Houman
TR Team Leader
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2002
- Messages
- 1,083
arcady said:
LOL, have you even read my post, my dear? Which point about rewriting history didn't you understand?
Your post has two major faults:
1) Who says Judaism accepts Converts?
Jews are the chosen ones! They are the chosen people by their God Jahweh! No one can become a Jew! You are born as a Jew! There is no such a thing as Conversion in Judaism! 2) Who says that Zoroastrians do not Convert and are dying out? It is the Parsees community who do not accept Converts and this has historical reasons. After the Muslim Conquest of Persia higher taxes were forced to the Zoroastrians. They were under tough pressure and were regarded as second class citizens. After few hundered years of poverty and pressure some of them have decided not staying longer in the motherland and have sought asylum in India. The King of India accepted their asylum but they had to give up all their weapons, their woman had to wear from then Indian Sari cloth instead of Persian cloth, their wedding had to be only in the evening. The Parsees also forbade to marry Indians from outside in order to keep their community alive. Since no conversion was allowed, they were no danger to grow and become a problem for the Hindus.
In 19th century however scholars have proved that Zarathustra's own words are only included in the Gathas (including 17 hymns), which is written in an archaic dialect extremly close to Vedic Indian that was 3700 years ago. Every thing else in Avesta, the Zoroastrian holy book, was written in a much later dialect.
Therefore a new wave of reformist came up and argued that the later written text in Avesta are mostly intepretations by the later priests especially from the period of the Sassnid dynasty. Reformists say, like the Christian Evangelists argue against Catholics, that there is the need to go back to the roots of the religion, to the words of Zarathustra himself rather than the tradition that built up during thousands of years after him.
The reformist Parsees therefore marry outside their community and they accept converts, because Zarathustra himself has never limited his speech to only Iranians. The remaining Zoroastrians in Iran are mostly reformists as well and DO accept conversion. There is also a small movement within USA/Canada/Brazil/Venezuella where Zoroastian Universities and Firetemples are built. Check out the yahoogroup [zoroastrianacceptance] for more information. Your argument is therefore totally wrong!
For more information about the reformists and traditionalists, refer to the books I had recommended in first post.
Kind Regards,
Houman
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