Chapter 16. Zurvan, Infinite Time: Heresy, Orthodoxy and the Sasanian Theological Dilemma

Zurvanism taught that Ohrmazd and Ahriman were twin sons of Infinite Time, Zurvan akarana. Few questions in Zoroastrian studies have divided scholars as sharply. There are two reasons. The evidence is contradictory: as Boyce puts it, “foreign sources for the late Achaemenian and Sasanian periods represent Persian Zoroastrianism as Zurvanite, whereas the native texts (almost all composed after the Muslim conquest) embody a predominately Mazdean orthodoxy” [Boyce, Selected Writings, #54999, “Some Reflections on Zurvanism”]. And the stakes are high, because the twin myth makes good and evil brothers. This chapter sets out the myth, the competing scholarly verdicts on it, its traces in Pahlavi texts, the dispute over the Mithraic lion-headed god, and the sects that Dhalla catalogues.

The myth of the doubting father

The fullest versions of the myth come from hostile Christian writers. Dhalla summarises the Armenian accounts of Eznik and Elishe. According to them, Zurvan “existed when the earth was not, and the heaven was not”. He offered sacrifice for a thousand years to beget a son who would create the universe. A doubt then crossed his mind “lest his sacrifice should turn out fruitless”, and he conceived two offspring, “one as the result of his sacrifice, the other as the outcome of the doubt”. He vowed to give sovereignty to whichever was born first. Ohrmazd read his father’s thought and told his twin, and “Ahriman thereupon perforated the womb and came into existence before Ormazd”. Zurvan rejected “this ugly, dark creature”. To keep his vow he decreed that “the empire of the universe should be conjointly ceded to both Ormazd and Ahriman for nine thousand years”, after which Ohrmazd would be free to deal with his brother as he wished [Dhalla, Zoroastrian Theology, #55166, ch.XXIV “Sects”]. Dhalla adds that Moses of Chorene had the Persians regard Time “as the source and father of existence”. He also cites Theodore of Mopsuestia (via Photius) for a Zurvan who “offered sacrifice in order to beget Hormizdas, but gave birth to Hormizdas and Satan”. In the Armenian historians, Mihr-Narseh, minister of Yazdegird II, speaks of Zurvan as “the prime originator of Ormazd and Ahriman” [#55166, ch.XXIV].

Boyce links the myth to its context. Mihr-Narseh’s proclamation to the Armenians declared that Zurvan “existed before heaven and earth” and then went on “on orthodox lines” [Boyce, Zoroastrians, #55117, ch.8 “Upholding a Zurvanite orthodoxy”]. The Christian martyr Pusai mocked Shapur II on this point: “According to what the magi say, Ohrmazd is the brother of Satan” [#55117, ch.8]. A late Zoroastrian source that Boyce quotes, the Second Ulema-i Islam, gives the reasoning behind the myth: Zurvan alone “has always been and shall be for evermore… Yet for all the grandeur that surrounded him, there was none to call him Creator, for he had not brought forth creation” [#55117, ch.5 “The Zurvanite heresy”].

Duchesne-Guillemin: three Zurvanisms and a borrowed quaternity

Duchesne-Guillemin follows Zaehner in distinguishing three varieties. “First the Zandiqs derived all creation from infinite Space-Time, denied heaven and hell, did not believe in rewards and punishments, and did not admit the existence of the spiritual world. Secondly the astrological fatalists believed that not only man’s earthly lot, but also his character were determined by Fate.” Lastly “the Zurvanites proper regarded Infinite Time, in its personification as the god Zurvan, as being the father of the twin spirits of good and evil, Ohrmazd and Ahriman” [Duchesne-Guillemin, The Religion of Ancient Iran, #38271].

He finds traces of Zurvanism even in orthodox Pahlavi cosmology:

“Zurvan had three associates, Light, Power, and Wisdom: the Mazdean simply substituted Ohrmazd for Power, called Light Space and Wisdom Religion, and kept Zurvan as Time.” [#38271]

He also warns that recovering the history from undated Pahlavi writings “is a hazardous undertaking”. Zaehner, who tried to trace “the oscillation between Zurvanism and Mazdeism in the course of the Sassanian period, has only partly succeeded” [#38271].

Boyce’s verdicts: heresy, orthodoxy, or both?

Boyce’s own position has three parts. On origins, she holds that the doctrine arose when western magi weighed Zoroaster’s linear “Three Times” against “Babylonian speculations about history being divided into great recurrent cycles”. The result “was the Zurvanite heresy, a development, it seems, of the late Achaemenian period”. Its scriptural basis was Yasna 30.3 (“Truly there are two primal spirits, twins”). The Zurvanites “postulated, with scholastic ingenuity, that for twins there must be a father”. She judges it “a deep and grievous heresy” that “betrayed Zoroaster’s fundamental doctrine that good and evil are utterly separate”. Yet because Zurvan was a remote first cause with “few, if any, observances”, his followers could still call themselves “Mazda-worshippers” and “live in general harmony with the orthodox” [#55117, ch.5 “The Zurvanite heresy”].

