Criticism of Zoroastrianism from The Perspective of The Torah

The direct letter of the Torah is “Bet” – the second letter of the Hebrew Alefbet. The Story of Creation discusses the creation of the universe as a duality. Darkness and light, day and night, etc. Our tradition is to understand that Hashem is One, and that this Universe was created by One G-d. If our tradition is to believe that our dualistic reality was created by a Singular deity, then what would we call those who believe in a second deity? Ignorant fools.

Zorastrianism was founded by an individual named Zarathustra (Zoroaster). In fact, there are no sources that indicate a founder. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “It has not yet been possible to place Zarathushtra’s hymns, the Gāthās, in their historical context. Not a single place or person mentioned in them is known from any other source. Vishtāspa, the prophet’s protector, can only be the namesake of the father of Darius, the Achaemenid king. All that may safely be said is that Zarathushtra lived somewhere in eastern Iran, far from the civilized world of western Asia, before Iran became unified under Cyrus II the Great. If the Achaemenids ever heard of him, they did not see fit to mention his name in their inscriptions nor did they allude to the beings who surrounded the great god and were later to be called the amesha spentas, or “bounteous immortals”—an essential feature of Zarathushtra’s doctrine.”

The Zoroastrian theology is a difficult concept to understand. Ibid: Zarathushtra’s silence on Mithra is not easy to interpret. Since this god was closely associated with Varuna in India and with Varuna’s likely substitute in Iran, Zarathushtra can hardly have ignored one-half of this divine pair without a definite purpose. Otherwise, it might be presumed that Mithra was included in the formula “Mazdā and the [other] ahuras”; however, Mithra is called in the Later Avesta (non-Gāthic) an ahura; so is Apām Napāt, a fire or brightness in the waters, corresponding to the Vedic Apam Napat. As for Verethraghna (the entity or spirit of victory), it seems that since he took over the function of Indra, who was a daeva, he could not be called an ahura, but in order to mark his belonging to the world of ahuras he was called ahuradāta, “created by an ahura.”

The fact that this so-called religion is rooted in Hindu theology raises the question of whether or not it is, in anyway, compatible with Judaism…The inherit dualism in the Zorastrian religion does imply that the founder could not fathom the idea that the perceived dualism in this world is from the Single G-d who’s above our comprehension. To say that these people have achieved the highest level of spiritual awareness is a bogus statement.