Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism

When Zarathustra lived is disputed: he has been placed in the second millennium BCE and in the centuries close to Cyrus. In his hymns, the Gathas, the world rests on the choice between truth and the lie, and over all stands Ahura Mazda, the wise lord, opposed by a spirit of evil. The teaching speaks of judgement after death, of the resurrection of the dead and the final victory of good; the fire in the sanctuaries is a sign of purity, not a deity. Under the Achaemenids and then the Sasanians, Zoroastrianism becomes the faith of the Persian kings, and in the age of the Second Temple its images stand alongside Jewish ones.