Christian Apokatastasis and Zoroastrianism

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406 Religion
&Theology
brill.com/rt
Christian Apokatastasis and Zoroastrian Frashegird

The Birth of Eschatological Universalism
Ilaria L.E. Ramelli*

Catholic University Milan; Angelicum; Princeton
ilaria.ramelli@unicatt.it; i.l.e.ramelli@durham.ac.uk; iramelli@princeton.edu
Abstract
The theory of universal restoration (apokatastasis), the eventual eviction of evil and
the purification, conversion and salvation of all rational creatures, was prominent in
early Christian thinkers and present in more Patristic theologians than is commonly
assumed. But, besides having philosophical, Biblical, and Jewish roots, may it have
stemmed from another religion? The only suitable candidate would be Zoroastrianism.
An analysis of the available sources concerning Zoroastrian eschatology shows that it
is improbable that this may have influenced the Christian apokatastasis doctrine. At
least, it is impossible to prove anything like this, mainly for chronological reasons. Fruit-
ful interactions may, however, have occurred at the time of Bardaisan. This essays shows
the importance of comparative religio-historical studies, and the reconceptualizing of
theological doctrines into social discourse, for research into early Christianity.
Keywords
apokatastasis/restoration – frashegird – eschatology – universalism and social dis-

course – comparative religious studies – Bardaisan of Edessa – Bundahishn – Zoroas-
trian eschatology – Zurvanism
* Part of the research that has led to this essay was undertaken during a senior research fellow-
ship – Gastprofessur in Religion at the University of Erfurt in 2014 and 2015. I am most grateful
to all colleagues and staff at the Max-Weber-Kolleg for wonderful conversations and kind
assistance. Warm thank also to the colleagues who offered helpful feedback when I presented
a draft of this paper at Patristica Bostoniensia, especially Robert Daly sj, Susan Harvey, Susan
Holman, David Konstan, Dan Olson, Ute Possekel, Augustine Reisenauer osd, and Arthur
Urbano, as well as the colleagues at Harvard Divinity School, where I also discussed this topic
during a senior visiting professorship in Greek Thought.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/15743012-02403007

christian apokatastasis and zoroastrian frashegird 351
1 The Value of Comparative Studies in Religion and the Social

Relevance of Eschatological Discourses
Early Christian studies and the discipline that is traditionally called “patristics”
can profit very much from comparative religio-historical studies. The latter,
indeed, can illumine in many ways the study of Christian antiquity and can
prove very valuable for the conceptualization of early Christian discourses. One
prominent example will be provided in the present essay, which focuses on a
comparison – to my knowledge never systematically tackled before – between
the early Christian theory of apokatastasis (“restoration, reconstitution, rein-
tegration”) and the Zoroastrian notion of frashegird or eschatological renova-
tion, transfiguration, or healing. Many chronological, textual, and interpretive
problems are involved in such a comparative religio-historical study, but it is
definitely worth undertaking it, all the more so if both patristic apokatastasis
and Zoroastrian frashegird are investigated against the background of social
discourses in imperial and late antiquity.
It is, indeed, especially interesting to redescribe the Christian theory of
apokatastasis and the Zoroastrian concept of frashegird as social discourses
of social re-imagining and critique, in line with Bruce Lincoln’s work on Per-
sian/Zoroastrian millenarianism as a social ideology.1 Lincoln proposed that
there were religions of order favored by the elite, such as Confucianism and
Anglicanism, and religions of the oppressed that could be used for opposi-
tional purposes, such as Taoism and Quakerism. He also classified these “oppo-
sitional” religions as passive, active, and revolutionary.2 In this connection, an
important research project, which is being conducted over the years, concerns
a systematic investigation into the social and political causes of the rejection of
the theory of apokatastasis on the part of the “Church of the Empire,” mainly
under the influence of Justinian in the East and Augustine and his heritage in
the West.
It seems, indeed, that at a certain point theories of apokatastasis were per-
ceived as socially and politically destabilizing. This had not been necessarily
1 Bruce Lincoln, Religion, Empire, and Torture. The Case of Achaemenian Persia, with a post-
script on Abu Ghraib (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Bruce Lincoln, “Epilogue,”
in Ancient Religions, ed. Sarah Johnston (Cambridge, ma; London: The Belknap Press of Har-
vard University Press, 2007), 241–252. See also The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrian-
ism, eds. Michael Stausberg, Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, with Anna Tessmann (Chich-
ester; Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015).
2 Bruce Lincoln, “Notes toward a Theory of Religion and Revolution,” in idem., ed., Religion,
Rebellion, Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1985), 266–299.
Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

352 ramelli
the case from the beginning, though: apokatastasis or universal restoration

could function in the first centuries ce as an alternative eschatological view to
apocalypticism and millenarianism, which were associated with oppositional
fringes (taking dualism between good and evil and a final cosmic battle as
remarkable features of apocalypticism). Indeed, the restoration doctrine in the
first four centuries ce was often associated with a critique of apocalypticism.
For instance, Origen, Eusebius, and Gregory of Nyssa rejected especially mil-
lenarianism as a result of an interpretation of the Apocalypse of John that in
their view was too “literal.” Bardaisan took his distance from an apocalyptic
perspective and the social milieux usually associated with such perspectives –
marginal, oppositional circles. This position of Bardaisan was probably related
to his espousal of the apokatastasis doctrine, as well as of a figural reading of
Scripture.3
Gerhard van den Heever has redescribed millenarianism and apocalyp-
ticism as social discourses in light of how Persian/Zoroastrian-derived dis-
courses operated in critical social contexts and anti-imperial settings such as
Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity, but also how the use of con-
cepts of frashegird/restoration by imperial elites undergirded their own claim
to authority, as the ones who establish a restored order.4 The same is the case
in the Roman Empire, where Christianity at first was an oppositional force,
marginalized and even occasionally persecuted, and accused of breaking the
pax deorum, and then was not only recognized by the Empire (with Constan-
tine), but even became the State religion (with Theodosius) and the guarantor
of the pax deorum – by then pax Dei. Libanius, Or. 30.33, expressed very well
the idea that the Roman Empire was based on pax deorum, when he stressed
that the stability of the empire depended on the religious sacrifices performed
in Rome. Therefore, Jeremy Schott can remark that “the notion that the safety
and success of the empire depended on the traditional worship of the gods
was shared by emperors and intellectuals.”5 This is why already Tertullian at
the beginning of the third century complained that Christians were deemed
3 See Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, “Mysticism, Apocalypticism, and Platonism,” forthcoming.

4 E.g., Gerhard van den Heever, “In Purifying Fire: World-View and 2Pet 3:10,” Neotestamentica
27 (1993): 107–118; idem, “Making Mysteries. From the Untergang der Mysterien to Imperial
Mysteries – Social Discourse in Religion and the Study of Religion,” Religion & Theology 12,
no. 3&4 (2005): 262–307; idem, “Novel and Mystery: Discourse, Myth, and Society,” in Ancient
Fiction: The Matrix of Early Christian and Early Jewish Narrative, eds. Jo-Ann A. Brant, Charles
W. Hedrick, and Chris Shea, Symposium 32 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 89–
114.
5 Jeremy Schott, “Porphyry on Christians and Others: Barbarian Wisdom, Identity Politics, and

responsible for the breaking of the pax deorum. The relation between religion
and the Roman Empire has been the object of a number of studies from dif-
ferent angles, most recently by Clifford Ando.6 Jörg Rüpke, who has devoted
much important scholarship to this interface, rightly emphasizes the plurality
and transformations of ancient Christianities, too, in the Roman Empire.7
Constantine’s universalistic drive, indeed, seems to have depended on his
deep concern for unity in the Empire, which I think primarily had to do with
religion (again, the ancient Roman tenet of pax deorum), as is clear especially
from Constantine’s own Letter to Alexander of Alexandria and the Presbyter
Arius (reported by Eusebius, Life of Constantine 2.64–72). Here Constantine
declares: “My design was, first, to bring the diverse judgments formed by all
nations concerning the divine [τὴν ἁπάντων τῶν ἐθνῶν περὶ τὸ θεῖον πρόθεσιν] to
a condition, as it were, of settled uniformity [εἰς μίαν ἕξεως σύστασιν ἑνῶσαι]” (Life
of Constantine 2.65, trans. Pietras with slight changes8). Note the terminology
of “unification” (ἕνωσις).9
Michael Simmons even suggests that in the third century in particular reli-
gion, focused on the imperial cult, was the real unifying factor in the Roman
Empire: “The emperors increasingly relied upon Roman religion as an agent
of unification”.10 This is why Simmons also surmises that “Christianity was the
only genuine universal salvation cult in the Roman Empire, and one of the main
causes of its eventual triumph was its distinct universalist soteriology, which
was successfully used by Constantine as an agent of political and cultural uni-
fication.”11 This is likely to have been the case, although we should determine
the exact meaning of “universalism” and “universalistic”: Simmons takes these
terms in a minimalistic sense, with reference to a religion that offered salvation
anti-Christian Polemic on the Eve of the Great Persecution,” jecs 13, no. 3 (2005): 277–314,
here 312.
6 Clifford Ando, Religion et gouvernement dans l’ Empire romain (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016).
7 Jörg Rüpke, From Jupiter to Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), esp. 271–285 on
the Roman Empire and religions.
8 Henryk Pietras, Council of Nicaea (325): Religious and Political Context, Documents, Com-
mentaries (Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2016), 106.
9 On Constantine’s religious politics see also Mark Edwards, Religions of the Constantinian
Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), with my review forthcoming in Gnomon;
Noel Lenski, Constantine and the Cities: Imperial Authority and Civic Politics. Empire and
after (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
10 Michael Bland Simmons, Universal Salvation in Late Antiquity: Porphyry of Tyre and the
Pagan-Christian Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 187 and passim.
11 Simmons, Universal Salvation, 201; Larry Hurtado, Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian
Distinctiveness in the Roman World (Waco: Baylor, 2016).

354 ramelli
to people of all races and classes, and all walks of life, not all of whom, however,
would in fact be saved. But there was a remarkable strand within Christian-
ity in late antiquity, which could be identified as the Origenian strand, which
taught that salvation was not only offered to all, but would eventually be actu-
ally achieved by all.12 This is a stronger sense of “Christian universalism,” which
is even likely to have influenced Zoroastrianism, too, in late antiquity, as will be
suggested in this essay.
Simmons makes another important point when he parallels Christian uni-
versalism as a unifying factor in the Roman Empire and Zoroastrian univer-
salism as a unifying factor in the Persian Empire, roughly at the same time:
“imperial policies depended upon religious culture to unify an empire [sc.
the Roman] that seem [sic] was becoming unglued. And similar develop-
ments occurred in the Sassanian Dynasty of Persia with respect to the rise of
a new prophetic movement and a concomitant soteriological universalism.”13
It seems highly significant to me that precisely Porphyry, who was profoundly
interested in universal salvation – very likely in an anti-Christian polemical
perspective14 – composed a treatise aimed at demonstrating that the writings
attributed to Zoroaster were in fact a later forgery. If there was any soteriolog-
ical universalism in these Zoroastrian texts in the third century ce, Porphyry
intended to dismantle their antiquity and authenticity. Christian universalism,
in turn, incorporated the Persian Magi into its own salvation economy.15
In light of these considerations, it becomes more and more important and
needed to investigate the possible relations between early Christian apokatas-
tasis discourse and Zoroastrian frashegird, also in light of recent, innovative
research into the former.
2 New Research into the Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis
A systematic investigation into the notion of apokatastasis in antiquity and

Late Antiquity has demonstrated that the theory of universal restoration –
12 Full documentation on this in Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis:
A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena, Supplements to Vigiliae Chris-
tianae 120 (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
13 Simmons, Universal Salvation, xix.
14 See Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, “Porphyry and the Motif of Christianity as παράνομος,” lecture,
University of Cambridge, January 2017, forthcoming.
15 Richard E. Payne, A State of Mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians, and Iranian Political Culture
in Late Antiquity (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 164–165.

that is, the eventual eviction of evil and the conversion of all rational crea-
tures, including wicked humans and even demons, to the Good, i.e., God, and
their salvation – was prominent, even though not universally accepted, in
Christian thinkers of the first centuries.16 In particular, it has been argued,
forcefully and carefully, and for the first time in a comprehensive monograph,
how the doctrine of apokatastasis is biblically, philosophically, and above all
christologically grounded in its patristic supporters. Its various strands have
been painstakingly traced, disentangled, and widespread assumptions about
its opposition to the doctrine of free will and its dependence on “pagan” phi-
losophy more than on Scripture in the patristic era have been dismantled.
The same 2013 monograph has also demonstrated that this theory was pres-
ent in many more thinkers than is commonly assumed – even in Augustine
for a while – and was in fact a major doctrine in patristic thought, down to
the last great patristic philosopher, John the Scot Eriugena in the High Middle
Ages. A separate research is in the works into the ramifications of this doctrine
in the following centuries, from the Late Middle Ages and the Reformation
era to modern and contemporary theology, in which the doctrine of universal
restoration is in the focus of a lively debate. These more recent developments,
however, do not make the object of the present contribution, which rather
turns to the possible sources of the Christian doctrine of apokatastasis.
3 The Question of the Origins of Christian Apokatastasis:

Socio-Political Factors and a Possible Zoroastrian Connection?
While a methodical examination of “pagan” philosophical notions of apokatas-

tasis, as distinct from the Christian doctrine of apokatastasis, from ancient
philosophy to late Neoplatonism, is a remarkable desideratum and is there-
fore underway,17 important contributions could also come from research into
16 Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis; see the reviews by Anthony Meredith,
International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 8, no. 2 (2014): 255–257: Mark J. Edwards,
Journal of Theological Studies 65, no. 2 (2014): 718–724; Johannes van Oort, Vigiliae Chris-
tianae 64 (2014): 352–353; Chris L. De Wet, Journal of Early Christian History 5, no. 2 (2015):
184–187; Steven Nemes, Journal of Analytic Theology 3 (2015): 226–233; George Karamano-
lis, International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 10, no. 1 (2016): 142–146; Robin Parry,
International Journal of Systematic Theology 18, no. 3 (2016): 335–338.
17 The first nucleus of this research was carried out at Durham University on a senior
research fellowship. A very partial and provisional output has been offered in “Proclus
of Constantinople and Apokatastasis,” in Proclus and his Legacy, eds. David Butorac and

