Where God Was Born

by Bruce Feiler

  In the late second millennium B.C.E., two new Indo-European tribes, the Medes and the Parsuas, infiltrated the Iranian highlands from the north, most likely from the Austro-Hungarian plain. The former set up an empire in the northern part of the country and were the ones to sack Nineveh in the seventh century B.C.E. The latter set up a rival region in the south, called Pars, which became the root for the term Persia when Cyrus the Great merged the two regions in the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. Under Cyrus, Persia became the dominant player in the Ancient Near East and the newest, least understood major influence on the Bible.

  From their earliest days, the Indo-Europeans had a different religious tradition from the Mesopotamians’, mostly localized polytheistic beliefs brought to the region by the nomadic tribes. By the first millennium B.C.E., these were folded into the most mysterious religion to emerge in the Axial Age. In some ways, Zoroastrianism has striking parallels with Judaism. Its central figures (Moses for Judaism, Zoroaster for his faith) left behind no archaeological traces; its canonical texts (the Torah for Judaism, the Avesta for Zoroastrianism) were not written down until hundreds of years after their events took place. The Avesta, recorded in the sixth century C.E., is so fragmentary one scholar has compared writing about Zoroastrianism from its stories to writing about Judaism based only on a few psalms and fragments from the Talmud.

  Also like Judaism’s, Zoroastrianism’s influence on world affairs has been disproportionate to its size—both then and now. Thomas Hyde, the Oxford don who coined the word cuneiform, claimed in 1700 that Zoroaster taught Pythagoras and prophesied about Jesus. Voltaire, writing in the mid–eighteenth century, used Zoroastrianism to prove that truth existed outside Christianity. Mozart based a central character in The Magic Flute, Sorastro, the benevolent priest of sun and light, on Zoroaster. And a century later, Friedrich Nietzsche used Zoroaster as the mouthpiece for his effort to emancipate humanity from the grip of religion. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche, using the original version of the prophet’s name, said the Iranian sage was the source of the most profound error in human history, the invention of morality. As a result, Nietzsche argued, Zarathustra himself must reverse that mistake and inspire humans to think beyond traditional Christian morality.

  In many ways, Nietzsche’s anti-Zarathustra tract became a sort of anti-Bible, a canonical text for those skeptical of religion. During World War I, the German government printed 150,000 copies of the book and distributed them to conscripts along with the Bible. Freud praised Nietzsche’s self-awareness, and in the 1930s Carl Jung held weekly seminars on the meaning of Thus Spake Zarathustra with the Zurich Psychological Club. Both Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss set Nietzsche’s work to music. The fanfare to Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra was used as the theme in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. An ancient Persian prophet who left behind no historical record had suddenly become the spiritual guru of the iconic science-fiction film of the 1960s.

  How did this happen?

  Zoroaster, from the Greek translation of Zarathustra, meaning “he who can manage camels,” lived as early as 1500 B.C.E., scholars estimate, or as late as 600 B.C.E. Everything known about him comes from oral tradition or texts written down centuries later. These stories tell of a man, like Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, who came from a desert background, perhaps an animal herder. Married three times, with six children, he was harassed by nomads and fled into the wilderness. There he communicated with Ahuramazda, the Wise Lord and the chief deity of the faith that would grow out of their partnership.

  Ahuramazda’s chief teaching was that life consists of a duality between good and bad. God is wholly good, but he is not wholly powerful. Only with the help of humans will God triumph over evil. Aligned with good are light, fire, summer, water, fertility, and health. Aligned with evil are darkness, cold, winter, drought, sickness, and death. As the ideas of Zoroaster moved from their shadowy beginnings to become the leading religion of Persia in the sixth century B.C.E., one revolution in Zoroastrian thought brought it into line with Judaism, the Pythagorean philosophers of Greece, and Buddhism, the other prominent belief systems of the Axial Age. Zoroaster stressed that all humans, not just the elite, must live an ethical life in order to save the world, and themselves. Even the humble could achieve redemption; even the mighty could fall. The chief way goodness was achieved was by living a life based on “good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.”

