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Liber XXXVI · Zoroastrianism

Liber XXXVI · Zoroastrianism · Chapter I: Ahura Mazda & Cosmic Dualism

Zurvanism: Zurvan, Infinite Time and the Twin Spirits

Zurvanism explained: the Iranian god of infinite Time, the myth of Ohrmazd and Ahriman as twin sons, its Greek and Armenian witnesses and modern debate.

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Zurvanism is the name modern scholars give to a current of ancient Iranian religion in which Zurvan, infinite Time, was regarded as the first principle and the father of both Ohrmazd (Ahura Mazda) and Ahriman (Angra Mainyu). It is known chiefly from Greek, Armenian and Syriac writers of late antiquity, flourished in some form under the Sasanian kings, and is still debated: was it a heresy, a rival orthodoxy, or simply a myth that many Zoroastrians told?

Zurvan: Time in Iranian Religion§

The word zurvan (Middle Persian zurwan or zaman) simply means "time". In the Young Avesta, Time appears in two aspects: Zurvan akarana, "boundless" or "infinite Time", and Zurvan darego-khvadhata, "Time of the long dominion", the limited span of history in which the cosmic battle is fought. Both are invoked in a handful of liturgical passages, including the Videvdad, as beings worthy of praise, but neither plays a major role. The Gathas of Zarathustra, discussed in Zarathustra and the Gathas, do not mention Zurvan at all.

Zoroastrian cosmology nevertheless gave Time an important structural place. In the Pahlavi books the history of the world is a drama of twelve thousand years, divided into four periods of three thousand, at the end of which evil will be defeated. Limited Time was understood as the arena of the struggle, created by Ohrmazd out of infinite Time so that Ahriman could be drawn into a contest he must lose. From this orthodox idea it was a short step, for some thinkers, to ask whether Time itself was the deeper reality behind both contestants.

The stimulus for that question lay in the Gathas themselves. A famous verse (Yasna 30.3) speaks of the two primal Spirits as "twins". If the good and evil Spirits were twins, who was their parent? Orthodox exegesis answered that they were twins only in the sense of being a pair, and that Ahura Mazda is not the father of evil. Zurvanism answered that their father was Time.

The Myth of Zurvan and His Twin Sons§

The fullest version of the Zurvanite myth is given by the Armenian churchman Eznik of Kolb in his fifth-century treatise against false doctrines. Before anything existed, Eznik reports, Zurvan alone existed. For a thousand years he offered sacrifice so that a son might be born to him who would create heaven and earth. At the end of that time he began to doubt whether his sacrifice would bear fruit. From the sacrifice Ohrmazd was conceived; from the doubt, Ahriman.

Zurvan, knowing that two sons were in the womb, vowed that whichever came to him first would be made king. Ohrmazd perceived this and revealed it to his brother, and Ahriman at once tore his way out and presented himself. When Zurvan asked who he was, Ahriman answered that he was his son; Zurvan replied that his son would be fragrant and full of light, whereas this one was dark and foul-smelling. Then Ohrmazd was born, bright and fragrant, and Zurvan recognised him and gave him the bundle of sacred twigs (barsom) with which he himself had sacrificed, making him priest. Bound by his vow, however, Zurvan granted Ahriman a kingdom of nine thousand years, after which Ohrmazd would reign and accomplish all he wished.

Eznik tells the story to mock it: a god who doubts, who cannot foresee, and who is trapped by his own oath. Yet the myth is not crude. It explains why a good creator faces an enemy of near-equal power, why evil has a fixed term, and why the world must pass through an age of mixture before its renewal — the themes traced in Ahura Mazda and Ahriman and Zoroastrian eschatology. It also places the origin of evil in a moment of doubt within the divine, an idea that later readers have compared with Gnostic myths of a fault in the higher world.

Witnesses from Greece, Armenia and Syria§

The earliest possible witness is Greek. Eudemus of Rhodes, a pupil of Aristotle in the fourth century BCE, wrote that the Magi and the "Aryan" peoples called the original undivided whole either Space or Time, from which a good god and an evil daemon, or light and darkness, were separated. His report survives only as a quotation in the sixth-century Neoplatonist Damascius, and how far it reflects a developed Zurvan theology is disputed, but it shows that Greek observers already associated the Magi with speculation about a principle prior to the two opposing powers. On Greek images of the Magi see the Magi: priests of ancient Persia.

Most of the evidence comes from the Christian East, where Zoroastrianism was the religion of the Persian state. Besides Eznik, the Armenian historian Elishe preserves what he presents as an edict of Mihr Narseh, chief minister of Yazdegerd II, sent to the Armenians in the mid-fifth century to urge them to return to the Iranian religion; it opens by stating that before heaven and earth existed, the great god Zurvan offered sacrifice and begot Ohrmazd and Satan. Syriac writers, notably the eighth-century Theodore bar Konai in his Book of Scholia, give further versions of the myth.

These sources are polemical and written from outside, but their agreement suggests that a Zurvanite account of origins was current in the Sasanian court and among at least part of the clergy in the fifth century.