356 ramelli
ancient and Late Antique “pagan” religions, meaning neither Christian nor Jew-
ish (nor Islamic, to be sure – but Islam is here excluded for obvious chronolog-
ical reasons). The issue at stake is to determine whether the Christian doctrine
of apokatastasis may have at least partially stemmed from another religion,
besides having some evident Jewish roots, or, in its idea of universal purifica-
tion, illumination, conversion, and salvation it can be confirmed to be a dis-
tinctively Christian doctrine, whose first supporters were Bardaisan of Edessa
and Origen of Alexandria, with some antecedents in Clement and in the New
Testament and Jewish-Christian literature,18 and with an impressive number of
followers in the patristic period.
The only viable candidate in this connection seems to be Zoroastrianism.
This track is very interesting to pursue, all the more so in that Bardaisan of
Edessa (†222ce), a Christian Middle Platonist, one of the very first who upheld
a theory of universal restoration (involving the instruction, conversion, and sal-
vation of the wicked),19 was almost certainly acquainted with Iranian ideas,
especially in his cosmology.20 This may also be the reason why later biograph-
ical accounts report that his parents were Persians, exiles in Edessa. Moreover,
he is called a “Parthian” by Julius Africanus in Kestoi 1.20, 184–185 Vieillefond,
the very first source available about him, who even met him at the court of
Abgar the Great around 200ce.21 Now, Parthians were largely Zoroastrians.
Moreover, Porphyry in Abstinence from Eating Animals 4.17 calls Bardaisan
“Babylonian,” which concurs with the other references. Bardaisan and his cos-
mogonic ideas can be related to Manichaean and Gnostic cosmological/escha-
Danielle Layne, Millennium Studies 65 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 95–122. A monograph

will ultimately be devoted to this investigation.
18 As demonstrated by Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, “Origen, Bardaisan, and the Origin of Universal
Salvation,” Harvard Theological Review 102 (2009): 135–168.
19 As demonstrated by Ilaria Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa: A Reassessment of the Evidence
and a New Interpretation. Also in the Light of Origen and the Original Fragments from De
India (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2009); see also eadem, Bardaisan on Human Nature, Fate,
and Free Will (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming).
20 For a very brief and general comparison of Bardaisan’s and Zoroastrian cosmologies, see
Prods Oktor Skjærvø, “Bardesanes,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, 3.7–8, ed. Ehsan Yarshater
(London: Routledge, 1989), 780–785.
21 See Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa, for this and all the other sources regarding Bardaisan,
and for the interpretation of Bardaisan as a Christian Middle Platonist, received by Patricia
Crone, “Daysanis,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, 3rd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 116–118, and Heidi
Marx-Wolf, “Bardesanes,” in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. Roger Bagnall et al.
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013); online: doi:10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah05032.

tological thought. However, Bardaisan can only have influenced Manichaeism,

and not vice versa.22
A comparative study of Zoroastrian eschatology and early Christian doc-
trines of apokatastasis is extremely interesting. However, there are also diffi-
culties. In particular, the chronology of Zoroastrian literature, in which possible
ideas of restoration are embedded, is very tricky23 and much textual work still
has to be done.24 Besides, the texts themselves are open to divergent interpre-
tations, as I shall show. Although already in the Parthian period Zoroastrian-
ism may have influenced early Christianity,25 the evidence adduced so far26
mainly concerns some aspects of astrology, cosmology, anatomy,27 and apoc-
alypticism, and provides no argument that Zoroastrian eschatology was uni-
versalistic at that time and influenced Christian universalism in this respect.28
Even Philip Kreyenbroek’s investigation into Zoroastrian eschatology focuses
22 Argument in Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa, who also points out how Bardaisan’s anthro-
pology and ethics are not in line with Valentinian, “Gnostic” determinism.
23 See, e.g., Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism. 1. The Early Period, Handbuch der
Orientalistik. Erste Abteilung, Nahe und der Mittlere Osten, 1. Abschnitt 8. Bd., Lfg. 2 (Leiden:
Brill, 1975); eadem, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London; Boston:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), 1–130 on Zoroastrianism from pre-Zarathustrian times
to the Sassanian period, and esp. eadem, Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism,
2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Michael Stausberg, Die Religion
Zarathushtras. Geschichte – Gegenwart – Rituale, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2002);
Prods Oktor Skjærvø, The Spirit of Zoroastrianism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).
24 Michael Stausberg, “On the State and Prospects of the Study of Zoroastrianism,” Numen
55 (2008): 561–600, individuates eighteen major foci of innovative recent research, among
which textual studies are prominent (570–574), besides religion and politics (576–579),
and impact on, and interaction with, other religious traditions.
25 So Stausberg, “State and Prospects,” 577.
26 E.g., Anders Hultgård, “The Magi and the Star,” in Being Religious and Living through
the Eyes: Studies in Religious Iconography and Iconology, eds. P. Schalk and M. Stausberg
(Uppsala: University, 1998), 215–225; idem, “Das Paradies: Vom Park des Perserkönigs zum
Ort der Seligen,” in La Cité de Dieu/Die Stadt Gottes, ed. Martin Hengel et alii, wunt 129
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 1–43; idem, “La chute de Satan: Arrière-plan iranien d’un
logion de Jésus (Luc 10,18),” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 80 (2000): 69–77.
27 A Book of Zoroaster is the named source of an excursus on human anatomy in the
Apocryphon of John: see Marvin W. Meyer, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (New York:
Harper Collins, 2008), 119–124.
28 See Apocalyptique iranienne et dualisme qoumranien, eds. Geo Widengren, Anders Hult-
gärd, and Marc Philonenko (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1995); Anders Hultgård, “Persian Apoca-
lypticism,” in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. 1, ed. John Collins (New York, Lon-
don: Continuum, 1998), 39–83; Marco Frenschkowski, “Parthica Apocalyptica: Mytholo-

358 ramelli
on apocalypticism and millenarianism and adduces no proof of universalism in

Zoroastrian eschatology in the first two centuries ce that can have influenced
patristic universalism.29
In the third century, in the Persian Sassanian empire, old “paganism” was
replaced by the better organized and more centralized Zoroastrianism, which,
as state religion, helped to bring about political and cultural unification,30
although there remained a plurality of religious practices, ideas, and move-
ments, with rich interactions that brought about redefinitions of religious self-
understanding.31 However, as Michael Simmons rightly noted, “Zoroastrianism
never developed into a universal salvation cult in the strict sense. This was
left up to the religion of Mani.”32 This is why, I think, there were refutations of
Mani from the Christian side (by Diodore of Tarsus, who relied on Bardaisan; by
Augustine, and by Titus of Bostra or Basra), but no refutations of Zoroastrian-
ism, which evidently was not perceived as a menace. Hence also Diocletian’s
edict against Manichaeism, but not against Zoroastrianism. Indeed, Michael
Simmons has suggested that “there was no such thing as a pagan universal sal-
vation cult [not even Zoroastrianism in the first three centuries ce, I would
add], and one of the major causes of the triumph of Christianity in the Roman
Empire was its unique universalist soteriology.”33 It is thus necessary to verify
whether this claim can be substantiated.
gie und Militärwesen iranischer Völker in ihrer Rezeption durch die Offenbarung des
Johannes,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 47 (2004): 16–57.
29 Philip Kreyenbroek. “Millennialism and Eschatology in the Zoroastrian Tradition,” in
Imagining the End: Visions of Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America,
ed. A. Amanat and M. Bernhardsson (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 33–55.
30 See Albert de Jong, “One Nation under God? The Early Sasanians as Guardians and
Destroyers of Holy Sites,” in Götterbilder, Gottesbilder, Weltbilder. Polytheismus und Mono-
theismus in der Antike, vol. 1, eds. R.G. Kratz and H. Spickermann, fat 2.17 (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2006), 223–238.
31 See, e.g., Shaul Shaked, Dualism in Transformation: Varieties of Religion in Sasanian Iran
(London: soas, 1994); Albert de Jong, “Zoroastrian Self-definition in Contact with other
Faiths,” Irano-Judaica 5 (2003): 16–26.
32 Simmons, Universal Salvation, 190.
33 Simmons, Universal Salvation, xix. The only proviso here, again, is what “universalist”
means: Simmons takes it to mean that salvation is offered to all, although it is not achieved
by all. When I use “universalism,” I mean this in the sense that salvation is both offered
and eventually achieved by all – the doctrine of apokatastasis. This is what I am tracing
in Zoroastrianism and ancient Christianity, to determine which of the two may have
influenced the other on this score, or even whether there might have been a common
source.

4 Zoroastrianism and Judaism: Zoroastrian Elements in the Dead Sea

Scrolls
One interesting element that is worth highlighting preliminarily is that con-

nections between Judaism and Zoroastrianism in the so-called Second Temple
period – a seminal age for the formation of the apokatastasis doctrine – are
attested by the Dead Sea Scrolls, where a larger number of Iranian words is
found than in previous Jewish literature, and very similar ideas to those of
Zoroastrianism emerge.34 Persian–Jewish interaction is already documented
in the Achaemenian period (550–330 bce), when the province of Yehud was
part of the Achaemenid Empire. At that time, Zoroastrians seem to have met
the purely cosmological doctrine of astral apokatastasis:
During the Achaemenian period … Persian scholar-priests encountered

the theory of Babylonian astronomers, that there existed a “great year”,
during which all heavenly bodies completed a full cycle of their move-
ments; and that in each “great year” every occurrence of the preceding
ones was exactly repeated, to infinity. This theory was widely adopted in
antiquity, with hugely varying numbers of natural years being assigned to
each “great year”. Among the Iranians it was probably Zurvanites who first
tried to reconcile these alien ideas with Zoroastrianism. They postulated a
“great” or “world year” of 12,000 years … Zoroastrians could not accept the
idea of an infinite repetition of historical events, but they divided the span
of known human history into three millennia (i.e., 9,000–12,000), ushered
in successively by Zarathushtra and the first two World Saviors. During
each of these millennia, they held, the same broad pattern of events is
repeated, until by the year 12,000 the Third Savior, the Saoshyant, will have
accomplished the final defeat of evil and historical time will cease.35
34 See Albert De Jong, “Iranian Connections in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Oxford Handbook
of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), online: doi:10.1093/
oxfordhb/9780199207237.003.0021; Shaul Shaked, “Eschatology i. In Zoroastrianism and
Zoroastrian Influence,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica 8.6, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (London: Rout-
ledge, 1998), 565–569: here 568–569; also David Winston, “The Iranian Component in the
Bible, Apocrypha, and Qumran,” History of Religions 5 (1966): 183–216; Émile Puech, “Les
Esséniens et la croyance à la résurrection: de l’ eschatologie zoroastrienne aux notices de
Josèphe et d’ Hippolyte”, in Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls, ed. Joel Baden, Hindy Najman,
and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 175 (Lei-
den: Brill, 2017), 1068–1095. None of them, however, tackles the question of the possible
Zoroastrian influence on the Christian doctrine of apokatastasis.
35 Boyce, Sources, 20.

360 ramelli
Now, astral apokatastasis dramatically differed from the Christian soterio-

logical doctrine of apokatastasis, but also influenced it in a way, to the point
that astral metaphors were used, for instance, by Evagrius Ponticus with refer-
ence to his own soteriological apokatastasis.36
Possible influences of early Zoroastrian eschatology could be detectable in
passages of Genesis written by Hebrews residing in Judaea during the Persian
era. For example, Jonathan Huddleston37 argues that Genesis was composed
in an eschatological perspective. Indeed, he takes Genesis to be a compos-
ite text whose material was largely composed and edited during the Persian
era. Examples of iconographical influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism and
Judaeo-Christianism are offered by Sara Kühn.38 In addition, Parthian–Jewish
interaction lasted throughout the entire history of the Parthian empire, which
terminated in 224ce, just two years after the death of Bardaisan, one of the very
first supporters of the universal restoration theory.
Given the many interrelations with Judaism, from Achaemenian times on-
ward and through to the age of Jesus and the early Christians, it is not incon-
ceivable that Zoroastrianism came into contact also with early Christianity, for
example with Bardaisan. He was very probably acquainted with Zoroastrian
cosmology and might have been influenced by its eschatology, but might also
have somehow influenced its eschatology (as I shall show, given the proba-
ble shape of Zoroastrian eschatology at that time, the latter option has some
chances to be the case).
4.1 Linguistic Elements

It is widely documented that Iranian words are used both in the Bible and
in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Iranian noun raz, “secret, mystery” is attested
in one of the latest book of the Hebrew Bible, Daniel (2:18–30; 4:9). Here
it refers to the hidden, symbolic meaning of dreams, which only a prophet
such as Daniel could understand. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, raz is to be found
more often, in the sense of “mystery,” with reference to divine secrets that are
shared only by a small number of persons.39 The chronological gap between
36 Ilaria Ramelli, “Harmony between arkhē and telos in Patristic Platonism and the Imagery
of Astronomical Harmony Applied to the Apokatastasis Theory,” International Journal of
the Platonic Tradition 7 (2013): 1–49; Evagrius, Kephalaia Gnostika, trans., intro., and comm.
Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, Writings from the Greco-Roman World 38 (Atlanta: sbl Press, 2015).
37 Jonathan Huddleston, Eschatology in Genesis, fat 2.57 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012).
38 Sara Kühn, “The Dragon Fighter: The Influence of Zoroastrian Ideas on Judaeo-Christian
and Islamic Iconography,” Aram 26, no. 1 (2014): 59–93.
39 See De Jong, “Iranian Connections.”

the Iranian texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls is large, as Wolfson has warned.40
But I deem it worth noticing that the very same term in its Syriac version, razā,
is a keyword in Bardaisan’s own cosmology, which also in other respects, as I
shall show, is remarkably similar to Zoroastrian cosmology. For Bardaisan held
that the “Mystery [razā] of the Cross” of Christ-Logos was already present at
the creation of this world, when the Logos arranged all beings in order, and
will be active through ordering and purification until the end, when a universal
restoration will take place, which will involve also the conversion and salvation
of the wicked.41
4.2 Conceptual Elements

In the Dead Sea Scrolls there are not only linguistic affinities with Iranian
terminology, but also some striking similarities to Zoroastrian ideas, also noted
by Albert De Jong.42 For instance, the opposition of Light and Darkness in the
Dead Sea Scrolls recalls the Zoroastrian one. The Prince of Lights rules the
Sons of Righteousness, the Angel of Darkness rules the Sons of Deceit. God
eternally loves the former of these two spirits, and eternally hates the other.43
The evil spirit is doomed to be destroyed: at the end of time God will obliterate
it forever,44 as it also happens in Zoroastrian eschatology (see below). This is
described in the Dead Sea Scrolls as a purification of the just, who will be totally
liberated from injustice.
The crucial issue with respect to apokatastasis, however, is what is going to
happen to the wicked. According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the followers of the
Spirit of Deceit will be punished especially after death, with damnation and
later a total annihilation. Now, if this picture denotes a Zoroastrian influence,
this suggests that at the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, between the second cen-
tury bce and the first ce, Zoroastrianism did not contemplate a conversion,
purification, and restoration of the wicked, and if so it could not have inspired
the core principle of the Christian doctrine of apokatastasis. Annihilationism
was, indeed, an alternative to either eternal torment (hell) or universal sal-
vation. All three of these alternatives were to be taken into consideration by
some early Christian theologians. Bardaisan foresaw an eschatological instruc-
40 Elliot Wolfson, “Seven Mysteries of Knowledge: Qumran Esotericism Recovered,” in The

Idea of Biblical Interpretation, ed. Hindy Najman and Judith H. Newman, Supplements to
the Journal for the Study of Judaism 83 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2004), 177–213, here 177–178.
41 Full discussion and documentation is found in Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa.
42 De Jong, “Iranian Connections.”
43 1qs 3:26–4:1.
44 1qs 4:19.

362 ramelli
tion and conversion of the wicked, and not their destruction or their eternal
damnation. This option was also adopted by Origen immediately afterwards,
and later by all the patristic supporters of the apokatastasis theory,45 including
Gregory of Nyssa and Evagrius.
5 Chronological Problems
The main problem in the reconstruction of the evolution of Zoroastrian cos-

mology and eschatology is the chronological uncertainty attached to it, since,
as is well known, most of the documents were transmitted orally (or were tradi-
tionally regarded as having been handed down orally) for many centuries and
were fixed in a written form only in Christian times, often much later than
Bardaisan’s and Origen’s own lifetimes – and very possibly after undergoing
alterations and superimpositions during such a long time. As a consequence,
it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine the form of Zoroastrian
eschatology that might hypothetically have influenced the early Christian doc-
trine of apokatastasis, all the more so in that, as I shall indicate, Zoroastrian
eschatological accounts themselves are in some points ambiguous and contra-
dictory. Basil of Caesarea in Letter 258.4 from 377 ce speaks of Magousaioi who
lived in Cappadocia in his day and remarks upon their lack of sacred books still
at that time, in the late fourth century ce, as well as of teachers of their doc-
trines. Their religious traditions were simply transmitted orally from parents to
children.
The Avesta, comprised of Gathic Avesta and Younger Avesta, was transmit-
ted orally for centuries – with varying degrees of continuity and faithfulness –
and committed to writing only in the fifth or sixth century ce, under the Sas-
sanians, the last Zoroastrian dynasty in Iran (224–651ce).46 At that time, the
Avestan alphabet was created on purpose by means of an expansion of the
Pahlavi alphabet. Additionally, this late committing of the texts to writing hap-
pened after a major break in the oral transmission itself at the end of the
Achaemenian empire, when many priests were slaughtered in the wake of the
conquest of Alexander the Great. As a consequence, scholars can be fairly
sure of the integrity and continuity of the transmission only of those which
45 On all of whom see Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis.