  Zoroastrianism became the dominant religion of Persia at exactly the moment that Persia became the dominant player in the Ancient Near East. Not surprisingly, Zoroastrian ideas began to infiltrate other belief systems of the region, including Judaism. Zoroastrianism, for instance, stressed that life had not just a beginning but an ending, at which point one’s deeds were judged and one’s soul sent to a heavenly paradise or an underworld hell. In biblical writings before the Babylonian Exile, the word heaven was used as a synonym for firmament and a vague description of where God resided.

  After the Exile, heaven began to be a place where certain humans could visit during their lives and everyone might have a chance to live after death. The idea of hell as a place of punishment also deepened at this time, as did the notion of Satan, one of the angels sent by God to obstruct good human behavior. Though scholars dispute the origin of these ideas, most agree they began to enter Western religion during the years when Persia stood astride the Near East. It seems safe to conclude that in the same way Mesopotamian ideas crept into the biblical notion of Creation, Persian (read: Zoroastrian) ideas crept into the Jewish and later Christian notions of afterlife.

  The world’s preeminent Zoroastrian Fire Temple is located just off a major thoroughfare in the middle of the urban clutter of Yazd. Though Iran’s Zoroastrian population numbered in the millions before the rise of Islam, it has dwindled to less than 100,000 today. (A similar number live in India and are called Parsees.) Owing to their limited numbers, the grounds of the temple in Yazd are small, about an acre. The two-story tan-brick building, built in 1940, is modest, about the size of a small-town public library, with white stone stairs leading up to a four-column porch. Over the door is the symbol of Zoroaster, a spread eagle bird with the head of a bearded man. The bird is similar to the one used in the seal of the United States, though its wings are stretched straight. The image is designed to show humans using their good qualities to triumph over evil and soar into union with Ahuramazda.

  Inside the marble foyer, a handful of worshipers were milling about under a chandelier. The room was largely empty, except for a giant portrait of bearded Zoroaster in a toga, painted in an animated, soft-focus style that made it seem almost airbrushed. The centerpiece of the temple, behind a tinted glass, was a foot-tall brass urn with a fire said to have been burning for three thousand years. “Zoroastrians are theists and do not worship the fire,” a plaque explained in English. “Rather they regard it as a symbol of purity. Only the unique God, Ahuramazda, deserves to be worshiped. The fire of this temple has been kept burning from the past until now by a special responsible person, a priest, by adding dry wood, such as almond or apricot, several times a day.”

  Behind the fire, through a small door, we were welcomed into the office of the president of the Iranian Zoroastrian Association. Dr. Kasra Vafadari was decorating. He was placing bowls of fruit on an antique table, with pieces of warm bread and small cups of tea. He was nipping off leaves and pouring water from a copper jug into houseplants on the windowsill. He was arranging the kilim cushions on upright chairs with mumbled excitement. Dressed in an expensive gray-and-white-checked suit and constantly tugging his fashionably floppy black hair from his eyes, he had the I-know-you’re-watching-me-and-I’m-slightly-crazed-yet-you-still-find-me-charming-don’t-you look of a movie diva before a photo shoot.

  “Okay, shall we start?” he said, and we sat down. “I think it’s important for you to know who’s talking. I’m Kasra Vafadari. I have a doctorate in Anglo-American modern history, and then I got another doctorate in a
ncient Iranian studies, both from Paris University. I taught in Tehran before the revolution, but the mullahs asked me not to teach because I didn’t pray to their god. So I went to Paris. I only came back in the last few years to become head of the Zoroastrian community, but the government does not like me, so they harass me and sometimes arrest me. But now I’m getting lost in my conversation, because I don’t know what—”

  “How about I start asking questions?” I said.

  “Good,” he said, and put his hands on his lap like a schoolboy. He looked to Linda for approval.

  “Question one: Do you think Zarathustra existed, and do you care?”

