1985 JAAR 53 201-235 Religious Influence Zor Jud CHR

The Question of Religious Influence: The Case of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity
Author(s): James Barr

Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Jun., 1985), pp. 201-235
Published by: Oxford University Press
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Journalof the AmericanAcademyof Religion,LIII/2
THE QUESTION OF RELIGIOUSINFLUENCE:

THE CASE OF ZOROASTRIANISM,
JUDAISM,AND CHRISTIANITY
JAMESBARR
It is customaryto connect certain phenomenaof the later Old Testa-

ment and of postbiblicalJudaismwith Iranianinfluence.The development
within Jewishreligionof such mattersas angels,dualism,eschatology,and
the resurrectionof the body is commonlyattributedto the impact of Iran-
ian religion.This would not be surprising,at least in theory;for the Jews
lived about two centuriesunder the Pax Persica, and some of their most
importantbookswere writtenin that time.
It thereforeis strikingthat, on the whole, biblical and Jewishstudies
have remained very much aloof from the study of Iranian language,
literature,and religion. For most biblical scholars,the "Orientalback-
ground of the Old Testament"has meant the Semitic background,per-
haps also the Egyptian and the Hittite, but much less the Iranian.The
energetic effort invested in work on Akkadian and Ugaritic parallels
standsin surprisingcontrastto the absence of similarattentionto Persian
materials.Part of the explanationfor this circumstancelies in the attrac-
tion of novelty. The Avesta was known in the West from the end of the
eighteenth century, and it therefore provided materialsfor exploration
long before Akkadian, and still longer before Ugaritic, evidence was
known. As usual, some of the theoriesbuilt upon Avestanevidence came
to seem highly unlikely, and it was doubtlessfelt that the resourcesof
this literaturehad been fully exploited. Much of Old Testamentscholar-
ship in the 1980s shows little greater consciousnessof the Iraniansources
than existed before the mid-nineteenthcentury.
One also must consider the problem of linguistic difficulty. For the
student starting from Hebrew, the natural path of expansion is that
opened up by Semitic linguistics,and the passagefrom Hebrew to Uga-
ritic or even Akkadianis a fairly easy and naturalone. But Hebrew has
practicallynothing in common with Avestanor Pahlavi,and Iranianand
Indo-Europeanlinguisticsare unfamiliarand difficultfor the Hebraist.
There are, of course, scholars who have studied both Hebrew and
James Barr is Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University.

202 Journalof the AmericanAcademy of Religion
Iranianmaterialstogether. Scandinaviain particularhas a traditionthat

linked the two and related them to the historyof religions;the names of
Soderblom,Nyberg, and Widengren come particularlyto mind. Among
Iranianistswho have made significantcontributionsto biblical study, one
thinksof H. H. Schaederand, more recently, M. J. Dresden.
Yet comparativelyfew Old Testamentscholarsseriouslystudy Iranian
materials.Bookslike I. Scheftelowitz,Die altpersischeReligion und das
Judentum, are now little read. That bible of the oriental environment,
Pritchard'sAncient Near Eastern Texts, containsno Iranianmaterials.It
does include one or two inscriptionsof Cyrusand Xerxes,but, characteris-
tically, these are translatedfrom their Akkadianversion,not from the Old
Persian,and handledby Assyriologists.I know of no fresh examinationof
the questionof Iranianinfluence by any majorOld Testamentscholarin
recent years.Actually,morehas been done by some New Testamentschol-
ars (Reicke:1960). Moreover,a number of new studiesof Zoroastrianism
have appeared,some of which make reference to contacts with the Old
Testamentand Judaism.I think particularlyof the work of Mary Boyce,
whose scholarshipis enhanced in profundityand in interest because her
knowledgeof Zoroastrianism derivesnot only from booksbut alsofrom her
living in the midstof the Zoroastriancommunity.The significanceof these
studies has still to be noticed by many biblical scholars.There is room,
therefore,for a freshlookat the subjectby an Old Testamentscholar.1
The purposeof this paper is not to offer any precise answer to the
question of the influence of Zoroastrianismon Judaism (and thereby
Christianity).Rather,it aims to investigate the problems,and the kinds
of evidence and argument,that are involved in studying the question at
all. In particular,it seeks to addressthree issues.First, what sortsof com-
parativeargumentsare effective when it is not certain that the religions
concernedhave actually influencedone another?Second,to what degree
is detailed linguistic evidence effective in solving these more general
problems?Third, can we arrive at any statementof a kind of perception
of another'sreligion that can help to explain the sort of interactionsthat
may have taken place?
It may be useful at the outset to say something about the impact of
theologicaland other ideologicalpositions.On the whole, the questionof
Iranianinfluenceupon Judaismappearsless affected by ideology than do
some other questions of the same kind. Many scholarsof the "biblical
theology"period, for example, were very anxious to make it clear that
biblical thought was entirely distinct from, and owed nothing to, Greek
1 The lack of expert knowledge in Iranianmatterswill be sufficientlyevident in what

follows. I can only say that I have done what I could to gain some slight competence in
the languages concerned and to take advantage of discussion with Iranian specialists
where I could do so.
Barr:ReligiousInfluence 203
thought. The absence of Greek influence was for them almost a matter
of principle.But these same scholarswere often willing to admit Iranian
influenceupon Jewishand biblical eschatology.For them, Greekthought
was closer and more real, and the idea of its influence upon the biblical
tradition representeda sort of challenge and danger. Iranian influence,
however, seemed more remote and less of a threat;it thereforecould be
freely discussed and, if necessary, acknowledged.2In this respect the
questionof Iranianinfluenceseems to be a more open one ideologically.
Nevertheless,this is not always so, and the effect of ideological con-
siderationsupon our questioncan often be traced. Scheftelowitzhas been
criticized on the ground that he could not bring himself to admit, des-
pite his long studies of the question, that Judaism, his own religion,
really owed anything to any foreign religion.3 J. H. Moulton, better
known among biblical scholarsfor his work on the Greek papyri and the
vocabularyof the New Testament, had a complicated set of religious
values, which much affected his handling of the Zoroastrianevidence.4
R. C. Zaehner(1970:1-39, especially 30-31) displayed in his later works
2 0. Cullmann is an obvious example. As I pointed out (1969:165n.), Cullmann strongly
insisted on the complete contrast between the biblical view and "all religious and philo-
sophical systems." Yet he found it possible and even natural to admit that Iranian religion
agreed with biblical in seeing time "as a line."
3 According to Duchesne-Guillemin (1958:87), Scheftelowitz, if he finds the same fact
on both sides, "refuses to deduce from it an Iranian origin even if it is attested much later
on the Jewish side."
4 Duchesne-Guillemin (ibid.) says that Moulton found it difficult, as a Christian, to
admit a large Iranian influence on his religion. It is doubtful, however, that Moulton is
rightly assessed by him. As I understand it, Moulton's type of liberal Christianity (accom-
panied by missionary zeal!) worked in a different way from what this suggests. Moulton
had an extremely high opinion of Zoroastrianism and assigned it a sort of validity close to
that of his own Christianity. Zoroastrianism properly understood, and taken at its best,
had therefore a positive role in relation to Christianity similar to that which-on tradi-
tional Christian understandings-the Old Testament had had. Nevertheless "Israel learnt a
profounder lesson still" (Moulton, 1913:331). If Moulton was cautious in recognizing clear
Zoroastrian influences upon Israel and thereby upon Christianity, therefore, this was not
because he was unwilling to assign Iranian religion a position of comparability with his
own religion. The contrary was the case. Moulton wanted to accord to Zoroastrianism a
greater degree of comparability with Christianity than was historically justifiable through
the influence of latish Iranian religion upon latish Judaism. He makes this clear in his
disagreement with Bousset (ibid.: 321). If Iranian influence was to be explained through
historical channels, it would mean practically that "Zarathushtra himself is to be struck
out of the list of the prophets who contributed to the development of Israel's religion"
(ibid.). Zoroaster's own work was for Moulton of primary significance; but it was not
accessible through historical channels to Jews of the last four decades B.C.,who knew Ira-
nian religion only through the distorted forms produced by the Magi, the villains of Moul-
ton's drama. Hence the relation of Zoroastrianism to Christianity for Moulton had to be a
relation of essences rather than one of historical derivation. Moulton's case is a good exam-
ple of the complications involved in relating the religion of the modern scholar to his
understanding of ancient religious comparison.
204 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
a deep hostility toward the Old Testament, which he contrasted with

Christian values. Such a gradation of values could easily have induced
him to assign to Iranian influence, rather than to inner development
starting in the Old Testament, elements he judged to be of positive
importance in later Christianity.
Theological and other ideological convictions, then, do have a cer-
tain influence on people's judgment of the probability of Iranian influ-
ence on Judaism and Christianity. Nevertheless, for many the question
remains a fairly open one; they do not feel that their religious convic-
tions will be compromised if Iranian influence is admitted, or if, on the
contrary, it proves not to have been effective after all.
If these remarks may suffice as preamble, we may turn to the discus-
sion of our question itself. The arguments for Iranian influence on the
later Old Testament and on postbiblical Judaism proceed on two levels,
one particular and one general. The particular argument depends on
detailed pieces of evidence, such as the name of the demon Asmodeus in
Tobit. We shall consider it later on. The general argument works from
wide probabilities. On one side, it comes from the general feeling that a
religion as great and noble as Zoroastrianism simply must have had an
effect on Judaism and Christianity. Mary Boyce expresses it thus: "So it
was out of a Judaism enriched by five centuries of contact with Zoroas-
trianism that Christianity arose in the Parthian period, a new religion
with roots thus in two ancient faiths, one Semitic, the other Iranian"
(1979:99). Similarly, Zaehner (1961:57), writing about rewards and pun-
ishments, heaven and hell, says that "the similarities are so great and the
historical context so neatly apposite that it would be carrying scepticism
altogether too far to refuse to draw the obvious conclusion" that, in this
area at least, Judaism and Christianity are dependent on Zoroastrianism.
According to this viewpoint, the importance and the influence of Zoroas-
trianism are so obvious that, on these quite general grounds, it is unrea-
sonable scepticism to doubt that important elements in Judaism and
Christianity had their ultimate origins in Iran.
However, the general argument also commonly depends on another
factor, the confidence that the development known in the later Old Tes-
tament and in Judaism is not intelligible except on the basis of external
influences. In other words, it implies that the internal dynamics of
Israelite-Judaic religion could not possibly alone have led to the phe-
nomena we find in the later sources. A good example of this is the influ-
ential and widely esteemed article of K. G. Kuhn, "Die Sektenschrift
und die iranische Religion."5 Of it Martin Hengel (1974: I, 230) writes,
"The Iranian derivation of this conception [i.e., that of two spirits, the
5 Cf. similarlyDupont-Sommer.
Barr: Religious Influence 205
evil spirit and the spirit of truth] has been demonstrated since the funda-
mental studies of K. G. Kuhn."6
Kuhn works in a simple way. He lines up the marked similarities
between Iranian texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls and then argues that the
conceptions shared by the two could not possibly have developed out of
the earlier Old Testament religion. He indicates the differences and thus,
as he sees it, shows how these conceptions, borrowed from Iran, were
developed in a peculiarly Jewish way. But his claim that the conceptions
could not possibly derive from a purely Jewish origin is, of course, easily
subject to challenge. All that is required is a hypothesis that could
account for the same facts on an inner-Jewish basis. Such an argument
would not have to prove that its hypothesis is right; it would need only
to show that there is a reasonable hypothesis that can provide an expla-
nation through internal Jewish development. Such a hypothesis would
make it impossible to claim that the phenomena can only be the result of
Iranian influence.7
6 But Hengel goes on at once to note the

