The Gathas and the Oldest Layer of the Avesta
The Gathas are not only the oldest texts of the Zoroastrian tradition but also the poetic core through which we can come closest to Zarathustra’s thought. Preserved within the Yasna, the liturgical section of the Avesta, these texts are composed in an archaic language known as Old Avestan or Gathic. Seventeen hymns are grouped into five sections according to their metrical features: Yasna 28–34, 43–46, 47–50, 51, and 53. The Yasna Haptanghaiti, placed among them, is also written in Old Avestan but in prose and does not belong to the five poetic groups of the Gathas. This distinction is fundamental for separating the Gathas from the Avesta as a whole and from later Zoroastrian texts.
Because the date of Zarathustra’s life cannot be determined with certainty, it is impossible to assign an exact year to the Gathas. Their linguistic characteristics place them before the Younger Avestan texts, yet the location of Zarathustra within the broad period extending from the middle of the second millennium BCE to the emergence of the Achaemenid Empire remains debated. This uncertainty does not diminish the historical value of the texts. On the contrary, the Gathas carry not the completed doctrine of a religion that would later become institutionalized, but the tensions of a thought still in formation.
The Gathas are neither a legal code, a systematic confession of faith, nor a mythological narrative recounting the genealogy of the gods. Prayer, supplication, questioning, counsel, polemic, and poetic thought merge within the same discourse. Zarathustra sometimes addresses Ahura Mazda, sometimes turns toward the community listening to him, and at other times confronts the religious and political forces opposing him. The voice of the text is therefore not merely that of a prophet announcing revelation; it is also the voice of a poet-priest who seeks to understand, asks questions, persuades, and calls others to take a position within the conflicts of his own time.
Zarathustra’s Own Voice
One of the distinctive features of the Gathas is that Zarathustra appears in the text not as an abstract legendary figure but as a speaking human being. He names himself, laments his isolation, asks for help, seeks protection, and confronts those who reject his teaching. The world of cattle, pastures, families, communities, and tribal leaders provides the everyday and historical ground of the teaching. Zarathustra’s thought does not arise as a cosmology detached from social life; it responds to the effects of violence, falsehood, bad government, and religious authority upon life.
In Yasna 29, the soul of the cow appeals to the creative powers because of the violence and plunder inflicted upon it. It asks who will protect it. The answer points not to a powerful warrior but to Zarathustra, the bearer of speech. Yet the soul of the cow is not immediately pleased with this answer; it complains that the person appointed to protect it is an ineffective speaker. Here it becomes clear that Zarathustra’s task is not to exercise force but to transform right speech into a social power. The poet’s word is not merely a sacred formula uttered during worship; it is the beginning of a new order capable of protecting life against violence.
The questions Zarathustra directs toward Ahura Mazda are likewise more than the transmission of ready-made answers. Throughout Yasna 44, he asks who holds the earth and sky in place, who created the waters and plants, and who orders light and darkness. Rather than constructing a creation narrative, these questions investigate the relationship between the order of being and the source of wisdom. Zarathustra thinks Ahura Mazda by looking at the world, yet he does not move from visible beings toward a simple representation of a god. The order of the cosmos cannot be separated from the human obligation to live rightly. Asking how heaven and earth are ordered becomes inseparable from asking according to what measure human life should be formed.
For this reason, the language of the Gathas is not an easy and direct language of doctrine. Wordplay, meter, repetition, polysemous concepts, and dense syntax have led to different translations of the hymns. Reducing Zarathustra’s words to a few moral maxims removes the religious and intellectual complexity of the poems. In the Gathas, doctrine is not presented as straightforward explanation; it is constructed through questions, calls, rhythm, and oppositions.
Ahura Mazda and the Call of Wisdom
The name Ahura Mazda is generally rendered as “Wise Lord.” Yet in the Gathas, Ahura Mazda is not merely the name of the most powerful god. He is conceived as the center of knowledge, right judgment, good order, and creative activity. Zarathustra does not simply submit to him; he asks him to teach, explain, and grant the power to distinguish what is right. The relationship between the human and the divine therefore carries the character of a learning relation directed toward wisdom rather than obedience founded upon fear.
