Jenny Rose > Quotes

“These were all composed in a language known as Old Avestan, which is similar in syntax, meter, and vocabulary to the Old Indic of the Rig Veda, an early Hindu text. The Ahuna Vairya is still recited as one of the daily prayers of Zoroastrians today, in a language that is thought to be over three millennia old.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“It is in the context of this mid-Sasanian era edict reported by Elishe that the myth of Zurvan as hypostatized “Time” is outlined. Another fifth century CE Armenian, Eznik of Kølb, narrates the myth in more details and with some variations. It describes Zurvan as progenitor of both Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu. This myth of a common progenitor seems to have been one way that Zoroastrians in the Sasanian period understood the separate origins and natures of good and evil. Although in this schema Zurvan is the source of both, he is not a creator god—that role belongs to Ahura Mazda. The Zurvanite “twinning” of Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu as “brothers” from a common origin is rejected as a false teaching in the Middle Persian Denkard.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“Iranian Zoroastrian immigrants who seek asylum in India under the aegis of the BPP must produce an identity card issued by a local anjuman (Zoroastrian council) within Iran; they must possess a sudreh and kusti (the sacred shirt and cord of the initiate), and be able to recite in Avestan the two cardinal prayers of the Ahuna Vairya and the Ashem Vohu.4 It is through demonstrating such practical knowledge of daily aspects of the faith that the applicants are recognized as having been initiated into and professing the religion. They then become eligible to receive the support of the Parsi community.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“The coins and inscriptions of the Kushan king Kanishka (r. c. 127–151 CE) use Bactrian, a Middle Iranian language that was written in Greek script, and seem to present this eastern variation of Zoroastrianism as the official religion.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“The name Assara Mazaash was found in an early first millennium ritual text from the library of the neo-Assyrian king Assurbanipal (r. 669–c. 630 BCE). It appears in a list of gods next to Elamite divinities, and may be a unique reference to two separate neo-Assyrian gods.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“The notion that the term “Zoroastrian” refers to religious conviction, rather than lineage and birth, is reflected in a resolution passed by the North American Mobeds (priests’) Council (NAMC) at its thirteenth AGM in 2000. This resolution reads in part: “A ‘Zoroastrian’ is a person who believes and follows the teaching of Zoroaster. It is recognized that ‘Zoroastrianism’ is a universal religion. It is further recognized that a Zoroastrian is not necessarily a Parsi.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“The Persian Rivayats refer to a woman’s barrenness as a viable cause for a man to take a second wife. The impossibility of reproduction may have been the reason that male homosexuality was classified as an act introduced by Angra Mainyu (Vd. 1.11). According to the Videvdad, one of the greatest sins was for a menstruating woman to have sexual intercourse with her husband (Vd. 15.7, 13–16), since not only would there be no possibility of reproduction taking place, but she would also pollute him. Nowadays, some take a bath or shower after sexual intercourse, since they consider spent semen also to be “dead matter.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“The term “Neo-traditionalist” is sometimes now applied by outside academics to those Parsis/Iranis who adopt a theological understanding of Zoroastrianism informed by western scholarship, but who retain—and sometimes have sought to reintroduce—“traditional” rituals.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“For centuries, the ancient Zoroastrian method of disposal of the dead has been a source of curiosity among outsiders: from Herodotus and Strabo in ancient Anatolia, to European travelers through Iran and India in the medieval and colonial periods. An early fourteenth-century description of a dakhma—the hilltop enclosure in which a corpse is placed to be consumed by vultures—is found in the writings of a French Dominican friar named Jordanus.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“This is evidenced by the discovery of many ossuaries, or “bone-holders,” dating from the fifth- to the eighth-centuries CE. These held the collected sun-dried bones of an individual, which were then placed in family vaults.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“One of my former students, recently tasked with the writing of bio-ethical guidelines for a teaching hospital in southern California, noted that among the Parsis in India the child-woman ratio—a key gauge of fertility—is about 85 per 1,000, whereas the average for the country is 578 per 1,000.9 This low birthrate is partly due to the fact that both Parsi men and women tend to pursue higher education, and to get married at the relatively late age of between 30 and 35 years old. Many do not marry at all.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“The Zoroastrian religion addresses the problem of the source of evil partly through the notion of ethical dualism, which operates at the level of human choice, and can transform the world for better or worse. One of the Gathic poems, which has been referred to as “the Gatha of the choice” encourages everyone to pay close attention to the recitation, opening their ears to the words, and their minds to enlightened thought, so that they can choose between two potentialities (Y. 30.2–4).”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“Those who describe themselves as traditionalist may outnumber other groups, but they espouse more than one normative Zoroastrian theology. The theological spectrum is most commonly construed in a manner similar to the various branches of Judaism: that is, with the “orthodox/traditionalist” at one end of the spectrum, and the “progressive/reconstructionist” at the other.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed

“Some scholars maintain that we should not even talk of “Zoroastrianism” in terms of a religion with a systematized collection of beliefs and praxes, until the late Sasanian or early Islamic period—that is, until the sixth to tenth centuries CE.”
― Jenny Rose, Zoroastrianism: A Guide for the Perplexed