Editing Zoroaster (section)

==Date==
[[File:CIMRM_44-Mithraic_pater_(Dura_Europos)_B.jpg|thumb |upright|3rd-century [[Mithraic]] depiction of Zoroaster found in [[Dura Europos]], [[Syria]] by [[Franz Cumont]]]]
There is no consensus on the dating of Zoroaster. The Avesta gives no direct information about it, while historical sources are conflicting. Some scholars base their date reconstruction on the [[Proto-Indo-Iranian language]] and [[Proto-Indo-Iranian religion]], while others use internal evidence.<ref name="Boyce Intro"/> While many scholars today consider a date around 1000 BC to be the most likely,{{Sfn|Malandra |2005|loc=: "Controversy over Zaraθuštra's date has been an embarrassment of long standing to Zoroastrian studies. If anything approaching a consensus exists, it is that he lived ca. 1000 BCE give or take a century or so [...]"}}{{Sfn|Kellens|2011|loc=: "In the last ten years a general consensus has gradually emerged in favor of placing the Gāthās around 1000 BCE [...]"}} others still consider a range of dates between 1500 and 500 BC to be possible.<ref name="auto1">{{harvnb|Lincoln|1991|pp=149–150}}: "At present, the majority opinion among scholars probably inclines toward the end of the second millennium or the beginning of the first, although there are still those who hold for a date in the seventh century."</ref>{{sfn|Boyce|1996|pp=3, 189–191}}{{sfn|Stausberg|Vevaina|Tessmann|2015|p=61}}<ref name="NigosianDate">{{harvnb|Nigosian|1993|pp=15–16}}</ref><ref name="ShahbaziAb">{{harvnb|Shahbazi|1977|pp=25–35}}</ref>

===Classical scholarship===
Classical scholarship in the 6th to 4th century BC believed he existed 6,000 years before [[Xerxes I]]'s invasion of Greece in 480 BC ([[Xanthus (historian)|Xanthus]], [[Eudoxus of Cnidus|Eudoxus]], [[Aristotle]], [[Hermippus]]), which is a possible misunderstanding of the Zoroastrian four cycles of 3,000 years (i.e. 12,000 years).<ref name="WestDate13">{{harvnb|West|2013|pp=89–109}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Stausberg|Vevaina|Tessmann|2015|p=441}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Boyce|1982|p=260}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Boyce|1996|pp=285–292}}</ref> This belief is recorded by [[Diogenes Laërtius]], and variant readings could place it 600 years before Xerxes I, somewhere before 1000 BC.<ref name="NigosianDate"/> However, Diogenes also mentions [[Hermodorus]]'s belief that Zoroaster lived 5,000 years before the [[Trojan War]], which would mean he lived around 6200 BC.<ref name="NigosianDate"/> The 10th-century [[Suda]] provides a date of 500 years before the Trojan War.<ref name="WestDate13"/> [[Pliny the Elder]] cited Eudoxus which placed his death 6,000 years before Plato, {{c.|6300 BC}}.<ref name="NigosianDate"/> Other pseudo-historical constructions are those of [[Aristoxenus]] who recorded Zaratas the [[Chaldea]]ean to have taught [[Pythagoras]] in [[Babylon]],<ref name="WestDate13"/><ref name="Tuplin2007"/> or lived at the time of mythological [[Ninus]] and [[Semiramis]].<ref>{{harvnb|West|2010|p=8}}</ref> According to Pliny the Elder, there were two Zoroasters. The first lived thousands of years ago, while the second accompanied Xerxes I in the invasion of Greece in 480 BC.<ref name="WestDate13"/> Some scholars propose that the chronological calculation for Zoroaster was developed by Persian [[magi]] in the 4th century BC, and as the early Greeks learned about him from the Achaemenids, this indicates they did not regard him as a contemporary of Cyrus the Great, but as a remote figure.<ref>{{harvnb|Boyce|1982|p=261}}</ref>

===Zoroastrian and Muslim scholarship===
Some later pseudo-historical and Zoroastrian sources (the {{transliteration|pal|[[Bundahishn]]}}, which references a date "258 years before Alexander") place Zoroaster in the 6th century BC,{{efn|"258 years before Alexander" is only superficially precise.<ref name= "Shahbazi_1977_26">{{harvnb|Shahbazi|1977|p=26}}.</ref> It has been suggested that this "traditional date" is an adoption of some date from foreign sources, from the Greeks<ref name= "Kingsley_1990_245">{{harvnb|Kingsley|1990|pp=245–265}}.</ref> or the Babylonians<ref name= "Shahbazi_1977_32">{{harvnb|Shahbazi|1977|pp=32–33}}.</ref> for example, which the priesthood then reinterpreted. A simpler explanation is that the priests subtracted 42 (the age at which Zoroaster is said to have converted Vistaspa) from the round figure of 300.{{sfn|Jackson|1896}}{{sfn|Boyce|1996|p={{page needed|date=November 2020}}}}<ref>{{Citation |last = Henning | title = Western Response}}.{{full citation needed|date=November 2020}}</ref>}}<ref>{{harvnb|Stausberg|Vevaina|Tessmann|2015|p=9}}</ref> which coincided with the accounts by [[Ammianus Marcellinus]] from the 4th century AD. The traditional Zoroastrian date originates in the period immediately following [[Alexander the Great]]'s conquest of the [[Achaemenid Empire]] in 330 BC.<ref name="NigosianDate"/> The [[Seleucid Empire|Seleucid]] rulers who gained power following Alexander's death instituted an "Age of Alexander" as the new calendrical epoch. This did not appeal to the Zoroastrian priesthood who then attempted to establish an "Age of Zoroaster". To do so, they needed to establish when Zoroaster had lived, which they accomplished by (erroneously, according to [[Mary Boyce]] some even identified Cyrus with Vishtaspa)<ref>{{harvnb|Boyce|1982|p=68}}</ref> counting back the length of successive generations, until they concluded that Zoroaster must have lived "258 years before Alexander".<ref name="WestDate13"/><ref name="Shahbazi_1977_25_26">{{harvnb|Shahbazi|1977|pp=25–26}}</ref> This estimate then re-appeared in the 9th- to 12th-century Arabic and Pahlavi texts of Zoroastrian tradition,{{efn|The {{transliteration|pal|[[Bundahishn]]}} computes "200 and some years" (''GBd'' xxxvi.9) or "284 years" (''IBd'' xxxiv.9). That '258 years' was the generally accepted figure is however noted by [[al-Biruni]] and [[al-Masudi]], with the latter specifically stating (in 943/944 AD) that "the Magians count a period of two hundred and fifty-eight years between their prophet and Alexander."{{sfn|Jackson|1899|p=162}}<ref name = "Shahbazi_1977_26"/>}} like the 10th century [[Al-Masudi]] who cited a prophecy from a lost Avestan book in which Zoroaster foretold the Empire's destruction in 300 years, but the religion would last for 1,000 years.<ref name="West 2010 6"/>

