Zurvanism
Zurvanism was a fatalistic religious movement of Zoroastrianism in which the divinity Zurvan is a first principle who engendered [|equal-but-opposite twins], Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu. Zurvanism is also known as "Zurvanite Zoroastrianism", and may be contrasted with Mazdaism.
In Zurvanism, Zurvan was perceived as the god of infinite time and space and also known as "one" or "alone." Zurvan was portrayed as a transcendental and neutral god without passion; one for whom there was no distinction between good and evil. The name Zurvan is a normalized rendition of the word, which in Middle Persian appears as either Zurvān, Zruvān or Zarvān. The Middle Persian name derives from Avestan.
Zurvanism was the official state religion of the Sasanians.
Origins and background
Although the details of the origin and development of Zurvanism remain murky, it is generally accepted that Zurvanism was:Zurvanism enjoyed royal sanction during the Sasanian Empire but no traces of it remain beyond the 10th century. Although Sasanian-era Zurvanism was certainly influenced by Hellenic philosophy, any relationship between it and the Greek divinity of Chronos "Time" has not been conclusively established. Non-Zoroastrian accounts of typically Zurvanite beliefs were the first traces of Zoroastrianism to reach the west, leading European scholars to conclude that Zoroastrianism was a monist religion, an issue of controversy among both scholars and contemporary practitioners of the faith.
Evidence of the cult
The earliest evidence of the cult of Zurvan is found in the History of Theology, attributed to Eudemus of Rhodes. As cited in Damascius's Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles, Eudemus describes a sect of the Medes that considered Space/Time to be the primordial "father" of the rivals Oromasdes "of light" and Arimanius "of darkness".The principal evidence for Zurvanite doctrine occurs in the polemical Christian tracts of Armenian and Syriac writers of the Sasanian period. Indigenous sources of information from the same period are the 3rd century Kartir inscription at Ka'ba-ye Zartosht and the early 4th-century edict of Mihr-Narseh, the mowbadān-mowbad or high priest under Yazdegerd I, the latter being the only native evidence from the Sasanian period that is frankly Zurvanite. The post-Sasanian Zoroastrian Middle Persian commentaries are primarily Mazdean and with only one exception do not mention Zurvan at all.
Of the remaining so-called Pahlavi books, only two, the Mēnōg-i Khrad and the Selections of Zādspram reveal a Zurvanite tendency. The latter, in which the priest Zādspram chastises his brother's un-Mazdaean ideas, is the last text in Middle Persian that provides any evidence of the cult of Zurvan. The 13th century Zoroastrian Ulema-i Islam, a New Persian apologetic text, is unambiguously Zurvanite and is also the last direct evidence of Zurvan as a First Principle.
There is no hint of any worship of Zurvan in any of the texts of the Avesta, even though the texts are the result of a Sasanian-era redaction. Robert Charles Zaehner proposed that this is because the individual Sasanian monarchs were not always Zurvanite and that Mazdean Zoroastrianism just happened to have the upper hand during the short but crucial period that the canon was finally written down. In the texts composed prior to the Sasanian period, Zurvan appears twice, as both an abstract concept and as a minor divinity, but there is no evidence of a cult. In Yasna 72.10 Zurvan is invoked in the company of Space and Air and in Yasht 13.56, the plants grow in the manner Time has ordained according to the will of Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spentas. Two other references to Zurvan are also present in the Vendidad, but although these are late additions to the canon, they again do not establish any evidence of a cult. Zurvan does not appear in any listing of the Yazatas.
History and development
Ascent and acceptance
The origins of the cult of Zurvan remain debated. One view considers Zurvanism to have developed out of Zoroastrianism as a reaction to the liberalization of the late Achaemenid-era form of the faith. Another view proposes that Zurvan existed as a pre-Zoroastrian divinity that was incorporated into Zoroastrianism. The third view is that Zurvanism is the product of the contact between Zoroastrianism and Babylonian–Akkadian religions, the divinity "Infinite Time" was well established, and – as inferred from a Manichaean text presented to Shapur I, in which the name Zurvan was adopted for Manichaeism's primordial "Father of Greatness" – enjoyed royal patronage. It was during the reign of Sasanian Emperor Shapur I that Zurvanism appears to have developed as a cult and it was presumably in this period that Greek and Indic concepts were introduced to Zurvanite Zoroastrianism.It is however not known whether Sasanian-era Zurvanism and Mazdaism were separate sects, each with their own organization and priesthood, or simply two tendencies within the same body. That Mazdaism and Zurvanism competed for attention has been inferred from the works of Christian and Manichaean polemicists, but the doctrinal incompatibilities were not so extreme "that they could not be reconciled under the broad aegis of an imperial church". More likely is that the two sects served different segments of Sasanian society, with dispassionate Zurvanism primarily operating as a mystic cult and passionate Mazdaism serving the community at large.