Around Ahura Mazda appear concepts such as Good Thought, Aša, devotion, good dominion, wholeness, and immortality. In later Zoroastrian tradition, these would be systematized more clearly as divine beings. In the Gathas, however, the boundaries among quality, principle, power, and divine being are not yet fixed. Good Thought may express both the human capacity to grasp what is right and an active reality that enables approach to Ahura Mazda. Aša may encompass cosmic order, right speech, just action, and the proper form of worship.
This structure makes it difficult to classify the Gathas simply as monotheistic or polytheistic. Ahura Mazda is unquestionably central, but his wisdom is not a sovereignty abstracted from the sacred qualities surrounding him. Divine order enters human life through good thought, right speech, and appropriate action. Ahura Mazda’s superiority arises not from arbitrary power but from being the source of wisdom and truth.
Zarathustra’s faith therefore does not consist merely in accepting that Ahura Mazda exists. The central issue is participation in his order through thought and action. Human beings do not remain passive before divine will; they take part in the realization of goodness in the world. Turning toward Ahura Mazda does not mean abandoning one’s judgment but refining it and exercising it under responsibility.
Choice and Moral Responsibility
One of the strongest innovations of the Gathas in intellectual history is the weight they give to human choice. In Yasna 30, Zarathustra calls upon his listeners to hear the best words with their ears, examine them with clear thought, and make their decisions for themselves. He addresses not only an elite priestly community but every human being who must decide. Truth is not an inheritance to be accepted because of the authority of tradition, but a way of life to be chosen through reflection.
This choice is not a neutral preference among independent belief options. Through thought, speech, and action, the human being participates in determining the direction in which life will proceed. The structure that would later be condensed in Zoroastrian tradition into the formula “good thought, good speech, good action” continually reappears in different poetic forms throughout the Gathas. Thought does not remain inward; it is expressed in speech and enters the world through action. Action, in turn, is not merely external behavior; it carries the quality of the thought and speech that produced it.
Human choice does not determine only the individual’s own spiritual future. Home, family, community, country, animals, and the earth are affected by its consequences. A person who follows falsehood does not merely commit a personal sin; they damage the shared order of life. The person who chooses what is right does not merely seek personal salvation; they contribute to the establishment of good government, peace, and a livable world.
The Gathas contain the idea of reward and punishment, but moral order is not reduced to an arbitrary recompense imposed from outside. A person’s own action carries them toward good or bad existence. Through thought, speech, and conduct, the individual prepares their own future. Divine judgment reveals the connection between the choice made and its consequence. Responsibility therefore begins, before obedience to a divine command, with knowing in what one participates.
At this point, Zarathustra’s teaching does not place all responsibility for evil upon gods or fate. Human beings possess the capacity to distinguish the paths before them and adopt one of them. Wrong choice may arise from ignorance, deception, bad thought, or self-interest, but the person’s share in action does not disappear. In the world of the Gathas, morality is not an abstract set of rules standing outside the human being but an active decision that determines the direction of existence.
Transformation within Ritual
It would be inaccurate to interpret Zarathustra’s teaching as a simple transition from ritual to morality. Zarathustra is a priest, and the Gathas are hymns preserved within the Yasna ritual. Prayer, sacrifice, sacred speech, fire, and offering do not stand outside his religious world. The real transformation appears in the redefinition of the value of ritual.
An act of worship is not considered to accord with truth merely because it has been performed correctly in formal terms. The thought that motivates it, the words spoken, and the actions it produces must also be right. Religious officials opposed by Zarathustra may use sacred forms while still directing people toward bad thought, violence, and falsehood. Religious authority thus ceases to function as a guarantee of truth in itself. Ritual acquires value insofar as it protects life and serves the right order.
The Gathas contain harsh criticisms of certain religious groups, bad rulers, and violent practices. Yet the full historical details of these polemics are not known with certainty. It is likewise impossible to say that Zarathustra completely rejected the Haoma cult or abolished every form of sacrifice. His fundamental objection is directed toward worship that legitimizes falsehood and serves the destruction of living beings.