46 See, e.g., Prods Oktor Skjærvø, “The Zoroastrian Oral Tradition as Reflected in the Texts,” in
The Transmission of the Avesta, ed. Alberto Cantera, Iranica 20 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
2012), 3–48.

were considered to be Zoroaster’s own Gathas (Gāθās or sacred hymns).47 But

at least for the rest of the Avesta, a major break must be taken into account
between the Achaemenian age, on the one hand, and the Parthian and Sassa-
nian times on the other. Therefore, if a restoration doctrine similar to the early
Christian doctrine of apokatastasis should be attested only in Parthian or even
Sassanian times (and I shall show that even this potential, late attestation is
very ambiguous and problematic), it is impossible to claim with any degree of
certainty that it was already developed in the Achaemenian period and, more
generally, in pre-Christian times.
Under the Sassanians, who supported a form of Zoroastrianism close to
Zurvanism and imposed Middle Persian or Pahlavi throughout their empire,
a canon of Avestan texts was established, grouped into twenty-one nasks or
books. The stages of this dynastic enterprise are recorded in the Pahlavi Denkart
(Dēnkard) or Dinkard (meaning Acts of the Religion, a compilation made in
the ninth or tenth century ce), the first phase being only partial: “Ardashir son
of Papak, following Tansar [sc. a Zoroastrian priest] as his religious authority,
commanded all those scattered teachings [sc. those whose preservation had
been ordered by the Parthian king Valakhsh or Vologeses] to be brought to
court. Tansar … selected one(?) tradition and left the rest out of the canon.
And he issued this decree: The interpretation of all the teachings of the Mazda-
worshipping religion is our responsibility, for now there is no lack of certain
knowledge concerning them.”48 Then another similar, but larger enterprise
was ordered by Shahpur i: “Shabuhr, son of Ardashir, further collected those
writings from the Religion which had been dispersed throughout India, the
Byzantine Empire, and other lands, and which treated of medicine, astronomy,
movement, time, space, substance, creation, becoming, passing away, change
in quality, growth (?), and other processes and organs. These he added to (?)
the Avesta and commanded that a fair copy of all of them be deposited in
the royal treasury; and he examined the possibility of bringing all systems (?)
into line with the Mazda-worshipping religion.”49 Likewise Shahpur ii in the
fourth century ce wanted to establish a Zoroastrian orthodoxy and imposed it:
“Shabuhr, son of Hormizd, summoned men from all regions to an unprejudiced
47 On which see, e.g., Prods Oktor Skjærvø, “Gathas,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to
World Literature, vol. 1: To 600 ce, ed. Ilaria Ramelli (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, forthcom-
ing), on the Gathas from their origins to their afterlife in the Sassanian and post-Sassanian
literature.
48 Denkart, ed. Dhanjishah Meherjibhai Madan (Bombay: Society for the Promotion of
Researches into the Zoroastrian Religion, 1911): 412.11–17.
49 Denkart, 412.17–413.2.

364 ramelli
(?) disputation to examine and investigate all utterances. After the triumph
of Adurbad, through his tested utterance, over all those of different groups,
schools (?) and sects, he made this declaration: ‘Now that we have seen the
faith as it truly is, we shall not tolerate anyone of false religion, and we shall
be exceedingly zealous’. And he did so.”50 He famously also persecuted the
Christians.
Copies of the Great Avesta were likely placed in the libraries of the chief Sas-
sanian fire temples, but during the Islamic period these temples were destroyed
and the oldest manuscript dates only to the year 1323 ce. It is clearly hard
to be sure to recover from these manuscripts, or at any rate from documents
stemming from the late Sassanian age, exactly the eschatological doctrines of
Zoroastrianism from the founder himself (ca. 1500/1200 bce?)51 to the time of
Jesus Christ, and see whether they might have influenced the early Christian
doctrine of apokatastasis.
6 Analysis of Cosmological and Eschatological Elements

in the Yasnas
Let me now analyze the most interesting texts concerning eschatology within
this large body, especially some Yasnas and the late Bundahishn, to see whether
a development can be traced and what the examination of these texts can
reveal about possible interactions between Zoroastrian eschatology and the
early Christian doctrine of apokatastasis.
Zoroastrian eschatology, or at least the little we can reconstruct of it, must be
understood against the backdrop of what has been handed down as Zarathush-
tra’s theology. God, Ahura Mazda (“Lord of Wisdom”), created the world52 and
all that is good in it through his holy Spirit, Spenta Mainyu, and with the aid of
six minor divinities, the Amesha Spentas (Avestic Aməša Spənta, “Holy Immor-
tals” or “Beneficent Immortals”53). All of these constitute the Zoroastrian Hep-
50 Denkart, 413.2–8.
51 In the Seleucidic era, the Zoroastrian Magi calculated that Zarathushtra had lived around
558 bce; this date, however, seems too late and Iranists have rather proposed dates that
span from the eighteenth to the eleventh century bce. For the scholarly debate about the
date of Zarathushtra, see Stausberg, “State and Prospect,” 572.
52 Yasna 44.7, uttered in the name of Zarathushtra: “By these (questions), O Mazda, I help
(humans) to discern Thee as Creator of all things through the holy Spirit.”
53 On these, see Johanna Narten, Die Aməṧa Spəṇta im Avesta (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
1982).

tad.54 In Yasna 45.2, the Adversary is called Angra Mainyu, the “Hostile” or “Evil
Spirit”; this and the holy Spirit of Ahura Mazda are “the two primeval spirits of
existence.” According to an interpretation of Yasna 30.3, the two spirits, Spenta
Mainyu and Angra Mainyu, were the twin offspring of Ahura Mazda, the only
uncreated entity, which would point to a monism as the original Zoroastrian
doctrine, not too dissimilar from the later Zoroastrian theory known as Zur-
vanism (see below).
This interpretation, however, is controversial and a different scholarly posi-
tion is that a radical dualism is the essence of original Zoroastrianism. In Yasna
44.16 Ahura Mazda is greeted not only as Creator, but also as healer: “As Healer
of the world, promise to us a judge.” The motif of judgment, as I shall indicate,
features prominently in Zoroastrian eschatology.
6.1 Yasna 30: Eschatological Rewards and Punishments

and the Transfiguration of the World
Yasna 30 is a significant text in this respect. It is one of the liturgical prayers that
were also edited and committed to writing in the late Sassanian period, with
extant manuscripts dating from the eleventh to the eighteenth century.55 It
belongs to the section of the Yasnas (nrs. 28–53) that includes the linguistically
most ancient texts of the Zoroastrian canon and is one of the Gathas, the hymns
traditionally attributed to Zarathustra himself; in particular Yasnas 28–34 make
up the Ahunavaiti Gatha. Here, as in other Gathas,56 the notion of eschatologi-
cal rewards and punishments emerges very clearly: “Worst Existence” (Avestic
daožaŋvha-, Pahlavi dušox), which awaits the wicked after death, is a place
or state of retributive punishment, while the “(House of) Best Purpose,” also
occurring in other Yasnas,57 designates a place or state of eschatological reward:
54 See, e.g., Boyce, Sources, 12.

55 Firoze M. Kotwal and Philip G. Kreyenbroek, The Hērbedestān and Nērangestān, iii (Paris:
Association pour l’ avancement des études iraniennes, 2003), 17–20; Boyce, History, 147–
177.
56 E.g., Yasna 43.5: “You [sc. Ahura Mazda] did appointed rewards for acts and words, bad for
the bad, a good recompense for the good, by Your innate virtue, at the final turning point
of creation.”
57 Yasna 33.3 and 33.13: “He who is very good to the just man, Lord, whether he be a kinsman
or one of the community or clan, or simply one serving the cow with zeal, he shall be in
the pasture of Truth and Good Purpose … You who see afar, reveal to me for support, Lord,
the incomparable things of Your kingdom, which are the recompense for good purpose.”

366 ramelli
(v. 3:) Truly there are two prim(ev)al Spirits, twins renowned to be in
conflict. In thought and word, in act they are two: the better and the evil.
And those who act well have chosen rightly between these two, but not
so the evildoers. (v. 4:) And when these two Spirits first came together
they created life and not-life, and how at the end Worst Existence shall
be for the wicked, but (the House of ) Best Purpose for the just man. (v. 5:)
Of these two Spirits, the Wicked One chose achieving the worst things.
The Most Holy Spirit, who is clad in hardest stone, chose right, and (so do
those) who shall satisfy Lord Mazda [sc. Ahura Mazda] continually with
rightful acts. (v. 6:) The Daevas indeed did not choose rightly between
these two, for the Deceiver approached them as they conferred (v. 8:)
Then when retribution comes for these sinners, then, Mazda, Power shall
be present for Thee with Good Purpose, to declare himself for those, Lord,
who shall deliver the Lie into the hands of Truth. (v. 9:) And then may we
be those who shall transfigure this world. O Mazda (and you other) Lords
(Ahuras), be present to me with support and truth, so that thoughts may
be concentrated where understanding falters. (v. 11:) O humans! when you
learn the commands which Mazda has given, and both thriving and not-
thriving, and what long torment (is) for the wicked and salvation for the
just – then will it be as is wished with these things.58
At the end the world will be “transfigured” or “made wonderful/excellent”

(made frasha-, v. 9), that is, liberated from evil. This, which is connected
with the notion of eschatological renovation ( frasho-kereti, Pahlavi fraškerd,
frašēgerd, frashegird), to which I shall return soon, could immediately intimate
a certain closeness to the general notion of apokatastasis. However, the pivotal
point of the Christian doctrine of apokatastasis is missing from our Zoroas-
trian document: while hell is depicted as long-lasting torment, it is not specified
whether the evildoers will finally exit hell, or will be destroyed, or else con-
verted. Their torment is said to be “long,” but we do not know from the ancient
texts whether it will be eternal, and if not, whether it will result in destruction
or in salvation.
6.2 Yasna 45 and Other Yasnas

Likewise, in Yasna 45, belonging to the Ushtavait Gatha, another reference to
otherworldly punishment is made, but no more details as to its eternity or to its
resulting in the sinners’ either destruction or purification and salvation: “Then
58 Trans. Boyce with minimal adaptations, as elsewhere unless otherwise specified.

shall I speak of the foremost (doctrine) of this existence, which Mazda the Lord,
He with knowledge, declared to me. Those of you who do not act upon this
manthra, even as I shall think and speak it, for them there shall be woe at the end
of life” (v. 3). This evidently denotes punishments, but not is nature or duration
or (in case of limited duration) outcome.
Virtuous people, on the contrary, are explicitly promised eternal life: “Then
shall I speak of what the Most Holy One told me, the word to be listened to as
best for human beings. Those who shall give for me hearkening and heed to
Him, shall attain wholeness and immortality … Ahura Mazda has promised by
His truth and good purpose that there shall be wholeness and immortality within
His kingdom, strength and perpetuity within His house” (vv. 5.10).59 If from the
last words one were to draw a comparison between the fate of the good and
that of the wicked, it would seem that the wicked, unlike the virtuous, should
not attain immortality, which hints at their destruction. This, however, is not
specified in these Gathas, while it will become clearer in later texts, which I
shall analyze soon.
The same opposition between immortality for the good and a long-lasting
postmortem torment for the wicked transpires also from other Yasnas belong-
ing to what is regarded as the most ancient group. For instance, in Yasna 32.5
and 32.15, belonging to the Ahunavaiti Gatha, one finds the following declara-
tion: “You have defrauded mankind of good life and immortality … you Daevas
and the Bad Spirit … By these things the company of the karapans [i.e., ‘pagan’
priests] and the kavis, are being ruined together with those they ensnare. They
shall not be brought to those ruling over life at will in the House of Good Purpose.”
Again, those who follow the demons instead of Ahura Mazda are declared
not to attain immortality: it would look like they will perish at some point. If
this deduction is correct, this would be very far from the Christian doctrine
of apokatastasis. Also, this may be difficult to square with the doctrine of the
resurrection of all humanity that we shall encounter soon in later texts (see
below).
The eternity of salvation for the good is hammered home again in Yasna
34.3: “Let salvation be granted indeed to the beneficent person among You for
ever, O Mazda!” This eternity of salvation contrasts, again, with the absence
of prospective eternity for the wicked: “Heavenly glory shall be the future
possession of the person who comes (to the help of) the just human being. A
59 See also Yasna 53.1: “The best wish of Zarathushtra Spitama has been heard, if Lord Mazda
will grant boons in accord with truth – a good life for ever – to him and to those who have
accepted and taught the words and acts of the Good Religion.”

368 ramelli
long life of darkness, foul food, the crying of woe – to that existence, O wicked
ones, your Inner Self shall lead you” (Yasna 31.20). Once again, these Gathas
fail to detail whether after this long postmortem life in darkness and suffering
the wicked will be destroyed. The possibility of their conversion, which would
represent a remarkable parallel with the Christian apokatastasis theory, does
not seem to be contemplated here.
Instead, in Yasna 46.11 it would seem that evil people are doomed to eter-
nal punishment (a doctrine that in patristic theology soon became the main
alternative to that of apokatastasis): “Karapans [i.e., ‘pagan’ priests] and kavis
by their powers yoked humankind with evil acts to destroy life. But their own
soul and Inner Self tormented them when they reached the Chinvat Bridge [čin-
vatō pərətu-]: guests forever in the House of Lie! [drūjō dəmāna-].” The Chinvat
Bridge is the place where all souls were supposed to be judged three days after
death.60
6.3 The Chinvat Bridge in Vendidad and Other Texts

