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Handbook for Bible Students - Contents
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    “Z” Entries

    Zoroaster, Religion of.—Zoroaster, or Zarathrustra, according to the native spelling, was, by one account, a Median king who conquered Babylon about b. c. 2458. By another, which is more probable, and which rests, moreover, on better authority, he was a Bactrian, who, at a date not quite so remote, came forward in the broad plain of the middle Oxus to instil into the minds of his countrymen the doctrines and precepts of a new religion. Claiming divine inspiration, and professing to hold from time to time direct conversation with the Supreme Being, he delivered his revelations in a mythical form, and obtained their general acceptance as divine by the Bactrian people. His religion gradually spread from “happy Bactra,” “Bactra of the lofty banner,” first to the neighboring countries, and then to all the numerous tribes of the Iranians, until at last it became the established religion of the mighty empire of Persia, which, in the middle of the sixth century before our era, established itself on the ruins of the Assyrian and Babylonian kingdoms, and shortly afterward overran and subdued the ancient monarchy of the Pharaohs. In Persia it maintained its ground, despite the shocks of Grecian and Parthian conquest, until Mohammedan intolerance drove it out at the point of the sword, and forced it to seek a refuge further east, in the peninsula of Hindustan. Here it still continues, in Guzerat and in Bombay, the creed of that ingenious and intelligent people known to Anglo-Indians-and may we not say to Englishmen generally?-as Parsees.—“The Religions of the Ancient World,” George Rawlinson, M. A., pp. 64, 65. New York: Hurst & Co.HBS 487.2

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