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Roots of Christmas

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  • #16
    MARY BOYCE (CONTINUED)

    But Boyce is eager to defend her notion of Zarathustra’s roots in a peaceful, primitive stone-age bipartite society in the second millennium, BC, with an attack on Oscar Stig Wikander:

    Wikander was not, unfortunately, aware of these studies by Near Eastern specialists until after he had finished his monograph, where he refers to them in an addendum only. This is the more regrettable since knowledge of them might have kept his own work more in touch with historical reality. ... Further, because he ignored archaeological discoveries, he did not realize that, since the Indo-Aryans and Iranians are held to have become separate peoples by around 2000 B.C., the [proto-Indo-Iranian] marya who was the object of his research was not a Bronze Age warrior equipped with chariot and gleaming spear, but a pastoral tribesman belonging to a late neolithic culture, who would have fought–when he had occasion to fight–on foot, and with a herdsman-hunter’s ancient weapons, club, slingstones, bow and arrow.55
    In general, [Wikander’s] theory of the existence of the [proto-Indo-Iranian] ‘Männerbünd’ remains unsubstantiated, since it rests not on acceptable evidence but on analogical and ill-based assumptions. Yet, remarkably, there have been scholars who have accepted it, and who by alluding to it as if proven, have given the concept a spurious reality....56
    To which she adds footnote 50:

    Notably G. Dumézil, who welcomed [Wikander’s] study as supporting his own controversial theory of a tripartite social division among all [Indo-European] peoples from proto-Indo-European times, and who dedicated to him his own Aspects de la fonction guerrière chez les Indo-Européens (Paris, 1956)....57
    According to Soviet/Russian archaeologist Viktor Ivanovich Sarianidi, who led expeditions in the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC; Bactria being the believed birthplace of Zarathustra) in 1976, the Early Bronze Age began much earlier, possibly as early as the first half of the third millennium, BC. One excavation site, known as Dashly 3, included a palace and a citadel, suggested the Late Bronze Age dated back as far as 2300 BC. The fortress suggests a standing army, indicating a tripartite society. But his research was published in the Russian language, and not translated into English until around 1995.

    Boyce was not one to allow the facts to get in the way of her utopian concept of a peaceful agricultural stone age civilization without the need of a standing army, in which the greatest of all prophets, Zarathustra Spitama, received the divine revelation from Ahura Mazda. But after criticism from other scholars on her early dates in the first two volumes of History, she modified her thinking a year after Volume Three was published:

    The possible chronological limits thus appear to be c. 1500-c. 1200; and a date at the lower limit, i.e., around 1200, seems the most reasonable one to postulate, since it is reconcilable with all the known data and does not assume too huge a temporal gap between the Old and Young Avesta.58
    Boyce had planned to write a fourth volume of A History of Zoroastrianism, Parthian Zoroastrianism, to have been co-authored with Albert deJong. But she passed away in 1996 before that project could be completed. The next year deJong wrote his Traditions of the Magi, in which he dismissed Boyce’s date and supported a later date of 1000 B.C.59
    #

    It is ironic that Mary Boyce once wrote, “But innovators claim antiquity for their innovation.”60 Innovators of the idea that the authors of the Bible borrowed their theology from Zarathustra need to do two things: One is to believe that the books of the Bible were written later than they actually were. Thus, the accounts of creation had to have been written after the Jews came into contact with the Zoroastrians in Persia. The latter part of Isaiah had to have been written by an anonymous author whom they refer to as “Second Isaiah”. Daniel had to have been written at the time of the Maccabees, and his prophecies were actually recorded events of his day.

    The other thing they must do is, as Mary Boyce said, to claim antiquity for their innovation. Thus the idea of worshiping one deity alone, and associating doctrines of creation, angels, eternal life, and the resurrection with that deity long before Moses, if there really was a Moses, led the children of Israel out of Egypt.

    Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, said it more accurately:

    For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. (Romans 1:18-23)
    NOTES:

    55. Mary Boyce, “Priests, Cattle and Men,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 50, No. 3 (1987),513-14.
    56. Ibid., 515-16.
    57. Ibid., 516.
    58. Mary Boyce, Zoroastrianism: Its Antiquity and Constant Vigour (Columbia Lectures on Iranian Studies, No. 7); (Costa Mesa CA: Mazda Publishers and Bibliotheca Persica, 1992) 45.
    59. deJong, Traditions of the Magi; Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature (Leiden, the Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill; 1997) 39,41.
    60. Boyce, 1982, 45.
    When I Survey....

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    • #17
      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      What is the work that you quote and then review?
      You lost me. Which quote?
      When I Survey....

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      • #18
        Originally posted by Faber View Post

        You lost me. Which quote?
        You keep quoting something (you know, the stuff in the quoted sections ), and then critiquing it. I'm just wondering what it is.

        I'm always still in trouble again

        "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
        "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
        "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

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        • #19
          Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
          You keep quoting something (you know, the stuff in the quoted sections ), and then critiquing it. I'm just wondering what it is.
          Oh, them. See the superscripted number at the end of each quote. They refer to the footnote numbers that appear at the end of each post.
          When I Survey....

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