lexicon interpretations and definitions ( part 1 )

Bahaismiran:

Assyrians: Members of an ancient Semitic race forming the Assyrian nation. The Semitic language was spoken by them.

Anarchism: A political theory holding all forms of government authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals.

Animism: A doctrine that the soul is the vital principle of organic development. It is also the attribution of conscious life to nature or natural objects, this theological doctrine is widespread in most parts of African continent. This belief that perhaps all appearances, but certainly living appearances, are animated by spirit (are made by an anima, Lat., “spirit”). Tylor introduced the term as of his explanation of the origin of religions, and for decades his view dominated the anthropology of religion. Now, at most, animism would be, either a recognition of soul-beliefs in particular societies, or a casual synonym for pre-literate societies and their religions.

Zoroastrianism: a Persian religion founded in the 6^th century B.C. by the prophet Zoroaster, promulgated in the Avesta, and characterized by worship of a supreme god Ahura Mazda who require men’s good deeds for help in his cosmic struggle against the evil spirit-Ahriman. This is the religion of the followers of the prophet known in the West as Zoroaster (Zarathustra to his followers). However, by the 7^th century. BCE, his teaching had spread across the Iran plateau, and when Cyrus the Great became the official state religion and so hold sway from N. India to Greece and Egypt.

In the 3^rd cen. There was a revolt when the Sasanians from the SW of the country, Persia proper, overthrew the Parthian northerners. They legitimated their rebellion by presenting their rule as a reassertion of Zoroastrian power, publicity which has affected generations of W. scholars (e.g.R.c.Zaehner’s Dawn and Twilight (ahl-al-kitab), though in Islamic times the Avesta had emerged as the holy text of the religion. Ever-increasing Muslim oppression forced the diminishing number of Zoroastrians to retreat from the big cities near trade routes to the desert cities of Yazd and Kerman and their neighboring villages. In the 10^th cent. , a band of Zoroastrians left the homeland to seek a new land of religious freedom, and settled in India where they are known as the Parsia or the people from Pars (Parsia).

Sai Baba: Hindu spiritual guide and miracle (siddha/iddhi) worker. He died in 1918, and was recognized as one who had direct experience of reality and truth-so much so that many regard him as a manifestation (avatara) of God. He is known as Sai Baba of Shirdi to differentiate him from the following. Sai Baba (b. 1926) of the asrama Prasanti Nilayam who is believed by his followers (now worldwide to be reincarnation of the first Sai Baba. He too is well-known for his miraculous powers.

Mandeans: (from manda, “knowledge”). Religious group in S. Iraq and the only representative of Gnosticism. Important in an extensive literature are Ginza Raba (Great Treasure) the Baptist in Mandens were descendants of John’s own disciples. In their own estimate, their religion is much older. They have a hierarchy of Malki (king), Reesh Amma (leading people), GAnzebra and Termithy (supplying priests). They are strongly pacifist, and believe in redemption being effected by a series of messengers beginning with one known as “Gnosis of life”. They may be the Sabeans mentioned in the Quran and today are called by Muslim Subbas.

Manichaeism: religion founded by Mani in 3^rd-cent.Iran and later very widely established. Mani was born in 216 near Seleucia-ktesiphon, the Iranian capital. At the age of 12 he had his first vision of his heavenly twin (identified later with the Paracelete), who instructed him. Thereafter he disputed with the community, and after a second vision, calling him to be an “apostle” he separated from them, with his father and two disciples, sometimes after the age of 25. Mani’s later life is not well-known. After preaching in India he returned to Iran c.242 where his patron was the new Sassanid ruler Shapur 1. His religion prosered until the accession of Bahram1 (274-7), who at the instigation of Kartir imprisoned and executed him at 276.

Although suppressed in Persia, Manichaeism spread west and east. In central Asia it had more lasting success, even being made the state religion of the Turkish Uigur Empire in 762. It also reached China in 694 where, known as the religion of light’, it seems to have persisted, in spite of official opposition at various periods, almost down to modern times.

Mani’s teaching was fundamentally gnostic and dualistic, position an opposition between God and matter. There was an elaborate cosmological myth: this included the defeat of a primal man by the powers of darkness, who devoured and thus imprisoned particles of light. The cosmic process of salvation goes on as the light is delivered back to its original state. Saving knowledge of this process comes through apostles of light’, among whom Mani, a self-conscious syncretist, included various biblical figures, Buddha, Zoroaster, and Jesus. He himself was the final one.

The Manichaean ‘church’ was divided into the ‘elect’ (or ‘righteous’) and ‘auditors’ (‘hearers’). The burden of Manichaean ethics, to do nothing to impede the reassembly of particles of light, was on the elect. Obviously the elect, not even able to harvest their own vegetables, could only survive with the support of the auditors. These could apparently lead quite unrestricted lives. The calendar contained one major festival, the Bema feast on the anniversary of Mani’s ‘passion’. Fasting was enjoyed on two days each week, plus a whole month before the Bema feast.