Zarathustra's Reformation of the Proto-Vedic Religion

EXISTENTIALIST MEETUP - Melbourne, Australia.

Monthly online Meetup presentation on the History of Religion.

The presentations are followed by questions, comments and discussion. All viewpoints are welcome.

Early Religion: An Alternative History

What do the historians and archaeologists think of the veracity of religious legends? Legends are an amalgamation of history and mythology. But how much of each?

"ZARATHUSTRA'S REFORMATION OF THE PROTO-VEDIC RELIGION."

During the third millennium BC, the nomadic cattle-herders of the steppe-lands north of the Caspian and Aral Seas started moving south. Their language was Indo-European. We know them as the proto-Indo-Iranians. They labelled themselves as the "Aryans".

In the 16th century BC their charioteers invaded India carrying with them their language, related to archaic Sanskrit, as well as their primeval religion. This religion eventually became the Vedic and, as such, part of Hinduism and Buddhism.

Meanwhile, back in Uzbekistan and Bactria, circa 1400 BC, Zarathustra (Zoroaster) reformed that primeval proto-Vedic, pre-Zoroastrian, religion.

WHAT WAS THIS PRIMEVAL PROTO-VEDIC RELIGION?

We have no history of this original religion. So, in order to find clues to it, the scholars have had to search through the 'Vedas', the Hindu sacred literature, as well as the 'Avesta', the Zoroastrian sacred literature.
They discovered that, for the first time in history, circa 2000 BC, ancient humans had begun to believe that, rather than the afterlife being spent in the traditional nether-world, their elite were to spend the afterlife up with the gods in sunlit paradise. Consequently, the nether-world gradually took an increasingly negative hue, until it became the Hell we now know in mainstream Christianity.
A further development was the ancients' realisation that the soul alone could not enjoy the pleasures of paradise without having a body with which to have physical sensations.
We will look at the report on the scholars' search in the book by the late Mary Boyce, Professor of Iranian Studies, University of London: "Zoroastrians: Their religious beliefs and practices".

A more detailed account can be found in her academic work: "History of Zoroastrianism, Vol.1".

Wikipedia's entry on the Indo-Iranic Peoples

YouTube: David Miller on Zarathustra/Zoroaster

The Zoom link will appear for those who RSVP.

Meeting ID: 884 8816 8494 - - Passcode: 338608

Please Note: The meeting commences at 9pm Friday in Seattle. (Which is 2pm Saturday in Melbourne, Australia).

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