The cult of fire is one of the more iconic aspects of Zoroastrian religious practice and belongs to the earliest stratum of Persian religions as attested in the earliest Zoroastrian texts tradition [e.g. Yasna Haptaŋhāiti (Y. 36)] and in the testimony of outside observers, such as Herodotus (1, 131). Fire temples became an important part of Persian religious practice, by the Sasanian period, it had undoubtedly become the foremost icon of Zoroastrian religious practice, Zoroastrians typically were dubbed “fire worshippers” by outsiders, including in the Babylonian Talmud, itself. During two major formative periods in Jewish history, the Achaemenid and the Sasanian eras, a large proportion of the Israelite/Jewish people found themselves as a minority within a Zoroastrian empire. This workshop aims to explore the impact of Zoroastrian religious notions relating to the fire cult, the foremost icon of Zoroastrianism, on the contemporary religious development within Judaism.
Programme