Decline and disappearance
Following the fall of the Sasanian Empire in the 7th century, Zoroastrianism was gradually supplanted by Islam. The former continued to exist but in an increasingly reduced state, and by the 10th century the remaining Zoroastrians appear to have more closely followed the orthodoxy as found in the Pahlavi books.Why the cult of Zurvan vanished, while Mazdaism did not, remains an issue of scholarly debate. Arthur Christensen, one of the first proponents of the theory that Zurvanism was the state religion of the Sasanians, suggested that the rejection of Zurvanism in the post-conquest epoch was a response and reaction to the new authority of Islamic monotheism that brought about a deliberate reform of Zoroastrianism that aimed to establish a stronger orthodoxy. Zaehner is of the opinion that the Zurvanite priesthood had a "strict orthodoxy which few could tolerate. Moreover, they interpreted the Prophet's message so dualistically that their God was made to appear very much less than all-powerful and all-wise. As reasonable as it might have appeared from a purely intellectual point of view, such an absolute dualism had neither the appeal of a real monotheism nor any mystical element with which to nourish its inner life."
Another possible explanation postulated by Boyce is that Mazdaism and Zurvanism were divided regionally; that is, with Mazdaism being the predominant tendency in the regions to the north and east, while Zurvanism was prominent in regions to the south and west. This is supported by Manichaean evidence that indicates that 3rd century Mazdean Zoroastrianism had its stronghold in Parthia, to the northeast. Following the fall of the Persian Empire, the south and west were relatively quickly assimilated under the banner of Islam, while the north and east remained independent for some time before these regions too were absorbed. This could also explain why Armenian/Syriac observations reveal a distinctly Zurvanite Zoroastrianism, and inversely, could explain the strong Greek and Babylonian connection and interaction with Zurvanism.
The "twin brother" doctrine
"Classical Zurvanism" is a term coined by Zaehner to denote the movement to explain the inconsistency of Zoroaster's description of the "twin spirits" as they appear in Yasna 30.3–5 of the Avesta. According to Zaehner, this "Zurvanism proper" wasAs the priesthood sought to explain it, if the Malevolent Spirit and the Benevolent Spirit were twins, then they must have had a parent, who must have existed before them. The priesthood settled on Zurvan – the hypostasis of Time – as being "the only possible 'Absolute' from whom the twins could proceed" and which was the source of good in the one and the source of evil in the other.
The Zurvanite "twin brother" doctrine is also evident in Zurvanism's cosmogonical creation myth; the classic form of the creation myth does not contradict the Mazdean model of the origin and evolution of the universe, which begins where the Zurvanite model ends. It may well be that the Zurvanite cosmogony was an adaptation of an antecedent Hellenic Chronos cosmogony that portrayed Infinite Time as the "Father of Time" whom the Greeks equated with Oromasdes, i.e. Ohrmuzd / Ahura Mazda.
Creation story
The classic Zurvanite model of creation, preserved only by non-Zoroastrian sources, proceeds as follows:Christian and Manichaean missionaries considered this doctrine to be exemplary of the Zoroastrian faith and it was these and similar texts that first reached the west. Corroborated by Anquetil-Duperron's "erroneous rendering" of Vendidad 19.9, these led to the late 18th-century century conclusion that Infinite Time was the first Principle of Zoroastrianism and Ohrmuzd was therefore only "the derivative and secondary character". Ironically, the fact that no Zoroastrian texts contained any hint of the born-of-Zurvan doctrine was considered to be evidence of a latter-day corruption of the original principles. The opinion that Zoroastrianism was so severely dualistic that it was, in fact, ditheistic or even tritheistic would be widely held until the late 19th century.