from viren's link:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Weâve seen in the previous chapter that the ancient Persians (or
Iranians) produced a leftist, world-saving, politico-religious
movement: Zoroastrianism. And weâve seen how many
dramatic similarities there are between Zoroastrianism and
Judaism. Since, as I will show later, it was the ancient Persians
who sponsored Judaism as an even more radical egalitarian and
ethical mass-liberation movement, the point of understanding
where the Persians came from is to get a sense for the ultimate
provenance of Jewish ideas.
The evidence supports the view that the ancient Iranians
were a development of ancient Indian culture, emerging into
their own as a result of population movements out of the Indian
subcontinent, where civilization began.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
the alacrity with which the author has integrated the frawley, elst, and rajaram paradigms into his "jewish history" agenda is v astonishing, although he is correct on almost all of his assessments.
however, the account given above of zoroastrianism as a "leftist" movement is very similar to how the westerners have viewed buddha as an egalitarian, positivist, (iconoclast, and essentializing) "philosopher" (see Buddhism vis-a-vis Hinduism1 for a refutation of this view by ram swarup). the problem is that zoroastrianism and buddhism did not produce the same type of semitic error when migrating to east asia; that is, the semitic error resulted only from zoroastrian and buddhist interaction in the near east (or in spartan authoritarian greece, later subsumed under rome, as the author would have it)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Weâve seen in the previous chapter that the ancient Persians (or
Iranians) produced a leftist, world-saving, politico-religious
movement: Zoroastrianism. And weâve seen how many
dramatic similarities there are between Zoroastrianism and
Judaism. Since, as I will show later, it was the ancient Persians
who sponsored Judaism as an even more radical egalitarian and
ethical mass-liberation movement, the point of understanding
where the Persians came from is to get a sense for the ultimate
provenance of Jewish ideas.
The evidence supports the view that the ancient Iranians
were a development of ancient Indian culture, emerging into
their own as a result of population movements out of the Indian
subcontinent, where civilization began.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
the alacrity with which the author has integrated the frawley, elst, and rajaram paradigms into his "jewish history" agenda is v astonishing, although he is correct on almost all of his assessments.
however, the account given above of zoroastrianism as a "leftist" movement is very similar to how the westerners have viewed buddha as an egalitarian, positivist, (iconoclast, and essentializing) "philosopher" (see Buddhism vis-a-vis Hinduism1 for a refutation of this view by ram swarup). the problem is that zoroastrianism and buddhism did not produce the same type of semitic error when migrating to east asia; that is, the semitic error resulted only from zoroastrian and buddhist interaction in the near east (or in spartan authoritarian greece, later subsumed under rome, as the author would have it)