prevalence of similar "dualistic" traditions in
the Hellenistic world; and this in principle opens up the possibility that the Qumran ideas
derive from other channels than direct contact with Iran.
7 The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has had an ambiguous effect on the entire dis-
cussion of our question. On the one hand it has, in the minds of some scholars-Kuhn,
Dupont-Sommer, Gaster-greatly confirmed the idea of Iranian influence on Judaism and
thereby the validity of the comparative approach based upon it. The same time, however,
saw an increase in the degree of doubt about such influence and caution in the assessment
of evidence alleged to exemplify it. Among Iranian specialists, Widengren and Zaehner
appear to take the evidence as clear confirmation of active influence; Frye (1962), by
contrast, is very negative on precisely this question. He points out that precise textual
analogies, like the pair "children of light and children of darkness," are lacking; that the
occurrence of Iranian loanwords proves nothing about religious influences; and he ends up
with the question, "May not the unorthodox Jewish beliefs of the Essenes be traceable to
the soil of Palestine, to the Judaism of that period with the apocryphal books, and above
all to the Zeitgeist?" Similarly, Colpe had asserted that the Iranian and the Jewish evi-
dence in both cases rested upon a spontaneous process of hypostatization, so that there was
no transference from one circle of religion and tradition to another. Among less well-
known scholars, if D. Winston affirms that Persian literary sources had already made their
mark on 2 Isaiah and on Daniel, that "a spate(!) of Iranian doctrines found their way into
the apocrypha" (187), and that the Qumran material is definitely of Iranian origin, even
though "the Iranian impact seems to have been along the periphery of Judaism only"
(210: surely a contradiction, if it was as pervasive as he himself maintains!), R. G. Jones at
about that same time was arguing mainly in favor of caution and and against what he
called a priori acceptance of external influence. Duchesne-Guillemin (1958:93) makes the
further point that, if the Dead Sea documents derive from Iranian religion, it is strange
that they should reflect so clearly the very early Zoroastrianism of the Gathas, considering
the great changes that Iranian religion had undergone since then-a point similar to
Moulton's sentiments mentioned above. "The survival of a pure GUthic doctrine up to the
time of the Manual [of Discipline] would be something of an enigma, knowing what
changes had intervened in Iranian religion since the days of the prophet." Kuhn, however,
had sought to defend himself against this argument on the grounds that the GCthas were
It seems, in fact, that the tendency to offer inner-Jewish explanations

is increasing, so that developments in Jewish apocalyptic are understood
as, shall we say, reactivations of ancient Canaanite myth rather than as
products of late and Iranian influence. Thus Paul Hanson writes, "The
basic schema of apocalyptic eschatology has evolved in Israel and the
whole development is perfectly comprehensible within the history of
Israel's own community and cult. Hasty recourse to late Persian influ-
ence is therefore unnecessary and unjustifiable" (60).
This may be right or wrong in itself, but obviously the merely gen-
eral argument that Iranian influence must be invoked is insufficient. At
this point the general argument necessarily becomes dependent on the
particular argument, that is, on the provision of some detailed evidence
to show that Iranian influence really did take place.
To put it in another way, the general argument that Iranian influ-
ence must have taken place needs to be supplemented by information
about mechanism and motivation. What was the mechanism through
which Iranian religious influence worked upon the Jews? And what was
the motivation that led Jews to suppose that Iranian religion and its
categories had something positive to offer them? At least some sort of
hypothesis about mechanism and motivation is required if the bare
bones of the argument for Iranian influence are to be filled out with
flesh. Conversely, it seems that in these comparative discussions the char-
acter of Iranian religion has often been presented selectively, in a way
that emphasizes the elements that people deem most relevant for Jewish
(or Christian) religion. But such a procedure does not well explain why
these elements were selected from the totality of the Iranian religious
world-picture and why other elements within that religious totality were
neglected and ignored. It is possible that Old Testament studies may
offer some suggestions in these regards, and to these we now turn.
We begin with the example of a biblical passage that might, at least
in theory, benefit from explanation against an Iranian background. I
refer to the story of creation as told in Genesis 1. Iranian religion, as will
be suggested again below, appears to have a strongly cosmological char-
acter. Could aspects of Genesis 1 be understood as reflecting this back-
ground? Mary Boyce (1979:52; 1982:43-47) suggests that the idea of
creation in the Old Testament arose through contact with Iran.8 The
the only text concerning which there was agreement in dating (310, n. 1).
8 The second volume of her History became available to the writer
only after the argu-
ment of this paper was complete, and it was possible to take account of it only in the
notes and in minor modifications. She supposes (46f.) that a Zoroastrian "agent" of Cyrus
may well have travelled to Babylon to converse with Second Isaiah about these religious
matters, which were of political importance to Cyrus in his campaigns. In this she follows
in part Morton Smith. The main point of Morton Smith's article, indeed, is not the dem-
onstration of Iranian religious influence as such, but the use by 2 Isaiah of Persian literary
liberal acts of Cyrus meant that the Jews afterwards entertained warm
feelings for the Persians, and "this made them more receptive to Zoroas-
trian influences." The evidence is in Deutero-Isaiah: Cyrus was hailed as
"Messiah"-certainly a highly abnormal procedure in Jewish religious
practice-and, she goes on, "the same prophet celebrates Yahweh for the
first time in Jewish literature as Creator, as Ahura Mazda had been cele-
brated by Zoroaster." As soon, therefore, as the Jews came into contact
with Iranian religion, this new encounter served as a catalyst for the
doctrine of creation.
Professor Boyce does not discuss Genesis 1, but it is an obvious con-
tinuation of her ideas to do so.9 It is at least arguable that Genesis 1
represents a later stage of thought about creation and a response to the
questions raised in Isaiah 40-66 (Barr, 1968-69, 1974?). I do not doubt
that the main origins of the ideas of Genesis 1 lie in Mesopotamia on the
one hand and in indigenous Jewish problems and discussions on the
other. Nevertheless, there are aspects of this important and impressive
passage that are not fully explained on these bases. For example, is there
any Mesopotamian precedent for the tightly schematized and numeri-
cally controlled account of creation in Genesis 1? If the account came
from the Persian period, certain aspects of it could have been framed in
response to Iranian cosmological ideas. In standard Zoroastrian concep-
tions, Ahura Mazda through Spenta Mainyu (Augmentative Spirit) brings
into being the six "entities": 1. Vohu Manah (Good Mind), 2. AMaVahi'ta
([best]Truth), 3. Xiathra (Dominion), 4. Armaiti (Devotion), 5. Haurvatdt
(Wholeness), 6. Ameretdt (Immortality). These, the Ameba Spentas, have
respective connections with the series of creations, namely, (1) cattle,
(2) fire, (3) metals, (4) earth, (5) water, (6) plants (Boyce, 1979:21-24).
There may be, behind the scheme, a seventh; Gershevitch considers that
Ahura Mazda himself had his own special creation, that of man, who
comes at the beginning of the series (11-12). Thus we have a clear
numerical grouping around the figures six or seven. This could have
suggested the clear numerical classification of creation in Genesis. If this
were so, then the Israelite account could have responded to the Iranian
plurality of creations, each under its separate entity, by organizing all
under one finite and complete creation by the one God.
Moreover, consider the conspicuous absence of angels from Gen-
esis 1. In this carefully organized chapter, there is only God and the
created world. The existence of what we call angels seems to be there on
the margin and to be assumed; but angels do not create anything, and
their own creation is not related. Could this be a negative reaction
forms. Nevertheless, by implication his article also supports the idea that the cosmological
interest of 2 Isaiah comes from Persian sources. In that case the motivation comes through
the rhetorical effects caused by political needs.
9 But see now, briefly, Boyce (1982:192).
against the idea that each stage of creation was presided over by a par-
ticular mediate superhuman entity?
Finally, why is there emphasis, so evident in Genesis 1, on the fact
that the creation was good-an element for which, so far as I know, no
close Mesopotamian parallel has been found, and which is so strongly
emphasized nowhere else in the Old Testament-and why is there strong
interest in the difference between the "kinds" of animals? In the Zoroas-
trian conception, not all things are good; some are good, some are mix-
tures of good and bad, some are really bad. Among animals, some, like
the dog, are ahuric and belong to the realm of the good. Indeed, to this
day in Zoroastrianism the dog receives not just the leavings of human
food, but the best of the food before the humans get any.10 On the other
hand there are the daevic animals, which belong to the side of darkness,
the so-called xrafstra (Boyce, 1979:44). Something analogous was known
to the Greeks already through Herodotus (with Plutarch it is "water
rats"):11the more one kills of such animals, the better, for the physical
destruction of such animals literally reduces the total power of evil in the
world. Could this furnish a reason why Genesis 1 shows an interest in the
"creeping things," which, though "unclean" for Jews to eat, are expressly
stated to be "good" creations of God?
Thus it is not difficult for the imaginative interpreter to think of
ways in which creation passages in the Old Testament could be illumi-
nated if they were seen against an Iranian background. If this were to be
accepted, however, it would not necessarily mean that Jewish religion
"took over" large elements from Iranian; rather, it would suggest that
Iranian religion acted as a catalyst and caused the Jewish religion to
define itself by contrast as much as by imitation. Such an interpretation
would follow Professor Boyce in agreeing that the presence of Iranian
religion affected the formulation of developed Jewish literature about
creation, but without suggesting that there was no Jewish idea of crea-
tion before that time.
10 On this, see the vivid portrayal of Boyce (1977:139-46 and passim, along with
Plate Ib).
11 Herodotusi. 140 reads:"The magi with their own hands kill everything except for
dog and man, and make great rivalrytherein, killing alike ants, snakes,and other creep-
ing things and flying things."Cf. Boyce (1979:76). Moultoncharacteristicallyconsiders
this to be an aspect purely belonging the the Magian deformationof the religion:"It is
purely Magian, alien alike from genuine Persian religion and from Zarathushtra's
Reform"(398). Plutarch,De Iside et Osiride 46 (Griffiths,ed.: 192), expressesmuch the
same idea, but clearly relatedto Zoroastriandualism:"Theybelieve that among plantstoo
some belong to the good god and others to the evil daemon, and that among animals
some, such as dogs, birds,and land hedgehogs,belong to the good god, whereaswater rats
belong to the bad deity, and for this reason they regard as happy whoever kills a great
number of them." For the killing of such creatures,notably of frogs, in more modern
times, see Boyce (1977:179).
As an imaginative exercise, such an interpretation may be quite

