I'll leave the sources up to other people, but the general idea is that the more dualistic parts of later Jewish theology might have originated with Zoroastrianism. Heaven, hell and the devil as God's antagonist supposedly weren't part of the story originally: the devil used to be an angel with a job description that placed him in opposition to humanity, but not God, and everyone went to Sheol after death.
I know HN has a big population of Indian readers. Avesta has close relationship to Vedic Hinduism. Eg: Avestan Mithra is the Vedic Mitra, Sanskrit Asura is Avestan Ahura, Vedic divinity Varuna and the Avestan deity Ahura Mazda.
The name for India in the Avesta is Hindu,Languange of Rig-Veda is closely related to language of Avesta. So on.
This is actually pretty cool; the similarity stems from the Proto-Indo-Iranian religion, which split into two branches, one going into Iran, and another into India. Zoroastrianism adopted these concepts and made a entirely new religion out of them.
It's interesting that Asuras are demonkind in Hinduism, but are gods in Proto-Indo-Iranian religion. It's especially interesting, because the word for Hindu gods or devas, is cognate with Deus, which is the word for God in Latin and Greek and other ancient European languages. So the split seems to have occurred after the Indo-Iranian and European branches forked.
> It's interesting that Asuras are demonkind in Hinduism
This particular notion might be difficult to relate to for those who are not familiar. The gods of hinduism do not occupy the position of infallibility, power and moral high ground that one may expect from a Abrahmic religion. Asuras are equal rivals, a bit unlucky at times. The gods' eternal and bitter contest with the Asuras for resources is filled with upmanship, deceit and all sorts of dirty tricks (played by both the parties), that would not only be considered immoral in the current context of but also the value system promoted by the Hindu philosphy. Somewhat similar to the Greek Titans.
The monotheism / polytheism line is also quite difficult to draw when it comes to Hinduism. It has flavors of both. Think of gods as very powerful daemon processes (some are shiny applications) but ultimately there is one kernel layer.
I really wish to visit Iran. It was out of question when I was a grad student in the US. Imight be a bit dicey evn now, and that is a crying shame.
The split is indeed very interesting & the mirror symmetry is very intriguing. I have wondered at it quite a bit over the years.
I do not think that the Prophet Zartosht (Zoroaster) (AS) adopted the shared roots, rather he pruned the proverbial collective burning bush of the Aryaman tribes.
His revelations, at least in form handed down to us, are in part very confident Q & A sessions with God, his "Friend", and to an extent include theological matter dismissing certain notions, practices, and spiritual agencies. One gathers that there was a sort of free for all in terms of appeal to higher agencies at his time, in the shared millieu of the region.
Note that there is a small hop from Persian Deev to Devil to counter balance the Deva to Divine. Zartosht's message was nothing if this: not all powers are pure (holy) and there is a Cosmic Choice to be made, and that this choice has eternal consequences. According to him, the Good is fundamentally Creative and Truthful. The evil is a destroyer and a liar. (Direct analog of which you can find in the Gospels.)
Accepting that, one can then easily map the Zoroastrian informative doctrine of 'Good thought, Good Speech, Good Action' to related Indian scripture (e.g. The Gita) and discourses on Karmic causality.
Interesting contrast on the vocabulary. A bit of Googling reveals a possible explanation:
>In the field of religion there are some interesting contrasts. Words such as devá have the meaning of god in the Vedas have the meaning of devil in the Avesta. Likewise some names for Vedic gods show up in the Avesta as evil spirits. This is likely due to the ancestors of the migrants to North India being a competing tribe of the tribe responsible for the creation of the Avesta.
>It's especially interesting, because the word for Hindu gods or devas, is cognate with Deus, which is the word for God in Latin and Greek and other ancient European languages.
There are many other such similarities, between Indian (ancient and modern) and European (ditto) languages:
Sanskrit: matru / Hindi: maata / Latin: mater / German: Mutter / English: mother: / Spanish: madre
Sanskrit: pitru / Hindi: pitaa / Latin: pater / German: Vater [1] / English: father: / Spanish: padre
[1] The V in German is pronounced like F in English, which in turn sounds somewhat like P in English.
From what little I admittedly know, 'gods' and 'demons' in Vedic traditions are more of clans than determiners of good or evil natures. In some epics gods do evil against good demons and vis versa in other works.
I suppose with enough human history in a culture you will be able to point to at least one example of anything.
You'd think just that. The Parsi community is generally highly regarded and for some reason many business leaders belong to it. The Tata family is probably the best-known exponent.
Endogamous-tending close-knit communities with cultural emphasis on education tend to have both high-trust and high-skill populations. Such groups are often well-placed to succeed in business.
I guess I'm curios why it has so many upvotes?