On the early Sasanians, Boyce takes the Manichaean texts as decisive. Mani’s Middle Persian scriptures rendered his supreme god as Zurvan and the First Man as Ohrmazd: “the first of many pieces of contemporary evidence which show that the Sasanians were Zurvanites”. The Parthian missionaries, by contrast, avoided the name, and she suggests that this “was very probably the main point of difference between Parthian and Persian theology” [#55117, ch.7 “Zurvanism in the early Sasanian period”]. On the mid-Sasanian period she speaks of an established “Zurvanite orthodoxy”. Shapur II named a daughter Zurvandukht. Mihr-Narseh named a son Zurvandad. She thinks it safe to assume that Adurbad i Mahraspandan, who survived molten metal poured on his breast, “was a Zurvanite” [#55117, ch.8]. Her conclusion is ironic: the dynasty presented as “the first creators and defenders of Zoroastrian orthodoxy” in fact “weakened the faith through giving prominence to their own Zurvanite beliefs” [#55117, ch.7 “Conclusion”].

Boyce’s review of Zaehner’s Zurvan: A Zoroastrian Dilemma (1955) shows the scholarly dispute at close range. She detects two stages in Zaehner’s book: “in chapters I-II Zurvanism is treated as a Zoroastrian heresy, influenced by Babylonian speculation, and coming into its own only with the Sasanian empire”. Later chapters move beyond this. Zaehner is said to find “a fusion of the personalities of Zurvan and Ohrmazd”, carried so far that Zurvan is at times “formally identified… with Ohrmazd, the Creator”. He also identifies three primal creators, “Time, Space, and Wisdom”, deducing their roles from a Pahlavi version of the Siroza [#54999]. Zaehner credits a Sasanian figure with attempting to fuse “the rival schools of Mazdeanism and Zervanism”, and adds: “The attempted fusion… was not complete; and it is thanks to his failure” that Zurvanite elements survive in the Pahlavi books [Zaehner, quoted in Boyce, #54999]. Boyce finds this argument “hard to follow” for “those who regard Zurvanism as a Zoroastrian heresy”. She grants, however, that his analysis makes it “very likely… that there were different schools of Zurvanite thought” [#54999].

The two also disagree over Firdausi. Zaehner reads the fatalism of the Shahnameh as Zurvanite survival. Boyce answers: “Were it merely a question of a pervasively fatalistic outlook, one might be inclined to attribute this… to Firdausi’s own time, or even to regard it as expressive of the heroic attitude in general (see H. Ringgren, Fatalism in Persian Epics, Uppsala, 1952)”. Zaehner’s case, she notes, rests on “one particular passage” [#54999].

Pahlavi traces: boundless time, long dominion and fate

The orthodox books keep Time as a creation or attribute of Ohrmazd. Dhalla notes that in the Pahlavi works Zurvan is “as cold and lifeless… as it was in the Avestan texts”. Ohrmazd creates it, or “Boundless Time is eternally in Ormazd”. The Zurvan myth itself “has left no traces whatever in the extant Pahlavi works” [#55166, ch.XXIV]. The Bundahishn nevertheless builds its cosmology on two kinds of time. Ohrmazd dwells in “endless light”. When he foresees Ahriman’s assault, he proposes a fixed contest: “so that the intermingling of the conflict may be for nine thousand years. For he knew that by appointing this period the evil spirit would be undone” [West (tr.), Pahlavi Texts Part I, Bundahishn ch.1, #55045]. Lincoln explains the scheme. Ahriman’s Assault “replac[ed] an unchanging eternity (‘infinite time,’ zrwan akarana) with a period of turbulence and struggle (‘long time,’ zrwan dar(e)ga)”, and “in that moment when demonic aggression made the celestial bodies start rotating, history proper began” [Lincoln, Anomaly, Science, and Religion, #55034].

The Menog-i Khrad, a work addressed to laymen, comes closest to a Zurvanite tone: “the affairs of the world of every kind proceed through destiny and time and the supreme decree of the self-existent eternity (zorvan), the king and long-continuing lord” [West (tr.), Pahlavi Texts Part III, Dina-i Mainog-i Khirad, #55047]. Dhalla gathers its fatalism under the heading “Fatalists”. In this scheme the twelve constellations stand with Ohrmazd and the seven planets with Ahriman. The planets, “like brigands and highwaymen… rob the righteous of their good lot and bestow it upon the wicked”. “Fate… is written on man’s forehead”. Dhalla also reports a balancing view. Vazurgmitra, Khosrow I’s minister, taught that fate and exertion are “as closely linked together as are man’s body and life”. Tansar compared fate and free will to “two loads on the back of an animal”. Dhalla concludes that “fatalism never came to be employed among the Zoroastrians as an excuse for cloaking man’s indolence” [#55166, ch.XXIV “Fatalists”]. Lincoln’s study of the planets shows how this astral demonology took shape. When Greek and Indian astronomy reached the late Sasanian court, the irregular, retrograde motion of the planets was explained by making them demons. The Greater Bundahishn calls them “the lying planets” and says “they are demons” [#55034].