  “You obviously are a well-matured writer,” he said, “because outside this, I might be tempted to accept your provocation, which is very, very below the belt, and say no. But I do care, because I don’t think there’s smoke without fire. I do think the hymns that make up the Avesta were said by somebody. So I would say yes, but obviously it’s not a scientific answer.”

  “You say it’s a below-the-belt question,” I said. “I think it’s an above-the-neck question. I think in biblical religion we are too obsessed with the question Did Noah exist? or Did Abraham exist? One of the appealing things about Zoroastrianism is that its origin is so vague it seems freed from this question.”

  “In that case I appreciate the question,” he said. “But you have to understand, in Iran for the past fourteen hundred years, if our god isn’t Allah, people will say we don’t believe in a real god. If we say our god is Ahuramazda and that we try to balance the twin forces of good and evil, then they say we’re dualistic. We experienced genocides in the past, so we are very sensitive.”

  I asked him about the moment when Zoroastrianism first took hold in Iran, and he stressed that the religion arose out of a merger of different traditions, including shamanism and Mithraism. “The only god who could satisfy all these different movements had to be a wishy-washy god,” he said. “I’m making fun, but the point is serious. The idea of having an open, universal god, who values wisdom above all else, allowed society to function more successfully. This is why Zoroastrianism still has appeal. It respects people. I love being a Zoroastrian. I get to interact with this modern god based on my own intelligence. Transfigurating is the most beautiful word I learned in English for my religion, because it means God can never do anything without me. For the world to get better, we must work together.”

  “I’m beginning to think this is the great contribution of this moment in religious history,” I said. “The Buddha made similar points, as well as the prophets. They moved the central relationship away from god and king, to god and individual. The prophets say it’s not about the powerful, it’s about the people. All humans deserve justice, and they must act justly in order to achieve it.”

  “Perfectly put,” he said. “The people become co-workers of God’s. You have a responsibility to make life better.”

  I asked him what Zoroastrian ideas he saw echoed in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He talked about the idea of the messiah and candlelight in Judaism, the notion of resurrection and the halo in Christianity, and the respect for fire in certain communities of Muslims. “But many Iranians have the tendency to say that everything is from Iran,” he said. “The reason is that you, the West, do the opposite. You talk about the Cradle of Civilization being Mesopotamia, and you forget Persia. We have become a little defensive.”

  “So all of this is leading to a big question,” I said. “We live in a world where religion has become more important than it was at any time in the last century. If we go back to the moment when all these religions came into being, and we see how Zoroastrianism and its wishy-washy god influenced other faiths, what can we learn from that moment that will help us today?”

  “I honestly believe that the most important thing to remember from Zoroastrianism is that man is free to choose. We are our own masters, and we must respect nature, not kill animals, keep the air and water clean. I can’t find a better philosophy of life than that, and it was invented more than 2,500 years ago. The most beautiful thing about Zoroastrianism is that it’s not moralistic—do this and don’t do that—it’s moral. And there’s a big difference.”

  “So if you were to choose a motto for our time to take away from your faith, what would it be?”

  “ ‘You are free to choose, choose well.’ God is in your brain. You must educate that part of you, you must read, you must help others. A Muslim can remain a Muslim. A Christian can remain a Christian. A Jew can remain a Jew. But think independently. Be calm. Be beautiful. And above all, be good.”

  A few miles outside Yazd is one of the more unusual religious structures I have ever seen. At the edge of the desert, two reddish brown hilltops with no vegetation rise like sentries. On top of each hill is a squat, round structure about fifty feet in diameter and thirty feet tall that looks like the watch tower of a medieval fort cut off at the knees. These buildings, called dakhmas, or silence towers, were built by Zoroastrians as places to bring their dead to be eaten by birds.

  Dusk was settling by the time we arrived, so we hurried to climb the narrow path. Linda was wearing sandals and her chador. From behind, silhouetted against the shadowy mountains, she looked like a bat. We were accompanied by Pallan, a Zoroastrian graduate student and friend of Kamran’s. I asked him if it was difficult being Zoroastrian in Iran. “All Iranians, in their heart, love Zoroastrians,” he said. “They think it’s cool. They think we are the pure Iranians.”

