Persian mythology

Around like 330 BC, this guy named Alexander the Great, and you probably heard of him.

He was marching east through a region that the ancient world called Arachosia, and this is an old Persian province in the modern Kandahar region.

And this is really the first weird connection to this whole story.

Later sources describe a city called Alexandria in Arachosia, and they supposedly founded or refounded this city during Alexander's conquest.

Now, we can't say with certainty that Alexander the Great personally stood there and drew a line in the dirt and founded the city that became Kandahar.

But we can say that Alexander marched through this exact region and that later tradition permanently connected Arachosia and Kandahar with Alexander the Great.

Fun fact, there's even a claim that the name Kandahar itself is a worn down version of Ikshander, which is the Persian and Arabic f- version of Alexander.

Kandahar, Ikshander.

At the time of Confucius' birth, five celestial sages entered the house, whilst vocal and instrumental music filled the air.

Mithras, the Persian saviour, was visited by wise men called Magi at the time of his birth, and was presented by them with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

And the same story is told by Plato in relation to the birth of Socrates.

While it is claimed for all the world's saviours that they were born by virgins and begotten by God, genealogies of royal descent are traced for them through the husbands of their mothers in a most illogical manner.

Like the gods of antiquity, the Christ must also descend into hell, and perform wonders similar to those of the ancient heroes.

All the saviors of mankind had done so.

Zoroaster the Persian, Osiris the Egyptian, Balder the Scandinavian, Quetzalcoatl the Mexican, and Krishna the Hindu, while Ishtar voluntarily descended into the Assyrian inferno.

Having descended into hell, resurrection was necessary, for it was unreasonable that the savior of mankind, the son of the supreme God, should remain perpetually in the place of punishment, and as his life on earth was over, he could no longer abide there, and so the only plausible sequence was an ascension to heaven.

That is a great thickness, but is it quite as thick as the heads of the fools who believe it? Our belief is that hell is far nearer than the clergy teach.

Omar Khayyam, the grand old Persian poet, the large infidel as Tennyson calls him, wrote as follows, in the splendid rendering of Edward Fitzgerald.

I sent my soul through the invisible, some letter of that afterlife to spell, and by and by my soul returned to me, and answered, I myself am heaven and hell.

Hell, like heaven, is within us, and about us in the hearts of our fellow men.

They, as Alger says, quote, conceived of God as a pure artistic force or seed of universal energy, which exhibits its history in the evolution of the cosmos, and on its completion blossoms into fire and vanishes.

The universal periodical conflagration destroys all evil and leaves the indestructible God alone in his pure essence again, unquote.

The Persians entertained a similar conception, which more closely resembles the Christian doctrine.

Ahura Mazda creates all things good, and the race of men happy and immortal.