Chapter 17. The End of Time: Pahlavi Literature, Judgment, Saviours and the Making-Wonderful

Zoroastrian eschatology has two levels. The first is individual: the soul is judged at the Chinvat Bridge on the fourth dawn after death. The second is universal: at the end of a fixed world history, a saviour born of the prophet’s preserved seed raises the dead, a river of molten metal purges every soul, and creation is made new. The Gathas sketch this scheme, the Younger Avesta develops it, and the Pahlavi books of the Sasanian and early Islamic periods fill it out in detail (the Bundahishn, Denkard, Dadestan-i Denig, Bahman Yasht, Arda Viraz Namag and Menog-i Khrad). Its likeness to Jewish, Christian and Islamic apocalyptic has led some authors in the library to treat Iran as their source. Others are more cautious. This chapter sets out the doctrine as the sources present it, and then the debate over its influence.

Three nights and the fourth dawn

Pavry’s systematic study follows the soul step by step. It stays near the body for three nights. “The souls, we are told, go to the account at the light of dawn in the period of Oshahin”. As for the place of reckoning, “we are informed that it is on Mount Harburz (Alburz)”, and “the Bundahishn expressly mentions that the Judges take account of the soul at the ‘Peak of Judgment’ (cikat i daitik)” [Pavry, The Zoroastrian Doctrine of a Future Life, #55149]. The struggle over the soul “goes on for three days and three nights, till the judges intervene on the dawn of the fourth day” [#55149].

The Pahlavi passages translated in Textual Sources give the scene in full:

“And for three days and nights your soul will sit at the body’s head. And on the fourth day at dawn, accompanied by the just Srosh and the good Vay and mighty Vahram, and opposed by Astvihad and the worse Vay and the demon Vizarsh… it will reach the high and terrible Chinvat Bridge, to which everyone comes.” [Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, #55116, §§114-115]

The wicked soul spends those three nights weeping, “saying: ‘Whither shall I go and whom shall I now take as refuge?'”. It sees “all the sins and wickednesses which it has done in the world”. Then, “on the fourth day the demon Vizarsh comes and binds the wicked man’s soul in the harshest way, and, in spite of opposition by just Srosh, leads it to the Chinvat Bridge” [#55116, §§159-162]. Boyce sees here an old belief that survived Zoroaster’s reforms: the soul lingered three days and at daybreak on the fourth “went up, drawn by the rays of the rising sun, to face Mithra at the Chinvat Bridge” [Boyce, Zoroastrians, #55117, “The extension of purity laws”].

The judges, the balance and the Daena

According to Pavry, the tribunal is made up of Mithra, Sraosha and Rashnu. The texts speak of “the mediation of Mihr and Srosh and Rashnu, and the weighing of Rashnu the just, on the balance of the Spirits”. Then “Rashnu the just exposes the soul of the wicked for (its) wickedness”. A soul that has wronged another is held “at the Chinvat Bridge until its adversary arrives and exacts justice from it” [#55149]. Jackson notes that the idea of souls being weighed in the balance “is very old in Zoroastrian ethics”, going back to Gathic passages such as Yasna 31.14 and 46.10 [Jackson, Zoroastrian Studies, #55164].

At the bridge the soul meets its own daena. In the Avestan text translated in Textual Sources, the righteous soul hears: “Truly, youth of good thoughts, good words, good acts, good inner self (daena), I am your very own Daena” [#55116]. Mills renders the Avestan question as: “Who art thou, O Maiden, who art the most beautiful whom my eyes have seen?”. He presents the figure as “an image representing its conscience” [Mills, Avesta Eschatology, #60373]. Elsewhere he notes that in Vendidad XIX.30 the soul is met “by a female form accompanied with dogs” [Mills, Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia, #55044]. For the sinner, Dhalla explains, the Avestan text is lost. But “from the similar account of the wicked soul’s journey preserved in the Pahlavi scriptures” we learn that “the soul of the sinner is confronted by the personification of its own conscience in the shape of an ugly old woman who mercilessly taunts it for the wicked life it has led” [Dhalla, Zoroastrian Theology, #55113].

The bridge itself changes with the traveller. Kenton, comparing it with the Norse Bifrost, quotes a Pahlavi description of it “like a beam of many sides, of whose edges there are some which are broad, and there are some which are thin and sharp; its broad sides are so large that its width is of twenty-seven…” [Kenton, The Book of Earths, #62090].

Three destinations wait beyond it. Jackson calls hell “‘the house of Falsehood'”, a “scene of frightful torment which rivals Dante’s Inferno”. Then, “with perfect logic Zoroastrianism taught also the existence of an intermediate or third place which was suited to the special cases in which the good and evil deeds, done in life, exactly balanced”. This is Hamestagan. Jackson cites the Arda Viraz Namag, the Menog-i Khrad and the Dadestan-i Denig, and notes that according to the last it “is divided into two” [Jackson, #55164]. The Arda Viraz Namag is presented as an eyewitness tour: “The soul of Viraz went from his body to the Peak of the Law and the Chinvat Bridge; and after seven days and nights it returned and entered his body again” [#55116].