Zurvan in the Sasanian Empire§

The Sasanian dynasty (224–651 CE) made Zoroastrianism the religion of the state, and the history of that church is told in Kartir and the Sasanian Zoroastrian church. The place of Zurvan within it is uncertain. Some names point to devotion to Time: one of Mihr Narseh's sons, for example, was called Zurvandad, "given by Zurvan". The Manichaean evidence is also telling. When the prophet Mani presented his teaching to King Shapur I in Middle Persian, he called his supreme deity, the Father of Greatness, by the name Zurvan, and Ohrmazd became the name of the First Man who fights the darkness. Mani evidently expected the name to be intelligible and acceptable at court (see Mani, prophet of light).

On the other hand, the surviving Zoroastrian books, written down mostly in the ninth and tenth centuries by priests of the orthodox tradition, never tell the myth of the twin sons and implicitly reject it. The Bundahishn opens with Ohrmazd in endless light and Ahriman in endless darkness, two independent principles, and makes Time a creation or instrument of Ohrmazd rather than his father. Some passages of the Denkard attack those who say that good and evil have a common origin, a teaching orthodox priests regarded as making God the author of evil. On these texts see the Bundahishn and Pahlavi literature.

Roman Mithraism has sometimes been brought into the story. Franz Cumont identified the lion-headed, snake-entwined figure found in some mithraea with Zurvan or with the Greek Aion, "Eternity". Most specialists now regard that identification as unproven, and the figure's meaning remains open (see Mithra and Mithraism).

Fate, Time and the Spirit of Wisdom§

Apart from the myth of the twins, the word "Zurvanism" is also used for a broader tendency to stress Time as fate. The Pahlavi Menog i Khrad ("Spirit of Wisdom") contains passages teaching that all things happen through fate and Time, while also insisting on human effort and the reward of good deeds. A later Zoroastrian text in New Persian, known as the Ulama-yi Islam ("the doctors of Islam"), presents a Zoroastrian priest explaining to Muslim scholars that Time is greater than both creations and that everything comes from Time. These works show that speculation about Time as the ground of being survived within the Zoroastrian community long after the Arab conquest, even if it was never the dominant theology of the priests.

Such ideas sat in tension with the strongly ethical voluntarism of the Gathas, in which each person chooses between Truth and the Lie and is judged by that choice. Fatalism, critics within the tradition argued, undermines responsibility.

Heresy, Sect or Myth? Zurvanism in Modern Scholarship§

European interest in Zurvan began with an error. When Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron published the first European translation of the Avesta in 1771, his rendering of Zurvan akarana as "Time without bounds" and the prominence he gave it encouraged some readers to treat it as the supreme being of the Persians, superior to Ormazd and Ahriman. This image of an impersonal Absolute behind the two opposing powers circulated in Romantic and later esoteric writing long after specialists had corrected it.

In the twentieth century the question became a scholarly battleground. The Swedish scholar H. S. Nyberg argued that Zurvanism represented the religion of the western Magi, and R. C. Zaehner, in Zurvan: A Zoroastrian Dilemma (1955) and The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism (1961), portrayed Sasanian religious history as a contest between Zurvanite and orthodox dualist parties, with Zurvanism at times favoured by the kings. Mary Boyce rejected the idea of a separate church. For her, Zurvanism was a widespread speculative movement, perhaps of Babylonian inspiration, within a single Zoroastrian community that shared the same rituals, priests and calendar; there were no Zurvanite temples or rites.

Shaul Shaked went further, arguing in Dualism in Transformation that "Zurvanism" is largely a modern construct: the myth of Zurvan was one of several ways in which Sasanian Zoroastrians spoke about cosmic origins, compatible with ordinary practice, and the idea of an organised sect is not supported by the sources. Most scholars today would agree that Zurvanite ideas were real and influential, especially in the fifth century, but that the evidence does not show a distinct religion with its own institutions.

Frequently asked questions§

Who is Zurvan?§

Zurvan is the Iranian personification of Time, especially infinite or boundless Time (Zurvan akarana). In the Avesta he is a minor being, but in Zurvanite myth he becomes the primordial god who fathers both Ohrmazd and Ahriman.

Is Zurvanism a separate religion from Zoroastrianism?§

Most scholars think not. Zurvanite ideas circulated within the Zoroastrianism of the Sasanian period, but there is no evidence for separate Zurvanite temples, priests or rituals. Whether it should be called a heresy, a school or simply a myth is debated.

Why did orthodox Zoroastrians reject the Zurvan myth?§

Because it gives good and evil a common father, which seemed to make God responsible for evil. Orthodox Zoroastrian theology holds that Ohrmazd is wholly good and that Ahriman is an independent adversary, not his brother.

Is the lion-headed figure of Mithraism Zurvan?§

Franz Cumont proposed that identification, but it is not supported by any inscription naming Zurvan, and most specialists now leave the figure's identity open. Some prefer to call it Aion or simply the lion-headed god.

Sources and further reading§