  In the battle of good and evil, Zoroastrians view death as a temporary triumph of evil, so any contact with a dead object can taint the forces of good. As a result, humans were not cremated, because burning the body would defile the fire. Bodies were not buried, because they would defile the earth. Bodies were left exposed in the open air, where they could be decomposed by the sun and devoured by vultures. This public exposure had the added benefit of reinforcing the religion’s egalitarian principles, as rich and poor were disposed of in the same manner.

  After about twenty minutes, we arrived at the entrance to the silence tower. A small doorway about chest-high was cut into the side of the circular building. I boosted Linda and Pallan, then climbed through myself. The interior was covered in small pebbles and was about the size of a circus ring. Until the Iranian government outlawed the practice in 1978, bodies were laid out with heads facing the perimeter, like spokes on a wheel. After three days, the remaining bones were swept into an internal pit, then dissolved with chemicals. Though the Iranian government banned the custom, some Zoroastrians in India still practice it. I asked Pal-lan what he’d thought of the idea when he learned about it as a boy.

  “I heard it had some advantages,” he said. “It’s neat, it doesn’t take up too much land, it doesn’t pollute. Also, it feeds the birds. My grandmother had it done.”

  “So if the custom were permitted again, would you do it?”

  “Maybe. It really doesn’t matter to me what happens to my body. What really matters is my soul, and it’s going to heaven.”

  As we walked down the hill, the sun was setting behind the central mountains, creating a vivid tableau, with a jagged line of black peaks followed by a similar line in chocolate brown, both backed by a nectarine sky. The sun was the color of fire. I had proposed we come to Yazd on something of a whim, knowing it was the heartbeat of Zoroastrianism but understanding little about what that meant. Now I could see the flame of Zoroaster burning behind some of the most familiar icons in Western faith—good and evil, heaven and hell—and I could see its tensions flickering in the shadows of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As we were saying goodbye to Kasra Vafadari, I mentioned that Linda and I had begun lighting candles on Friday nights to celebrate Shabbat. “When we look into the light, should we think of Zoroastrianism?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “The goal is not to replace one religion with another. It’s to realize that we all grew out of a similar time and place, and share similar dreams. When you look at that ligh
t, you should think higher thoughts, and dedicate yourself to making them come true.”

  Zoroastrianism, I was beginning to think, may be the first light unto the nations, a religion so tiny that its contributions to Western religion have long since been consumed by other traditions, their origins long since forgotten. And yet those contributions are testament to the rich foundry of faith that characterized the Ancient Near East in the first millennium B.C.E., when religions viewed the spiritual ideas of other faiths not as threatening their existence but as enhancing their appreciation of a complex, multifaceted world. The Zoroastrian contribution to that moment is that life is not about hewing to one invariable truth; it’s about persevering through the tension of light and dark, achieving the victory of good over evil, and ending life not with trumpets of noise but on towers of quiet. This may be the greatest allegory of Iran: The most influential ideas in the history of religion were not all made with proclamations.

  Some were made in silence.

  . 2 .

  HIS ANOINTED ONE

  When I was a freshman in high school, a man came to Ms. Arden’s ancient history class one day when we were studying Greek and Roman mythology. I remember that course so fondly that the textbook we used, Myths and Their Meaning, by Max J. Herzberg, still sits on my bookshelf, its spine mended with masking tape. The man was hawking a summer trip and showed us slides from Greece with white cliffs, green hills, and the most mesmerizing marble ruins sticking up from the ground. That afternoon I went home and talked with my mother.

  “I fell in love today,” I said.

  “With whom?” she said.

  “With travel.”

  We couldn’t afford that trip, she explained, and twenty-five years later I’ve still not been to Greece. In fact, I’d mostly forgotten about that afternoon until Kamran turned our vehicle into a site in southeastern Iran, just outside Shiraz, whose grounds were as plush and ruins as ethereal as those images I saw more than two decades earlier.