stimulating. Before we go farther with it, however, we should stop and
face a body of Old Testament evidence that points in the opposite direc-
tion. Whatever may be the case with the creation story, we have to con-
sider the striking indifference of other parts of the Old Testament to the
religion of Iran.12
The rise of the Persian Empire brought into the Middle East a reli-
gion that in structure and type was entirely different from the religions,
of basically Semitic peoples, with which the Hebrews were reasonably
familiar. But it is very difficult to find in the Bible any recognition of the
fact. What is noticed, and clearly referred to, is the change of power
that affected the position and destiny of the Jews. Belshazzar was slain
and Darius the Mede took the kingdom; Cyrus came to say that Jeru-
salem would be rebuilt and the temple re-founded. Clearly the rise of
Persia proved fortunate for the Jews, and for this reason it is noted that
the blessing and favor of the God of Israel rests upon the Iranian
monarchs.13
But this does not mean that the Old Testament is interested in their
religion. Indeed, it manifestly is not. Nowhere does the reader of the Old
Testament learn that these monarchs are worshippers of Ahura Mazda
and derive their power from him. Nehemiah was the cupbearer of Arta-
xerxes I and presumably in a position to know, in the colloquial phrase,
what made him "tick," but he gives no indication of the king's religion.
What was Nehemiah's reaction to the emblem of Ahura Mazda promi-
nently displayed on the palace walls of Persepolis (Zaehner, 1961: plate
2)? What did he make of the king's inscription: "All that was built by me
was built by the favor of Ahura Mazda. Me may Ahura Mazda together
with the gods protect, and my kingdom, and what has been built by
me ." (Kent: 153, A'Pa = 148,XPb, 26-30)? Moreover, the Zoroas-
... calendar appears to commence in 441 B.C., three years or so after
trian
Nehemiah's conversation with the king, but again Nehemiah's memoirs
leave no hint of such a development.14 And what would Nehemiah, pre-
sumably a monotheistic Jew, have said had he seen the following inscrip-
tion of Artaxerxes II at Susa, where he himself had served: "By the favor
of Ahura Mazda, Anaitis and Mithras this palace I built. May Ahura
Mazda, Anaitis and Mithras protect me from all evil, and that which I
have built may they not shatter nor harm" (Kent: 154)?
12 This aspectseems to have received much less attentionin scholarship.

13 Dandamaev (1976:233)says that the biblical writers exaggerate the goodwill of the
Persianmonarchstowardsthe Jewish religion, wishing to encouragetheir own people by
telling them that the great kings of Media and Persiahad recognizedtheir God and given
protectionto those who believed in him.
14 On the calendar see Duchesne-Guillemin(1962:120-25) and Boyce (1979:70-74,
92-93; 1982:243-50).
If Nehemiah knew about this sort of development, or about the reli-

gious structure that undergirded it, he said nothing about it. In the Bible
the Persian emperors speak in terms not of the actual name of their own
god, Ahura Mazda, and still less of the other gods,15 but of "the most High
God" or "the God of Heaven," terms readily assimilable to Jewish religion.
It was open to Jews to understand this as if it referred to the one true God,
the God of Israel. This was no mere fiction of biblical style, for the Ele-
phantine letters show that it was actual and normal in correspondence. For
example, the letter 302, addressed to Bigvai, reads "The Health of your
lordship may the God of Heaven seek after exceedingly at all times" (Cow-
ley: 111, 113)). This usage concealed rather than disclosed the actual per-
sonality and structure of the emperor's own religion.
What impressed the biblical writers about the Persian empire was
not the religion that it believed and practiced but its court ceremonial
and its means of power. Cyrus writing his decree for the rebuilding of
the temple, Darius digging it out of the archives and confirming it
(Ezra 6), Nehemiah taking wine to the king and being frightened when
asked why he was sad, Darius wanting to support Daniel but unable to
do so because he had been tricked into making his decision unalterable,
Ahasuerus with his 127 provinces and his court rules, that a woman had
to have a beauty treatment of great complexity, that petitioners must be
instantly put to death unless the king stretches out his sceptre to them-
all these are the sort of thing that interested the biblical writers when
they wrote about the Persian empire. Its actual religious structures, as we
know them from Iranian sources, are left largely unnoticed. Daniel talks
in the same civil way to Nebuchadnezzar and to Darius, and there is no
recognition or comment that Darius' religion is a world apart from that
of ancient Babylonia. Of course, all these stories of good relations with
foreign potentates were stylistically modeled on that one great pattern,
Joseph's relations with Pharaoh in Genesis. The fact remains that the
Daniel traditions, which doubtless go back to memories of Persian times,
show no vivid interest in the religious peculiarity of the Iranian world.
The main impact made by life in the Persian empire is that it provided
colorful pictures of how things were at the imperial court, from the
viewpoint of power and ceremony.
This is not to say that the religious atmosphere had no effect at all,
for it may well have generated some legends and motifs of the tales.
Take, for instance, the idea that the laws of the Medes and Persians were
"unchangeable." There seems to be no evidence that their laws were any
more free from amendment and adjustment than those of any other
15 Anaitisor Anahitaand Mithrasmay be construedas older Indo-Europeandeities who

had been thrustinto the backgroundby the originalZoroastrianmonotheisticimpulse,but
who were now coming back into recognitionwithin the religion.
people. The motif may be a legend rather than a reflection of the reali-
ties of life in Iran. It might be a relic of older Indo-Iranian myth, for the
God Varuna, one of the greatest of the Veda, was dhrtavrata 'whose
laws are established'; his ordinances are constantly said to be fixed (Ger-
shevitch: 6; Boyce, 1979:23). A feature of mythology may thus have been
transferred to the actual Persian constitution by the Hebrew storyteller
or the tradition before him; for him it hardly mattered whether or not it
was an accurate account of Persian life. In any case, Darius in Daniel 6
was dealing not with a law, but with an administrative ruling only just
made by himself. The point was that ill-wishers inveigled the innocent
monarch into a position from which, even when his policy produced
unintended results, absolutely no reversal could be considered. Such a
legend may have a religious background, but it tells us nothing about the
actual religion of Darius's time.16
To this consideration of literary content in the Old Testament we
may add the more detailed evidence of loanwords from Persian. These
occur in both Hebrew and Aramaic, but within the Bible there are prob-
ably more in the Aramaic sections, depending on how one counts them.
Naturally, even if a word of Persian origin appears in Hebrew, this does
not necessarily mean actual contact of Jews with Iranians; for many
Persian words may have been adopted first into Aramaic and then from
there into Hebrew. In adopting them, Jews may not have known any-
thing of their origin or their context and meaning within Iranian
society.17 Even without this caution, it seems that Persian loanwords in
Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic of this earlier period are seldom terms of
the Iranian religious world and seldom show signs of acquaintance with
the major ideological systems of the Iranian people. Thus, there is no
loanword, so far as I know, from ahura 'lord', or from drug 'lie', or from
16 If it should be true that the relation of the four world-empiresto a scheme of four
differentmetals(Daniel 2) came from a Persiansource,I would tend to class it also in this
way. The scheme was a literary figure, hardly an actual element in Persianreligion. In
any case, it seems still uncertainin what way the authorof Daniel came upon this figure.
In an impressivearticle, Momigliano (1980: especially 161) judges that the scheme of
metals, as applied to a series of reigns or historicalperiods,may be Persian,but that the
scheme of four world-empiresis Greek, and that there is no Persian precedent for the
attachmentof the metals to world-empiresas distinct from Persianinternal events. The
connectionwas more probablythe originalidea of the authorof Daniel. Also see Flusser,
and Collins.Collins takes the Persianparallelsas good illustrationsfor the Daniel mate-
rial but seems to imply that Iran is not the basic sourceof the imagery.
17 Frye seems to have a different emphasis in his article in the Eilers Festschrift
(1967:78)where he says that "theadoptionof loanwordsshowsthat ideas and conceptsare
often borrowedalong with the words"and his article on Qumran(1962:26)where he says
that "Iranianwords in the Dead Sea Scrollswould not be extraordinaryand then would
prove nothingabout religiousinfluence."The latter point of view is on the whole followed
here, except where there is a special reasonto the contrary.
arta, asa 'truth', or from magu 'Magian',18 or from fravawi 'guardian