Twelve thousand years and the metal ages

The individual drama sits inside a cosmic timetable. In the Bundahishn, Ohrmazd foresees the Assault and offers Ahriman 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”. Ahriman, “unobservant and through ignorance”, accepts, “just like two men quarrelling together, who propose a time thus: Let us appoint such-and-such a day for a fight” [West (tr.), Pahlavi Texts Part I, Bundahishn ch.1, #55045]. West’s introduction refers to the religion’s “computation of twelve thousand years” [#55045]. In this scheme the 9,000 years of conflict follow a first age of purely spiritual creation, and the coming of Zarathustra marks the last age, which the millennial saviours divide among themselves.

The Bahman Yasht gives the political side of this scheme. In West’s summary, Zarathustra is shown “a tree with four branches of different metals”. These are explained as four periods, “the times of Vishtasp, of Ardakhshir the Kayanian, of Khusro Noshirvan” and a final evil age. In a second vision he sees “a tree with seven branches of different metals… denoting the seven ages” [West, #55045, introduction to the Bahman Yast]. The imagery of metals, together with the naming of Sasanian kings, ties the apocalypse directly to dynastic history.

The three saviours

Boyce traces the saviour figure back to the Gathas. Zoroaster “seems to have taught that after him there would come ‘the man who is better than a good man’ (Y 43.3), the Saoshyant”, whose name means “one who will bring benefit”. His followers came to believe that the Saoshyant “will be born of the prophet’s own seed, miraculously preserved in the depths of a lake (identified as Lake Kasaoya)”. A virgin will bathe there and conceive a son, “Astvat-ereta, ‘He who embodies righteousness'”. Boyce stresses: “Despite his miraculous conception, the coming World Saviour will thus be a man, born of human parents” [#55117, “Belief in a world Saviour”]. Dhalla’s formulation is sharper: “Astvatereta, or the Saoshyant proper, will be immaculately conceived through a virgin called Vispataurvi, or ‘the all-triumphant'” [#55113].

The Pahlavi books add two millennial forerunners. West’s chronology of Denkard VII has Aushedar born and “at the beginning of the eleventh millennium, when the sun stands still for ten days”, conferring with the sacred beings at the age of thirty. Aushedar-mah follows, and his millennium opens when “the sun stands still for twenty days and nights” [West (tr.), Pahlavi Texts Part V, #60400]. Boyce adds that northern Buddhism’s Maitreya “must owe something to Zoroastrian teaching about the Saoshyant”, and that longing for him intensified “in the dark period after Alexander’s conquest”, producing “a rich apocalyptic and prophetic literature” that made the names of “Zoroastres” and “Hystaspes” familiar to the Greco-Roman world [#55117, ch.6]. Her Selected Writings include the article “On the Antiquity of Zoroastrian Apocalyptic” (BSOAS 1984) [#54999].

Resurrection, molten metal and frashokereti

Dhalla’s chapter on the Renovation lists the sequence: “millennium of Soshyos — The collaborators of Sosyos — Resurrection of the dead — Universal judgment — Bodily punishment — Ordeal of molten metal — The righteous and the wicked shall no longer” be separated [#55113]. Buch writes that “the evil souls will be tried at the time of the final collective judgment and required to go through blazing fire”. This is a purgation that ends hell, not eternal damnation [Buch, Zoroastrian Ethics, #55150]. Mills finds the ordeal already in the Gathas. He renders Yasna 51 as asking Mazda to give satisfaction “through Thy red flame… through the melted bronze [through the lake of fire]… for the wounding of the faithless and the prospering of the” righteous [Mills, #60373].

The sources disagree on what frashokereti means. Cook follows De Harlez. The word “is regarded by many Eranian scholars as equivalent to ‘resurrection.’ This rendering, as De Harlez proves, is inadmissible”, since it means a renovation of the material universe [Cook, The Origins of Religion and Language, #55083]. Lincoln translates it as “Renovation” or, “more literally, ‘Wonder-making'” [Lincoln, #55034]. Jackson holds that “this dogma of ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ is found both in the Gathas and in the Younger Avesta”. He calls it “decidedly a millennial doctrine which is closely associated with the belief in the coming of a Savior (Saoshyant) and the resurrection of the dead” [#55164].

Source or parallel? The influence debate

Some authors in the library argue for Iranian priority.