In this respect, the Gathas carry religious truth from the flawless performance of ceremony into the whole of human existence. The person who prays cannot be separated from the person who acts. If the mouth that speaks sacred words serves falsehood in everyday life, the meaning of worship becomes corrupted. One of the strongest gifts Zarathustra can offer to Ahura Mazda is the dedication of his own life, good thought, speech, and action to the right order. At the end of Yasna 33, this dedication is expressed explicitly: Zarathustra offers his body and life, together with thought, speech, and action, to Ahura Mazda and Aša.
Participating in the Future of the World
The aim toward which the Gathas are directed is not merely to remove human beings from a corrupted world and carry them into an immutable realm of holiness. Zarathustra seeks the transformation of the lived world. In Yasna 30, he expresses the wish to be among those who, through the wisdom of Ahura Mazda, will renew existence. The human being is not a spectator waiting for the completion of the world, but an agent participating in the future of goodness.
In later Zoroastrian tradition, this idea would develop into a detailed doctrine of cosmic renewal. In the Gathas, however, the fundamental orientation is simpler: the world can become better through right human thought and action. Goodness is not merely an ancient order to be preserved; it is a possibility that must be realized. Truth ceases to be a static law inherited from the past and becomes an active measure that constructs the future.
The social dimension of Zarathustra’s teaching becomes clear here. Good dominion, peaceful settlement, protection of animals, truthful speech, just distribution, and wise government are not separate concerns. All depend upon ordering life in the same direction. No sharp distinction is established between cosmic order and political order, worship and daily labor, spiritual choice and social consequence.
Salvation, likewise, is not merely the fate of the individual soul after death. The task of the human being is to participate in saving the world in which they live from the effects of falsehood, violence, and bad government. The order of Ahura Mazda does not realize itself automatically; it enters historical life through those who choose it and transform it into action. Zarathustra’s call is therefore religious, ethical, and social at once.
The Historical Limits of the Gathas
One of the most important conditions for understanding the Gathas is not to project all the concepts of later Zoroastrian doctrine backward into these poems. The detailed periods of creation found in Middle Persian texts, the cosmic struggle between Ohrmazd and Ahriman, classes of angels and demons, the geography of the afterlife, and systematic narratives concerning the end of the world do not appear in the Gathas with the same clarity.
This does not mean that later tradition is completely disconnected from the Gathas. Many later teachings expanded conceptual cores already present in these hymns. Yet the core must not be confused with the completed system. The Gathas are poems in which concepts whose boundaries are not yet fixed remain in motion. The superiority of Ahura Mazda, the opposition between good and bad orientations, human choice, the consequences of action, and the renewal of the world are all present, but the full theological forms they would acquire in later centuries have not yet been established.
The strength of the Gathas lies precisely in this incompleteness. The reader encounters not a closed system of dogma but a voice that calls for thought. Zarathustra asks questions as much as he announces answers; he seeks to learn from Ahura Mazda as much as he approaches him; he calls the community not only to believe but also to listen, distinguish, and decide.
Conclusion
The Gathas carry the beginning of the Zoroastrian tradition not only historically but intellectually. In these hymns, religion is not merely a matter of rituals offered to the gods; it is an existential decision that brings human thought, speech, and action into the same direction. Turning toward Ahura Mazda means not surrendering to an unknown power but seeking the measure of wisdom and bringing that measure into life.
Zarathustra does not place the human being inside a world that is already complete. He confronts humanity with responsibility for a world still unfinished. While violence, deception, and bad government damage life, right thought, right speech, and good action can rebuild it. The human being must decide through their own judgment which side they will join, yet the consequences of that choice do not belong to the individual alone.
The enduring question of the Gathas emerges here: will the human being be content merely to know truth, or will they participate in its realization in the world? Zarathustra’s answer closes the distance between thought and action. Truth is not merely the correct statement spoken aloud; it is the order chosen in thought, assumed through speech, and placed into the world through action.
