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• 1 2019-02-27T19:08:43-08:00 Verbing the Character: Zarathustra 9 Chapter 8.3.4.3 plain 2019-03-31T23:43:24-07:00

  
  Like Moses, the literary figure of Zarathustra has been credited with the authorship or production of the texts that serve as the sole information regarding his “person.” Figure 14 shows the verbs associated with Zarathustra in the Old Avestan texts; Table 8 presents a detailed view. In contrast to the Hebrew Bible, the Old Avestan texts are quite small: the latter are composed of roughly two percent of the number of words making up the former.
  
  
  The information presented in this chapter are based on a reading of the text in a particularly flat manner, without theological assumptions underlying the assembly of the datasets. There can be little question that, while this is a rigorous scholarly approach, it deliberately ignores the high likelihood that these texts were composed within a particular religious context and designed based on assumptions reasonable to that culture. Further, there is no doubt that these texts, in their liturgical functions have been (and continue to be) received, preserved, and dissemination within frameworks of religious expectations and beliefs. This observation foregrounds the acknowledgement that reading either the Hebrew Bible or Old Avestan texts as compositions authored by alleged historical figures who depict themselves as “prophet-founders” within their work changes the standards by which verbs are understood to apply to these characters.¹ It is no accident that creation of the textual tools used in building and maintaining the religious communities in which they function became, at some point, attributed to the literary figures constructed by those very activities. It appears that both texts and the “prophet-founders” found within function as tools for facilitating the social mobility of the worship of Ahura Mazda and YHWH. 

  The figure of Zarathustra appears to be constructed in seventeen stanzas across the Gathas.² Interestingly, it appears that the character is the subject in roughly 38% of instances presented in Table 8 – this is strangely close to the percentage noted above for Moses after the total is adjusted for commanded subject instances. Unfortunately, the Old Avestan dataset is small enough to make it difficult to read too much into the potential relationship between these percentages, but it may be worth noting a pattern that both cases appear to present: the role of “prophet-founders” is characterized by the figures being acted upon more than acting. This is reflected in the fact that the verb most associated with Zarathustra (and nearly always as an object) has to do giving, putting, or establishing. To a reader socialized in a modern world dominated by religions deemed monotheistic, each with some expression of a “prophet-founders” building block, the majority of verbs used to figure Zarathustra would seem to outlining the basic shape of this “type:” “being given,” “being shown favor,” “being supported,” “establishing,” “invoking,” “declaring,” “listening,” and “doing homage.” If the Old Avestan texts construct the “prophet-founder” in a way that resembles those of other religions deemed monotheistic, the direction of influence is obvious: the Old Avestan example appears to be the earliest attested version of such a character. 

  An examination of the 17 passages in which the name of Zarathustra appears suggests that a significant number of terms are used to shape the figure of the “prophet-founder” beyond the instances of verbal acting or beyond acted upon. Consider that in the first part of Yasna 33.14 Zarathustra is the subject dadāitī (3^rdperson singular “gives”), but much information constructing his character lie in the direct objects that he gives: “Thus, Zarathustra is giving as gift the life breath of nothing less than his own body as the foremost share of his sacrifice and of his good thought to the All-knowing one, as well as what is the foremost share of his action through Order and that of his utterance: his readiness to listen…and the command of his sacrifice.”³ Although Skjaervo’s translation reveals that grammatically the English sounds a bit convoluted, the image of Zarathustra is quite clear: the “prophet-founder” sacrifices himself in support of Ahura Mazda.⁴ This image is evoked by more than just the mention of the character as subject of the verb.
  
  
  Table 9 presents a list of 20 concepts that appear across the passages in which Zarathustra appears and the frequency with which they appear. The top six of these appear in Yasna 33.14 and seem to underlie much of the Zoroastrian code, “Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds.”⁵ This dataset offers a different glimpse of the experience of the reader/listener/audience and the potential rhetorical (and psychological) strategy of associating these concepts with the character. Whether or not Zarathustra is interacted directly with Ahura Mazda in these passages, the name of the divine character appears and thus, together, these figures are constructed (in part) using concepts of aša- (“order/truth”), manah- (“mind/think”), vahu- (“good”), and dā- (“give/put/establish”). The experience of an worshipper who was fluent in Old Avestan may have been intentionally shaped by the consistent repetition of these words within proximity to the name of Zarathustra.⁶

   

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  ¹ Stausberg oberves, “It remains a matter of faith or speculation whether there ever lived a person by the name of Zarathustra.” Stausberg, “Zarathustra: Post-Gathic Trajectories,” 69.

  ² Yasna 28.6, 29.8, 33.14, 43.8, 43.16, 46.13, 46.14, 46.19, 49.12, 50.6, 51.11, 51.15, 53.1, 53.2, 53.3, 54.1

  ³ Skjærvø, The Spirit of Zoroastrianism, 214.

  ⁴ Kellens, Essays on Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism, 74.

  ⁵ Rose, Zoroastrianism: An Introduction, 3.

  ⁶ This idea is further supported by the appearance of Zarathustra’s name in Yasna 53.1-3, not as a character acting or being acted upon, but rather twice as possessor of something (genitive case) and once as a family name or ethnonym. Considering the size of the corpus and brevity of text mentioning Zarathustra, it is difficult to ignore the significance of associations made in these three stanzas to the figuration of his character.