Mills. Mills is the most forceful of them. His Oxford lectures present “the Zend Avesta as collated with the pre-Christian exilic pharisaism”. He reminds readers how uncertain belief in a future life was among Jews, since the Sadducees believed in “neither angel, nor spirit, nor resurrection”. He then asks: “If Persia produced any effect at all — and who but a fatuate can doubt this — after restoring the Jewish” nation, how could that influence not have been “great — perhaps crucial — till ‘life and immortality were brought to light’?” [#55044]. His companion study sets Avesta eschatology beside Daniel and Revelation. In it “the dragon of seven heads is, of course, the Azhi Dahaka of Avesta”, with six heads “changed to seven in Revelation on account of the dominant influence of that number” [#60373].

Autran. Autran (1935) makes the Iranian expectation the frame of Christian hope (his French is quoted here in translation). “The announcement of the coming of a Saviour, of the general Resurrection of bodies, of the Last Judgment, of the Coming of the Kingdom” pervades the Iranian faith. He argues that IV Ezra shows that “the Judaic conception was decidedly modelled on the Iranian one”, while the Sadducees, the strict keepers of old Israelite tradition, rejected resurrection [Autran, Mithra, Zoroastre et la préhistoire aryenne du christianisme, #60164, “Résurrection et Jugement dernier”].

Boyce. Boyce states that Christianity arose “out of a Judaism enriched by five centuries of contact with Zoroastrianism”. She adds that the Iranian teachings “lost some of their logic and coherence” when they were adopted into a creed of one omnipotent God [#55117, ch.6].

Other authors are more cautious.

Carter. Carter says only that “to this foreign contact… we probably are indebted for some of the loftiest and most spiritual conceptions, which came into Judaism and passed from Judaism into Christianity” [Carter, Zoroastrianism and Judaism, #55114].

Cook. Cook, citing De Harlez, insists that the Pentateuch is “ages older than the earliest time of Hebrew contact with Persia” [#55083].

Sundermann. Sundermann shows how the argument has to be made case by case. For the demon Asmodaios of Tobit, Isidor Scheftelowitz denied an Iranian origin on phonological grounds, and “Scheftelowitz was not the only one to doubt or reject” it. Sundermann himself concludes, from the names and from the shared role as “enemies of marital union”, that “the assumption of an Iranian origin of the Jewish demon Asmodaios is correct” [Sundermann, Zoroastrian Motifs in Non-Zoroastrian Traditions, #55067].

Keshe’s reinterpretation: resurrection as transmutation

Mehran Keshe reads these doctrines as garbled technology. In KSW 453 (2022) he claims that “transmutation and transportation has been part of the life of the man”. He says that “at the time of Christ the knowledge was to be transferred as transmutation of the Soul and physicality, but then it became, that the body of the Christ disappeared for some days”, and was turned into “what you call, mysticism”. “Christ or Buddha, and the others understood the work of the transfer and transmutation, but they hid it under the name of religion”. Of his own teaching he says: “We’re talking about pure resurrection, and nothing more” [Keshe, KSW 453, #378165]. In KSW 337 he states: “We close the door on the STM [Soul of the Man], and we open the door to the Soul of the UC [Universal Council] where the physical existence is not an option” [Keshe, KSW 337, #378049]. In the traditional doctrine, the body is raised and the world is renewed in matter. Keshe’s claim reverses this: physical existence is left behind for a realm of souls.

Key points

• The soul sits three nights at the body’s head. At the fourth dawn, escorted by Srosh, Vay and Vahram and opposed by Astvihad and Vizarsh, it reaches the Chinvat Bridge at the “Peak of Judgment” on Alburz [#55149; #55116].
• Mithra, Sraosha and Rashnu judge, and Rashnu weighs deeds on “the balance of the Spirits”. Hamestagan receives souls whose deeds exactly balance [#55149; #55164].
• The Daena appears as a beautiful maiden to the righteous and, in the Pahlavi books, as an ugly old woman to the sinner. The bridge is broad or razor-thin according to the soul [#55116; #55113; #62090].
• The Bundahishn’s 9,000-year contest, the metal ages of the Bahman Yasht and the millennial forerunners Aushedar and Aushedar-mah frame a world history that ends with Astvat-ereta, born of a virgin and the prophet’s seed [#55045; #60400; #55117; #55113].
• At the end, molten metal purges the wicked and frashokereti, which Cook says means “renovation” rather than resurrection, renews creation [#55150; #55083; #55164].
• Mills and Autran present the Avesta as the source of Pharisaic and Christian eschatology. Carter, Cook and the Scheftelowitz side of the Asmodaios debate are more cautious [#55044; #60164; #55114; #55067].
• Keshe claims that resurrection and ascension were a “transmutation of the soul” that religion turned into mysticism, and that humanity is moving to a state where “physical existence is not an option” [#378165; #378049].