e
New Testament, is plain. To say that the Persians derived the
doctrine of the resurrection from the Jews seems to us as
arbitrary as it would be to affirm that they also borrowed from
them the custom, mentioned by Ezekiel, of weeping for Tammuz in
the gates of the temple.

In view of the whole case as it stands, until further researches
either strengthen it or put a different aspect upon it, we feel
forced to think that the doctrine of a general resurrection was a
component element in the ancient Avestan religion. A further
question of considerable interest arises as to the nature of this
resurrection, whether it was conceived as physical or as
spiritual. We have no data to furnish a determinate answer.
Plutarch quotes from Theopompus the opinion of the Magi, that
when, at the subdual of Ahriman, men are restored to life, "they
will need no nourishment and cast no shadow." It would appear,
then, that they must be spirits. The inference is not reliable;
for the idea may be that all causes of decay will be removed, so
that no food will be necessary to supply the wasting processes
which no longer exist; and that the entire creation will be so
full of light that a shadow will be impossible. It might be
thought that the familiar Persian conception of angels, both good
and evil, fervers and devs, and the reception of departed souls
into their company, with Ormuzd in Garotman, or with Ahriman in
Dutsakh, would exclude the belief in a future bodily resurrection.
But Christians and Mohammedans at this day believe in immaterial
angels and devils, and in the immediate entrance of disembodied
souls upon reward or

33 Die Lehre Zoroasters nach den alten Liedern des Zendavesta.
Zeitschrift der Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, band ix. ss. 286,
683-692.

34 Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i. pp. 426-431.

punishment in their society, and still believe in their final
return to the earth, and in a restoration to them of their former
tabernacles of flesh. Discordant, incoherent, as the two beliefs
may be, if their coexistence is a fact with cultivated and
reasonable people now, much more was it possible with an
undisciplined and credulous populace three thousand years in the
past. Again, it has been argued that the indignity with which the
ancient Persians treated the dead body, refusing to bury it or to
burn it, lest the earth or the fire should be polluted, is
incompatible with the supposition that they expected a
resurrection o