Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices) 2nd Edition

Zoroastrians were once one of the major religions of the world. Today they are just a minor sect. I was curious to know how big they were and what became of them. What do they believe? How did they lose stature in the world? This book provided some limited answers, though I found it most accessible towards the end.

The early history in the book has a focus on our current historical understanding of the roots of Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism. This helps give context, but also distracts from the religious history. It would be more interesting to have a focus on what Zoroastrians accept as their history and then bring out areas that can't be verified. This is especially important with a religion that is as old as narrowly practiced as this one. I also struggled understanding the beliefs and locations that were described.

Things started to become more clear after the rise of Islam. The religion was mostly relegated to rural backwaters. The story of the Parsi in India is the one major exception. The exodus allowed the Zoroastrians to flourish. They have come to economically dominate the Indian economy, but are also fading in population.

The beliefs of the Zoroastrians is a little less clear. Fire is important. They are often accused of being fire worshipers. However, they also have a form of monotheistic dualism.  There seems to be a good deal of Zoroastrian doctrines that have been adopted by Judaism.