Dr. Mills. Having already shown himself by his
translations a most competent authority on the subject, he in 1894
called attention, in a review widely read, to "the now undoubted
and long since suspected fact that it pleased the Divine Power to
reveal some of the important articles of our Catholic creed first
to the Zoroastrians, and through their literature to the Jews and
ourselves." Among these beliefs Dr. Mills traced out very
conclusively many Jewish doctrines regarding the attributes of God,
and all, virtually, regarding the attributes of Satan.
There, too, he found accounts of the Miraculous Conception, Virgin
Birth, and Temptation of Zoroaster, As to the last, Dr. Mills
presented a series of striking coincidences with our own later
account. As to its main features, he showed that there had been
developed among the Persians, many centuries before the Christian
era, the legend of a vain effort of the arch-demon, one seat of
whose power was the summit of Mount Arezura, to tempt Zoroaster to
worship him,--of an argument between tempter and tempted,--and of
Zoroaster's refusal; and the doctor continued: "No Persian subject
in the streets of Jerusalem, soon after or long after the Return,
could have failed to know this striking myth.
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