The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest living religions. It is widely considered by scholars to have had a profound impact on the religious history of the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and the development of the field of comparative religions. This book represents the first comprehensive English-language survey of Zoroastrianism ever published. With contributions from 33 international scholars from 10 countries, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism is evenly divided into six thematic sections, containing discussion of Zoroaster/Zarathustra, historical and regional surveys, topical and thematic discussions, analyses of the intersection of Zoroastrianism and nine other religions and cultures, and concluding with a survey of primary sources. Reflecting the current trend in the study of religion to move away from purely textualist and essentialist views of religious traditions, the Companion presents Zoroastrianism as a cluster of dynamic historical and contextualized phenomena. This accessible and interdisciplinary handbook of Zoroastrian studies will be essential reading for anyone interested in better understanding one of the world's oldest and most influential religions.Michael Stausberg is a Professor of Religion at the University of Bergen and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. His books in English include Religion and Tourism: Crossroads, Destinations, and Encounters (2011) and Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism (2008), and he is the editor or co-editor of Defining Magic (2013), The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religions (2011), Contemporary Theories of Religion (2009), and Theorizing Rituals (2 vols., 2006-2007). Dr. Stausberg has also published widely on Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism in German; he is co-editor of the international journal Religion. Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina is a Lecturer in Religious Studies at Stanford University. After completing his PhD in 2007 at Harvard University, he served as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Undergraduate Core Curriculum and as the Lecturer on Old Iranian in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Dr. Vevaina is the author of several articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, and in 2010 he received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, USA. He is currently completing a book project on Zoroastrian hermeneutics in Late Antiquity.