The End of Times in Zoroastrian Tradition

The talk will address the development of Zoroastrian eschatological thought with a specific focus on the apocalyptical genre and its theoretical definition. Religious speculation about the End of Times will be traced from its Avestan roots to its full blossoming in Sasanian and later Islamic times.

Many different religious traditions present in the ancient world pondered on the End of Times and the Hereafter. Since they were strongly interconnected one to the other, ideas and beliefs traveled from one culture to the other in a circular movement that cannot be solely understood through an approach focusing on inherited developments alone. This was even more true in Late Antiquity and in the early Middle Ages when the Sasanian Empire was the home of different competing faiths. Therefore, Zoroastrian tradition can only be fully understood against the wider background of religious thought in Western Asia and the Mediterranean. Moreover, it is well known that historical events influenced the development of apocalyptic and eschatological ideas.

Finally, in this lecture a specific effort will be made to show that the Zoroastrian tradition contributed to the development of the apocalyptic literary genre in a dialectical relationship with other coeval cultures.