festion, if such there be, thoroughly assimilated. 'he fravashi is no longer a being neces.sarily good, but becomes a coinpli;te spiritual counterpart of the nation (Daniel) or the church (Apocalypse), and capable therefore of declension and punish- ment.* Similarly, the 'angels' of the little ones are nearest the throne (Mt 18'"), because represent- ing those who have not learned to sin. The stud)' of St. Paul's attitude to these doctrines is in- structive in more ways th;in one.t He accepts an elaborate ranking of sjiirits. The air, as in Parsism, is made the arena of strife between good and evil angels : J the spirit world is a reflex of the earthly in the inextricable mixture of contending powers. But he accepts these beliefs only as enhancing the supremacy of Christ : cf. He 1^ 2^ Rev 22". Like Zoroaster, centuries earlier, he found his contemjioraries in danger of a virtual polytheism (cf. Col 2'"), and set them free by mag- nifying the one Divine Being whose traii.scend- ence made worship of mere angels impos.sible. In doing this, Zoroaster simplj' tried to ignore the deities of the f.aith bo reformed, with the result th:it after his death they came back like a flood, losing little in position by their formal subordina- tion, as angels, to Ahura Mazda. St. Paul was able to accept fearlessly the angelology he found, while greatly lessening its importance, and achiev- ing a permanent success in raising Christ to an un- approachable height above the s])irit world.
9. Much of what has been said can be repeated for Demonolvgy. It would be absurd to think of Satan and his angels as borrowed from Angra Mainyu and the datras. Tlie .Semites had deintjns enough of their own, and the Satan doctrine in Parsism and in Judaism developed in very dillerent ways. We may still believe that the ranking of demons and the elevation of one s)iiril to their bead may have been stimulated by Parsism. There are native forces which largely account for the diller- cnce between earlier and later Jahvism in this respect ; but when we find the Jews, after historical contact with Persians, advancing to a position
• Cf. Weber, Jiid. Theol.t p. 170 1. ; also Soderblom in Itev. Uittt. lU'l. xl. waft, : on the whole subject see the writ-er's poper, ' It Is his Ancel," in JTS, 1902.
t See BeyschlaR, A7' Tlieol. ii. lonlT. Mazdcisni hart prohaliiy mixed with in(li|;enous cults in Cilieia (see lieo. Itift. Jiel. xxxvl. 201), so ttiut St. Paul may have been ae<)uainted with it in youth.
1 Against this view of Kph 2''' see Findloy (in Kxpoit. BibU), \}. 10;i. He observes that tlic Uabbis retranletl the alniosphere as Satan's abo<le — *a notion foreijin to Srri|ilure.' 'They, at anv rate, may well have sot the notion from Parsism
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ZOROASTRIANISM
more and more like theirs, it is hard to suppose the movement entirely imlepemlent. Stave well shows that the teaching of the Proplifts, esppcinllv Deutero- Isaiah, tended to an absolute denial of existence to heathen deities ; yet as early as 2 Ch 28^ the gods of Damascus are real, and before long they and other foreign guds aie firmly estab- lished as demons. The striking contrast between this development and tliat towards which the Projilifts li'd is explained satisfactorily by the daevas of Parsism, who were to some extent them- selves the deities of hostile tribes. The earlier histdry of Jewish and Parsi denionology may dillbr widely ; but the doctrine of the N't might be broadly enunciated in terms which would accurately describe Zoroaster's own teaching, while that of the Talmud has much in common \vith accretions found in the Vendidad and the Pahlavi patristics. In both NT and Gathas, Evil is a lying and murderous spirit, which in the beginning chose evil thoughts, words, and deeds, and which has over since the Fall * tempted mankind, with the aid of fiends who afllict the bodies and souls of men. In both, men are called to join in the strife which shall end with the destruction of EWl in hell. Could we believe that a pure Gathic religion was ever preached within the Jews' hearing, the historical connexion of the two systems would be almost indisputable. But the very corruptions of later Parsism must have helped to recommend it to the popular Jewish mind, which was equally in boudage to the fear of evil spirits and the foolish ritual that pretended to control them. It is note- worthy that Judaism deliberately forsook sug- gestions from its earlier writings — the Serpent of Gn 3 and Azazel in Lv 16 — when it formed a new demonologv with ' the Satan ' as prince of evil. We naturally seek a foreign body wliose attraction has drawn it from its proper course. Without pursuing this subject in detail, we may note in conclusion that in the Apocalypse, where parallels with Parsism (however explained) are especially numerous, there is a deep-seated connexion of thought in the characteristic balancing of the heavenly and the infernal — e.g. the devil, the beast, and tlie false prophet as the ' anti-trinity of heir(.seeMilligan, 5rtirrficc<«re, p. 11011'.). Itseems reasonable to suppose that the author would readily make use of imagery from a system so subtlj" re- sembling his own. There is significance then in tlie identification of the Serpent of Gn 3 with Satan (12^), whose binding and subsequent destruction is narrated in striking accordance with the Parsi story of Azhi Dahaka (above, § 4 (6)). AVe may peiliaps fairly add that Azhi Dahaka is especially connected with Bab}ion,t a coincidence which might be claimed as no mere accident — the less so as in the Pahlavi Bahmnn Yasht (SBE v. 234) we find the serpent Azlii, in his brief release before his final destruction, swallowing 'one-third of man- kinil, cattle, sheep, and other creatures of Auhar- nuizd.' The obvious parallels in the Apocalypse are only discounted by the impo.ssibility of prov- ing that the Pahlavi translator is here faithful to his original Avestan text, now lost. (See above, § 7). 10. The question of Parsi influences upon the E.S.SKNES is raised by Lightfoot's dissertaticm (in L'omm. on Col. pp. 387-389). He accepts (like Hilgenfeld) links with Parsism in (1) dualism, (2) sun-worship, (3) angelolatry, (4) magic, (5) striving after ])urity. Otiier points might be plausibly added, such as their white garments, the value set on truth, their devotion to agriculture, etc. (Their unblooily olferings must not be counted here, for Mazdeism has always had a sacrifice of llesli, as well as the libation and the Haoma otleruig). It