The Cursum Perficio of Jesus

Zoroastrianism had a certain fascination for me at a young age. The Mazda car with its rotary engine and old references in vintage electronics books to "Ahura-Mazda" GE Mazda lights, inspired me to look up the reference. But I never seriously considered believing in it in the sense I was told I had to believe in God by my parents and authorities as a kid.

There are still a few Zoroastrians, but they are nearly extinct. They don't proselytize, and don't welcome converts much. But Zoroastrianism is the key predecessor of Christianity, and perhaps of all creedal religions.

Dr. Oliver had quite a bit to say about it. I'll provide a brief quote:

"WHEN A RESIDENCE is sold these days, the new owner almost always makes changes: he has it painted another color, he has the interior redecorated and installs new furniture, he may remove a partition between small rooms or divide a very large room, he may have the kitchen remodelled, and he may make other alterations to suit his taste or convenience; but the fabric of the house, its foundations, its beams, and its walls, remain unchanged.

The foregoing description, condensed and summary as it was, will have sufficed to show that the Christians today are living in Zoroaster’s old house. It has been remodelled here and there, but the fabric remains as it was built, twenty-six centuries ago.

The essentials of the newer cult are all in Zoroaster’s invention: the Good God and the Bad God; their armies of angels and devils; the contested partition of the universe between Good and Evil; the Holy War for One World of Righteousness; Heaven and Hell and even Purgatory (Misvan Gatu); and the apocalyptic vision of cosmic strife that will end only in a decisive last battle between the hosts of the Lord and the hosts of Satan, which will be followed by the Last Judgement and the end of Time, after which nothing can ever change again. All human beings sprang from a divinely-created original pair, whose descendants, equal in ancestry are made equal by Faith in the Good God, who fathered and sent into the world a Virgin-born Saviour to reveal his will to mortals, whose sins and merits are accurately recorded by the celestial bookkeeping system in preparation for the Last Judgement, when, incredible as it seems, they will be resurrected, so that, so to speak, they can enjoy the life everlasting in their own persons. The Zoroastrians, by the way, explain that when the time comes, Ahura Mazda’s zealous agents will find and reassemble every particle of the man’s flesh, which was eaten and digested by birds of prey centuries or millennia before; Christians attempt no explanation, but in most churches they still recite the Apostles’ Creed (forged at the end of the Fourth Century and subsequently revised), affirming that they believe in "the Resurrection of the Flesh," but they probably never think of what they are saying.

We could add numerous details of Christian doctrine that were devised by the Magi in the various Zoroastrian sects: confession of sins (paitita), penance and absolution (barasnom), ceremonial Last Suppers of bread and wine, observance of the twenty-fifth of December as a divine birthday, and many others, including even terminology, such as use of the title ‘Father’ to designate a priest.1

Zoroastrianism and Christianity, however, are not identical, with only a change of names and a few minor details. The remodelling has introduced two really striking differences. When Zoroaster emerged from the Virgin’s womb, he laughed to signify that life is good and should be enjoyed, and although the Magi, with the normal concern of holy men for their professional emoluments, devised all sorts of sacraments, rites, ceremonies, and religious obligations to keep their customers at work for them, the religion never lost a decent respect for human nature. The first woman had been the twin sister of the first man, and no Zoroastrian ever thought of a woman as an "imperfect animal" with an insatiable lust for sexual intercourse, "an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colors.’2 No Zoroastrian ever had the Christians’ morbid obsession with sex or thought he or she would conciliate a ferocious god by thwarting and perverting their own nature and natural instincts or, for that matter, by inflicting discomfort and pain on themselves in an orgy of masochism. No Zoroastrian ever thought that it would be holy to stop the reproduction of our species and leave the world uninhabited. No Zoroastrian was ever infected with the insanity that, for example, made Jerome run out into a desert so that he wouldn’t see any of the "evils of nature," and made Origen castrate himself to appease a god’s hatred of mankind. No Zoroastrian’s mind was ever haunted and distracted by an incubus of imaginary guilt, an Original Sin inherited from a man and woman who had discovered that their creator had equipped them with sexual organs he forbade them to use.3 No Zoroastrian intelligence was ever so perverted that he felt guilty for living, maddened by morbid obsessions that are sexual in origin, but, by an even fouler perversion, may be diverted into a maudlin guilt because he does not share the squalor of the lowest strata of society or does not sufficiently degrade himself to satisfy the enemies of his race and of his own progeny.

Equally startling is the Christian remodelling of the Good God. Ahura Mazda is a strictly just, honest, and impartial deity: he has ordained certain rules of righteousness for all mankind, and his servants keep a strict account of each individuals obedience or disobedience. Yahweh, on the other hand, is a god who early conceived an inexplicable partiality for a miserable tribe of swindlers and robbers, who pleased him by observing strange taboos, sexually mutilating their male children, and defecating and urinating in the ways he likes to watch. Having created the world, he spent the greater part of its existence in abetting his barbarous pets as they preyed on more civilized people, and he was their confederate as they swindled and robbed their victims or stole a country they wanted by massacring all the men, women, and children, and even their domestic animals. He even tampered with the minds of kings so that he would have an excuse for inflicting on their subjects every sadistic torture he could devise for the delectation of his favorites. And having been the accomplice of the world’s parasites for centuries, he unaccountably changed his mind and sent them his only begotten son so that they would kill him and thus give him an excuse for breaking his bargain with them. It is no wonder that Christians so constantly talk of their "fear of God" who wouldn’t fear a deity so capricious, ruthless, and unscrupulous?

No unprejudiced observer could fail to conclude that Zoroastrianism was not changed for the better when it was remodelled by its new owners.

It remains for us to account for the spiritual deterioration in the subsequent chapters of this booklet.

A judicious reader may inquire why the Zoroastrian religion, if so markedly superior to its successor, so declined that it now engages the faith of only a small colony of about 120,000 Parsees whose ancestors found in India a refuge from Islam. That is one of the historical questions that can be answered without qualification or uncertainty. The primary cause is obvious: in heaven, as on earth, nothing succeeds like success, and failure is the cause of failure.

Although Zoroaster’s invention was a "universal" religion and sent out missionaries to preach its gospel to all the world, it became the official religion of the vast and mighty Persian Empire and Ahura Mazda’s fate became inextricably entwined with the fate of the Persian King of Kings. Had Xerxes’ huge navy and army been victorious at Salamis and Plataea, the True Faith would have followed the Persian warriors over Europe, much as Christianity later followed the British regiments throughout the world. It is even possible, I suppose, that we should be Zoroastrians today, worshipping a god represented by an eternal flame on the altar of each community, and pestered by "creation scientists," who would try to prove to us that Darwin was wicked to doubt that Ahura Mazda created Gayamart so that he could engender Masi and Masanl, the ancestors of all mankind. But I doubt it: gods, like men, become senescent, and even if they are immortal, if they are too busy or slothful to answer their votaries’ prayers and supplications for a few centuries, they have only themselves to blame when they are supplanted by younger and yet untried immortals."

http://www.revilo-oliver.com/rpo/RPO_NewChrist/chap11.htm