Sacred Text · The Avesta

Who sustains the earth

Ushtavaiti Gatha · Yasna 44.4 · L. H. Mills

“This I ask Thee, O Ahura! tell me aright, who from beneath hath sustained the earth and the clouds above that they do not fall? Who made the waters and the plants? Who to the wind has yoked on the storm-clouds, the swift and fleetest two? Who, O Great Creator! is the inspirer of the good thoughts (within our souls)?”
Yasna 44.4 (Ushtavaiti Gatha) · L. H. Mills, SBE XXXI

Translation: Lawrence H. Mills (1887), The Zend-Avesta, Part III (The Yasna, Visparad, Afrinagan, Gahs and Miscellaneous Fragments), Sacred Books of the East vol. XXXI, public domain, via the Internet Archive (item zendavesta03darm). Reproduced in context; Mills’ round and square brackets are his own clarifying insertions, and embedded footnote marks in the scanned text were removed. Chapter and verse follow the standard Yasna numbering.

Christian comparison

How this connects to Jesus

Who upholds the earth below and the clouds above that they do not fall, who made the waters and the plants? Zarathushtra confesses one Lord behind the whole ordered world. The New Testament says the very same of Christ: in him all things were created, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:16-17). Where the Gathas praise the one Wise Lord who sustains creation, Christians confess that this sustaining Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Explore: One Lord, the CreatorWhy Jesus?Read the Gospel

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