VIEWPOINTS AROUND 1000 | 201the credentials of the Mazdean scriptures, the Avesta, can hardly be ques-
tioned.^12 Their oldest element, perhaps created c. 1000 BCE, is the Gāthās,
poetic and cryptic texts attributed to the prophetic revelation of Zarathush-
tra himself. The Avestan scriptures were orally transmitted for a millennium
and a half until Sasanian times, and then written down in a specially devised
alphabet to guarantee their preservation and precise pronunciation, though
the oral tradition probably remained predominant. This apparently came to
pass progressively between the third and sixth centuries, and was presumably
intended to reinforce Mazdaism against both its own heretics, and scriptural
competitors such as Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Manicheism.^13
Nevertheless, Sasanian Mazdaism avoided rigidification, and even accom-
modated a certain fluidity of doctrine.^14
Besides writing down the original Avesta, Sasanid scholars produced a lit-
eral and glossed translation into Middle Persian, and commentaries. This
zand, as they called it, was largely oral to begin with. It allowed the scripture
to be taught publicly, and contribute to current theological debates. But it
also reveals how far even the Mazdean elite now was from understanding its
own heritage.^15 It also nurtured dangers—or might be perceived to. Their
enemies linked both Mani and the notorious heretic Mazdak (d. 528) with
the composition of zand texts. Perhaps this was why zand did not in Sasanian
times become as deeply rooted a commentary culture as Torah or Qurʾān
study.^16 Indeed, Khosrow I allowed the laity to study only the Avesta, not its
zand,^17 which reminds one of his brother- ruler Justinian’s distrust of both
legal commentators and rabbinic exegetes (not to mention Origenists).
In the ninth- to tenth- century Avestan encyclopedic text known as the
Denkard (Acts of the religion),^18 at the beginning of book 4, we find an ac-
count, dating back to the sixth century, of how the written Avesta (here as-
signed to the earliest phase of Sasanid rule) drew on a spectrum of scientific
literature, including from other cultures, in line with the Iranian view that
religion, dēn, embraces all human wisdom and knowledge.^19
12 On the Avesta, see J. Kellens, “Avesta,” EIr 3.35–44; H. Humbach, “Gathas i,” EIr 10.321–27; S.
Shaked, “Scripture and exegesis in Zoroastrianism,” in Finkelberg and Stroumsa (eds), Homer, the Bible,
and beyond [6:56] 63–74; A. Cantera, Studien zur Pahlavi- Übersetzung des Avesta (Wiesbaden 2004),
esp. 162–63, 343–47.
13 On the third- century priest Kirdir’s campaigns against alien religions, see his epigraphical re-
cord: P. Gignoux, Les quatre inscriptions du mage Kirdīr (Paris 1991) 60.
14 Shaked, Dualism [3:15] 14–15, 20, 57–58.
15 Humbach [7:12], EIr 10.321; cf. Shaked, Dualism [3:15] 6, 116–19.
16 Shaked, Dualism [3:15] 59, 79–80; C. G. Cereti, La letteratura pahlavi (Milan 2001) 23–24; de
Blois [3:16], EIs^2 11.510.
17 P. G. Kreyenbroek, “Exegesis i,” EIr 9.115.
18 P. Gignoux, “Dēnkard,” EIr 7.284–89; Cereti, Letteratura pahlavi [7:16] 41–78.
19 M. Shaki, “Dēn,” EIr 7.279–81.