spirit'. The element arta- is found in names like Artaxerxes,
which occurs in the Bible, but there is no evidence that anyone knew
'artah.asta,
what the arta- element represented. It is quite likely that Hebrew din at
Esther 1:13, kol yidece dait wa-din, is from Avestan daana 'religion' and
therefore distinct from the Semitic din 'judge, judgment'.19 But even if
so, it is an isolated example, and the actual meaning of the word contin-
ued to be 'judgment' in Hebrew; the Syriac cases with the sense 'religion'
are much later. As for ddt itself, this is certainly a Persian loanword in
Hebrew and later became the dominant Jewish word for 'religion'. In
this it corresponds to Arabic din, but in the Bible it does not mean 'reli-
gion' but 'law, decree', even 'practice', and so in the "laws"of the Medes
and Persians; this was, of course, the actual Persian meaning. So it was
not borrowed with a specifically religious meaning.
In later times, by contrast, borrowings directly dependent on Zoroas-
trian religion appear in Aramaic/Syriac. A striking example is the Syriac
daywa 'devil', daywana 'demoniac', found in the Gospels, for example,
Matthew 4:24. This comes from post-Christian times and is readily expli-
cable as such; the Syriac-speaking church sought for a term for the
demons and demoniacs of the Gospels and found one that was intelligi-
ble in their milieu.
Thus the evidence of loanwords, for what it is worth, seems to show
no strong evidence of Jewish awareness of the Iranian religious struc-
tures. Conversely, loanwords do demonstrate the point already made on
the basis of literary content, namely that Jews knew a lot about the
administrative workings and court procedures of the empire. Thus we
have words for 'satrap', for 'magistrate' (detabraya [Daniel 3:2], from
data- 'law' and bar- 'bear'), for heralds and for assorted astrologers and
the like; there are also phrases for legal sanctions and punishments, like
having one's limbs removed (Daniel 2:5) or having one's house made a
dunghill (Daniel 2:5). Tirshatha, a title used in the Nehemiah cycle, is
another administrative title or mark of respect ('venerable, reverend' or
the like); although the Iranian basis for it does not seem very clear, it can
18 The term rab-mag of Jeremiah 39:3, 13 is certainly not Iranian, and is related to
Akkadianrab-mugi(von Soden:667b), as is obviousfrom the fact that the referenceis to
Babylonianfunctionaries.It was in fact used, nevertheless,by Moultonas evidence of the
presenceof Magi (187f., 230, 430).
19 So G. R. Driver (1955:90,n. 2). The suggestionis one of Driver'sbest, and is doubtless
followed by The New English Bible with its "all who were versed in law and religion."
The idea was doubtlesssuggestedby Syriacdin 'religion',dinig, 'ascetic',both from this
Iranian root, and cited already in Brockelman(151b), as acknowledgedby Driver, and
perhapsalso by still earlierdiscussions,such as Scheftelowitz(1901:82ff.), which discusses
diniyi' at Ezra 4:9, and implies the same Iranianroot for it.
hardly be anything else.20 Some other words are rather general terms:
raz 'secret' in the Aramaic of Daniel,21 zan 'sort, kind' (Psalms 144:12,
2 Chronicles 16:14?), pitgam 'word' (Qohelet 8:11, Esther 1:20), nahfir
'pursuit, persecution, battle', or the like (1QM 1.9).22 All this suggests
that linguistically, at least, Persian contact with Jews was slow to take
effect and in the long run rather slight.
It is interesting to think again of Nehemiah in this connection. Pre-
sumably he could speak Old Persian,23 since he could hardly have car-
ried on his conversation with Artaxerxes without it. But there are few
Persian words in Nehemiah's own memoirs. Perhaps he is the first to use
pardas 'park' in Hebrew; and he was not using the word generally but
speaking of an actual Persian pairidaeza, the king's enclosed forest
(Nehemiah 2:8; the word occurs also in Canticles and Qohelet, once
each). The technical terms used by Nehemiah tend to be Akkadian
rather than Persian. Tirshatha is used of him, but not by him in his first-
person memoir. On the whole Nehemiah's speech and writing is rather
pure Hebrew.
So far, then, these arguments suggest that, at least in the first century
20 The word is usuallyexplained as related to a form that would in Avestanbe targta-,

passive participleof the root 'fear', cognate with Sanskrittras-, and hence the meaning
would be 'reverend,venerable'or the like; so, for instance,Scheftelowitz(1901:93), who
has been generally followed by lexicographers,though his actual argumentationis far
from convincing:the putative Iranianform is not at all similar to the Hebrew, and the
analogousSanskrittrasta means 'frightened',not 'reverend'(Macdonell:112). But until
somethingbetter is suggested,Scheftelowitz'ssuggestionmay have to be allowed to stand.
21 Frye (1967:79)raisesquestionsabout the meaningof raz, which he translatesas 'Mys-
terium'. He says that the originalsense in Avestanis 'loneliness,remoteness,hiddenness',
that the transitionto 'mystery'is still unexplained,and that the real meaning of the word
in the Scrollsis still unclear. Since 'secret'is the Pahlavi meaning (Mackenzie:71, 132),
however, one may question whether this doubt is justified.Widengren (1960:55)says it
goes back to a non-Persianform.
22 Frye (ibid.) discussesthis word and appearsto hold that, even if adopted from Ira-
nian, it is no sign of profoundinfluenceof the thoughtof Iran upon the Qumrancommu-
nity. He seems to favor Rabin'ssuggestion(132) that the word is of Hittite origin, saying
that the sense thus arrivedat, 'terror,panic', fits better than the Iraniansense 'hunt, hunt-
ing'. Nevertheless,the Hittite derivation seems a very remote and unlikely suggestion.
The term seems clearly Iranian,and perhapsonly a developmentof sense at Qumranhas
to be supposed.Other Jewishsourcesuse it with the sense 'hunt',e.g., TargumOnkelosto
Genesis 25:27, here in the form or (so pointed in the Targum)
'hunter'. See, against Carmignacnah.irakan
(363), who doubted the existence of this word, de
nah.•irkan
Menasce (213-14) and Yadin (260). Syriac has, for instance, 'hunter' (Peshitta
Genesis 10:9), cf. the Syriac senses in general (Brockelmann;424). The most interesting
nh.yrtn'
study is by Asmussen.He thinks that the word indicates an ecstatic and almost orgiastic
devotionto the hunt, quite unlike the biblicaltraditionof thoughton the subject,and that
for this reason the term was adopted into Hebrew; it was evidence of a "Hellenistic-
Parthianinfluence"in Palestine.
23 It is often said that Aramaicwas the lingua franca of the PersianEmpire,but this can
hardlymean that the emperorsthemselvesspoke it in their own palace.
or so of Persian rule, Jews who were in contact with Iran paid rather
little attention, favorable or unfavorable, to the religion of the dominant
nation. If they knew the peculiar characteristics of that religion, they
kept them to themselves and said nothing about them. The picture is not
much different in the Elephantine community. These Jews had come to
Egypt with Cambyses in 525 and had been there as soldiers of the Per-
sian power for about one hundred and twenty years when the letters
were written; and they had to deal with Persian governors with names
like Bagohi and Waidrang. But, though religious problems arose in sev-
eral ways, there seems to be little influence of Iranian religion on Jews:
the difficult problems for religious interpretation in the names containing
elements like Bethel, Herem, 'Anat, and the like are problems within
Semitic and Canaanite religion.
There is nevertheless certainly contact with Iranian religion. We
have a broken piece in Elephantine 37.6 (Cowley: 133) which comments
that a certain man, appointed over a province, is a mzdyzn, a word
identical with the Persian mazdayasna 'worshipper of [Ahura] Mazda'.24
A break in the letter unfortunately leaves us ignorant what more was
said about him, though the impression given is not favorable and rather
suggests that, because he was a Mazda-worshipper, the governor could
not be relied on to support Jewish interests and property. The evidence
is compatible with the supposition that in general Jews liked best to
know very little of the religion of the imperial authorities and to keep
only very limited contact with it.
At this point we may introduce the evidence of the book of Tobit,
both one particular piece of evidence and the general purport of the
book as a whole. A citation from T. W. Manson may be a good starting
point:
The clearest evidence of Persian influence on Jewish theology,
apart from the general similarityof the two systems,is the use of
the name Asmodeusfor the chief of the demons. This name is
borroweddirectly from the Persian 'AeshmaDaeva, the demon
of violence and wrathin the later Avesta'.(154)
In Manson's case, this argument serves to demonstrate that the organiza-
tion of many evil spirits into a spiritual kingdom of evil is mainly due to
the influence of ideas taken from Iranian religion. The "general similar-
ity of the two systems" is a major point that will be considered later.
First, however, we may concentrate on the detailed argument from the
name Asmodeus.
The philological problems are complicated, and not every detail can
be treated here. In particular, it should not be assumed that all Iranian
24 For more recent comment, which, however, does not speculate about the
religious
judgements involved, see Porten (55).
specialists affirm the Iranian derivation of the name Asmodeus; on the

contrary, a number of them remark on uncertainties in it.25
The actual name of the Iranian demon is A6'ma, and the element
daeva 'demon' is another word. The supposition that the name in Tobit
derives from this requires that the two words should be taken together,
the d of daeva providing the d of Asmodeus. But, though A8Mmais a
daeva, it appears that in early Iranian sources he is usually called only
A8"ma, not A~8ma daZva; the Pahlavi form of the name is, similarly,
Pim.26 The customary theory depends, therefore, on taking as one name
two words, one of which is a name in the original and the other a
description; but these two words in Iranian sources apparently do not
normally occur together in this way. This is not an insuperable difficulty,
but it makes the identity of the two terms less obvious than might at first
be supposed.27
There is some phonological difficulty in tracing back the form Asmo-
deus (the Greek forms are BA Ao o8av9; S A Tobit 3:8, 17) to an
Iranian original AePnma.One would have expected o•oatosg;
the Hebrew/Aramaic
form to have a first vowel P or i. If din is really 'religion' and derived from
da~na in Esther, this would well illustrate the expectation of an i vowel
here, while the -i- of pardes likewise comes from this diphthong (Persian
pairidaeza). The initial a vowel is therefore puzzling.28
The uncertainties of the Iranian derivation have to be compared
with the possibilities of a Semitic derivation. Asmodeus in Tobit must be
the same demon who in Targum and Talmud is 'aimeday malka de-lede
'Ashmeday king of the demons'. He is associated particularly with King
Solomon, whom he attacks and causes to be removed from his throne
because of his overweening behavior. It was during this time of disgrace
that Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, a good and rational expla-
nation of how that happened. Therefore, if the name as found in Tobit is
25 For instance,Duchesne-Guillemin(1963:84)says it is difficultto explain the name in

any other way, but admits that "la correspondancephon6tiquen'est pas rigoureuse,mais
cela est courant dans les emprunts."Widengren (1957:215) accepts the equation. Frye
(1962:266)says that Asmodeusis "an example of a direct, tangible influence from texts"
and adds that "an Iranian etymology is the most satisfying explanation"-hardly an
enthusiasticsupport.
26 "It is noteworthythat in the Avesta,as we have it, the actual collocationAN=madafva
does not occur, though it does in the Bundahish,which is based on a massof lost Avestan
matter"-so Moulton(251).
27 In any case, one can assuredlyexclude the positiontaken A.
by Wikgren(1962:661b),
who declaresthe word to be Persianbecause the latter part comes from daeva, but then
leaves it vague what the rest of the word might be, whether from IranianAelma or from
the Semitic root 8-m-d. There is absolutelyno ground for the Iranianexplanationunless
the two wordsare taken as one collocation.
28 These considerations are no doubt what was intended by Duchesne-Guillemin
(1963:84)in his cautionabout the phoneticcorrespondence.
derived from Persian, then the Talmudic/Targumic name must be

