Sacred Text · The Avesta

The world's two first spirits

Ushtavaiti Gatha · Yasna 45.2 · L. H. Mills

“Yea, I will declare the world's two first spirits, of whom the more bountiful thus spake to the harmful: Neither our thoughts, nor commands, nor our understandings, nor our beliefs, nor our deeds, nor our consciences, nor our souls, are at one.”
Yasna 45.2 (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

Zarathushtra declares the world’s two first spirits, and marks how utterly the more bountiful and the harmful are unlike in thought, word, and deed. Scripture too draws a sharp line between light and darkness, and calls us to walk as children of light (Ephesians 5:8-9). Yet the Gospel holds that these are not two equal and eternal powers; there is one holy God, and the darkness has no rival to his throne, for in him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5).

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