Iran
The shape almost every later Western ending repeats, set in place here first.
Iran is the source the rest of the corpus draws from. In the Gathas, the hymns attributed to Zarathustra, the cosmos is a finite struggle between truth and the lie, Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, and the struggle has an end decided by the moral conduct of individuals. That framing, a single linear history moving toward a close in which the person's life matters to the outcome, is the move that reshaped Western eschatology.
The later Pahlavi texts spell out the shape. The Bundahishn describes frashokereti, the "making wonderful," when the dead are raised, bodies are made whole again, and the world is purified: the righteous walk through a stream of molten metal that feels to them like warm milk while it burns the wicked away. A savior born of the prophet's seed, Saoshyant, presides. Resurrection, judgment, a renewed creation after a final battle, all appear in clear form here first.
The transmission is historical, not speculative. These ideas pass from Persian rule into Jewish thought after the Babylonian exile, and from there into Christianity and Islam, so that when later apocalypses describe a new heaven and a new earth they stand in a line running back through Iran. Norman Cohn argued for Zoroastrian priority specifically on the point of a future end at the centre of a religion. The system is treated in Zoroastrian Eschatology, the text in Bundahishn Manuscript (Pahlavi Cosmogony), and the adversary that later traditions inherited in The Dajjal: the One-Eyed Deceiver. The reason to read Iran first in any survey of endings is that almost every other entry in this subject repeats a template it set.
See also
- Zoroastrian EschatologyThe first religion built around a future end of the world, where a savior will r
- Bundahishn Manuscript (Pahlavi Cosmogony)Ninth-century CE Pahlavi manuscript of the Bundahishn (Primal Creation), the pri
- The Dajjal: the One-Eyed DeceiverThe end's deceiver: one-eyed, marked with the word kafir between his eyes, he br
- Frashokereti: the Final RenovationThe world does not end so much as get fixed: the last savior appears, the dead r
Further reading
- The Gathas of Zarathustra (Yasna 28-34, 43-46, 47-50, 51-53) · tr. Stanley Insler, The Gathas of Zarathustra, 1975 The prophet''s own hymns, the earliest layer.'
- Bundahishn (Zand-Āgāhīh, "Creation"), Pahlavi cosmogony · ed. and tr. Behramgore Anklesaria, 1956 The ninth-century summary of the end, the renovation, and the molten-metal ordeal.
- Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices · Routledge, 1979
- Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium · Oxford University Press, 1970 The argument for Zoroastrian priority in framing a future end of the world.