===Modern scholarship===
In modern scholarship, two main approaches can be distinguished: a late dating to the 7th and 6th centuries BC, based on the indigenous Zoroastrian tradition, and an early dating, which places his life more generally in the 15th to 9th centuries BC.{{Sfn|Humbach|1991|loc=chap. "The date of Zarathustra"}}

====Late date====
Some scholars<ref name="auto1"/> propose a period between 7th and 6th century BC, for example, {{c.|650–600 BC}} or 559–522 BC.<ref name="NigosianDate"/><ref name="ShahbaziAb"/> The latest possible date is the mid 6th century BC, at the time of Achaemenid Empire's [[Darius I]], or his predecessor [[Cyrus the Great]]. This date gains credence mainly from attempts to connect figures in Zoroastrian texts to historical personages;<ref name="ShahbaziAb"/> thus some have postulated that the mythical [[Vishtaspa]] who appears in an account of Zoroaster's life was [[Darius I]]'s father, also named Vishtaspa (or [[Hystaspes (father of Darius I)|Hystaspes]] in Greek). However, if this was true, it seems unlikely that the Avesta would not mention that Vishtaspa's son became the ruler of the Persian Empire, or that this key fact about Darius's father would not be mentioned in the [[Behistun Inscription]]. It is also possible that Darius I's father was named in honor of the Zoroastrian patron, indicating possible Zoroastrian faith by [[Arsames]].<ref name="West 2010 6">{{harvnb|West|2010|p=6}}</ref>

====Early date====
Scholars such as [[Mary Boyce]] (who dated Zoroaster to somewhere between 1700 and 1000 BC) used linguistic and socio-cultural evidence to place Zoroaster between 1500 and 1000 BC (or 1200 and 900 BC).<ref name="West Dating"/><ref name="ShahbaziAb"/> The basis of this theory is primarily proposed on linguistic similarities between the [[Avestan language|Old Avestan language]] of the Zoroastrian [[Gathas]] and the [[Vedic Sanskrit|Sanskrit]] of the [[Rigveda]] ({{Circa|1700}}–1100 BC), a collection of early Vedic hymns. Both texts are considered to have a common archaic Indo-Iranian origin. The Gathas portray an ancient [[Stone Age|Stone]]-[[Bronze Age#Iranian Plateau|Bronze Age]] bipartite society of warrior-herdsmen and priests (compared to Bronze [[Trifunctional hypothesis|tripartite society]]; some conjecture that it depicts the [[Yaz culture]]),<ref>{{citation|first1=J. P.|last1=Mallory|author2-link=Douglas Q. Adams|first2=Douglas Q.|last2=Adams|title=Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tzU3RIV2BWIC|year=1997|publisher=Taylor & Francis|pages=310–311, 653|isbn=978-1-884964-98-5|author1-link=J. P. Mallory}}</ref> and that it is thus implausible that the Gathas and [[Rigveda]] could have been composed more than a few centuries apart. These scholars suggest that Zoroaster lived in an isolated tribe or composed the Gathas before the 1200–1000 BC migration by the Iranians from the steppe to the [[Iranian Plateau]].<ref name="Boyce Background96"/><ref>{{harvnb|Boyce|1982|pp=1–7}}</ref><ref name="West Dating"/><ref>{{harvnb|West|2010|p=18}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Stausberg|2008|p=572}}</ref> The shortfall of the argument is the vague comparison, and the archaic language of Gathas does not necessarily indicate time difference.<ref name="WestDate13"/><ref name="NigosianDate"/>

It has been suggested by Silk Road Seattle, using its own interpretations of [[Victor H. Mair]]'s writings on the topic that Zoroaster could have been born in the 2nd millennium BC.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2002-05-07 |title=Zoroastrianism |website=Silk Road Seattle |publisher=[[University of Washington]] |url=https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/exhibit/religion/zoroastrianism/zoroastrianism.html |access-date=2023-03-01}}</ref>{{sfn|Mair|1990|p=34}} 

[[Almut Hintze]], the [[British Library]], and the [[European Research Council]] have dated Zoroaster to roughly 3,500 years ago, in the 2nd millennium BC.<ref>{{Cite web |title=An introduction to Zoroastrianism |url=https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/ancient-near-east1/the-ancient-near-east-an-introduction/a/an-introduction-to-zoroastrianism |access-date=2023-03-12 |website=[[Khan Academy]] |language=en}}</ref>