The Chinvat Bridge is well attested in the so-called Vendidad (a simplification of
the original title, Vidēvdād, “Given against the Daevas”), from the late Parthian
period – which ended when Bardaisan died – or the early Sassanian period.
However, the Vendidad only survives in two composite redactions of the late
Sassanian age, not earlier than the sixth century ce, and its manuscripts date
to the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries.61 In Vendidad 19, the judgment
of the soul is described, which takes place three days after death, precisely at
the Chinvat Bridge:
(26:) Zarathushtra said to Ahura Mazda …: (27:) “O Creator! where will

the rewards be, where will the rewards be adjudged? …” (28:) Then said
Ahura Mazda: “After a man is dead, after his time is over, after the wicked
demons, evil of thought, rend him completely, at dawn of the third night,62
60 See, e.g., Philippe Gignoux, “Hell. i. In Zoroastrianism,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica 12.2, ed.
Ehsan Yarshater (London: Routledge, 2004), 154–156.
61 See Boyce, History, 294–330; William Malandra, “Vendīdād,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica,
online ed., http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/vendidad; Prods Oktor Skjærvø, “The
Videvdad: Its Ritual-Mythical Significance,” in The Age of the Parthians, ed. Vesta S. Curtis
and Sarah Stewart (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 105–141. A full study or up-to-date
edition and translation of the Vendidad is deplored as still lacking by Stausberg, “State and
Prospects,” 573.
62 This is the same timing that the early Christian tradition attached to the resurrection
of Jesus, but the three days before the resurrection are also found in the stele of Hazon

the Radiant One (the Dawn) grows bright and shines, and Mithra, having
good weapons, shining like the sun, arises and ascends the mountains
which possess the bliss of Asha. (29:) The demon named Vizaresha (“The
one who drags away”), O Spitama Zarathushtra, leads the bound soul of
the wicked man, the worshipper of demons … It (the soul) goes along
the paths created by time for both the wicked and the just, to the Mazda-
created Chinvat Bridge … (30:) There comes that beautiful one, strong, fair
of form, accompanied by the two dogs … She comes over high Hara, she
takes the souls of the just over the Chinvat Bridge, to the rampart of the
invisible yazatas. (31:) Vohu Manah rises from his golden throne. Vohu
Manah exclaims: “How have you come here, O just one, from the perilous
world to the world without peril?” (32:) Contented, the souls of the just
proceed to the golden thrones of Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spentas,
to the House of Song, the dwelling-place of Ahura Mazda, the dwelling-
place of the Amesha Spentas, the dwelling-place of the just.”
Both the good and the wicked are brought to the test of the Chinvat Bridge. The
good are then welcomed into the kingdom of Ahura Mazda, while, according to
the Hadhokht Nask (a fragmentary part of the Avesta), the soul of a wicked man
who dies, after three days, at dawn, will come to the judgment at the Chinvat
Bridge and as a result will sit in “Endless Darkness” (3). If one has to take “end-
less” in a strict sense, as Shaki for example does,63 then in this late Avestan text
it would seem that the otherworldly punishment of the wicked will be eter-
nal, thus ruling out their possible conversion, purification, and salvation. So,
this picture, which is also supported by Yasna 46, as I have pointed out (“guests
forever in the house of lie”), is very different from the eschatological scenario
foreseen by the early Christian supporters of the doctrine of apokatastasis.
Also in the Pahlavi Menogi Khrad (Mēnōg ī xrad, “The Spirit of Wisdom”),
ch. 2, from the later Sassanian period (but including materials of earlier prove-
nance – exactly how earlier, though, we cannot say), the postmortem context is
similar: after three days, the soul will reach the Chinvat Bridge. When the soul
Gabriel, found by Ada Yardeni and surprisingly close to the Dead Sea Scrolls (see Ada
Yardeni, “A New Dead Sea Scroll in Stone? Bible-like Prophecy Was Mounted in a Wall 2,000
Years Ago,”Biblical Archaeology Review 34, no. 1 [2008]: 60–61; Hazon Gabriel: New Readings
of the Gabriel Revelation, ed. Matthias Henze, Early Judaism and Its Literature 29 [Atlanta:
sbl Press, 2011]), and in the Hebrew Bible, e.g., 1 Sam 30:12. Though, the exact detail of the
dawn of the third day after death is identical in the Vendidad and in the Christian Gospels.
63 Mansour Shaki, “Duzak,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica 7.6, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (London: Rout-
ledge, 1996), 613–615.

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of the just person crosses that bridge, the bridge becomes extremely wide, and
the just soul crosses easily; his or her good acts will come to meet the soul in the
form of an incredibly beautiful girl (2.123–126). But in the case of the wicked, the
demon Vizarsh will seize his soul and will beat and torment it and finally drag it
to hell. His own bad deeds – bad thought, bad word, bad act, bad inner self – will
approach the wicked in the form of a hideous girl (2.164–171). In hell, the sinner,
for instance, is served poison, scorpions, and other disgusting food, and he is
doomed to eat this to eternity. Especially Menogi Khrad 40.31 is clear that “the
[Chinvat] bridge and destruction and punishment of the wicked in hell are for
ever and everlasting.”64 This reference to eternity, even in a late work, indicates
that the belief in eternal punishment was upheld still in later Zoroastrian times.
Whether the wicked will be definitely destroyed or will endure punishment for-
ever is unclear from this text, but what seems clear is that their conversion and
salvation is ruled out.
Very similar is the scenario depicted in the Greater Bundahishn, also from
late Sassanian times (more below), which devotes a long section, chapter 30,
to the judgment of every soul at the Chinvat Bridge, which is described as
extending over the “wicked existence” or hell (30.3). After death, the soul stays
for three nights close to the dead body; at dawn on the third day, in the case
of the righteous a pleasant breeze comes forward, in the case of the wicked
a stinking breeze, visions of desolation, and horrible figures representing his
own wicked deeds. The wicked soul cannot cross the bridge and falls down to
Duzakh, the “wicked existence,” that is, hell. On the contrary, the soul of the
good is said to be able to ascend on a kind of spiritual ladder, whose three steps
are good thoughts, good words, and good deeds (30.26). In this late text, an
intermediate state called hamistagān is also envisaged, at the very end of the
chapter (30.32–33): if a person has sins and meritorious deeds in equal measure,
this will be assigned to hamistagān, “a place just like the earth” (likewise the
threefold division between Paradise, hell, and this intermediate place appears
also in Arda Viraz Namag 6.9–11). In general, the principle of eschatological
retribution is strongly emphasized in the Greater Bundahishn.65
64 Trans. E.W. West, Sacred Books of the East, 24 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1880).
65 For instance, in 28.10: “In the world a human being performs sins and good deeds, and
when one dies they reckon one’s sins and good deeds, whoever is pure goes to the abode of
harmony, and they cast whoever is wicked into the wicked existence,” that is, hell. Likewise
in 28.16: “Humans perform sins and good deeds in the world, and when they are dead they
adjudge their souls, they consign the one deserving the best existence to the best existence
[sc. Paradise], and the one deserving the wicked existence to the wicked existence,” or hell.
Likewise in Bundahishn 27.53–55: “As regards the wicked existence one says: It is darkness

6.4 Problems
These texts bear no trace of any future restoration, conversion, and salvation
of the wicked. But in a late Pahlavi text of the Sassanian age, an account of
a soul’s journey to heaven and hell, whose final redaction seems to date back
to the ninth or tenth century ce in the early Islamic period and to have been
influenced by early Christian apocalyptic writings such as the Apocalypse of
Peter and that of Paul, the idea is suggested – based on a cosmological scheme
with which I shall deal soon – that after nine thousand years torments in hell
will cease: “He who has been one day in hell cries out: ‘Are not those nine
thousand years yet fulfilled, that they do not release us from this hell?’ ” (Arda
Viraz Namag ch. 54).66
This is clearly of high interest; however, it is not specified at this point
whether sinners will be released to be converted and saved, or to be destroyed.
This difference is of course vital to any possible comparison with the early
Christian doctrine of apokatastasis. According to Mary Boyce, “The concept of
hell, a place of torment presided over by Angra Mainyu, seems to be Zoroaster’s
own, shaped by his deep sense of the need for justice.”67 Though the eternity of
hell or what will happen to the wicked at the end of hell remains a moot point.
This is obviously the most relevant point to any investigation into possible
interrelationships between Zoroastrian eschatology and the early Christian
doctrine of apokatastasis.
It is worth pointing out that the notion of the crossing of the Chinvat Bridge
toward salvation is very similar to Bardaisan’s notion, reported by Ephrem in
a fragment quoted ad litteram, that Christ made it again possible for humans
to cross the crossing point toward salvation that Adam had precluded.68 Bar-
daisan was probably influenced by the Iranian myth. His universalistic drift,
however, conveyed by the theory of apokatastasis, cannot be proved to derive
from a Zoroastrian background, mainly for chronological reasons; the reversal
would seem more probable.
that one can grasp with the hand, and stench which one can cut with the knife. And if
they inflict punishment on a thousand men within a span, they imagine that they are
alone. That one punishment of loneliness is very bad for them … Their food is stinking,
and plenty of offal of the frog, and other harmful objects.”
66 On the Arda Viraz see Philippe Gignoux, “Ardā Wīrāz,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Eshan
Yarshater; online: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/arda-wiraz-wiraz.
67 Boyce, Zoroastrians, 27.
68 Analysis of Ephrem’s quotation in Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa, 228–229.

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7 Greek Sources
Certainly the notion of the final eviction of evil found in several Zoroastrian
sources is the same that the early Christian supporters of the apokatasta-
sis theory upheld. Some scholars think that this notion belonged to a pre-
Christian phase of Zoroastrianism, but even if this be the case, what needs to be
determined for a comparison between Zoroastrian eschatology and Christian
apokatastasis theories, and for any possible conclusion in this regard, is the ulti-
mate fate of the wicked when evil is finally annihilated: will they be destroyed
as well, or will they be converted and saved?
According to Albert De Jong,69 the promise of the eventual defeat of evil was
elaborated already by the Magi of the Achaemenian era, who shaped a coherent
philosophy of history: the two spirits, the good an the wicked, would wage war
against each other in this world for a limited period, the 9,000 years that appear
also in the Arda Viraz Namag, as I mentioned. At the end of this period, evil
will be totally defeated, and those who contributed to the eventual victory of
good will be rewarded (again, the question of the ultimate fate of the wicked
remains unaddressed). This philosophy of history cannot be found developed
in the Avestan texts; so, it does not seem to belong to the first phases of
Zoroastrianism. In De Jong’s view, it must however have been elaborated in the
Achaemenian period, since it was known in the fourth century bce in Greece
as the teaching of the Magi, especially in Theopompus, cited by Plutarch, Is.
Osir. 46–47, and Diogenes Laertius 1.6–9.70 This is Plutarch’s account:
There are also those who call the better principle God and the other a
daemon, as, for example, Zoroaster the sage, who, they record, lived five
thousand years before the time of the Trojan War. He called the one
Oromazes [sic] and the other Areimanius; and he further declared that
among all the things perceptible to the senses, Oromazes may best be
compared to light, and Areimanius, conversely, to darkness and ignorance,
and midway between the two is Mithras: for this reason the Persians give
69 Albert de Jong, Traditions of the Magi: Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature, rgrw
133 (Leiden; New York; Köln: Brill, 1997), 157–228; idem, “The First Sin: Zoroastrian Ideas
about the Time before Zarathustra,” in Genesis and Regeneration: Essays on Conceptions of
Origins, ed. Shaul Shaked (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2005),
192–209; idem, “Iranian Connections.”
70 On Greco-Roman sources concerning Zoroastrianism see briefly also Stausberg, “State and
Prospects,” 576.

to Mithras the name of “Mediator.”71 … They believe that some of the

plants belong to the good God and others to the evil daemon; so also of the
animals they think that dogs, fowls, and hedgehogs, for example, belong
to the good God, but that water-rats belong to the evil one; therefore the
man who has killed the most of these they hold to be fortunate. However,
they also tell many fabulous stories about their gods, such, for example, as
the following: Oromazes, born from the purest light, and Areimanius, born
from the darkness, are constantly at war with each other; and Oromazes
created six gods, the first of Good Thought, the second of Truth, the third
of Order, and, of the rest, one of Wisdom, one of Wealth, and one the
Artificer of Pleasure in what is Honorable. But Areimanius created rivals,
as it were, equal to these in number. Then Oromazes enlarged himself to
thrice his former size, and removed himself as far distant from the Sun
as the Sun is distant from the Earth, and adorned the heavens with stars.
One star he set there before all others as a guardian and watchman, the
Dog-star. Twenty-four other gods he created and placed in an egg. But
those created by Areimanius, who were equal in number to the others,
pierced through the egg and made their way inside; hence evils are now
combined with good. But a destined time shall come when it is decreed
that Areimanius, engaged in bringing on pestilence and famine, shall by
these be utterly annihilated and shall disappear; and then shall the earth
become a level plain, and there shall be one manner of life and one
form of government for a blessed people who shall all speak one tongue.
Theopompus says that, according to the sages, one god is to overpower, and
the other to be overpowered, each in turn for the space of three thousand
years, and afterward for another three thousand years they shall fight and
war, and the one shall undo the works of the other, and finally Hades shall
pass away; then shall the people be happy, and neither shall they need to
have food nor shall they cast any shadow. And the God, who has contrived
to bring about all these things, shall then have quiet and shall repose for a
time, no long time indeed, but for the God as much as would be a moderate
time for a man to sleep.
Is. Osir. 46–47, italics mine
71 On Mithras and his relation to Zoroastrianism see Mary Boyce, “On Mithra’s Part in
Zoroastrianism,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 32 (1969): 10–34;
Hanns-Peter Schmidt, “Mithra 1,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater; online:
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/mithra-i.

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The absence of shadow and of any need for eating in Theopompus’s account
points either to a future incorporeal state or to a future transformation of
bodies, which is compatible with later Zoroastrian accounts of the eventual
resurrection. Note, however, that in Theopompus’s report, which stems from
the fourth century bce, it is stated that Hades, i.e., Ahriman, will pass away, to
be sure, but the repose of God after that is not said to be eternal, but to last only
for a while. This raises the suspicion that the Zoroastrian philosophy of history
known to Theopompus four centuries before the rise of Christianity entailed
an infinite cyclicality rather than the eventual and eternal eviction of evil at
the end of all times. This conception would therefore be remarkably different
from that of the Christian apokatastasis theory. Indeed, Origen indicated in the
infinite repetition of cycles one of the main differences between “pagan” (such
as Stoic and, later, Neoplatonist) theories of apokatastasis and the Christian
doctrine of universal restoration.72
Theopompus is also cited by Diogenes Laertius for his reports on Zoroas-
trian beliefs. Again his account is ambiguous and unclear with respect to the
ultimate fate of the wicked:
Aristotle in the first book of his dialogue On Philosophy declares that

the Magi are more ancient than the Egyptians; and further, that they
believe in two principles, the good spirit and the evil spirit, the one called
Zeus or Oromasdes, the other Hades or Arimanius. This is confirmed by
Hermippus in his first book about the Magi, Eudoxus in his Voyage Around
the World, and Theopompus in the eighth book of his Philippica. The last-
named author says that according to the Magi human beings will live in
a future life and be immortal, and that the world will endure through their
invocations.
diog. laërt. 1.8–9, italics mine
The promise of immorality is there – and is confirmed by another, later quo-

tation from Theopompus by Aeneas of Gaza, who interprets this as a belief in
the resurrection: “Zoroaster prophesies that some day there will be a resurrec-
tion of all the dead. Theopompus knows of this and is himself the source of
information concerning it for the other writers.”73
However, in Theopompus, as reported by Laertius, there is not even the
perspective of an eventual annihilation of evil. What is most relevant to the
72 E.g., in Cels. 4.67–68; Princ. 3.3.4.

