when having to face the demand for his own views on the nature of love, Aristophanes comes up with the whole myth, together with some additions to be found in other Indo-European tales: originally, human beings were androgynes (half-men, half women and in some cases, both sides men, to the great amusement of Aristophanes himself). Since they had four superior limbs and four lower ones, there seemed to be no limit to their capacities, and they conspired against the gods. Apollo split them in half and healed the resulting wound; but the split remained the reason why men and women are always in search of their “other half” according to Aristophanes. For the many parallels on the theme, cf. West, Indo-European Poetry, 356–9, 376.
19 O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 255–6Google Scholar.
20 The edition used is also by O'Flaherty, Doniger, The Rig Veda: An Anthology of One Hundred Eight Hymns (London: Penguin, 1982)Google Scholar.
21 Mahabharata 3.186–9.
22 In other words, the toils of work described in Hesiod after the “Age of Heroes”; note that the woes intensify, in contrast to dharma, which diminishes.
23 Geo Widengren, “Les quatre ages du monde”, in Widengren, Apocalyptique iranienne, 25.
24 Another hymn to that primordial being is to be found at the Ṛg Veda 10.2.
25 For good pictorial examples, cf. Hoppál, Mihály and Sadovszky, Otto von, Shamanism: Past and Present (Budapest and Los Angeles: Ethnographic Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences/International Society for Trans-Oceanic Research, 1989)Google Scholar. For more detailed analysis, most of the material is in Russian (cf. especially Leonid P. Potapov, Altaiskii shamanizm, Leningrad: “Nauka”, Leningradskoe otd-nie, 1991, and for the drums, the seminal article by Prokofyeva, Yelizaveta, “Shamanskije bubny”, in Lewin, Maxim and Potapov, Leonid P. (eds), Istoriko-etnograficheskij atlas Sibiri, Moscow and Leningrad, 1964)Google Scholar. I owe many of the insights herein developed to Mr Raul Maravalhas, an excellent and promising young scholar on the topic.
26 Diomedes and Glaucus seem unaware, in Homer, of the practical utility of the weapons themselves: in the Iliad 6.119–221, golden weapons are traded for Diomedes' brazen ones – but this does not accord with any technological explanation of the sequence found in Hesiod. Indeed, one might ask – even in Antiquity – what effectiveness golden armour might have had.
27 Berlin, Brent and Kay, Paul, Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 7, 16–8Google Scholar. The authors define colour perception in “stages” according to the level of sophistication regarding technological development of the informers. “Stage I” has the extremes of white on one end and black on the other; however, their note on p. 159 challenges many anthropological assumptions regarding perception and evaluation of colours in different cultures.
28 Again the triad “death” – “black colour” – “iron (age)”, are constant throughout Indian, Iranian and Hesiodic versions of the myth.
29 These two cannot be treated as one and the same issue – the first implies a rather more serious disorder, since the respect of parents for their own sons was not an issue at the time; the second one implies a more “conventional” pattern of “world turned upside down”, since children should obey their parents at any given time.
30 The last three themes are also present in Polybius' Histories 6, while discussing the origins of politically organized societies: he claims that it lies in the ingratitude of sons towards their parents (who realize that there must be another form of solidarity among men besides family ties), and the subsequent rule of the strong in constitutional forms of government.
31 Although they “perish at night” (Works, 177), which is also dark or black.
32 The total of fifty-two evils listed under 7.5.1. to 7.5.10 is more than the individualized thirty-two woes in Table 1 because some can be ascribed to more than one category.
33 This could be associated with the netherworld but also with the colour of the night in Works, 177, and the colour of iron in the yugas and in Hesiod; this is a Zoroastrian topos already found in the Avesta, e.g. Hōm Yašt 9.15.
34 Which implies obviously a risk of deviation from it, referred to twice in other ZWY passages.
35 Apologia 1.20.
36 Divine Institutions 7.14.
37 DI 7.15.
38 DI 7.17.
39 DI 7.21.
40 As introductory titles, cf. Fuchs, Harald, Der geistige Widerstand gegen Rom in der antiken Welt (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1938)Google Scholar; by the same author, “Zur Verherrlichung Roms und der Römer in dem Gedichte des Rutilius Namatianus”, Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 42, 1943, 49–51Google Scholar; Kocsis, Elemér, “Ost–West Gegensatz in den Jüdischen Sibyllinen”, Novum Testamentum 5, 1962, 105–10Google Scholar; Potter, David S., Prophets and Emperors: Human and Divine Authority from Augustus to Theodosius (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 The theme is not mentioned in the “Iron Age” itself, but Hesiod's lengthy complaints about Perses (Works, 212 onwards) are hardly placed randomly after the description of an age where brethren hurt one another, the just suffer, etc. The same is true for subsequent items in Lactantius' description of perverted judges, outlaws and the like.
42 These are, in Lactantius DI 7.16, respectively by fire (ekpyrosis), sword (wars), earthquakes, water (flood), disease and famine. Life has become unpleasant because of these natural disturbances – but again these evils fit more into the catalogue of woes typical of sibyllina, especially the last four books of the SibOr, and have no parallel, in the form in which they appear in DI 7.16, in Hesiod's “Iron Age”.
43 Some passages in the ZWY display parallels to both Lactantius and Hesiod, but are, interestingly, outside of the sections on the ages of the world in chapters 1 and 3: these are passages dealing with: the works of the righteous being calumnied (ZWY 4.37); false oaths (4.38); injustice (4.60); constant falsehood (4.39); impiety (4.40); shamelessness (4.62); and “might is right”, related to xešm (4.61). The earth is darkened in a sense, like iron and death too are dark: gēhan nizm ud tom ud tārīgīh (6.4); fathers stand against their sons (6.11 – this passage includes perils to property).
44 Cf. the GrBd 30 (on individual judgement and weighing of the actions) and 34.17 ff. on general judgement and the fire through which all men, righteous and impious, should pass.
45 Gn, OrSib 1, 2 and Berossus (in Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.37). A different kind of destruction by fire, or ekpyrosis, is also to be found among Stoics (e.g. in Seneca, Natural Questions 3.29), but devoid of religious overtones and faced as a purely natural phenomenon.
46 Cf. Zaehner, Richard C., The Teaching of the Magi. London/New York: George Allen & Unwin/Macmillan, 1956Google Scholar, especially chapter 4; Franz Cumont. “La fin du monde selon les mages occidentaux”, Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, 1931, 76 ff.
47 Hinnells, “A study of the oracle of Hystaspes”, 140.
48 Cf. Walcot, Peter, Hesiod and the Near East (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1966)Google Scholar. Walcot emphasizes Hesiod's links with Ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature.
49 Justin, the Martyr, Apologia 1.20, 44 and Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 6.5
50 For an excellent introduction to Lactantius' intellectual background, cf. Ogilvie, Robert M., The Library of Lactantius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978)Google Scholar.