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In the history of religions, Zoroastrianism has been an unusually efficacious faith, exercising an influence on the doctrines of other religions disproportionate to the size of its following. The notion of angels as agents of God (rather than as demigods) is but one of Zoroastrianism’s legacy to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Zoroastrianism was founded in ancient Persia (modern-day Iran) in about 1000 B.C. (some sources say much earlier, others around 600 B.C.) by the prophet Zoroaster. It was the official religion of the area until Alexander the Great’s conquest, after which it was later restored. In the seventh century A.D., Islamic invaders took over the area, andZoroastrianism disappeared from the land of itsbirth. A relatively small body of Zoroastrians, who are called Parsees in the subcontinent, survivein contemporary India, many in the Bombay area.
The religion of Zoroaster is best known for its dualism. The god of light and the upper world, Ohrmazd or Ahura Mazda (Wise Lord), and his angels are locked in a cosmic struggle with the god of darkness and the lower world, Angra Mainyu or Ahriman (Evil Spirit), and his demons. Unlike Christianity, in which the outcome of the war between God and the Devil has already been decided, Zoroastrianism portrays the struggle as more or less evenly matched (although many strands of the tradition would assert that Ahura Mazda’s triumph isinevitable). Individual human beings are urged to align themselves with the forces of light, and are judged according to whether their good or evil deeds predominate.
Eventually there will be a final battle between good and evil, after which there will be a general judgment in which everyone will be put through an ordeal of fire (a river of molten metal), in which good individuals will have their dross burned away and evil people will be consumed. The souls of the blessed will be resurrected in renewed physical bodies.
Many of the components of this vision of the end times—a final battle between good and evil, judgment of the wicked, resurrection of the dead, and so on—were adopted by Jewish apocalyptic thinkers. From texts composed by these apocalypticists, such notions were adopted into Christianity and Islam.
For reasons that are unclear, angels are often associated with religions and religious movements that place a special stress on such events expected to take place at the end of time (referred to as the eschaton in Greek, from which we get the word eschatology).
It appears that Zoroaster set out to reform the preexisting religion of Persia rather than to create a new religion. It is also clear that he preached the centrality of one god, Ahura Mazda. The other divinities of the earlier pantheon were reduced to the status of mere agents ofthe supreme deity—that is, to angels. Also, some of the gods of the original Indo-European pantheon were transformed into demons, although this transformation may have resulted from factors completely independent of the reforming activities of Zoroaster.
Chief among the Zoroastrian angels are the holy immortals (the amesha spentas or ameshaspands). These beings are named after qualities valued by Zoroastrians, such as Vohu Manah (Good Thought or Good Sense) and Armaiti (Piety or Harmony). In a certain sense, the amesha spentas are the archangels of the Zoroastrian religious system. Corresponding to these archangels of light are agents of the evil Ahriman,such as Druj (the Lie).
As Zoroastrianism developed, the number of celestial beings multiplied, leading some observers to remark that the old polytheistic system had unwittingly been revived in the later stages of this religious tradition. At some point, a new class of angel, the yazatas, emerged. They became so important that they seemed to eclipse Ahura Mazda himself. Chief among the yazatas was Mithra, the god/angel of light.
Yet another group of angelic beings to emerge were the fravashi. They seem to have originally been spirits of the ancestors, but gradually developed into guardian spirits, both of human beings and of celestial beings. Somewhat like the notion of Plato’s ideal forms, the fravashi is the immortal part of the human being that remains in heaven when the individual is incarnate on earth.
From Angels A-Z by Evelyn Dorothy Oliver and James R. Lewis
Sources:
Cohn, Norman. Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic
Faith. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993.
Eliade, Mircea, ed. A History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1978.
Noss, John B. Man’s Religions. 4th ed. New York: Macmillan, 1969.