derived from it too. But the latter form also invites considerationof the
Semitic root s-m-d 'destroy',and all the more so since a demon with the
name Shimadonappears in the Midrash,Genesis Rabbah36. Shimadon
is explicable as deriving from s-m-d 'destroy' but hardly as deriving
from the Iranian A6ma. The name Asmodeuscould be explained as a
name built upon a verbal noun form belonging to the hiphil (aphel);the
-ay ending might be as in names like Borqay. There is a difference
between the o of the Greekform and the shewa of the Aramaic,but that
differenceis there on any explanation.29
If the provenance of this name is somewhat uncertain, one might
next ask if names given to demons in Jewishliteratureappear commonly
to be Iranian in origin.30 Such names will not necessarily be either
Semitic or Iranian;in principle they could be Mesopotamianor even
Egyptian. If many Jewish names of demons appearedto be Iranian,this
would confirm the Iranianexplanationof Asmodeus.But I do not find,
from limited soundings made, that Iranian provenance is probable for
other such names. In the BabylonianTalmud, Pesahim 111, some terms
like Zerada, Palga, Shide, Rishpe are obviously Hebrew/Aramaic, as is
Qeteb, while some others,like Izlath, Asya, and Belusia,could be almost
anything. Anotherimportantdemon is Agrath or Igrath bath Mahalath,
the queen of the demons in the Talmud. It has been suggested that this
name came from Angra (Mainyu) and thus from the principal evil
agency of Zoroastrianism.If this were true, it would stronglysupportthe
Iraniantheory of Asmodeus;but it does not seem very likely.31
The purely philologicalanalysisof the name Asmodeusseems, there-
fore, to be indecisive in its results. One might say that the Semitic and
Iranian explanationsare roughly equally balanced in probability,with
the Semitic rather more likely on the whole, and the possibilityremain-
ing that it is neither. If the matter is not certain, then this name in itself
is not enough to supportthe idea of a wide-ranginginfluence of Persian
religion upon Jewishdemonologyor Jewishreligionin general.
To this we may add features of the character of this unpleasant
demon. His role and function seem remote from what might be derived
29 F. Zimmerman,in his edition of Tobit (63n.), simply dismissesthe Iranianderivation

without argumentand declaresthe word to be Hebraic.Furtherfolkloreabout Ashmedai
can be found in the encyclopaedias.The name of the demon in the Midrashis often given
as Shamdon:I follow the spellingof the Soncinoedition. For the o of the Greekform, one
might considercomparisonwith words like Sodom which have an o in the LXX (and at
Qumran),where the Masoreticform has shewa.
30 For some general informationabout names of demons,see Gaster(1962) and Encyclo-
pedia Judaica (V:1521-28).
31 Ta-Samasays that the Iranianexplanationof this name has been disproved,but does
not say why or how.
from A6'ma, who in Zoroastrianismis the wrath and violence, often

under intoxication,of those who do injury to innocent cattle and the
structureof the world. The only thing Asmodeusdoes is to kill Sarah's
husbandson their wedding-night, and such occasional evil-doing on a
limited scale is all that we know about him. He seems to be more a Jew-
ish devil than an Iranianone bent on underminingthe cosmos. He is a
very demythologizeddevil, and a dose of fish liver paste, suitably burnt,
sends him off with his tail between his legs. It is, of course, to Upper
Egypt that he goes, certainly a place for demons but not particularlyfor
those from Iran. He evokes neither the ultimate war between evil and
good powers in Zoroastrianismnor the deadly sin-related power of
demons in the Gospels,but something closer to the world of spirits and
demons in the Talmud-essentially trouble-makingbeings, but no seri-
ous threatto the stabilityof the religiousworld.32
Once we see this, we observe that the general cultural and religious
atmosphereof Tobit does not necessarilyhave very much to do with Iran
at all. Even if the book originated there, which is possible, and even
allowing that it is set in Media and that Tobit had left his large deposit
of money at Rages (now Ray, only a few miles from Teheran), there is
no manifest reflection of any aspect of Iranian religion if the name
Asmodeusis not such. If the setting is genuinely from Iran, it is the set-
ting of Jewish life in Iran rather than a depiction of Iranian life and
society for itself. Thus a numberof scholars,including the great Noldeke
(Simpson:185), thought that the book came from Egypt, and this is the
positiontaken in D. C. Simpson'scommentaryin the Charlesedition. In
view of the Qumran fragments, this now seems less likely, and one
would think ratherof a Palestinianprovenancein which folk tales com-
ing from Jewish experience in Iran were used. In any case the motifs
and features that have been connected with Iranianreligion seem pre-
cariousevidence: the angel Raphaelis a very Jewishangel; the fact that
a dog goes with Tobias and the angel is hardly evidence of Zoroastrian
honoring of the dog; the emphasis on the burial of Israelite victims of
war or sicknesshas nothing to do directly with the peculiar disposalof
the dead in Zoroastrianpractice;that Raphael is "one of the seven holy
angels"(Tobit 12:15)is hardly a hint at the system of the AmebaSpentas.
At the most, one might suppose that the peculiaritiesof Iranianreligion
had done somethingto suggest these motifs;but the content of the motifs
32 Miss Erica Frank, a graduate student at the Universityof Melbourne,kindly called
my attention to the artistic representationsof Asmodeuswhich appear in Syriac manu-
scripts,with a legend such as hn' j'dy' '"mdy''this is the demon Asmodeus'.I am not sure
whetherthis inclinesthe balancein favor of the Iranianor the Semiticexplanation;on the
whole, I think, in favor of the Iranian. On the general question, however, Frye writes
(1962:266)that "noneof the storiesabout this demon can be traced to either an Iranian
prototypeor even comparedwith an Iranianparallel."
as developed in the book seems to derive nothing from Iranianreligion.

An importantemphasis of the book is the insistence that on the day of
the Lord'sanger Media will be a much better place to be than Assyria.
So far as the text tells us, this seems to come not from any suggestion
that Media has a better sort of religion than Assyria-nothing at all is
said about that-but out of the denunciations of Assyria by certain
Hebrew prophets.33Besides, the intellectual source clearly specified by
the book itself is the Sayingsof Ahikar,a Semitic document, whose hero
turnsout to have been a Jew.
To summarize:the Jewish evidence lacks any indication of curiosity
about the distinctive character of Persian religion. The Persiansseem
accepted in it as de facto authoritieswith whom one could negotiate on
a basis of respect and even friendship, but the actual nature of their
religiousbelief and practiceis left aside. Jewishassessmentof the Persian
regime depended not on understandingits religion but on the quite
different criterionof the extent to which its actions favored the interests
of the Jewish community. This kind of assessmentwas encouraged by
the policy of the Persian emperors themselves, who generally did not
seek to Iranicize the empire outside the Iranian lands. Affairs abroad
were conducted in Aramaicand, on the whole, Iranianculture and reli-
gion were not for export.
The contrastbetween the Jewish attitude to the Persiansand that of
the Greeks is instructive. Unlike the Jews, the Greeks were intensely
curiousabout Persianculture and religion. Herodotuspassed on a great
deal of informationabout them. Consideringthe circumstances,in De
Iside et Osiride Plutarch provides a remarkablywell-informedaccount
of certain aspectsof Zoroastrianism.In particular,he mentionsthe oppo-
sition between AhuraMazdaand Ahrimanand the six "gods,"as he calls
them, the AmebaSpentas,created by the former.34But this materialdid
not come from Plutarch'sown experience;he got it from earlier sources
like Theopompus,Eudoxus,and Hermodorus.35That is, during the same
century, Nehemiah, from the Persiancourt itself, revealed nothing about
contemporarylocal religion, but Greeksin distant Europe could already
'3 It must be noted that the places where the prophetscall upon "Media"to assaulta
Mesopotamianpower seem all to refer to Babylon rather than Assyria(cf. Isaiah 13:17,
21:2; Jeremiah25:25, 51:11, 28); this is probablywell covered by the fact of numerous
anachronismsin the book.
34 Much the best source for study of this is J. Griffiths.The essentialchaptersare 46-47,
with his annotationon pp. 470-82.
35 Theopompusof Chios was a historian,born about 378 B.C.;Eudoxusof Cnidus, a
mathematician,lived about 390-340 and knew Plato; Hermodoruswas a mathematician,
from Syracuse,and also a disciple of Plato. This last is credited with the chronologyfol-
lowed by Plutarch, according to which Zoroasterlived five thousand years before the
siege of Troy.
providea reasonablyrecognizableaccount of at least partsof it. This was

partly a result of their naturalcuriosity,well exemplified by Herodotus,
and partlybecausethey thought it might be philosophicallyimportant.
Thus the Greeks,and not the Persians,may have been the missionar-
ies who made the Iranianreligiousworld known to non-Iranians,includ-
ing the Jews. In this respect, Greek thought worked in two different
directions.Throughits own curiosity it spread the knowledge of Iranian
conceptions.The Hellenized Zoroastertraditiondisseminatedthese ideas
very widely, and the Greek-speakingJudaismof Alexandriaapparently
knew of them. There were people who identified Zoroasterwith Ezekiel,
with Nimrod, and with Balaam.36The evidence for this, of course,
comes from a later time, but it is the resultof a long process.
The Iranianmaterialwas significantnot only because of the Greeks'
curiosity, but even more because of the oriental reaction against Greek
culturalexpansionism.Indeed, it may have been as part of this oriental
anti-Hellenisticreaction that the Jews came-if they did-to find Ira-
nian conceptionsuseful for the expressionof their own religion. I do not
claim that this is certain, but such a suppositiondoes fit many of the
facts. The features that can most plausiblybe understoodto derive from
Iranian religious influence emerge not in the Persian period but in the
Greek. For the usual list of supposedly Persian ideas-periodization of
the world'sduration, resurrection,angels, and demons-the most likely
evidence is in Daniel, Enoch, Jubilees,and variousDead Sea Scrolls.But
we find very little sign of the same ideas in the material generally
assignedto the Persianperiod that Persianitself. The same is true of the
loanwords.It is in the Greekperiod that Persianloanwordsbecome more
common, just as it is in the Persian period that Akkadianloans are fre-
quent, and in the Roman that Greek loans are most obvious, and not
earlier.I do not seek to prove that Iranianinfluence actually operated in
this way, but, supposingsuch influence, to supply a plausiblehypothesis
for its transmission.
Moreover,this hypothesisis by no means novel. Kuhn thought that
Iranianinfluence could not have come earlier than the latter half of the
Persianperiod, ca. 430-330 B.C.,and he thought that it must have been
mediated by Babylonian culture.37Hengel, commenting on this, says
36 I here follow Hengel (11:154,n. 777). For a detailed