73 Aen. Gaz. Theophr. 77.

present investigation, nothing is said in any of these Greek accounts about the
eventual restoration of all rational creatures, or at least of all humans, their re-
conversion to the Good (the principle represented by Ahura Mazda/Ohrmazd)
and their salvation.74 Therefore, in pre-Christian Zoroastrianism the essential
element of Christian apokatastasis seems to be lacking. Also, the definitive
nature of the eviction of evil, which Boyce sees in later sources,75 is not attested
with any certainty (consider Theopompus’s obscure reference to the only lim-
ited repose of God after the victory over evil, as though the cosmic cycle should
start again). As a consequence, it is hardly possible to hypothesize that the early
74 The same is the case with Dio Chrysostom’s purported account of a Zoroastrian cosmolog-
ical myth in his Borystheniticus speech. See Albert de Jong, “Dions Magierhymnen,” in Dion
von Prusa: Menschliche Gemeinschaft und göttliche Ordnung, ed. Heinz-Günther Nessel-
rath (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2003), 157–179, here 176, who deems
it very improbable that Dio drew his information from Persian sources; Robert Gordon,
“Franz Cumont and the Doctrines of Mithraism,” in Mithraic Studies, ed. John R. Hinnels
(Manchester: University Press 1975), 215–247, who thinks that Dio’s exposition has noth-
ing Iranian in it; Roger Beck, “Thus Spake not Zarathustra: Zoroastrian Pseudepigrapha of
the Graeco-Roman World,” in Mary Boyce and Franz Grenet, A History of Zoroastrianism,
3. Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule, Handbuch der Orientalistik. Erste
Abteilung, Nahe und der Mittlere Osten. 1. Abschnitt 8. Bd., Lfg. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1991),
491–565, here 539–548; Ilaria Ramelli, “Stoic Cosmo-Theology Disguised as Zoroastrian-
ism in Dio’s Borystheniticus? The Philosophical Role of Allegoresis as a Mediator between
Physikē and Theologia,” Jahrbuch für Religionsphilosophie 12 (2013): 9–26 who argues that
Dio is presenting as Zoroastrianism what in fact was Stoic cosmology and offers rea-
sons for that. That Zoroastrianism may have influenced Greek philosophy is maintained
by Stephen R.L. Clark, Ancient Mediterranean Philosophy: An Introduction (London; New
York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). On the reception of the figure of Zoroaster and of
Zoroastrian ideas in the Greek world and among Greek philosophers (especially Aca-
demics and Stoics) and alchemists, and in the Orphic Derveni papyrus, see Ezio Albrile,
“Inventare Zoroastro. Riflessi della religione iranica nel mondo greco,” Quaderni di Studi
Indo-Mediterranei 8 (2015): 1–20.
75 Boyce, Zoroastrians, 19–21, remarks: “Zoroaster went much further, and in a startling
departure from accepted beliefs proclaimed Ahura Mazda to be the one uncreated God,
existing eternally, and Creator of all else that is good, including all other beneficent
divinities … in vision he beheld, co-existing with Ahura Mazda, an Adversary, the ‘Hostile
Spirit’, Angra Mainyu … Ahura Mazda knew in his wisdom that if he became Creator and
fashioned this world, then the Hostile Spirit would attack it, because it was good, and it
would become a battleground for their two forces, and in the end he, God, would win the
great struggle there and be able to destroy evil, and so achieve a universe which would be
wholly good forever.” As I have pointed out, however, Theopompus’s words suggest that
at least still in the fourth century bce it was not at all clear that the victory of the Good
would be forever; this rather emerges in much later sources such as the Bundahishn.

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Christian supporters of apokatastasis were drawing on Zoroastrian ideas on the

restoration of the wicked that were circulating in their days.
8 Cosmology and Eschatology in the Greater Bundahishn
Noteworthy details concerning the fate of the wicked within the framework of
the eschatological eradication of evil – the key issue at stake in the present
research – are to be found in the Pahlavi book Bundahishn (“Primeval Cre-
ation”). This text is late and cannot be taken to represent pre-Christian details
with any certainty; in addition, its account of the final destiny of the evildo-
ers is ambivalent and liable to opposite interpretations, as I shall show. The
Bundahishn has survived in two recensions, the Iranian or Greater Bundahishn,
which I shall analyze here, and the shorter Indian Bundahishn. It was probably
compiled in the late Sassanian period, in the fifth to seventh centuries; many of
its chapters date to the eighth and ninth centuries, which is also the time when
the Bundahishn was committed to writing, and it is impossible to distinguish
entirely between earlier material and later accretions in it.76
It deals not only with creation, as its title suggests, but also with eschatology,
and the author seems to have been somehow acquainted with Greek scientific
literature. It certainly offers a much later version of Zoroastrian cosmology than
that attested by the Gathas. The cosmology reflected in the Greater Bundahishn
seems to be the result of a development of earlier Zoroastrianism through
priestly speculation, notably about the “world-year.” What is already alluded to
in the Gathas is the Last Judgment, with the resurrection of the body postponed
until the time when Ahura Mazda’s kingdom (khshathra) will come on an earth
made once more perfect, as He had created it.77
However, the eternity of this perfect state does not seem to be posited
already in the Gathas; as we have seen analyzing Theopompus’s report, in the
fourth century bce this element was probably still missing, while it is evident in
the Sassanian Bundahishn. According to Philip Kreyenbroek,78 the Bundahishn
76 See, e.g., Boyce, Zoroastrians, 136; Neil McKenzie, “Bundahišn,” in Encyclopaedia Iran-
ica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater; online: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bundahisn-primal
-creation.
77 Boyce, Sources, 45; see now also Skjærvø, Spirit of Zoroastrianism, 29–30 on eschatology
and the end of the world, with texts on 157–171.
78 Philip Kreyenbroek, “Good and Evil in Zoroastrianism,” in Gut und Böse in Mensch und
Welt: Philosophische und Religiöse Konzeptionen vom Alten Orient bis zum frühen Islam,

gives expression to an absolute dualism that is a characteristic of later, and not

earlier, forms of Zoroastrianism. Here, Good and Evil are eternal principles on
an equal footing with one another. Evil must be rendered powerless at the end
of time, and humans can contribute to this outcome during history.
8.1 Comparisons with Bardaisan

The cosmological myth of the Bundahishn bears significant similarities to
Bardaisan of Edessa’s creation myth. Bardaisan was more of a monist, since he
did not deem evil a principle on a par with God, and in this he was a Christian
(“Middle”) Platonist.79 A possible influence of this myth on Bardaisan – if
the myth had already the shape it has in the Bundahishn in Bardaisan’s time,
which cannot be proved – , or of Bardaisan on this myth, is not to be ruled
out. Bardaisan was acquainted with the customs of Zoroastrian Persians, as
is clear from the Liber legum regionum, where he speaks of Persians who
inhabit also other places than Persia, such as Media and Atropatene, Parthia
(the Parthians, contemporary with Bardaisan, were Zoroastrians), Egypt, and
Phrygia. If the author/redactor of the Bundahishn was familiar with Greek
and Indian science,80 he could easily also have been familiar with Bardaisan’s
cosmology and eschatology, which were transmitted in both Syriac and Greek.
Things are complicated by the fact that Bardaisan’s cosmology, too, is trans-
mitted by later traditions, the so-called “cosmological traditions,” which might
in turn have been influenced by Iranian ideas. However, earlier fragments from
Ephrem and Porphyry provide confirmations to those later traditions and indi-
cate that they essentially go back to Bardaisan himself.81 As for his eschatolog-
ical doctrine of apokatastasis and the conversion and salvation of the wicked
(the most interesting doctrine for a comparison with Zoroastrian ideas within
the present investigation), it is embedded in the Liber legum regionum, which
reflects Bardaisan’s ideas faithfully – especially those from his Contra Fatum –
and is a product of his immediate disciples (third century ce, much earlier than
the written form of the Bundahishn).82
eds. Heinz-Günther Nesselrath and Florian Wilk, Orientalische Religionen in der Antike
10 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 51–61.
79 As argued by Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa.
80 McKenzi, “Bundahišn.”
81 Full analysis in Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa.
82 Argument in Bardaisan on Free Will, Fate, and Human Nature. The Book of the Laws of
Countries, ed., trans. and comm. Ilaria Ramelli (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018).

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Now, according to the late Zoroastrian myth reflected in ch. 1 of the Greater
Bundahishn, section 1, we find that Ohrmazd,83 the good God, was on high,
in Endless Light and knowledge, and Ahriman in the depths, with slowness
of knowledge, in Eternal Darkness.84 This is also the abode of the demons,
who are said to be “of the nature of darkness” in Vendidad 8.80, from the
late Parthian or the early Sassanian period, that is, either from Bardaisan’s
time or afterwards. Exactly in the same way, the initial situation depicted by
Bardaisan in the “cosmological traditions” is that God was on high, above
all, and darkness-evil below, under all.85 However, at least according to the
account of Barhadbshabba, Bardaisan did not identify Light with God: “In the
beginning – I quote – Light was in the East, and the Wind – I quote – was
opposite to it, in the West; Fire was in the South, and Water opposite to it, in
the North. Their Lord was on high, and the enemy, that is, darkness, in the depths.”
The same report is given by Moses bar Kepha in the ninth century. God, located
“on high,” is distinct from Light, an element, located in the East.
Then the Bundahishn records the attack of the evil spirit of darkness upon
the light of Ohrmazd: “The Evil Spirit, on account of his slowness of knowledge,
was not aware of the existence of Ohrmazd. Then he arose from the deep, and
came to the boundary and beheld the light. When he saw the intangible light
of Ohrmazd he rushed forward. Because of his lust to smite and his envious
nature he attacked to destroy it. Then he saw valour and supremacy greater than
his own. He crawled back to darkness and shaped many devs,86 the destructive
creation. And he rose for battle” (Bundahishn 1.15–17).
Likewise, Bardaisan’s cosmology contemplated the initial attack of dark-
ness/evil upon light, but also on the other elements, defended by God. This is
Moses bar Kepha’s account: “At a certain moment – I quote – , either by chance
or for an event, they crashed into one another/assaulted one another. And dark-
ness had the impetus to ascend, in order to mix with those and among those;
then, those pure beings began to be disturbed and to flee before darkness. And
they sought refuge in the Most High’s mercy, that he might liberate them from
the sinister colour that had mixed with them, that is, from darkness.”87 Unlike
83 This is the Middle Persian form of Avestic Ahura Mazda.

84 On Zoroastrian cosmology see also, although partially outdated, Marijan Molé, Culte,
mythe et cosmologie dans l’ Iran ancien (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1965).
85 Full quotations and analysis of all these Syriac sources, with precise references, is found
in Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa.
86 This is the Middle Persian term for the Daevas, essentially demons.
87 See Ramelli Bardaisan of Edessa, 323–326.

the Bundahishn, Bardaisan, who was a Christian, introduced at this point the
intervention of God’s Logos, triggered by the elements’ invocation to God upon
darkness’ assault on them: in Moses bar Kepha’s quotation from Bardaisan,
The Word of Thought [sc. the Logos] of the Most High, who is Christ,
descended, and separated that darkness from the pure beings, and dark-
ness was expelled and fell into the abyss, which becomes their nature.
He gave each being its own region, in order, according to the Mystery of
the Cross. And from the mixture of these beings and their enemy, darkness,
he constituted this world, and established it in the middle, lest another
mixture occur between them and what had already been mixed, while it
was purified and purged by a unique conception and birth, until it will be
concluded.
For Bardaisan, Christ-Logos brought order by resending darkness below, sepa-

rating it from the pure beings, but some particles of darkness remained mixed
with the good creation of God, which will thus have to be purified until the
end – and the main agent of purification will be again Christ, through his Incar-
nation, his sacrifice, and his activity of instruction and illumination. At the end
of time, according to Bardaisan, Christ will bring about the definite eviction of
evil and the instruction and conversion of all sinners. In this way, by entailing
the conversion and salvation of the wicked, Bardaisan’s doctrine of apokatasta-
sis configures itself as a doctrine of universal salvation.88 And this is precisely
the respect in which it appears to be different from contemporary Zoroastrian
eschatology, as we shall see.
In the Persian myth, Ohrmazd created good creatures, and Ahriman evil
creatures; these then got “mixed,” in a “mixture” (Pahlavi gumēzišn) that is
foreseen to be followed by a final “separation” (wizārišn). Bardaisan too spoke of
the present state of the world as a state of “mixture” (as is clear also from Moses
bar Kepha’s above quotation), though not between good and bad creatures
proper – since in his view all creatures are creatures of God and are all good –
but between good creatures and evil itself. The latter is now among them, but
will be annihilated in the end, when nobody will choose evil any more and
all rational creatures will convert and voluntarily adhere to the Good. In the
Bundahishn it seems that only the creatures of Ohrmazd will return to belong to
Ohrmazd and be restored, after being led astray by Ahriman during the state of
“mixture” that characterizes the present world, while the creatures of Ahriman
88 See Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 110–120.

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will be destroyed. Ohrmazd sets a time to put an end to the state of mixture, in
which Ahriman can appropriate the creatures of Ohrmazd:
Ohrmazd said: “You are not all-powerful, Evil Spirit; so you cannot destroy
me, and you cannot so influence my creatures that they will not return to
being mine.” Then Ohrmazd in His omniscience knew: “If I do not set a
time for that battle of his, then … he will be able eternally to make strife
and a state of mixture for my creatures. And in the Mixture he will be
able to lead my creatures astray and make them his own,” just as, even
now, there are many human beings in the state of mixture, who practice
impiety more than piety [i.e., they are mostly performing the will of the
Evil Spirit].
Bundahishn 1.24–25
Very interestingly, the dialectics of alienation (ἀλλοτρίωσις) from the Good to

evil and final re-appropriation (οἰκείωσις) of all creatures by God was theorized
by the two main Christian supporters of apokatastasis, Origen and Gregory of
Nyssa.89 However, these thought that all rational creatures, including wicked
humans and demons, will convert in the end and be saved, whereas even in
the late Bundahishn version of Zoroastrian eschatology at least all demons will
perish, and, as we shall see, probably also wicked humans as well.
The eventual destruction of the creation of Ahriman is announced in the
following terms: “Then the entire kingship of the creation of Ohrmazd, in the
future body for ever and ever, that is limitless. The creation of Ahriman, at the
time when the future body will be, shall be destroyed” (Bundahishn 1.7). This
passage also displays the Zoroastrian notion of the resurrection (ristāxēz), at
the end of time. The risen body will be an immortal body. Bardaisan also
foresaw a future body of the resurrection, which will be immortal. Indeed,
notwithstanding the accusations levelled against him – just as against Origen –
by heresiologists, there are substantial reasons to think that Bardaisan in fact
theorized the resurrection of the body, a spiritual, immortal body, as Origen
also did.90 The rich iconography at Dura Europos, about the time of Bardaisan,
89 As argued convincingly by Ilaria Ramelli, “The Stoic Doctrine of Oikeiosis and its Trans-
formation in Christian Platonism,” Apeiron 47 (2014): 116–140.
90 Argument in Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa, confirmed by Thomas McGlothlin, “Is Aphra-
hat’s Demonstration on the Resurrection against Bardaisan? Contextualizing Dem. viii,”
communication at the Sixth North American Syriac Symposium, Duke University, Durham,
nc, June 26–29, 2011; now further arguments in Ramelli, Bardaisan on Free Will. For Origen

includes Iranian iconography and Iranian elements in a resurrection scene,

confirming the Zoroastrian belief in the resurrection at that time.
8.2 The Resurrection, the Destruction of Evil, and the Fate of the Wicked
The resurrection of humans in the Bundahishn is inscribed in the context of the
final defeat of Ahriman; here the period of nine thousand years appears again:
(1.18–19:) Then Ohrmazd said to the Evil Spirit: “Set a time, so that accord-
ing to this bond we may postpone battle for 9,000 years.” For He knew that
through this setting of a time He would destroy the Evil Spirit. Then the Evil
Spirit, not being able to foresee the end, agreed to that pact. (20:) This too
Ohrmazd knew in His omniscience, that within these 9,000 years, 3,000
years will go according to the will of Ohrmazd; 3,000 years, in the Mix-
ture, will go according to the will of both Ohrmazd and Ahriman; and at
the last battle it will be possible to make Ahriman powerless/useless, and to
ward off the assault from his creatures. (21:) Then Ohrmazd recited aloud
the Ahunvar. And He showed to the Evil Spirit His own final victory, and
the powerlessness of the Evil Spirit, and the destruction of the devs, and also
the resurrection and the future body, and the freedom of creation from the
Assault for ever and ever. (22:) When the Evil Spirit saw his own power-
lessness, together with the destruction of the devs, he fell prostrate and
unconscious. He fell back again into hell, even as He says in the scriptures
that when He had spoken one third, the Evil Spirit crouched in fear; when
He had spoken two thirds, the Evil Spirit sank upon his knees; when He
had spoken it all, the Evil Spirit became powerless to do evil to the creatures
of Ohrmazd.
Here the final victory of Ahura Mazda/Ohrmazd is described very clearly, with
the destruction of the demons, the creatures of Ahriman, and the vanishing of
evil. However, what happens to bad humans at the very end is not specified. In
Bundahishn 14.15–16 the permanence of the souls of the wicked in hell is said to
endure until the end of material life (consistently with the tenet that at the end
of this material life Ahriman will become unable to do evil any more), though
it is not clarified here what will happen afterwards:
see idem, “Origen,” in A History of Mind and Body in Late Antiquity, eds. Sophie Cartwright
and Anna Marmodoro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), Ch. 17.

