Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Blaðsíða 148

I42 LE NORD
valuable to the understanding of central problems of the old
Iranian religion.
In H. S. Nyberg Sweden has a scholar who, in addition to
his important work in the sphere of the Semitic languages, has
devoted much of his exceptional energy to the solution of Iranian
questions. Not the least useful of his books is his admirable “Hilfs-
buch des Pehlevi,” which removes many stumbling-blocks from
the path of the student of this language, the notation of which
is such a deterrent to the beginner and fraught with so many
puzzles even to the advanced specialist. But Pahlavi literature
is not only a necessary means for the interpretation of the Avesta,
it has also acquired an increasing importance for the light it
sheds on the movement of ideas in the Near East in general
during the centuries which preceded the rise of Islam. Several
problems related to the history of these ideas have been taken
up by Nyberg and examined in the light of his intimate knowledge
of the civilizations and religions of the neighbouring peoples of
Iran.
Nyberg’s greatest contribution to Iranian research is, how-
ever, his “Irans forntida religioner” (The Ancient Religions of
Iran) (1937), also available in a German translation. In this book
he argues against the conception of Zarathustra as a liberal
reformer of humane views and interested in agriculture. Accord-
ing to Nyberg, whose account bears the stamp of his sociological
outlook, Zarathustra was not mainly a reformer, but a conserver
of existing religious ideas. He lived among an Eastern Iranian
tribe of cattle-breeders as its priest and “ecstatic,” occupied with
dervish dances and ordeals. In the religion of the tribe Ahura
Mazdah w^s the omniscient Heaven God, but he stood apart
from the struggle between the good and the bad Twin Spirits,
which had both of them emanated from him. He was thus a
typical “deus otiosus,” in the traditional sense of the word.
Besides him, there were a number of subordinate divinities,
who, in spite of their abstract names, really represented col-
lective tribal functions. In this religious community there had
now appeared a new doctrine, that of Mithraism, which involved
the sacrificial slaughter of oxen. In his attempt to defend the
tribal cattle, “the soul of the bull,” against slaughter, and in his
championship of the old faith generally, Zarathustra was forced
to see this faith in a new light. He went through a religious
crisis, and the old faith acquired a new meaning for him. It