problem in this see Neusner
(1965) and Winston(213-16).
37 Kuhn (310) actually specifiedthe time "roughlyfrom the fifth to the third centuries."
He thought (309) that the influenceof Iranianreligion was not suddenly brokenoff with
the beginning of the Greek domination but continued thereafter to work for some
time-in contrastto our own suggestionthat the Greek period was the real time of Ira-
nian influence. Hinnells (1969) carries us to a still later point of time. He considersthat
there is no substantialevidence of contact in Achaemenid times, that the real time of
influence was during the Parthianinvasionof Palestine-Syriain 40 B.C.,and that Iranian
that the mode of communicating Iranian influence remains an open

question. In his view, the Babylonianintermediaryis hypothetical,and
its existence remains to be demonstrated.Furthermore,he suggeststhat
"we might considerthe possibilitythat an AlexandrianJewishsource was
involved"(i:230). Whetheror not we have to be so specific as to look for
an AlexandrianJewish source, we may perhapsconsider that Hellenism
as a whole providedthe channel throughwhich this sort of knowledgeof
Iranianideas was diffused.
This brings us to the deeper questions of religious comparison.
T. W. Manson(above, p. 214) regardedthe name Asmodeusas the par-
ticular evidence for Iranianreligiousinfluence and "the general similar-
ity of the two systems"as the general reason for its acceptance among
the Jews. But is it true that the two religionshad a similarstructure?If
Jews thought they perceived something akin in the Iranian religious
world-and we hardly have found clear evidence that they did-did
they correctly discern the structure of that religion and the lines of
dependence and causationthat connected one element with another?It
is here, I suggest, that arguments for Iranian influence upon Judaism
have often suffered from the gross fault of much comparisonbetween
religions,the isolationof similar elements and the ignoring of the struc-
tural reasonswhy these elements are important within one religion as
distinct from another. It is one thing to make a list of things that seem
similar in Judaismand Zoroastrianism-dualism,hell, resurrection,and
so on-and quite anotherto say that the structuresand internaldynam-
ics of the two religions are similar. The structuralquestion does not
merely ask if both religions have a resurrection,or a hell, or angels, or
whateverit may be. Rather,it seeks the reasonswithin each religion why
a resurrection,or a hell, or angels, or dualism,is significant.
To approachthis questionwe must attempt a sort of holistic descrip-
tion of some elements of Iranian religion, a depiction that highlights
their interdependenciesand interconnections.The description that fol-
lows reflects the perspective of a biblical scholar and will obviously be
vulnerableto the criticismof a competent Iranologist,but that risk must
be run.
One also has to take account of the substantialdifferences among
Iranologist.Those who despairthe inability of biblicalscholarshipto pro-
duce consensuson anything will find their spirit lifted when they turn
their attention to ancient Iran.38The date of Zoroasterhimself is symp-
tomatic. Althoughmost Iranologistsseem to place him about the seventh
influence might have acted directly on Christianity without having to pass through
Judaism.
38 The wide divergences in the understandingof Zoroasterare well illustrated in
W. B. Henning'scritique of the ideas of E. E. Herzfeld and H. S. Nyberg, conveniently
accessiblein Zaehner(1961:349-59).
to sixth centuries B.C., Nyberg treated him as a sort of "prehistoric

man,"39and Mary Boyce elevates him to the hoary date of 1500 B.C.
Numerousother differencesemerge at every turn.
In addition, one must be clear at the outset that there is no single
"Iranianreligion."Five different stages or sets of phenomena may have
to be considered: (1) the ancient inheritance of pre-ZoroastrianIndo-
Iranianreligion; (2) the religion of Zoroasterhimself; (3) the religion of
the Achaemenid emperors, from Cyrus to the coming of Alexander-
which at least has the advantage of tangible and datable inscriptional
evidence; (4) the later Zoroastrianism,in which-as many see it-deities
and mythological elements thrown out by Zoroasterfound their way
back into the religion; (5) the religion of the Magi, if that is something
different. There may be further later stages, but these fall into a period
too late for the purposesof this essay.
The obvious question for our purposesis: if the Jews had actually
known the nature of Iranianreligion (in any or all of its forms), would
they have regardedit with sympathy?Would they have seen in it some-
thing in common with their own religion?Might they, for instance,have
perceived it as another basically monotheisticreligion, largely aniconic,
with one single prophetcomparableto Moses,and with a strong empha-
sis on ritual cleanness?The answer to such a question depends, among
other things, on the stage of Iranianreligion under considerationand the
forms of it that were available to the consciousnessof the observer.For
example, there could well be a difference between a time at which
Ahura Mazda appeared clearly as sole, supreme god and a period in
which his associationwith other gods such as Anahita and Mithra was
more manifest.
One final historical remark is apposite. This essay deals primarily
with contacts between Iranian religion and Judaism before the rise of
apocalypticand the coming of Christianity.Contactsas late as Sasanian
and Talmudic times have been well surveyed and have produced much
interestingevidence. It is possiblethat these later contactsresemblethose
of severalcenturiesearlier,but caution is necessaryin supposingthat this
is usually the case. By the time of the Sasanians,the various religions
concerned, including Christianity,appear to have fixed themselves into
ratherclear and distinct forms, and their interrelationshipspresupposed
39 Frye (1952:48-54)seems similarlyvague about the time when the prophetmay have
lived: "Afterso many years of researchwe do not know when or where he lived or even
preciselyhis teachings"(48f.); "It is highly probablethat Zarathushtrais not a figment of
the imaginationand that he did exist .... To determinethe date of Z. we have no histori-
cal data to help us, and we can only say that most probably he lived before the
Achaemenid empire" (49). Again: "From the Greek sources, a date of, say, 1000 B.C.
might seem a shade more reasonablefor Zoroasterthan 600 B.C.,but this is speculative"
(50).
these forms. This is particularly evident for Judaism; by 200 A.D. the
shape of Judaism was much more firmly established than had been the
case in 350 B.C.Moreover, even in this much later period the extent of
contact with, and real understanding of, another religion seems not to
have been very much greater than it was earlier.40
Let us now return to the questions we posed above and consider
some significant features of Iranian religion. The first obvious feature is
the aspect of abstraction and intention that attaches to the great Amesa
Spentas. Wholeness or Immortality are abstract qualities, at least when
compared with concepts known from the Old Testament. 'Good Mind'
and 'Dominion' seem close to mental attitudes. This is important because
the system of the Ameba Spentas is often taken to have been part of the
model upon which Hebrew angelology developed. But the names and
functions of the Ameba Spentas, and the nature of the entities as
revealed by them, are very far removed from what counted as angels in
most stages of Judaism. The Jewish angel develops from the side of being
a man sent by God: just as it was three men who came to Abraham in
Genesis 18, so even in Tobit Raphael is a man from God who walks with
Tobias; and when angels have names they have human names: Gabriel,
Raphael, Uriel. The more developed angelology of Enoch may come
closer to the Iranian style, in that each of the "watchers," the fallen
angels, controls a science, like astrology or the making of swords. The
names, though extended from the style of human names, become names
that no humans would ordinarily have: Shamsiel, Kokabiel, Barqiel. Nei-
ther the total structure of the Enochic angelology, nor the style of the
names, shows great similarity to the system of the Ameba Spentas.
The idea of angels is also sometimes traced back to another aspect of
Iranian religion, namely the fravalis or 'guardian spirits' that attend ind-
ividuals and maintain the bounty and prosperity of the world. Certain
New Testament passages seem to come close to this Iranian conception,
in particular the word of Jesus in Matthew 18:10 about the angels of the
children looking continually upon the face of the heavenly father (cf.
also Acts 12:15). This idea of the guardian angel attendant upon the
individual is, however, less characteristic or typical of the major Jewish
and Christian ideas of angels.
40 Cf., for example, Neusner (1976). He finds certain significant

signs of contact but
nowhere a great deal that is very definite. "The rabbisdo not seem to have known much
about Iranianreligion and culture"(148)-a position rather in line with what we have
said about the Old Testament."The rabbisgive evidence of knowing what they should
have known:those few aspectsof Iranianculture,law and religion,which impinged upon
the practical affairs of the Jewish community" (149). Also see Neusner (1982), which
appeared after this essay had been completed. Similarly,Frye seems to place the main
locus of contact and influencein this later period, but even here finds ratherlittle that is
both centraland definite (1952, 1967).
In general, then, there seems to be no manifest relation between the

underlying structure of Iranian thought, whether about the Ameba Spen-
tas or about the fravalis, and the underlying structures of Hebrew ideas
about angels. This does not make impossible the idea that Iranian angel-
ology influenced Hebrew, but it means that, if this did happen, the ideas
must have been seen quite out of their Iranian context and detached
from it. The result must have been that the ideas were formalized.
A second main characteristic that, I suggest, seems manifest to the
biblical scholar when he looks at Zoroastrianism is the strongly cosmolog-
ical character of its nucleus.41 The six or seven main entities on the side
of truth are related to the various major elements of the universe. The
other main structure is the opposition between Truth and the Lie, with
the supporters, human and superhuman, of each. Thus the elements of
the universe are related not to personal, if irrational, beings like the gods
of many pantheons, but to entities that in a way are qualities, purposes,
and abstractions and that because of this character provide a sort of
rational interpretation of the universe. The problematic and changing
nature of the universe is accounted for by a mixture of contraries; for
the creations were made good but forces from the opposition side man-
aged afterwards to make their way in. Fire is pure and ahuric, but
smoke is daevic. Similar interpretations of the universe in terms of mix-
ture and separation are known to us, of course, from early Greek philos-
ophy. The idea that Zoroaster was a philosopher and therefore to be
aligned with Pythagoras and Plato is not completely fanciful; indeed, it
is less fanciful than the alignment of Moses with the same company.
The features of Iranian religion most often identified as influences
on Jewish religion appear to be meaningful within this Iranian cosmolog-
ical context and, therefore, are not intelligible apart from it. The belief
in resurrection is a good example, which I illustrate from the writing of
Zaehner. It is certainly not enough to say, as he does (1961:57), that
"both Jew and Zoroastrian regarded soul and body as being two aspects,
ultimately inseparable, of the one human personality."42 In the Old
Testament and earlier Judaism, even if soul and body were two aspects
41 I feel some doubt in
pressingthis point, for it might be argued that cosmologyis not
so central to the Iranianconcept of God as appears to a biblical scholar. Is it rather a
sophisticatedaccountof deity, which is then providedwith cosmologicalconnections?Yet,
even if the latteris the case, it seems to supporta cosmologicalcharacterfor the systemas
a whole. In seeing it in this way, I am influencedby the presentationof it given by Mary
Boyce; clearly, one might have to think differentlyif one followed the account given by
some other Iranologists.
42 Consideringthat the idea of resurrectionis often regardedas the most obvious area
for Jewish borrowingfrom Iran, it is disconcertingthat Zaehner,while insistingon such
borrowingin the doctrineof rewardsand punishments,says of resurrectionthat "we can-
not say with any certaintywhether the Jews borrowedfrom the Zoroastriansor the Zoro-
astriansfrom the Jewsor whethereither in fact borrowedfrom the other."
of the human personality,this was not an adequate reasonfor a belief in