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Then the Adversary attacked their thoughts and vitiated their minds.
They exclaimed, ‘The Evil Spirit gave the Water, the Earth, the Tree, and
other things,’ as aforesaid. This is [the first] false utterance, [which they
are constrained] to utter by the compulsion of the devs; the Evil Spirit
appropriated from them this first satisfaction that owing to that false
utterance they both became wicked, and their souls will be in the wicked
existence until the final material life.
Creation itself, with the contextual rise of time, is described in the Bundahishn
as a trick of Ohrmazd aimed at defeating Ahriman,91 whose eventual helpless-
ness is stressed once again:
(1.36–37:) When He pondered upon creation, Ohrmazd saw by His clear

vision that the Evil Spirit would never turn from the Assault; the Assault
would not be made powerless except through creation; creation could not
develop except through time; but if He created time, Ahriman’s cre-
ation too would develop. And having no other course, in order to make
the Assault powerless, He created time. (41–42:) Thus from the creation,
when He created creatures, until the end, when the Evil Spirit will be help-
less, is a period of 12,000 years. That is limited. Afterwards the creatures
of Ohrmazd will join the limitless, so that they will abide in purity with
Ohrmazd for ever. (44:) Ohrmazd fashioned forth the form of His creatures
from His own self, from the substance of light – in the form of fire, bright,
white, round, visible afar. (47–49:) The Evil Spirit shaped his creation from
the substance of darkness, that which was his own self, in the form of
a toad, black, ashen, worthy of hell, sinful as is the most sinful noxious
beast. And first he created the essence of the devs, namely wickedness, for
he created that creation whereby he made himself worse, since through
it he will become powerless.
After the definitive defeat of Ahriman, which will occur after twelve thousand
years from the creation, the creatures of Ohrmazd will be free forever from the
assaults of Ahriman and the demons and will dwell in eternity (the “limitless”)
with Ohrmazd. Again, what will exactly happen to the wicked is not revealed
here: Will they finally convert, be released from hell, and live happily forever, or
91 For this connotation see also Philip G. Kreyenbroek, “Cosmogony and Cosmology. i. In
Zoroastrianism/Mazdaism,” in Encyclopedia Iranica 5.3, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (London:
Routledge, 1993), 303–307, with specific reference to the Bundahishn.

will they be destroyed as a consequence of the destruction of evil? This is the

most crucial issue to be determined, if one intends to clarify possible relations
between the kind of restoration envisaged in Zoroastrian eschatology – at least
at this late stage, in the late Sassanian times – and the early Christian doctrine
of apokatastasis.
The title of creator, and even of mother and father of creatures, is reserved
for Ohrmazd (and not for Ahriman, even though we are told that the latter also
produced his own, evil creatures): “At creation the motherhood and fatherhood
of creatures belonged to Ohrmazd; for when He nourished the creatures spiri-
tually, that was motherhood, and when He created them materially, that was
fatherhood” (Bundahishn 1.59). This double creation, first spiritual and then
material, is the same as is found in the Jewish Platonist Philo of Alexandria and
in the Christian Platonists Origen and Gregory of Nyssa.92 Note, however, that
the feminine aspect in the Bundahishn passage is associated with the spirit,
and the masculine with matter, exactly the opposite of what we have in Philo,
followed by Origen and Gregory. In an allegorical interpretation that reflects
typical traits of Greek misogyny, indeed, the feminine element was associated
by them with matter, sensuality, passions, and ultimately sin, while the mas-
culine element was associated with spirit, intellect, rationality, and ultimately
virtue – even though both Origen and Gregory of Nyssa have much in their own
systems to correct such biased and misleading associations.
After death, souls are judged at the Chinvat Bridge, which we have already
encountered as a place of judgment for each individual soul, three days after
death. “The seventh of the invisible beings is Amurdad. And of the physical
creations she took for herself plants. And for aid and fellow-working there were
given her Rashn and Ashtad and Zam-yazad, the three Khwarrahs who are there
at the Chinvat Bridge, who during the Assault judge the souls of human beings for
their good and evil deeds” (Bundahishn 3.19; see above for chapter 30, entirely
devoted to the Chinvat Bridge). Here it is remarked that these immediate
individual judgments take place during the present time, during which the
“assault” of Ahriman continues upon Ohrmazd’s creatures, but not at the end
of time, when the assault will no longer take place. Once again, the vital point
is to clarify what will happen at the end of time to those who, at the Chinvat
Bridge, have been dispatched to hell: Will they be ultimately liberated, or will
they be destroyed?
92 See Ilaria Ramelli, “ ‘Preexistence of Souls’? The ἀρχή and τέλος of Rational Creatures in
Origen and Some Origenians,” in Studia Patristica lvi/4, ed. Markus Vinzent (Leuven:
Peeters, 2013), 167–226.

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The Bundahishn, in the Sassanian age, seems to insist that the resurrection
and restoration to a life of immortality will involve all humans, but in most of
its passages there is no indication as to how the fate of those in hell with work
within this framework of the resurrection for an eternal life free from enemies:
He bestowed the wisdom of all knowledge upon (the fravahrs of) human
beings, and said: “Which seems to you the more profitable, that I should
fashion you for the material world, and that you should struggle, embod-
ied, with the Druj, and destroy the Druj; and that at the end I should restore
you, whole and immortal, and recreate you in the physical state, for ever
immortal, unageing, free from enemies; or that you should be protected
for ever from the Assault?” And the fravahrs of human beings saw by the
wisdom of all knowledge the evil which would come upon them in the
world through the Druj and Ahriman; yet for the sake of freedom in the
end from the enmity of the Adversary, and restoration, whole and immortal,
in the future body for ever and ever, they agreed to go into the world.
Bundahishn 3.23–24
The fravahrs of human beings indicate the first, spiritual creation of humanity,
where Ohrmazd acted as a mother. Here Ohrmazd asks the spiritual human
beings whether they want to be created also as material; this would be their
“fathering” on the part of Ohrmazd. The second, material creation of humanity
was necessary in view of its eschatological definitive liberation from evil. For
human beings, this will mean a restoration to wholeness, or perfection, and
immortality, or endlessness.
Within this larger picture of the final restoration of the world, its liberation
from evil, and the resurrection of humanity, there is only one passage in the
Bundahishn where the specific fate of those in hell is addressed. Therefore, this
passage must be examined with the utmost attention, due to its importance for
the present investigation. It is chapter 34, which begins with a defense of the
resurrection – here said to be brought about by a Savior, evidently on account of
Ohrmazd – on the grounds that, if Ohrmazd created everything out of nothing,
a fortiori will he be able to recreate the bodies of those who have died. This is
the same argument as was widely used by Christian apologists in support of the
resurrection:
(section 5:) Ohrmazd says: “If I made that which was not, why cannot I
make again that which was?” (7:) The Soshyant [Sōšyans] will raise up all
the dead. And all humankind will arise, whether just or wicked. (9:) Human
beings will recognize other humans, that is, a soul will recognize [a soul,

a body] another body, that this is my father, this is my mother, this is

my brother, this is my wife, and this is any whatsoever of my very near
relatives. (10–11:) Then the assembly of Isadvastar93 will take place. In
that assembly, everyone will behold his own good or bad deeds, and the just
will stand out among the wicked like white sheep among black. (13:) They
will then separate the righteous from the wicked; and [they will carry]
the righteous to the abode of harmony, and cast the wicked back to the
wicked existence [sc. hell] and for three days and nights in material body
and [material life] will undergo punishment in the wicked existence. And
the righteous, in material body, will see delight in the abode of harmony
those three days. (15:) And all persons will pass through their own deeds.
The righteous shall weep for the wicked, and the wicked [shall weep] for
himself … Owing to their own deeds that they have done, [the wicked]
undergo punishment which no one has undergone, which they call the
punishment “of the three nights.”
(18:) Fire and the yazad Airyaman will melt the metal in the hills and
mountains, and it will be upon the earth like a river. Then all human beings
will be caused to pass through that molten metal, and will make them pure.
And for those who are just it will seem as though they are walking through
warm milk; and for the wicked it will seem as tough they are walking in the
flesh through molten metal. And thereafter humans will come together with
the greatest affection, father and son and brother and friend. One will ask
another, “Where were you these many years? What was the condition of
your soul? Were you righteous or wicked?” (21:) When first the soul will
see the body, it will enquire of it. On the [reply] being uttered, humans
will unanimously be of one acclaim, and will administer loud praise to
Ohrmazd and the Amesha Spentas. (22:) Ohrmazd will at that time be
the perfecter of the creatures, that is, He need not do any superior work,
during the while that they restored the dead.
(23:) The Soshyant with his helpers will perform the yasna for restoring
the dead. For that yasna they will slay the Hadayans bull; from the fat
of that bull and the white haoma they will prepare ambrosia [anōš] and
give it to all humankind; and all human beings will become immortal, for
ever and ever. (24:) This too one says: They will restore with the age of
forty years those who had attained to adult proportions. And they will
reproduce with the age of fifteen years those who were minors and had
not attained to age. And they will give everyone his wife and children,
93 This is the proper name of the Soshyant.

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and they will make demonstrations of regard towards their wives, just
as now in material life, but there will be no begetting of children. (25:)
Then Soshyant by order of the Creator will give reward and recompense to
all humans in conformity with their deeds. There may be one who is [so]
righteous that he will say, “Do you carry me to the abode of harmony
of Ohrmazd,” and, as befits himself, he lifts up his astral body, and he is
advancing, in its company, for ever and ever. (26:) This too one says: He
who has performed no worship, has ordered no ‘geti-kharit’ and has given
no garments as righteous gift [to the worthy], will be naked there; if he shall
perform the worship of Ohrmazd, the spiritual gathas will verily serve the
purpose of clothing to him.
(27:) Then Ohrmazd will seize the Evil Spirit, Vohuman will seize Ako-
man, Ardwahisht Indra, Shahrewar Sauru, Spandarmad Taromat that is
Naonhaithya, Hordat and Amurdad will seize Taurvi and Zairi, truthful
utterance will seize the untruthful utterance, and [the holy] Srosh will
seize Aeshma. (28:) And then two Drujs will remain, Ahriman and Az.
(29:) Ohrmazd will come to the world, himself as Zot, and [the holy] Srosh
as Raspi, and He will have the sacred girdle in his hands. (30:) The Evil
Spirit, helpless and with his power destroyed, will rush back to shadowy
darkness through the way by which he had entered. And the molten metal
will flow into hell; and the stench and filth in the earth, where hell was, will
be burnt by that metal, and it will become clean. The gap through which the
Evil Spirit had entered will be closed by that metal. (32:) The hell within the
earth will be brought up again to the world’s surface, and there will be ren-
ovation [ frashegird] in the universe, the world will become immortal at
will, forever and ever.
The resurrection will involve both the just and the wicked. This, however, will
not annul a substantial difference in their respective deserts. For there will be
a general judgment, universal unlike the individual judgments that take place
for each one immediately after death at the Chinvat Bridge. The river of molten
metal – which resembles the river of fire of early Christian traditions such as
that of the Apocalypse of Peter, received by Clement and Origen94 – will be the
instrument of both judgment and punishment: it will not harm the just, but it
will cause the greatest pain to the wicked. However, what is suggested at section
18 is that the wicked will be purified by this torment: “and [the river] will make
them pure”.
94 See Ramelli, “Origen, Bardaisan.”

At first sight, then, there would seem to be here a remarkable correspon-

dence with the ideas of the early Christian supporters of the doctrine of apoka-
tastasis, including the final universal praise to God, Ahura Mazda/Ohrmazd.
And, since the Bundahishn is much later than those Christian theologians, one
may wonder whether Christian apokatastasis theories may have influenced it
to some extent. But, as we shall see very soon, this noteworthy mention of
purification at section 18 is apparently contradicted by the mention of a new
retribution in sections 25–26. So, even in the late Bundahishn, it is very diffi-
cult to find a consistent doctrine of the purification, conversion, restoration,
and salvation of the wicked, comparable to that of the Christian apokatastasis
theory.
The Bundahishn at this point, after section 18, does not specify the dynam-
ics of this purifying punishment; rather, it abruptly introduces the reunion of
human beings linked by bonds of affection such as friendship, brotherhood, or
parenthood (a motif that was already presented at section 9 and that is, surpris-
ingly enough, repeated here at section 18), and the resurrection of all humanity.
Even speculations about the approximate age of bodies at the resurrection and
about the lack of the begetting of children closely resemble those going on in
the first Christian centuries about the resurrection.
Only after these speculations concerning the resurrection does the mention
of evil and those overcome by evil resume: at sections 25–26, one would think of
an inconsistency, since, after stating that all will have been purified in the river
of molten metal, and so presumably the wicked have had their sins washed or
burnt away, the Bundahishn insists again that everyone will receive the reward
for their good or bad deeds performed on earth. This seems to be at odds
with the previous purification, mentioned at section 18, and with the Christian
apokatastasis doctrine, according to which, once the wicked have been purified
through suffering, they will not be punished again for their past evil deeds. The
Bundahishn further details that, once Ahriman is made powerless, the molten
metal – whether with the wicked inside or not, it is not specified – flows into
hell, burning away all that is evil and thereby purifying the earth in a renovation
or transfiguration or healing ( frashegird).95
95 See on this Almut Hintze, “Frašō.kǝrǝti,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica 10.2, ed. Ehsan Yarshater
(London: Routledge, 2000), 190–192; Boyce, Zoroastrians, 25–26 summarizes this “renova-
tion/healing” theorized by the Bundahishn in the following terms: “‘Creation’ was the first
of the three times into which the drama of cosmic history is divided. Angra Mainyu’s [sc.
Ahriman’s] attack inaugurated the second time, that of ‘Mixture’ (Pahlavi ‘Gumezisn’),
during which this world is no longer wholly good, but is a blend of good and evil; for
the cycle of being having been set in motion, Angra Mainyu continues to attack with the

