726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



revelation or creation, but of slow evolution out of a remote 

 past. 



The facts thus shown did not at first elicit much gratitude 

 from supporters of traditional theology, and perhaps few things 

 brought more obloquy on Renan, for a time, than his statement 

 of the simple fact that " the influence of Persia is the most power- 

 ful to which Israel was submitted." But this was now seen to 

 be strictly true. Not only was it made clear by study of the Zend 

 Avesta that the Old and New Testament ideas regarding Satanic 

 and demoniacal modes of action were largely due to Persian 

 sources, but it was also shown that the idea of immortality was 

 mainly developed in the Hebrew mind during the close relations 

 of the Jews with the Persians. Nor was this all. In the Zend 

 Avesta were found in earlier form sundry myths and legends 

 which, judging from their frequent appearance in early religions, 

 grow naturally about the history of the adored teachers of our 

 race. Typical among these was the Temptation of Zoroaster. 



It is a fact very significant and full of promise that the first 

 large, frank, and explicit revelation regarding this whole subject 

 in form available for the general thinking public was given to 

 the English-speaking world by an eminent Christian divine and 

 scholar the Rev. Dr. Mills. Having already shown himself by 

 his translations a most competent authority on the subject, he in 

 1894 called attention, in a review widely read, to " the now un- 

 doubted and long since suspected fact that it pleased the Divine 

 Power to reveal some of the important articles of our Catholic 

 creed first to the Zoroastrians, and through their literature to the 

 Jews and ourselves." Among these beliefs Dr. Mills traced out 

 very conclusively many Jewish doctrines regarding the attributes 

 of God, and all, virtually, regarding the attributes of Satan. 

 There, too, he found accounts of the Miraculous Conception, Vir- 

 gin Birth, and Temptation of Zoroaster. As to the last, Dr. Mills 

 showed a series of striking coincidences with our own later ac- 

 count. As to its main features, he showed that there had been 

 developed among the Persians, many centuries before the Chris- 

 tian era, the legend of a vain effort of the arch-demon, one seat of 

 whose power was the summit of Mount Arezura, to tempt Zoro- 

 aster to worship him ; of an argument between tempter and 

 tempted, and of Zoroaster's refusal ; and the doctor continued : 

 " No Persian subject in the streets of Jerusalem, soon after or long 

 after the Return, could have failed to know this striking myth." 

 Dr. Mills then went on to show that, among the Jews, " the doc- 

 trine of immortality was scarcely mooted before the later Isaiah 

 that is, before the captivity while the Zoroastrian scriptures 

 are one mass of spiritualism, referring all results to the heavenly 

 or to the infernal worlds." He concludes by saying that, as re- 



