Before the Church · c. 1200–900 BC; date heavily disputed
The Gathas
Zarathustra
What it is
Seventeen hymns in the prophet's own voice, addressed to a single wise lord who created light and darkness and set two primal spirits at the beginning, one choosing truth and one the lie — and every person after them choosing too. At the end comes a judgement by fire and molten metal, and a world made fresh.
Why it lasted
The oldest layer of Zoroastrian scripture, and the standing question behind Second Temple Judaism: a cosmic dualism, a final judgement, a resurrection, and a renewed world all appear in Jewish writing after the Persian period and scarcely before it.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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