Posted by Ginny Tosken [GinnyT] on April 03, 1999 at 15:43:27 {Ed9c7782HM7fLSrSG9icFbqv3I7Em.}:
I saw this article in today's New York Times and thought it might be of interest to some here, given the recent posts about Krishna, Christ, and comparative mythology.
I will copy the first few paragraphs and post the address for the site. These newspaper articles disappear quickly, so don't be surprised if the link doesn't work after today.
Ginny
Apocalypse? Now? It depends who you're talking to. One in four Christians believes that Jesus will return in their lifetime, an Associated Press poll reported in 1997. The idea that the apocalypse and the coming of Jesus will occur on Jan. 1, 2000 is derived -- imperfectly, perhaps -- from the Bible, which nowhere gives an exact date for the event.
But Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Zoroastrians also have ideas about end of the world. Ancient Greeks, Egyptians and American Indians all had apocalyptic beliefs.
Some scholars say that Zoroastrianism, founded by the Iranian prophet Zarathustra (or Zoroaster, as the Greeks called him) around 1300 B.C., laid the foundation for Judeo-Christian teachings about the apocalypse. Zoroastrians "taught that the world has a beginning and an end and forms the field of a cosmic battle between good and evil," between Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom, and Ahriman, who is wicked, said James Russell, a professor at Harvard University.
Zoroaster never specified a date for the world's end. But "he suggested it would
end with the coming of a savior; and that the world would then be cleansed of death and wickedness and people would rise from the dead," Russell said.