resurrection;indeed, over long centuries it had not led to such a belief.
Even in the time of Jesus it was still uncertain that resurrectionwas a
valid and necessarypart of the religion at all, and resurrectionwas con-
sidered to be a very surprisingthing. In Zoroastrianismthe rootsof these
ideas seem to have been quite different: the different aspects of the
material world are different creationsderived from the variouscreating
principles.As Zaehnerputs it, "Zoroastersaw the spiritualand material
worlds as being the opposite poles of a unitary whole intimately linked
together.. . physical life in its perfection is the mirror of the divine
life" (1961:47).Thus, if I understandhim rightly, the resurrectionof the
body is the corollaryof the fact that the spiritualreality shouldand must
manifest itself in the physical reality, a doctrine that much later, in the
Pahlavi books, was systematizedin the distinction between menog and
getig, the spiritual and the material (Boyce, 1979:25; Zaehner, 1961:
200f.; and especially Shaked,1971). If this is right, the basis of the resur-
rection idea is cosmological:spirit strives to manifest itself in created
matter. But, if this is the frameworkwithin which resurrectionoperates
in Iranianreligion, it is quite different from that in which it operatesin
Judaism. And this must mean that, if the resurrectionidea was taken
over from Iranianreligion,it can have been taken over only on a basisof
inner-Jewishreasoningsand motivations,adopted formally, but with no
idea of the underlyingreasonswithin Iranianreligion.43
The same seems to be the case with the periodizationof the world's
duration,an importantpart of eschatologicalschemes.The traditionthat
the world existed for a fixed time divided into periods is old; Plutarch
has it from Theopompusin a form that fits quite well with the Pahlavi
books (Griffiths,ed.; 192-93, 480f.).44There are three or four periods,
each of 3,000 years. If there are four, then one belongs to the gradual
manifestationof the creations;the next is dominated by Ahura Mazda;
the next is a mixture in which Angra Mainyu is interfering;and then
there is a final one in which we are led up to the Rehabilitationof the
cosmos. Zoroasteris understoodto have come along at the beginning of
43 G. F. Mooreexpressedhimself somewhatsimilarly.Acceptingan "unmistakableaffin-

ity" between Iranian and Jewish ideas in the area of eschatologyand resurrection,he
concludes,"The Persianscheme must have been most strongly commended by the fact
that it seemed to be the logical culmination of conceptionsof retributionwhich were
deeply rootedin Judaismitself"(11:395).
44 For some other remarkson periodizationsee Winston (197) and Russell (224-29).
Some of the features listed, e.g., by Winston, may well be too late to count for pre-
Christiantimes, e.g., the idea found in the Talmud that the total durationof the world
will be 7,000 years. 2 Enoch is also probablymuch too late (cf. below, n. 48). Moreover,
even where Jewishschemesof periodizationare early, the questionremainswhether they
too are not explicablefrom inner Jewishdevelopment,for certain aspectsof chronological
interestrun back to an early stage within the Bible itself.
the final period of 3,000 years. The system is a cosmological one, domi-
nated by the principle of expressing how evil got into the cosmos and has
to be got out again, and the very round figures express this cosmological
character. In the Hebrew apocalyptic schemes the content is provided by
indigenous Hebrew tradition, with important periods like the time from
the creation to the flood, the period of the kings, the duration of the
exile. Hebrew chronologies are on the whole much less rounded, and
their figures are commonly jagged and uncomfortable blocks, like the
1,656 years from creation to the flood, or the Danielic numbers of days
to the end, 1,290 and 1,335 (Daniel 12:11-13). Scholars have often
attempted to make sense of the Hebrew figures by suggesting that they
are really based upon some round number, like 4,000, and that the vari-
ous detailed figures are attempts to bring the date into conformity with
such a total. But all such attempts depend either on shifting between one
text and another (e.g., the Masoretic and the Samaritan) or on forming a
hypothesis about the original intentions behind the scheme of numbers,
intentions which are not realized in any of the texts that we have. More-
over, where clear examples of round numbers can be discerned, they
sometimes represent not a round number for the duration of the world,
but a round number for a particular period of history. An obvious case is
the chronology of Jubilees, with 2,450 years, i.e., 50 jubilees of 49 years,
from creation to the entry into Canaan. On the whole, biblical chronol-
ogy was most positively and clearly worked out as a statement of the
times from the beginning down to the events of early history, especially,
of course, the flood, but also the Abrahamic migration, the Exodus, and
the like. Once it got farther down into biblical times, after Solomon's
construction of the temple, it became distinctly more vague and uncer-
tain. No express and clearly stated doctrine of the total duration of the
world in years existed in late biblical times. Once again, then, if the idea
of the periodization of the world's duration came to Israel from Iran, it
seems to have come in a way that greatly altered the scope, character,
and motivation of that idea.
Again and again we find that the supposition of Iranian influence
behind Jewish notions, though entirely conceivable and possible, remains
intangible and undemonstrable. Sometimes scholarship has really been
more favorable towards that supposition than the evidence, carefully
examined, warrants. It has been widely accepted that the Qumran docu-
ments display some effect of the dualistic Iranian opposition between
'Truth' and 'the Lie'. I have already pointed out that the essential Ira-
nian concept drug or druj 'the Lie' was not borrowed as a loanword into
Hebrew. It would be possible, however, that the Iranian contrast Truth/
Lie was indeed borrowed but was expressed in Hebrew words; these
Hebrew words would then enjoy a sort of semantic growth into a pattern
formed by the Iranian ideas. This is exactly what T. H. Gaster, a
devoted comparativist, says of 'emet 'truth': "Asha, [the principle] of truth

and normalcy [represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls as 'emet]" (1962a:134).
The facts of the texts, however, make it seem unlikely that Iranian
metaphysical dualism is being reproduced here. Although 'emet 'truth' is
common in the Scrolls, the obvious contrary terms do not occur in any-
thing like the same distribution, nor do they stand in the abstract and
absolute sort of syntactical position that would satisfy the conditions for a
clear semantic borrowing from Iranian religion. Among the Hebrew
terms, geqer 'lie' is not very common: Kuhn lists 10 places, including one
of the verb; of kazab he lists 15, including two of the verb. On the other
hand, 'emet occurs far over 100 times. Most cases of the noun kazab are
in collections like "the man of lies," "the speaker of lies," and similarly
with Seqer. The placing of 'truth' and 'lie' in central thematic positions
of opposition, e.g., in antithetical parallelism, is actually rather rare. This
means that the traces of genuine Iranian dualism in these terms are
fainter than has generally been recognized.45 The position is not altered
much if we take into consideration the terms for 'deceit' like mirmah,
remiyyah. The basic opposition in the Dead Sea Scrolls seems to be that
between 'truth' and 'iniquity' rather than that between 'truth' and 'lie':
cf. the central passages about the two Spirits (1QS 3:18: rwhwt h'mt
wh'wl). In the Scrolls, as elsewhere, evil men tell lies, and the evil oppo-
nents of the Qumran sect had told a lot of them. The lie as such, how-
ever, does not seem to have been a quasi-independent metaphysical
entity as in Iran. Again, when the opposite of truth is Belial or Mastema
or the like, the similarity to Iran is again less clear. Taking the question
as a whole, with openness towards either possibility, one is inclined to
conclude that the dualism of the Two Spirits at Qumran, with the
accompanying paraphernalia of light and darkness, truth and iniquity,
could have evolved from inner-Jewish developments. Moreover, it is
possible to consider that the Qumran phenomena can be explained as
part of a common process of hypostatization that similarly affected a
number of religions at the same time, rather than as a process of "influ-
ence" beginning in one and then passing from it to another (Colpe: 480).
The place of fire furnishes another interesting case. The veneration
of fire in Zoroastrianism is something that might perhaps have escaped
the censure of Jews as falling short of idolatry; it would be comparable
with the Greek perception of the Persians as setting up no statues or
images of the gods, nor worshipping them in temples. An interest in fire
45 This is essentiallythe same point on which Frye has already been quoted, n. 7 above:
the textual evidence very often fails to provide the exact systematicanalogies that are
required if a real agreement of concepts between Iranian and Jewish sources is to be
proved. Neither do the Iraniansources offer us 'childrenof light and children of dark-
ness',nor do Jewishsourcesoffer us the same systematicoppositionof 'truth'and 'lie'.
could also have been linked with the important function of light, which,
whether coming from Iranian sources or not, is very evident in the
Scrolls.46 In Iranian belief, fire was the purest element and belonged
especially to the supreme god; the maintenance of it was a cosmic neces-
sity and a duty laid upon believers. In the Scrolls, however, there seems
to be no sign that fire was so conceived; as in the older biblical tradition,
it is a threatening force, used as a symbol for divine judgment and des-
truction. The same is the implication of a phrase like "Our God is a
consuming fire" in the New Testament (Hebrews 12:29).
There are yet other aspects of Iranian religion that invite considera-
tion, even if the results are likely to be negative in the end. The impor-
tance of ritual purity has not been noticed as much as other aspects.
Scholars have been quick to fasten attention upon the more philosophical
features, such as dualism, or the more eschatological, such as resurrec-
tion, so that the importance of complicated measures of ritual purifica-
tion may well have escaped many biblical scholars. The recent works of
Mary Boyce have brought these vividly to attention. It is a common
position in Old Testament studies that the texts about Levitical purity,
46 Winston,who like MortonSmith sees substantialIranianinfluencein 2 Isaiah,consid-

