Zoroastrian News - اخبار زرتشتیان

Thursday April 10, 2008 7:00 pm
Stanford University
Cummings Art Building ROOM 2
Professor Almut Hinze

“Defeating Death: Eschatology in Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity”

The doctrine of the Last Things, or eschatology, is an important component not only of the Zoroastrian, but also of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. Themes associated with eschatology in these four traditions include ideas of judgement - both Individual after a person has died and universal at the end of time -, heaven as a place of reward and hell as one of punishment, and a redeemer who resurrects the dead and ushers in a new era of perfect existence and everlasting life in the presence of God. The similarities in eschatological teachings between the so-called Abrahamic religions, on the one hand, and those of Zoroastrianism, on the other, are even more remarkable if one considers that such eschatological ideas are not found in the texts of the Jews before they made contact with the Persians in the mid-sixth century before the Christian era (BCE).

Accordingly, the question of influence has been studied by both Biblical and Iranian scholars, but to date no consensus of opinion has yet been reached. Almut Hintze studied Classics and Indo-European philology in Heidelberg, Oxford and Erlangen. From 1990 to 1996 she taught Indo-Iranian Studies in Berlin.

She is now the Zartoshty Brothers Senior Lecturer in Zoroastrianism at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has published on Indo-Iranian and, especially, Avestan philology. Her major works
include an edition of the Avestan Zamyo Yao and a study of the meanings of different words meaning ‘reward’ or ‘retribution’ in Vedic and Avestan. During a research visit to India, she uncovered one of the most important Avestan manuscripts, believed to be lost.

From 2003-2006 she held a British Academy Research Readership and has just published a new edition with translation, commentary and dictionary of the most important Zoroastrian liturgy, the Yasna Haptanghaiti. She is now working on an edition, translation and commentary of the entire Avestan Yasna as well as on an Introduction to Zoroastrianism for Cambridge University Press.

The Lecture is open to the public and free of charge