388 ramelli
Whether this burning of evil includes the wicked who were in the river of
molten metal is unclear. Also given the inconsistencies detected in the escha-
tological narrative of the Bundahishn, it seems that different traditions have
flown together into the final redaction at our disposal. So, much ambiguity
remains. It may be that the otherworldly punishment is not eternal, consists
in walking in molten metal for a while and be purified, then all will be resur-
rected, become immortal, and live forever. But it may also be that the wicked
will be destroyed and the purification of their evil implies their eventual anni-
hilation. The latter is Mary Boyce’s exegesis: “At this last ordeal of all the wicked
will suffer a second death, and will perish off the face of the earth. The Daevas
and legions of darkness will already have been annihilated in a last great battle
with the Yazatas; and the river of metal will flow down into hell, slaying Angra
Mainyu [sc. Ahriman] and burning up the last vestige of wickedness in the uni-
verse.”96 Likewise, she speaks of the “annihilation of the wicked” while dealing
with Zoroastrian eschatology and the Last Judgment already in Achaemenian
times.97 However, she is aware of the inherent ambiguity of the sources.98
Daevas [sc. devs] and all the other legions of darkness which he had brought into exis-
tence … mankind thus shared with the spenta divinities the great common purpose of
gradually overcoming evil and restoring the world to its original perfect state. The glori-
ous moment when this will be achieved is called ‘Frashokereti’ (Pahlavi ‘Frashegird’), a
term which probably means ‘Healing’ or ‘Renovation’. Therewith history will cease, for the
third time, that of ‘Separation’ (Pahlavi ‘Wizarishn’) will be ushered in. This is the time
when good will be separated again from evil; and since evil will then be utterly destroyed,
the period of Separation is eternal, and in it Ahura Mazda and all the Yazatas and men
and women will live together for ever in perfect, untroubled goodness and peace.” It must
be remarked that this picture is attested with certainty only in Sassanian times, and not in
pre-Christian times. Moreover, the exact fate of the wicked punished in hell at that final
stage – the most crucial element for a comparison with the Christian doctrine of apokatas-
tasis – remains ambiguous: see above the main text.
96 Boyce, Zoroastrians, 28, italics mine.
97 Boyce, Zoroastrians, 77.
98 Boyce, History, 1.242–244 sees “two different traditions in Zoroastrianism with regard to
the fate of the sinners. Some traditions state that the sinners will be destroyed utterly,
others that the final judgement – which is carried out by a river of fiery metal, extracted
from the mountains and flowing over the (flat) earth … – will eradicate evil from the
resurrected bodies of the sinners and thus cleanse them. (It is perhaps useful to state here
that this is the final judgement; there is no divine tribunal, actually no part played by the
gods in these traditions.) The end result, in both scenarios, is the total eradication of evil
from creation, by which the Evil Spirit is rendered powerless, and following which the
world is renewed. All this will take place at a destined time, which (in the Zoroastrian
sources) is calculated, since the entire history of creation, mixture, and separation (of

8.3 Parallel Problems with the Yashts

A similar problem emerges with the Yashts. In Yasht 19 (Zamyād Yašt),99 one of
twenty-one Avestan hymns in Younger Avestan, the Saoshyant surfaces briefly
in connection with the frashegird or cosmic renovation, at v. 89, just as it does
in the Bundahishn, even though this figure seems to have been already known
in Achaemenian times. Later it developed into three distinct Saviors, each to
be born from Zarathustra’s seed by a virgin mother. According to Yasht 19.89,
“That will cleave unto the victorious Saoshyant and his helpers, when he shall
restore the world, which will (thenceforth) never grow old and never die, never
decaying and never rotting, ever living and ever increasing, and master of its
wish, when the dead will rise, when life and immortality will come, and the
world will be restored at its wish.”100
The sentence “he shall restore the world” literally means “he will make the
world wonderful/excellent”, transfigured, that is, without evil. The world will be
made “undying”. All evils will be overcome and “the Druj shall perish” (89, 90).
Nothing is said here, once again, about the implications of this for sinners in
hell, which is the most important element for a possible comparison with the
Christian doctrine of apokatastasis.
9 Conclusive Reflections on Late Zoroastrian Eschatology, Bardaisan,

and Aphrahat the Persian
9.1 The Bundahishn, the Religious Judgments, and Other Late Texts
If the wicked are really destroyed in the Bundahishn and not converted and
saved, this scenario would be close to that of other late Zoroastrian texts that
touch upon eschatology. For instance, according to a ninth-century Zoroastrian
Pahlavi writing, the wicked are damned for eternity, and the souls of those who
yielded to Ahriman and demons are annihilated.101 These would seem to be
two reciprocally contradictory statements, possibly due to accretions in the
good and evil) will unfold within the span of 9,000 (or 12,000) years.” See also Mary Boyce,
“On the Orthodoxy of Sasanian Zoroastrianism,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies 59: 11–28 (1996): 23–24.
99 On which see the commentary by Almut Hintze, Der Zamyād-Yašt, Edition, Übersetzung,
Kommentar, Beiträge zur Iranistik 15 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994).
100 Trans. James Darmesteter with adaptations by Joseph H. Peterson, available at http://www
.avesta.org/ka/yt19sbe.htm.
101 Pahlavi Rivayat 32.5; 36.4.

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history of this late text, but both solutions clearly rule out the perspective of a
conversion, purification, and salvation of sinners.
Also, according to another late Zoroastrian document, a Pahlavi text on
religious customs, people who committed particularly severe sins, unnatural
sexual acts, and apostasy will not experience any purification from sin or res-
urrection.102 Again, either eternal torment or destruction is the alternative. The
destruction, or the eternal punishment, of the wicked foreseen in these Zoroas-
trian texts is obviously different from the outcome posited in the Christian
doctrine of apokatastasis as supported by Bardaisan of Edessa and many oth-
ers, although it is also different from the thesis of the eternity of hell. The three
alternatives were in fact:
(1) temporary purifying torment followed by conversion and salvation (an-

cient Christian apokatastasis);
(2) temporary torment followed by destruction (annihilationism, probably
embraced by Zoroastrianism at least in some texts, as well as by some
early Christians), or even immediate destruction;
(3) eternal torment (eternity of hell, which became the Christian mainstream
doctrine after the rejection of apokatastasis by the “Church of the Empire”
under Justinian in the Greek East, and under Augustine’s influence in the
Latin West).103
Shaul Shaked has rightly observed that
Two different positions seem to coexist in the Zoroastrian eschatological

conceptions. One is that of absolute justice given to the individual accord-
ing to the person’s merits, and the other is that of the posthumous fate of
the person being determined as the outcome of a final struggle between
the spirits of good and evil over it. The latter conception allows for an
appeal by the family and friends of the deceased to the deities to intercede
on his behalf. The two points of view coincide, but they may represent two
ways of looking at the matter of eschatological judgment, that could have
been originally separate.104
102 Shayest ne Shayest (Šāyest nē šāyest) 17.7.

103 A specific historical study of the factors that led to the rejection of the apokatastasis theory
is badly needed and a future monograph will be devoted to it.
104 Shaked, “Eschatology i,” 566.

Not even Shaked, however, in his interesting article tackles the problem
of whether Zoroastrian eschatology may have somehow influenced the early
Christian doctrine of universal restoration – or vice-versa. He thinks that for
late Zoroastrianism, as testified to by the Bundahishn, all human beings will
be purified of their sins: “The residents of hell will be purified from their sins
and will join the righteous.”105 If this should be the case, it would reveal in the
Bundahishn a very different development from Yasna 46 and also Hadhokht
Nask 3 and even the late Menog-i Khrad 40.31, in all of which, as I have pointed
out earlier, the damnation of the wicked was declared to be eternal.
Even if in the Bundahishn the wicked should be definitely purified by the
river of molten metal and never return to punishment again (although this
is highly controversial, given the strong ambivalence of the Bundahishn and
overtly conflicting passages therein in this respect), this outcome would be
attested only for the late Sassanian times, much later than the first and the
main Christian attestations of the doctrine of apokatastasis. Therefore, it would
be impossible to claim that this kind of Zoroastrian eschatology could have
influenced the early theories of universal restoration.
While in the Bundahishn it is possible, but not entirely sure (due to appar-
ently contradictory statements), that a definitive purification of the wicked
will take place, this is clearly spelled out in a 9th century ce Pahlavi work by
Manuschihr (Manūščihr), high priest of the Persian Zoroastrian community.
It is entitled Religious Judgements (Dādestān ī dēnīg). Here we are presented
with roughly the same eschatological story as in the Bundahishn, but without
the ambiguities and the contradictions of the latter. In 1.32.4 ff., the Religious
Judgements text recounts the myth of the Chinvat Bridge, and all the distress of
the wicked.
In 1.32.7 readers begin to be intimated that the sufferings in hell, following
the Chinvat Bridge, aim at arousing in those tormented repentance and a strong
desire for good deeds: “And through the leading of Vizarash he [sc. the sinner]
comes unwillingly unto hell, becomes a household attendant of the fiend and
evil one, is repentant of the delusion of a desire for falsities, is a longer for getting
away from hell to the world, and has a wonderful desire for good works.” Soon
after, in 1.32.10–15 it becomes clear that torments in hell will last only until
the renovation of frashegird, when Ahriman will be destroyed and the river
of molten metal will purify the wicked from their sins:
105 Shaked, “Eschatology i,” 567.

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The sojourn in hell is not limited before the resurrection, and until the time
of the renovation [ frashegird] he is in hell … And at the time of the reno-
vation, when the fiend perishes, the souls of the wicked pass into molten
metal for three days; and all demons and evil thoughts, which are owing to
their sin, have anguish effectually, and are hurried away by the cutting and
breaking away of the accumulation of sin of the wicked souls. And by that
pre-eminent ablution in the molten metal they are thoroughly purified from
guilt and infamy, and through the perseverance and mercifulness of the pre-
eminent persistent ones they are pardoned, and become most saintly pure
ones; as it is said in metaphor that the pure are of two kinds, one which is
glorious, and one which is from (molten) metal.106 And after that purifica-
tion there are no demons, no punishment, and no hell as regards the wicked,
and their disposal also is just; they become righteous, painless, deathless,
fearless, and free from harm. And with them comes the spirit of the good
works which were done and instigated by them in the world, and procures
them pleasure and joy in the degree and proportion of those good works.
This picture, in this very late Zoroastrian text, is quite similar to the Christian
doctrine of apokatastasis; even the element – not emphasized by the Bun-
dahishn – of the intercession of the just on behalf of the wicked is typical
of early Christian apokatastasis writings, especially the Apocalypse of Peter,
which inspired both Clement and Origen and eschatological texts such as the
Apocalypse of Paul.107
Even the evolution of hamistagan from an intermediate state, similar to this
world (as we have seen in the Greater Bundahishn), into a place of suffering,
seems to owe much to Christian depictions of purgatory: “The place of a soul of
the wicked, after the dying off of the body, can be in (one of) three districts: one
of them is called that of the ever-stationary [hamistagan] of the wicked, and
it is a mixture [gumezako, sc. of good and evil], but the evil is abundantly and
considerably more than the good; and the place is terrible, dark, stinking, and
grievous with evil.” Indeed, hamistagan is said soon afterwards to be a part of
hell, the less terrible one. But clearly it is no longer distinct from hell, as instead
it was in the tradition that flowed into the Bundahishn, obviously because here
in the Religious Judgements it is patent that hell too is not a definitive state for
the wicked, nor does it entail their destruction.
106 Those glorious are the people who have deserved paradise; those from metal are the
people who are saved after purification in the river of molten metal.
107 As documented in Ramelli, “Origen, Bardaisan.”

It is significant that in Religious Judgements 1.37.90–92 there are explicit ref-

erences to Christianity and its notion of the resurrection of Christ.108 Therefore
it is clear that the author of this text was acquainted with Christian doctrines
and was in conversation, or rather competition, with it. In light of this, it would
not be surprising if in Pahlavi Zoroastrian documents such as the Religious
Judgements (contemporary with ninth-century Eriugena, the last patristic sup-
porter of apokatastasis), and also the Bundahishn, we could find influences of
the early Christian doctrine of the purification, instruction, restoration, and
salvation of the wicked, which is well attested in theologians such as Bardaisan
(† 222ce), Origen (†255ca. ce), Didymus, Gregory of Nyssa (fourth cent. ce),
and Evagrius (†399ce).
It is mainly for chronological reasons, indeed, that one cannot hypothesize
that the Christian doctrine of apokatastasis was directly inspired by Zoroas-
trian eschatology. Biblical and philosophical roots are more firmly attested, as
well as roots in some early Jewish, Second Temple Jewish, and Jewish-Christian
literature.109
9.2 Hints from Bardaisan and Aphrahat

There might have been some reciprocal influence, however. Especially Bar-
daisan, as I have mentioned, shows both cosmological and eschatological ele-
ments that come very close to those of the later Bundahishn. The direction of
the influence might be double, or it might go from Bardaisan (or other similar
Christian cosmologies and eschatologies) to the Middle Persian myth, espe-
cially in the case of eschatology. The eventual overcoming of evil and the end of
the state of “mixture” is a prominent feature of the Middle Persian myth, which
calls this “renovation” ( frashegird), as I have said, a notion close to restoration
or apokatastasis.
Bardaisan at the end of the Book of the Laws of Countries from about the
230s ce, but reflecting Bardaisan’s own, earlier dialogue Against Fate, and at any
108 “And every single statement of each of the truthful is as much evidence, about those
several colors of those who are liars, as even the compiled sayings of the Abraham of the
Christians, which are the word of him who is also called their Messiah, about the Son of
the Supreme Being; thus, they recount that the Son, who is not less than the Father, is
himself He, the Being whom they consider undying. One falsehood they tell about the
same Messiah is that he died, and one falsehood they tell is that he did not die; it is a
falsehood for those who say he did not die, and for those who say he did die; wherefore did
he not die, when he is dead? And wherefore is it said he did not die, when he is mentioned
as dead?”
109 For all these, see Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis.

394 ramelli
rate his own ideas, spoke of the eschatological constitution of a “new world” in
which evil will have no part and creatures will be free from “mixture” (muzzagā)
with evil. This, from Bardaisan’s Christian viewpoint, will be mainly the result
of the instructing and purifying work of Christ-Logos, the Savior born from a
virgin. Likewise, for the Middle Persian myth, the renovation begins with the
appearance of a Savior born from a virgin (although this Savior is not the Son
of God, but the son of Zarathustra, from the prophet’s seed left in a lake).
The Savior will bring about the resurrection of the dead, and the judgment
will purify humans from sin: these are further elements of contact with the
Christian theory represented by Bardaisan.
I believe that the possibility of some influence of Bardaisan’s ideas on this
later phase of Zoroastrianism deserves further investigation. However, whereas
for Bardaisan the wicked will be purified and instructed, will convert to the
Good, and will therefore be all saved, as a gift from God – a theory which
Bardaisan shares with Origen, Gregory Nyssen, and most supporters of the
Christian doctrine of apokatastasis – this outcome, as I have indicated, is far
from being supported, or at least clearly stated, in the Bundahishn, let alone in
earlier, pre-Christian Zoroastrian accounts. It only emerges unambiguously in
very late Zoroastrian documents, such as ninth-century Religious Judgements.
The possibility of some reciprocal influence between Sassanian Zoroastrian-
ism and Bardaisan and his milieu, and even of some influence from Bardaisan
(and possibly other Christian theologians) on Zoroastrian eschatology is rein-
forced by the following considerations. A long while before the composition
of the Bundahishn, the Persian Aphrahat, a former “pagan,” possibly Zoroas-
trian, who later converted to Christianity,110 in the third and early fourth cen-
tury ce knew Bardaisan’s work and thought, as has recently been convincingly
argued.111 This indicates that Bardaisan’s theories and books were circulating in
Persian areas just decades after his death; therefore, they may well have been
familiar to (other) Zoroastrian intellectuals as well. Called the Persian Sage,
Aphrahat was born in Persia around 270ce, just fifteen years after the death
of Origen and less than fifty after that of Bardaisan, and seems to have been
110 Sujit T. Thomas, “Taking upon the Likeness of Angels: Asceticism as the Angelic Life in
Aphrahat’s Demonstrations,” in Orthodox Monasticism, Past and Present, ed. John
A. McGuckin (New York: Theotokos Press, 2014), 43–49: 43: “he was probably born into
a pagan family.” Aphrahat was surely conversant with Jewish Mesopotamian traditions:
see Ilya Lizorkin, Aphrahat’s Demonstrations: A Conversation with the Jews of Mesopotamia
(Leuven: Peeters, 2002).
111 Ilaria Ramelli, “Revisiting Aphrahat’s Sources: Beyond Scripture?,” in Mélanges offerts à
l’ Abbé Élie Khalifé-Hachem = Parole de l’ Orient 41 (2015) 367–397.

