rapid an acceptance in the East, beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, as greatly to affect the substance of so ancient and important a creed as Zoroastrianism, as expounded in a recension of the sacred books of that religion made almost immediately after Philo’s death, if not then actually in progress. It is enough to suggest these questions, without attempting their solution; we are only concerned to see whether Darmesteter’s theory, if correct, is incompatible with the existence in the earlier form of the Avestan religion of elements which may reasonably be presumed to have affected the development of our legend through Hebrew channels. Darmesteter himself does not attempt to set up any hard and fast theory on the subject. In his own words: ‘Without pressing conclusions too hard as to facts and dates, this much can be safely inferred … that Platonic doctrines had found their way to Persia in the first centuries of the Christian era’ (_loc. cit._). In particular, he traces Platonic influences in the spiritual and allegorical manner in which the creations of the old Aryan mythology are dealt with in the Avesta, and in the prevalence of a similar tone in the Avestan cosmology. The most notable instances of this mode of thought occur in the Var of Yima, which is practically a Platonic world of Ideas,[65] and in the Amesha Spentas, or Bountiful Immortals, who, we are told, first assume the character in which they now appear in the Avesta under the influence of Neo-Platonic theories.[66] At the same time, Darmesteter points out that the ancient Achæmenian religion already possessed the fundamental doctrine of the conflict between the powers of good and evil, and the final triumph of the good, and of those that had adhered to it. The duration of the universe is already divided into four periods of 3000 years each,[67] in the last of which Ahriman was to be subdued, and men were to ‘live happily, needing no food, and casting no shadow.’[68] He further states, as we have seen, that the Avesta was compiled from various works of different dates; these would necessarily embody much matter of older date than themselves--very much older, we are warranted in believing, alike by the analogy of other religions, and by the nature of many of the beliefs preserved in the Avesta. In speaking of the books of which the Avesta is composed, Darmesteter gives it as his opinion that ‘the Vendîdâd may be taken as the best specimen of the text imbued with the pre-Alexandrian spirit’;[69] and it is precisely the Vendîdâd that contains the greater part, though not all, of the doctrines concerning the Otherworld, of which an abstract has been given above. We are thus warranted in assuming that the Persians had developed a tolerably complete theory of the Otherworld, and of the rewards and punishments there meted out in recompense for man’s conduct in this life, at a date early enough to influence Hebrew thought, before either nation had come under Hellenic influences.