Judaism as a Destructive Religion
One, as that which broadens the world is the law of the Mazdaean religion [worshipers of the Supreme God, Ahura Mazda, i.e., Zoroastrian], and that which destroys the world is the law of the Jewish faith, the order of the [Iranian] rulers is pure and lawful, and their law is that of the Mazdaean religion, and it is necessary to abstain from the…
Another polemical response to Judaism appears in the Dēnkard, the largest collection of Middle Persian Zoroastrian traditions to have survived from late antiquity. This passage presents Judaism as the very opposite of Zoroastrianism, which the text associates with the “rulers,” presumably a reference to the Sasanians. The effort to caution Zoroastrians to keep their distance from Jewish law suggests the proximity of the two communities.
