How Christianity 'Stole' from Zoroastrianism
Before Jesus, there was Zoroaster — and more of your Bible than you think comes from him.
When Christians attacked Zoroastrianism in the 6th century, they weren’t confronting a strange or alien religion — they were clashing with the very faith that had already shaped their own. Long before Jesus, Zoroastrianism had laid out heaven and hell, angels and demons, a cosmic savior, and the final judgment.
Most Christians have never heard of Zoroastrianism, let alone studied it. But put the Bible next to the sacred texts of this ancient Persian faith, and the similarities jump out. Heaven and hell. Angels and demons. A final judgment. A messiah who defeats evil and brings eternal life. None of these ideas began with Christianity. They were fully formed in Zoroastrianism centuries before Jesus was born.
The truth is, Christianity didn’t appear out of thin air. It grew in a world where ideas were already circulating — and Zoroastrianism was one of the most influential sources. You don’t have to hate Christianity to see that. You just have to look at history without the Sunday school filter.
The Zoroastrian World
Zoroastrianism began in ancient Persia, possibly as far back as 1200 BCE, but most scholars date the prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) to somewhere between 1500 and 1000 BCE. It became the official religion of the Persian Empire long before Christianity existed.
Its core teaching is a cosmic battle between good and evil, led by two opposing forces: Ahura Mazda, the supreme god of light and truth, and Angra Mainyu, the spirit of chaos and destruction. Humans aren’t just spectators in this fight — they have a role to play in choosing good over evil.
If that sounds familiar, it should.
The Jewish Connection
So how did these Persian ideas make it into Christianity? Through Judaism.
In the 6th century BCE, the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah and sent many Jews into exile. Later, the Persians — under Cyrus the Great, a devoted Zoroastrian — conquered Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to their homeland. During that time under Persian rule, Jewish thought absorbed some Zoroastrian concepts that weren’t prominent in early Hebrew religion.
Before the exile, the Hebrew Bible talks about Sheol — a shadowy, neutral place where all the dead go. There’s no clear heaven or hell, no Satan ruling over fire, no final judgment. After the exile, you start seeing those ideas show up. By the time Christianity formed centuries later, they were central.
Heaven and Hell
Zoroastrianism had a very developed afterlife system. The soul crosses the Chinvat Bridge after death — if you’ve lived a righteous life, it widens and you pass into the “House of Song” (paradise). If you’ve lived wickedly, it narrows and you fall into the “House of Lies” (a place of punishment).
Compare that to Christianity’s heaven and hell. The names are different, but the idea of moral sorting after death is identical in structure. Early Judaism didn’t have this. It came in after contact with Persia.
Angels and Demons
Zoroastrianism had armies of divine beings — the Amesha Spentas (“Holy Immortals”) who served Ahura Mazda, and evil spirits (daevas) under Angra Mainyu. They acted as messengers, protectors, or tempters.
By the time Christianity emerged, angels and demons were a standard part of Jewish and Christian thinking. The Christian idea of Satan as a cosmic enemy leading an army of demons looks far more like Angra Mainyu than the Satan in the Hebrew Bible, who starts out as a sort of prosecutor in God’s court, not an independent evil power.
The Final Judgment
In Zoroastrian belief, history ends with a great battle between good and evil. A savior figure, the Saoshyant, is born of a virgin, defeats evil, raises the dead, and brings about the final judgment. The righteous live in a renewed, perfect world; the wicked are destroyed.
This should set off alarm bells. A messiah born of a virgin? Resurrection of the dead? Eternal paradise for the good? These concepts existed in Persian religion long before the Gospels were written.
The Virgin Birth
The Saoshyant’s virgin birth is one of the clearest overlaps. Zoroastrian tradition said he would be conceived by a maiden who bathes in a lake containing the preserved seed of Zoroaster. Christianity’s nativity story swaps the lake for the Holy Spirit, but the pattern is there: a divinely ordained savior with a supernatural conception.
A Cosmic Battle
Christianity’s New Testament — especially Revelation — is soaked in imagery of a final showdown between God’s forces and Satan’s armies. Zoroastrian texts like the Bundahishn have almost the same story arc: a climactic battle, the destruction of evil, resurrection of the dead, and a perfect world where death is gone forever.
It’s not plagiarism in the modern legal sense. It’s cultural borrowing. The Jewish people, and later early Christians, lived under Persian, Greek, and Roman empires. Ideas traveled. When people heard a story that made sense of suffering or promised justice, they remembered it — and sometimes they made it their own.
What the Scholars Say
Historians and religious scholars have been pointing out the Persian fingerprints on Judaism and Christianity for decades. Mary Boyce, one of the foremost authorities on Zoroastrianism, wrote that the religion had “a profound influence on the development of Judaism” during and after the Babylonian Exile, particularly in shaping beliefs about the afterlife, angels, demons, and the final judgment. She argued that the Jewish people, living under Persian rule for over 200 years, “could hardly remain uninfluenced by such a sophisticated, long-established creed.”
Biblical scholar Lester L. Grabbe, in his work on the Persian period, notes that Second Temple Judaism — the form of Judaism that eventually gave rise to Christianity — shows unmistakable signs of Persian influence, especially in apocalyptic literature. Books like Daniel, written after the exile, are full of cosmic battles, angelic messengers, and visions of a final judgment — elements that were almost absent in earlier Hebrew texts.
Scholar John R. Hinnells has documented how Zoroastrian dualism — the sharp divide between good and evil — seeped into Jewish thought during this period, replacing the more morally ambiguous worldview of the earlier Hebrew Bible. The figure of Satan, for instance, shifts from being an accuser in God’s court (as in Job) to a rebellious cosmic enemy, much like Angra Mainyu in Persian religion.
Even conservative Christian scholars who reject the idea of direct borrowing often find themselves in a corner when pressed on the timeline. The sudden and dramatic appearance of heaven, hell, a final resurrection, and a devil-like adversary in Jewish thought after centuries without them is not easily explained without acknowledging Persia’s influence. At best, they argue that God “chose that moment” to reveal these truths — which still concedes the suspicious fact that these “revelations” perfectly mirrored the dominant religion of the empire ruling over the Jews at the time.
In academic circles, this is no longer a fringe theory — it’s mainstream history. The debate isn’t if Zoroastrianism influenced Judaism and Christianity, but how much.
Before You Go
Over centuries, beliefs shift, absorb, and transform. Christianity is no exception. It took root in a landscape already rich with older traditions, and Zoroastrianism was among the most potent sources feeding it. The similarities are too specific and too numerous to wave away.
Whether you see that as theft, inspiration, or proof of a shared human vision of justice depends on your own lens. But the evidence is unambiguous: the Christian ideas of heaven and hell, angels and demons, a virgin-born savior, and a final judgment were alive in Persia long before Jesus walked in Galilee.
If you were taught these concepts were unique revelations, history has another story to tell.
Read this far? Then I want to hear your take. Do you see this as proof of borrowing, proof of shared truth, or something else entirely? Drop a comment and let’s talk.
Sources and Further Reading
Zoroastrianism | Definition, Beliefs, Founder, Holy Book, & Facts
English Zoroastrian Library : Origin of concepts of Heaven and Hell
JOHN R. HINNELLS: Zoroastrian and Parsi studies. Selected works of John R. Hinnells.