The course studies the views on cosmogony and cosmology of the Zoroastrian religion. It focuses on the Zoroastrian doctrines on the origin and history of the cosmos in Zoroastrian sources (the Avesta and the Middle Persian texts) and in texts by non-Zoroastrian authors dating to the pre-Islamic early Islamic periods. It highlights the position of these doctrines in the system of beliefs and practices of the Zoroastrian religion, such as the relation between the spiritual and the material planes of existence, and the function of ritual in the Zoroastrian worldview.
The Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations (History, Religion)
St. George