The lion-headed god: Zurvan or Ahriman?

The Mithraic dispute turns on the lion-headed figure, entwined by a snake and marked with the zodiac. Zaehner states the issue: “The great Belgian scholar, Franz Cumont, had identified this sinister figure with the Iranian god of time and fate, Zurvan… and such was this scholar’s immense prestige that lesser men followed all too tamely in his footsteps”. Duchesne-Guillemin (Ohrmazd et Ahriman, p.128) and Zaehner himself (BSOAS 1955) replied that it “can scarcely have been other than the Zoroastrian devil, Ahriman”. Their argument rests on the dedications: “there are none to Zurvan or to any corresponding Roman God of time or fate, but quite a number deo Arimanio”. Zaehner links this to Plutarch’s account of Persians who offered “offerings for averting evil” to Areimanios. Such worship was “absolutely anathema to any orthodox Zoroastrian”. He sees survivals of such “devil-worship” (divasnih) in the Yezidis, the Mandaeans and the Ahl-i Haqq, and in a Luri folk epic, Irradiant, recorded by ‘Ali Mirdrakvandi [Zaehner, Zoroastrian Survivals in Iranian Folklore, #55094].

Widengren holds the opposite view. He reconstructs a Mithraic pantheon with, “on the top of it… the god of eternity who is given various names, Aion, Saeculum, or Kronos, Saturnus. Behind these designations stands the Iranian god of Time and destiny, Zurvan”. He finds Zaehner’s identification of the lion-headed figure with Ahriman “rather difficult to understand” [Widengren, The Mithraic Mysteries in the Greco-Roman World, #38302]. Dhalla follows Cumont: Zurvan “accompanied Mithra in his migration to the far West and was placed at the pinnacle of the divine hierarchy in the Mithraic cult” [#55166, ch.XXIV]. Ries’s Italian survey traces the classical witnesses to an early Zurvanism. Following Bousset, he concludes that “la religione zervanita era ben nota all’epoca di Alessandro” (“the Zurvanite religion was well known in Alexander’s time”). He cites Berossus (c. 300 BC) for Zervan “come a uno dei principi della terra” (“as one of the principles of the earth”) [Ries, Il Culto di Mithra, #38276, “Mithra, i Magi e lo zervanismo”].

Other sects and the long afterlife of Zurvan

Dhalla stresses how meagre the native record is: several sects known from Greek, Syriac and Armenian writers “are not even mentioned by name in the Iranian works”. Eznik and Elishe say the Zoroastrians of their day were “split into two rival sects”. Damascius, citing Eudemus, reports sects that “held Space as the primordial being that created the rival spirits of goodness and evil” [#55166, ch.XXIV]. The Zurvanites were “the most formidable of the sects”. They “evidently aimed at resolving the Zoroastrian dualism into monotheism by the apotheosis of Time”, and they survived long after the empire fell: Shahrastani, in the twelfth century, “met the followers of this sect in his day” [#55166, ch.XXIV]. Boyce reports that rejection of the heresy finds expression in Denkard IX.30.4, and that it “finally disappeared some centuries after the coming of Islam”. She also credits it with “enormous influence… on many Gnostic faiths”, for which “the Three Times, the remote First Cause, and the lesser Creator of this world, were fundamental doctrines” [#55117, ch.5].

Key points

• In the myth Zurvan, doubting his sacrifice, conceives both Ohrmazd and Ahriman. Ahriman tears his way out first and receives a joint rule of 9,000 years. The full story comes mainly from Armenian and Syriac Christian writers [#55166; #55117].
• Duchesne-Guillemin, following Zaehner, distinguishes materialist Zandiqs, astral fatalists and “Zurvanites proper”. He sees the triad of Light, Power and Wisdom recast in orthodox cosmology [#38271].
• Boyce places the heresy’s origin in the late Achaemenid period and calls it the orthodoxy of the Sasanian court, a “deep and grievous heresy” that weakened the faith [#55117].
• Boyce’s review of Zaehner records his shift from “heresy” to fusion theories, and her doubts about reading Firdausi’s fatalism as Zurvanite (citing Ringgren) [#54999].
• The Pahlavi books keep Zurvan subordinate to Ohrmazd. They distinguish “infinite time” from the “long time” of conflict and contain strong astral fatalism [#55045; #55047; #55034; #55166].
• On the lion-headed Mithraic god, Cumont, Widengren and Dhalla read it as Zurvan/Aion. Duchesne-Guillemin and Zaehner read it as Ahriman, citing the deo Arimanio dedications [#55094; #38302].
• The Zurvanites outlived the empire. Shahrastani still met them in the twelfth century [#55166].