active in Adiabene, which belonged to the Persian empire. His name itself was
Persian: Frahāt (“Aphrahat” comes from the Syriacized version). He very proba-
bly came from a “pagan” family; at a certain point he converted to Christianity,
was baptized, and assumed the Christian name Jacob. His knowledge of Jewish
traditions, especially from the Hebrew Bible, is rich.112 As I said, it is likely that
before his conversion he was precisely a Zoroastrian, like the Persian kings and
many of their subjects. His Demonstrations attest to a profound knowledge of
Scripture, but are generally considered to be isolated within patristic literature,
with no references to works of other Christian theologians.
However, from recent, innovative research it has emerged that some Demon-
strations show impressive similarities not only with Mara Bar Serapion’s Syriac
Letter to His Son (very interesting to Christians since it spoke of the death of
Jesus and assimilated it to the innocent death of Socrates and other philoso-
phers), but also with Bardaisan’s ideas, both those expressed in the Liber legum
regionum and those found in other works. Aphrahat also seems to have polemi-
cized with Bardaisan on at least a couple of points, concerning the nature of
risen bodies and the role of God’s will or of nature in governing the behavior of
natural elements and animals.113
For instance, in Demonstration 14.36–37 Aphrahat clearly alludes to, and
criticizes, Bardaisan’s argument in the Liber legum regionum (although without
naming him, but calling him “someone”) that natural elements and animals
act on the basis of their nature. Aphrahat claims that they rather obey the will
of God. Also, in Demonstration 4.5–6 Aphrahat employs twice the very same
Syriac expression that was characteristically used by Bardaisan with reference
to the cross of Christ both in the so-called “cosmological traditions” and in a
Greek fragment preserved by Porphyry: “the Mystery [razā] of the Cross.”114
Just one last example: in Demonstration 8 Aphrahat rejects Bardaisan’s and his
followers’ notion of the resurrected body as a spiritual body.115 These and other
references to Bardaisan have totally escaped scholars so far, probably because
of their elusiveness, and perhaps also due to Aphrahat’s supposed isolation
in the cultural and theological panorama of patristic literature. Taking this
112 See Sebastian Brock, “Jewish Traditions in Syriac Sources,” jjs 30 (1979): 212–232.
113 So Ramelli, “Revisiting Aphrahat’s Sources.”
114 Full analysis in Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa, 107–124. The fragment preserved by Porphyry
in De Styge is reported by Stobaeus Anthology [Ecl. Phys.] 1.3.56; 1.66.24–70.13 Wachsmuth
= Porphyry fr. 376 Smith.
115 This specific criticism was suggested, I think rightly, by McGlothlin, “Is Aphrahat’s Demon-
stration on the Resurrection against Bardaisan?”, expressly on the basis of the analysis of
Bardaisan’s notion of the resurrection offered in Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa.

396 ramelli
as a presupposition has likely prevented scholars from investigating literary

parallels and sources outside of Scripture.
Now, the Persian Aphrahat’s acquaintance with Bardaisan’s works and ideas,
including his eschatological ideas as spelled out in the Liber legum regionum,
is highly significant. It points to the diffusion of Bardaisan’s Christian writings
and theories in early Sassanian Persia, well before the composition of the Bun-
dahishn. This confirms that it is not out of the realm of possibility that Persian
intellectuals and priests elaborated cosmological and especially eschatological
scenarios, later reflected in the Bundahishn and more clearly in Religious Judge-
ments, with Bardaisan’s ideas and those of his milieu in mind. Of course, the
relationship between Sassanian Zoroastrianism and Bardaisan must be seen
as reciprocal; I have already drawn attention to remarkable Iranian elements,
for instance, in Bardaisan’s cosmology.
10 Late Zurvanic and Non-Zurvanic Documents and General

Conclusions
Another interesting document that reflects late Sassanian Zoroastrian cosmol-

ogy and eschatology belongs to the Zoroastrian current called Zurvanism. This
was adopted by the late Achaemenids, as it seems, and successively by the Sas-
sanians. It was a monism – based on a particular exegesis of Yasna 30 – accord-
ing to which Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu were not unoriginated principles,
but the twin sons of Zurvan (Zurwān), a minor divinity of late Younger Avestan
texts representing Time.116 Mary Boyce’s well-known definition of Zurvanism as
a “heresy” of Zoroastrianism is now rejected by several scholars, such as Albert
de Jong, who, like Shaked,117 prefers to see Zurvanism as one of several variants
of the main Zoroastrian cosmogonical myth.
At any event, the Zurvanite document to which I would like to call attention
is reported by the Armenian Christian author Eznik of Kolb, from the late
fourth and fifth centuries, who was educated in Edessa and Byzantium, was
active refuting Zoroastrian doctrines, and was probably quoting the following
passage from a lost Pahlavi document of the fourth or fifth century ce:118
116 Boyce, Sources, 96; Zoroastrians, 67–70.

117 Shaul Shaked, “The Myth of Zurvan: Cosmogony and Eschatology,” in Messiah and Chris-
tos: Studies in the Jewish Origins of Christianity, eds. Shaul Shaked and Guy Stroumsa,
tsaj 32 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 219–240.
118 The unique manuscript that preserves Eznik’s refutation of “heresies,” including Zoroas-
trian Zurvanism, is itself very late, stemming from 1280ce (Yerevan Matenadaran ms.

Behold what Zardusht119 said concerning the begetting of Ohrmazd and

Ahriman. When nothing at all yet existed, neither heaven nor earth nor
any other creature which is in heaven or on earth, there existed the great
god Zurvan, whose name is to be interpreted as “fate” or “fortune”. For
one thousand years he offered sacrifice in order that he might perhaps
have a son who would be called Ohrmazd, and who would make the
heavens and earth and all which they contain. (2) For one thousand years
he offered sacrifice. Then he pondered in his heart and said: “Shall I truly
have profit of these sacrifices, and shall I have a son called Ohrmazd?
Or do I strive thus in vain?” And even while he reflected in this manner,
Ormazd and Ahriman were conceived in the womb:120 Ohrmazd through the
offered sacrifice, and Ahriman through the doubt … (5) And while Zurvan
was giving the rods to Ohrmazd and blessing him, Ahriman, having drawn
near to Zurvan, said to him: “Have you not made this vow, that whichever
of my two sons shall first come before me, him I shall make king?” And
Zurvan, that he should not violate his oath, said to Ahriman: “O false
and injurious one! The kingship shall be granted you for nine thousand
years; and I shall establish Ohrmazd as ruler over you. And after nine
thousand years Ohrmazd shall reign and do all that he will wish to do.”
(6) Then Ohrmazd and Ahriman set to fashioning the creatures. And all
that Ohrmazd created was good and straight, and all that Ahriman made
was evil and crooked.121
f1 Zaehner
no. 1097). The section on the Persians is a refutation of Zurvanism (on this section, see
Robert C. Zaehner, Zurvan: A Zoroastrian Dilemma [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955],
54–78, 419–428). See also Ezio Albrile, “L’Anima e il tempo. Riflessioni sullo Zurvanismo
in Eznik di Kolb,” Studi sull’Oriente Cristiano 5 (2000): 5–36; idem, “Zurvān tra i Mandei?
Un excursus sulle origini dello Gnosticismo,” Teresianum 47 (1996): 193–244; idem, “Zur-
wān sulla luna. Aspetti della gnosi aramaico-iranica,”Rivista degli Studi Orientali 75 (2001):
27–54.
119 This is the Middle-Persian name of Zarathustra.
120 “Naturally this myth gave scope for further elaboration – in whose womb, for instance, had
the twins been conceived?” (Boyce, Zoroastrians, 68). I think the womb is that of Zurvan.
This is suggested not only by the fact that Zurvan is the only existing being at that primeval
stage, but also by the “maternity” of Ahura Mazda/Ohrmazd – the primeval existing being
outside of Zurvanism – , i.e. his above-mentioned spiritual creation. The original divinity
is conceived as both Mother and Father, so no wonder that Zurvan, the original deity, is
deemed to possess a womb.
121 Zaehner, Zurvan.

398 ramelli
Here we can see again the promise of the final victory of Ohrmazd over Ahri-
man at the end of time, the same as is attested in the non-Zurvanic Bundahishn.
The document cited by Eznik attests, too, to a late Sassanian phase of Zoroastri-
anism, which cannot be taken to reflect pre-Christian stages with any certainty.
What is more, there is no attestation here of a conversion and salvation of the
wicked, which is extremely controversial in the Bundahishn itself and is the
main point for any comparison with the Christian doctrine of apokatastasis,
which in the time of Eznik and of his Zoroastrian source was already becom-
ing more and more controversial.
In a ninth-century Pahlavi book, contemporary with Eriugena, a brief cat-
echism called Selected Precepts of the Ancient Sages,122 sections 11 and 30, one
finds again the promise of the eventual destruction of evil, Ahriman’s product,
but the fate of the wicked is declared to be hell: “And there is one path of evil
thoughts, evil words and evil acts, that of the darkness and finiteness and total
evil and death and badness of the wicked Evil Spirit, who once was not in this
creation, and who again will not be in the creation of Ohrmazd, and who in the
end will be destroyed … Further, a person must be grateful; and by gratitude this
is meant, that she should be thankful that she has it in her own power to save her
soul from hell.” The emphasis is on free will that can save each person from hell,
but how hell can be squared with the final elimination of evil, is not explained.
One can surmise that hell is not understood as eternal, but there is no clue to
that.
As for the eventual destruction of evil, the argument given here in support
of this eschatological outcome is protological: evil was not in the creation orig-
inally, and therefore it will not endure in the creation of Ohrmazd. This is the
same argument, and even the same wording, that both Origen in the early third
century ce and Evagrius Ponticus in the late fourth had used: “There was a time
when evil was not, and there will be a time when it will not be any longer” (Eva-
grius, Propositions on Knowledge 1.40, in turn taken literally from Origen).123
Again, the restoration of the world to a state without evil is clear both in our late
Pahlavi book and in these early Christian theologians, but while the latter were
sure that all rational creatures, often including even demons, would eventually
be illuminated and purified, will convert, and will be saved, thus finally exiting
hell, Zoroastrian evidence to this kind of outcome is extremely scanty and con-
tradictory. Moreover, it dates at best to the late Sassanian period or even later,
as we have seen in the case of Religious Judgements.
122 Chidag Andarz i Poryotkeshan; Boyce, Sources, 100.

123 See Ramelli, Evagrius Kephalaia Gnostika, full commentary on kg 1.40.

In conclusion, it seems impossible to prove, and improbable at best, that

the Christian doctrine of apokatastasis may have been influenced by Zoroas-
trian eschatology, which developed in that direction too late – likewise, the
Islamic doctrine of the extinction of hell is posterior to the Christian one.124
But a fruitful and significant interrelation between early Christian and Zoroas-
trian ideas might have taken place in the case of Bardaisan of Edessa and his
cultural milieu; his death almost coincided with the end of the Parthian and
the beginning of the Sassanian age, a main divide between the two Zoroastrian
empires of the early Common Era. Just as Christian apocalyptic influenced the
late Arda Viraz Namag, and the author of Religious Judgements was certainly
acquainted with Christianity, so too is it possible, I think, to hypothesize an
influence of early Christian apokatastasis theories on late Zoroastrian escha-
tology.
An influence of Christian eschatological ideas onto late Zoroastrianism is
possible, and even probable, also in the light of the interactions between Chris-
tians and Zoroastrians in Sassanian Persia in late antiquity, studied by Richard
Payne,125 which must be contextualized within the interactions of the vari-
ous religions of the Sassanian Empire with Zoroastrianism,126 and interactions
between Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism studied by Aryeh Kofsky
and Serge Ruzer.127 Payne shows that Christians were not isolated in that con-
text, as previously was often assumed, and not simply in conflict with Zoroastri-
ans and imperially persecuted, while they were occasionally victims of violence
more for social and political factors than for their religion,128 but they con-
stantly interacted with Zoroastrians and exchanged ideals and imagery.129
I think the present investigation has shown that one important example
of such interaction can be found in the influence of the Christian doctrine
of apokatastasis on the Zoroastrian concept of Frashegird. Other Christian-
Zoroastrian interactions have been recently highlighted, for instance, by Patri-
124 See Marco Demichelis, A Study of the Doctrine of the Annihilation of Hell in Early Islamic
Thought (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2017).
125 Payne, State of Mixture.
126 See Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians: Religious Dynamics in a Sassanian Context, ed.
Geoffrey Herman (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2016).
127 Aryeh Kofsky and Serge Ruzer, Reshaping Identities in Late Antique Syria-Mesopotamia.
Christian and Jewish Hermeneutics and Narrative Strategies, Judaism in Context 19 (Piscat-
away: Gorgias Press, 2016).
128 Payne, State of Mixture, 38–42, 53–56. Payne deconstructs the myth of a “great persecution”
under Shahpur ii, elaborated by Syriac hagiographers.
129 Payne, State of Mixture, Chs. 2–6.

400 ramelli
cia Crone.130 Zoroastrian representations of the afterlife also seem to have

influenced Mandaeism,131 even though they probably did not influence Chris-
tian theories of apokatastasis.
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Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406 Religion

Christian Apokatastasis and Zoroastrian Frashegird

Ilaria L.E. Ramelli*

apokatastasis/restoration – frashegird – eschatology – universalism and social dis-

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/15743012-02403007

1 The Value of Comparative Studies in Religion and the Social

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

the case from the beginning, though: apokatastasis or universal restoration

3 See Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, “Mysticism, Apocalypticism, and Platonism,” forthcoming.

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

2 New Research into the Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis

A systematic investigation into the notion of apokatastasis in antiquity and

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

3 The Question of the Origins of Christian Apokatastasis:

While a methodical examination of “pagan” philosophical notions of apokatas-

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

Danielle Layne, Millennium Studies 65 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 95–122. A monograph

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

tological thought. However, Bardaisan can only have influenced Manichaeism,

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

on apocalypticism and millenarianism and adduces no proof of universalism in

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

4 Zoroastrianism and Judaism: Zoroastrian Elements in the Dead Sea

One interesting element that is worth highlighting preliminarily is that con-

During the Achaemenian period … Persian scholar-priests encountered

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

Now, astral apokatastasis dramatically differed from the Christian soterio-

4.1 Linguistic Elements

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

4.2 Conceptual Elements

40 Elliot Wolfson, “Seven Mysteries of Knowledge: Qumran Esotericism Recovered,” in The

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

The main problem in the reconstruction of the evolution of Zoroastrian cos-

45 On all of whom see Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis.

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

were considered to be Zoroaster’s own Gathas (Gāθās or sacred hymns).47 But

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

6 Analysis of Cosmological and Eschatological Elements

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

6.1 Yasna 30: Eschatological Rewards and Punishments

54 See, e.g., Boyce, Sources, 12.

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

At the end the world will be “transfigured” or “made wonderful/excellent”

6.2 Yasna 45 and Other Yasnas

58 Trans. Boyce with minimal adaptations, as elsewhere unless otherwise specified.

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

6.3 The Chinvat Bridge in Vendidad and Other Texts

(26:) Zarathushtra said to Ahura Mazda …: (27:) “O Creator! where will

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

to Mithras the name of “Mediator.”71 … They believe that some of the

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

Aristotle in the first book of his dialogue On Philosophy declares that

The promise of immorality is there – and is confirmed by another, later quo-

72 E.g., in Cels. 4.67–68; Princ. 3.3.4.

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

Religion & Theology 24 (2017) 350–406

Christian supporters of apokatastasis were drawing on Zoroastrian ideas on the

8 Cosmology and Eschatology in the Greater Bundahishn