Faszination Zarathustra: Zoroaster und die Europaische Religionsgeschichte der Fruhen Neuzeit.

Michael Stausberg. Faszination Zarathustra: Zoroaster und die Europ[ddot{a}]ische Religionsgeschichte der Fr[ddot{u}]hen Neuzeit.

(Religionsgeschichrliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, 42.) Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998. 2 vols. xl + 1084 pp. DM 470 ISBN: 3-11-014959-1.

Studies in early modern intellectual history sometimes require research that bridges the boundaries of epochs, regions, and disciplines. Recent examples include Irena Backus, ed., The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West (Leiden: Brill 1997); Stephen A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (Tempe: MRTS, 1998); and Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Philosophia perennis (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1998). These studies reflect upon long-term developments in the history of ideas, as well as share a central interest in the methods of interpreting early modern thought. Thorough philological scrutiny -- as it manifests itself through text editions, bibliographies, biographies and microhistories -- provokes the question of what was actually happening "then" and why it concerns scholars "now." The book under review, happily, is a study that combines both farsightedness and closely researched detail.

Stausberg's book (which originated as a doctoral thesis at the University of Bonn) shows how Zarathustra/Zoroaster was perceived and transmitted beginning with Georgios Gemistos Plethon, who claimed that the Chaldean Oracles were documents of Zoroastrian wisdom. But the key figure in the transmission of Zoroastrianism was Marsilio Ficino, as he amalgamated the figure of Zoroaster into his "Platonic theology." Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Agostino Steuco were in different ways concerned about the acceptability of the ancient theology from the Christian point of view, and it was for this reason that Francesco Patrizi compiled a philologically reliable edition of the texts in question. After this peak of Zoroastrianism in the Renaissance, both philological and historical studies questioned the authenticity of the alleged teachings of Zoroaster and the historicity of his person. Theodor Zwinger's Theatrum vitae humanae was the turning point, as it compiled contradictory information about Zoroaster as Persia n, as king of the Bactrians, and as magician or inventor of magic and astrology. Zwinger also recorded the divergent accounts of this figure's historical identity -- all without any attempt at coherence. It seems that Zwinger's encyclopedia was designed as a mirror of human learning, not as its critique, but it also inaugurated a shift from admiration to critical attempts to historicize the myths of Zarathustra. This process ends before Friedrich Nietzsche who in his Thus spoke Zarathustra (1883) masked his own message with the figure of the Persian sage. Major steps were achieved by lawyers like Barnab[acute{e}] Brisson, historians of philosophy like Thomas Stanley, historians-philologists like Gerhard Johannes Vossius, and Catholic apologists like Johannes Bissel S.J. and Pierre-Daniel Huet. (Before them Benedictus Pererius S.J., who is not mentioned, drew in his 1591 De magia [I, 131 upon the inconsistency of the reports about the life and teachings of Zoroaster in order to ridicule his authority in magic. ) With the first appearance of genuine primary sources in the late seventeenth century, Thomas Hyde was able to separate definitively the historical figure of Zarathustra from the early modern myth of Zoroaster. There developed two almost independent currents of religious history/ethnology and "usage" within philosophical arguments of the Enlightenment about religion and reason. Thus, the core of this book ends with the orientalist A. H. Anquetil Duperron and Voltaire. However, occasionally later continuations of certain strains of Zoroastrianism are followed down to the twentieth century. So far the material.

Intellectually, Zoroaster is a touchstone of the making of the modern mind that incorporates theology, professional philosophy, various spiritual movements, history, and philology. He helped strengthening the "truth" of Christian doctrine and at the same time weakening the authority of a specific Christian revelation. Thus he was welcomed both by apologists of Christian religion such as Herbert of Cherbury, as well as by those, like David Hume, who "naturalized" all religious feelings. Therefore, with the enlightened critique of sources intellectual history does not end: historical contextualization of the real Zarathustra accompanies the deconstruction of religious belief. A parallel case is found in the Protestants' interest in the textual basis of the Bible, which eventually led some to question the Bible's divinity, and made the apology of Christian belief the business of psychology, epistemology, and sociology, rather than theology. Thus, even though scholarly research on Persian cults is motivated by a particular interest in religion, it is an upshot of the "fascination of Zarathustra" generated by Renaissance thinkers.

Stausberg's detailed presentation of the various uses made of Zoroaster is intended as a contribution to a "European history of religion" as distinguished from a "history of religions in Europe." Zarathustra/Zoroaster is a "construction" of the European mind; it is not an "influence" from outside European culture, but a case of "reception" in the sense of creative appropriation. Stausberg distinguishes Eigengeschichte from Fremdgeschichte ("proper" vs. "alien" history). Only gradually does Zoroaster (a part of the self-definition of religious ideas) become Zarathustra (a figure foreign to European culture), and even this transition is part of European intellectual history, especially of religious thought.

As happens in a one thousand page text, some misprints and misspellings occur. Still, this book, based on sources in most European languages plus some non-European, is a monument of encyclopedic learning. All discussions of Zoroastrianism are presented in their proper biographical and intellectual contexts, and many of them -- even those well known to Renaissance scholars -- appear in a new light. A reader who starts with the twenty-page foreword (by the doyen of religious history studies in Germany, Carsten Colpe) might be astonished by its almost hymnical tone, but by the end of the book, it is clear that this study is a major contribution to the theory of religion and needs a translation into English.