Zurvanism

Zurvanism was a fatalistic religious movement of Zoroastrianism in which the divinity Zurvan is a first principle (primordial creator deity) who engendered equal-but-opposite twins, Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu. Zurvanism is also known as "Zurvanite Zoroastrianism", and may be contrasted with Mazdaism.

In Zurvanism, Zurvan was perceived as the god of infinite time and space and also known as "one" or "alone." Zurvan was portrayed as a transcendental and neutral god without passion; one for whom there was no distinction between good and evil. The name Zurvan is a normalized rendition of the word, which in Middle Persian appears as either Zurvān, Zruvān or Zarvān. The Middle Persian name derives from Avestan (Avestan: 𐬰𐬭𐬎𐬎𐬁𐬥, romanized: zruuān, lit. 'time', a grammatically neuter noun).

Although the details of the origin and development of Zurvanism remain murky (for a summary of the three opposing opinions see § Ascent and acceptance below), it is generally accepted that Zurvanism was:

Zurvanism enjoyed royal sanction during the Sasanian Empire (226–651 CE) but no traces of it remain beyond the 10th century. Although Sasanian-era Zurvanism was certainly influenced by Hellenic philosophy, any relationship between it and the Greek divinity of Chronos "Time" has not been conclusively established. Non-Zoroastrian accounts of typically Zurvanite beliefs were the first traces of Zoroastrianism to reach the west, leading European scholars to conclude that Zoroastrianism was a monist religion, an issue of controversy among both scholars and contemporary practitioners of the faith.

The earliest evidence of the cult of Zurvan is found in the History of Theology, attributed to Eudemus of Rhodes (c. 370–300 BCE). As cited in Damascius's Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles (6th century CE), Eudemus describes a sect of the Medes that considered Space/Time to be the primordial "father" of the rivals Oromasdes "of light" and Arimanius "of darkness".

The principal evidence for Zurvanite doctrine occurs in the polemical Christian tracts of Armenian and Syriac writers of the Sasanian period (224–651 CE). Indigenous sources of information from the same period are the 3rd century Kartir inscription at Ka'ba-ye Zartosht and the early 4th-century edict of Mihr-Narseh, the mowbadān-mowbad or high priest under Yazdegerd I, the latter being the only native evidence from the Sasanian period that is frankly Zurvanite. The post-Sasanian Zoroastrian Middle Persian commentaries are primarily Mazdean and with only one exception (the 10th century Denkard 9.30) do not mention Zurvan at all.

Of the remaining so-called Pahlavi books, only two, the Mēnōg-i Khrad and the Selections of Zādspram (both 9th century) reveal a Zurvanite tendency. The latter, in which the priest Zādspram chastises his brother's un-Mazdaean ideas, is the last text in Middle Persian that provides any evidence of the cult of Zurvan. The 13th century Zoroastrian Ulema-i Islam ([Response] to Doctors of Islam), a New Persian apologetic text, is unambiguously Zurvanite and is also the last direct evidence of Zurvan as a First Principle.

There is no hint of any worship of Zurvan in any of the texts of the Avesta, even though the texts (as they exist today) are the result of a Sasanian era redaction. Robert Charles Zaehner proposed that this is because the individual Sasanian monarchs were not always Zurvanite and that Mazdean Zoroastrianism just happened to have the upper hand during the crucial period that the canon was finally written down. In the texts composed prior to the Sasanian period, Zurvan appears twice, as both an abstract concept and as a minor divinity, but there is no evidence of a cult. In Yasna 72.10 Zurvan is invoked in the company of Space and Air (Vata-Vayu) and in Yasht 13.56, the plants grow in the manner Time has ordained according to the will of Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spentas. Two other references to Zurvan are also present in the Vendidad, but although these are late additions to the canon, they again do not establish any evidence of a cult. Zurvan does not appear in any listing of the Yazatas.