NOTES for Ezd2 4:46

Today it is hard to say exactly what promise to God, the "King of heaven," made by the king of Persia, is in question. Neither the Persians themselves nor their rulers were ever Yahwists or worshiped the God of Israel. Perhaps Ezra has in mind something else, a certain religion of the Persians which, like Yahwism, was a monotheistic religion.

Such a religion could have been Zoroastrianism, which began to spread in Persia already during the reign of Cyrus the Great, and in the time of Darius and Ezra had already become the state religion of the Persian Empire. Zoroastrianism, however, was not a monotheistic religion but a dualistic one; at its foundation lay a teaching about two deities, good and evil, existing from eternity. Their struggle constitutes the essence of world history, not only earthly but universal, cosmic history, because from the point of view of Zoroastrianism the whole universe is a battlefield of the forces of light with the forces of darkness.

This struggle, of course, also touches the earth. All humanity is included in it, and everyone must decide on whose side in the great battle of light and darkness he will stand. Between Yahwism and Zoroastrianism, despite the fundamental difference that separates monotheism and dualism, there was much in common, up to and including messianism, which was characteristic of Zoroastrianism just as it was of Yahwism.

There was also an essential difference: the Zoroastrian Messiah, whom the Zoroastrians called the "Saoshyant," the deliverer, came not to transform the earthly world but to destroy it. The Zoroastrians thought that this world had been hopelessly corrupted by dark forces, and their Messiah comes only in order to lead out of it his supporters, those who have taken the side of the forces of light, consigning the world lying in evil to fire together with all who have proved unworthy of the new, heavenly world that he prepared for the warriors of light.

Perhaps those "wise men," more precisely "magi," as the Zoroastrian priests were called in Greek, who came to Jesus came to Him because they knew: in the West, on the territory of the Roman Empire, there lives a people who, like them, awaits the coming of the "Saoshyant." Ezra, who as a courtier of the Persian king must have known Zoroastrian teaching well, had probably heard of certain vows Darius had made to his God, and he evidently treats them as seriously as the vows that any of his own co-religionists could have made to Yahweh. Persian kings for their part always regarded Yahwism with sympathy, seeing that in many respects it was close to their own religion, so that a vow to assist the restoration of the Temple, made by Darius to Ahura Mazda, the supreme good god of Zoroastrianism, became entirely possible.

Thus great religions of different peoples sometimes touch one another spiritually. They touch because sparks of the Revelation, whose fullness was given to the people of God, were scattered among many peoples and many traditions. Traditions whose meaning was fully disclosed in the meeting with the people of God. This is what happened with Zoroastrianism after Cyrus the Great's conquest of Babylonia.