ers (187) the referencesto fire in Isaiah50:10-11 to apply to Jews who had turned to the
Persiancult of fire. The phrase qodehe 'eS 'ignitersof fire' is, he tells us, a "verbatim
translation"of puraithoi,the designationof the Magi in Strabo15.3.15 and equivalentto
Avestanathravan.This whole interpretationseems very unlikely.
A more rewardingcase for discussionis 2 Maccabees1.19, 22, 33-34, the storyof the
concealmentof the temple fire and its rediscoveryin the form of a thick liquid, which
proved to be naphtha.Winston(199f.) quotes Brownleeas saying that "thisis a clear case
of identifying the sacred fire of the Persianswith the exiled fire of the temple altar in
Jerusalem."Yes, but this is somethingother than 'Iranianinfluenceon Jewish religion';it
is more like a Jewishtake-overof Iranianreligion. The Jerusalemtemple fire was hidden
in Persia and eventually discovered with impressive results. When the king of Persia
heard of this and had verified it, he enclosed the site with a wall and declared it sacred.
The effect of the legend on the readerwill be, among other things, the following:if there
is somewhere in Iran a sacred fire, authorized as such by the emperor and carefully
walled off as a holy site, it is actually, if one only knew it, a Jewish fire, taken originally
from the Jerusalemtemple. This all-importantfeature of Iranian religion is thus an
unknowingand secondaryobservanceof a central feature of Jewish religion. There is
some analogy with Paul'spicture of Greek religion:"Whomthereforeye ignorantlywor-
ship, him declare I unto you" (Acts 17:23). This entire aspect of the story, however, is
evident only to such readersas are interestedin Iranianreligionat all, and one cannotsay
that that interest is pressed upon the reader by the author of 2 Maccabees.The Iranian
religious backgroundcould easily be entirely missed by the reader. The story is set in
Persiabecause Nehemiah was in Persiaand because the Persiaof the time containedthe
territory(originallyBabylonia)to which the exiles had been sent. The idea of a hidden
fire, eventuallyregained,could perhapsequally well have had a Jewishor a Greekback-
ground. Even if the semi-etymological word-play on naphtha through nephthar,
explained as 'purification',should have some sort of Iranian basis, the allusion and its
meaninghad almostcertainlybeen lost from an early time.
mainly in the books of Leviticus and Numbers, belong to the Persian

period. If there was reason, therefore, on other grounds, to believe that
Iranian religion deeply affected Jewish, then one would have to consider
the possibility that it stimulated some of the interest in ritual purity.47
Once again, however, it may well be that the Jewish ritual texts rest
entirely on inner Jewish tradition. Perhaps comparative studies of the
details of the rituals might lead to some useful conclusions.
That the name Mithra means 'contract', 'covenant', will hardly fail
to attract at least the momentary notice of Old Testament specialists,
especially at a time when it is argued that the covenant terminology of
the Bible itself comes from a rather late stage, and when we have seen
(above, p. 000) that the deity Mithra receives recognition from Arta-
xerxes II in the early fourth century. Perhaps, however, this is no more
than mere coincidence.
Rather more convincing is the idea that an Iranian source lies behind
the role of the fallen angels, the "watchers" of apocalyptic. In Zoroastri-
anism the dethroned gods seem to cast a constant shadow. In India the
devas became the great gods and the asuras sank to the rank of demons;
in Iran the cognate term, ahura, was the name of the supreme god, and
the daevas became demonic anti-gods. The fallen angels of the Bible
have a basis in older Hebrew story: in Isaiah 14:12 Lucifer is fallen from
heaven, and in Ezekiel 28:12-19 the king of Tyre had had a sort of
angelic existence in Eden before he was thrown out. It is not clear, how-
ever, that these angelic falls and expulsions had always been the begin-
ning of quite catastrophic evil. Even in Genesis 6 the same is true of the
angelic marriages as described in the earlier sources, for it is not
expressly stated that the offspring of these unions were great sinners, as
they were later to become: they were "mighty men of old, men of
renown," which could be taken, if alone, in a rather praiseworthy sense.
It could be the Iranian influence that identified all this as a uniquely bad
breakdown of the cosmic order, with the ancient evil and daevic powers
getting back in, where they were supposed to keep out. This conception
would lead to the reading of the passage in a totally unfavorable light, as
suggested by our text of Genesis 6:5-7, and still more clearly expressed
in apocalyptic.
47 Boyce (1982:189f.,200) says that Nehemiah, in orderto serve as cupbearerto the king
of kings, must have had to keep the Zoroastrianpurity laws, so as not to bring pollution
upon his royal master.After years of this it would not be surprisingthat he, returningto
Jerusalem,concernedhimself with questionsof purity among the Jews.It is therefore"not
overbold"to supposethat it was Zoroastrianexample that led to the gradualtransforma-
tion of the Jewishpurity code so that it came to be a set of laws applicableto every indi-
vidual in his daily life. As the reader of this article will have realized, ProfessorBoyce's
reconstructionsof what may have happened on the Jewish side are often highly
adventurous.
This very tentative and uncertain survey must now come to an

end.48 The question, whether Jewish religion was really influenced by
Iranian, has not been answered. On the whole, the most probable thing
seems to be the suggestion that Iranian religious influence, if it did come
in, came in through the admixture of Oriental ideas in the Hellenistic
world and was adopted because it was part of the anti-Hellenistic reac-
tion: if so, then in Judaism this did not occur until the second century
B.C. and really after 170 or so, with the later sections of Daniel, with
Enoch, and with other comparable works. Substantial and convincing
evidence of Iranian influence on earlier strata of the Old Testament
seems to be lacking.
As for the mental operation of this influence, we may perhaps consider
the following model. Faced with a religion quite different from one's own,
one may react in two or more ways. One way is to say that, since this is a
different religion, no points in common and no points of comparison exist
at all. One may deny, or one may ignore, but there is nothing to discuss and
no point in seeking to understand. The second way is to recognize that
there are certain common concepts and elements, even if their place and
function is quite different in one's own religion and in another. One can
then say, "yes, we also have one supreme god, we also have a resurrection,
we also have one great prophet back in the beginning of time." This second
way is not necessarily one of accceptance of another religion or of submis-
sion to its ideas; but it is a recognition that there are certain comparable
elements. This is of interest to our question in two ways. First, it may sug-
gest how another religion can influence one's own without one's making
any actual surrender to the other's claims. By accepting that there is some
sort of comparability, one may begin to cast the expression of one's own
48 There are indeed a number of other features of Iranian

religion that deserve to be
taken into considerationin a full account;but some of these seem more marginal,or else
are probablytoo late in date to count for the questionas here posed. One strikingpassage
is 2 Enoch 58:6, which tells how the beasts will not perish, nor all souls of beasts which
the Lord created, until the great judgment,and they will accuse man, if he feed them ill.
This is remarkablylike Zoroastrianconceptions (cf. Videvdat 13, and, among modern
scholars,Duchesne-Guillemin[1963:84]).Winston(197) says that this is "perhapsthe most
strikinglycharacteristicIraniandoctrinein the Apocrypha."This is right, but of courseit
is equally striking that no other so completely characteristicIranian doctrine is to be
found in them. This leads on to the question of the date of 2 Enoch. Althoughit is built
upon early Jewish tradition, much of it is Christianand very late. Milik, in a highly
learned argument, maintainsthat this document originatedas late as the ninth or tenth
century, while its longer text is even later (109-112). The strikingnature of its doctrine
arisesthereforefrom the fact that it is much too late for our period.
More probabilitymight attach to the idea that the interest in the calendar, so obvi-
ous in Enoch and Jubilees, had something to do with the Persian calendar (as also, no
doubt, with the Greekcalendars)-if only in the sense that the awarenessof foreign calen-
dars might have made more clear to Jews that there was a real question what the true
calendarwas and how it operated.
religion in part in terms intelligible in that other, or in imagery meaningful

in that other, even while resisting all the time the actual claims of that
other. Jews in the Greek world, one may suggest, were doing this much of
the time; Philo of Alexandria is the chief example. Secondly, comparison of
this kind may help to explain how one religion can influence another even
if the inner connections and causations of the source religion are neglected
or unknown.49 Through this model of comparison, it is intelligible that
Jews might find stimulus in an element or pattern of Iranian religion, such
as its dualism, its idea of resurrection, or its picture of the dethroned pow-
ers penetrating back into the cosmos, even if they did not take over or even
understand the inner bonds of cause and meaning that held these same
things together within Iranian religion itself.50
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Asmussen,J. P.
1961 "DasiranischeLenwort na in der Kriegsrollevon Qum-
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are usuallyin the natureof the appropriationof things in the possessionof anotherwhich
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1985 JAAR 53 201-235 Religious Influence Zor Jud CHR

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1985 JAAR 53 201-235 Religious Influence Zor Jud CHR

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The Question of Religious Influence: The Case of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity

Author(s): James Barr

THE QUESTION OF RELIGIOUSINFLUENCE:

It is customaryto connect certain phenomenaof the later Old Testa-

James Barr is Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University.

Iranianmaterialstogether. Scandinaviain particularhas a traditionthat

1 The lack of expert knowledge in Iranianmatterswill be sufficientlyevident in what

a deep hostility toward the Old Testament, which he contrasted with

6 But Hengel goes on at once to note the

It seems, in fact, that the tendency to offer inner-Jewish explanations

As an imaginative exercise, such an interpretation may be quite

12 This aspectseems to have received much less attentionin scholarship.

If Nehemiah knew about this sort of development, or about the reli-

15 Anaitisor Anahitaand Mithrasmay be construedas older Indo-Europeandeities who

arta, asa 'truth', or from magu 'Magian',18 or from fravawi 'guardian

20 The word is usuallyexplained as related to a form that would in Avestanbe targta-,

specialists affirm the Iranian derivation of the name Asmodeus; on the

25 For instance,Duchesne-Guillemin(1963:84)says it is difficultto explain the name in

derived from Persian, then the Talmudic/Targumic name must be

29 F. Zimmerman,in his edition of Tobit (63n.), simply dismissesthe Iranianderivation

from A6'ma, who in Zoroastrianismis the wrath and violence, often

as developed in the book seems to derive nothing from Iranianreligion.

providea reasonablyrecognizableaccount of at least partsof it. This was

36 I here follow Hengel (11:154,n. 777). For a detailed

that the mode of communicating Iranian influence remains an open

to sixth centuries B.C., Nyberg treated him as a sort of "prehistoric

40 Cf., for example, Neusner (1976). He finds certain significant

In general, then, there seems to be no manifest relation between the

of the human personality,this was not an adequate reasonfor a belief in

43 G. F. Mooreexpressedhimself somewhatsimilarly.Acceptingan "unmistakableaffin-

devoted comparativist, says of 'emet 'truth': "Asha, [the principle] of truth

46 Winston,who like MortonSmith sees substantialIranianinfluencein 2 Isaiah,consid-

mainly in the books of Leviticus and Numbers, belong to the Persian

This very tentative and uncertain survey must now come to an

48 There are indeed a number of other features of Iranian

religion in part in terms intelligible in that other, or in imagery meaningful

49 So alreadyG. F. Moore,"Borrowingsin religion,however,at least in the field of ideas,

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