Let's Talk Religion
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Patron only Q&A! + Video suggestions
🕑 Added 2021-01-18 22:24:22 +0000 UTCHi everyone!
I love to see that this community keeps growing, and I want to get better at providing you with exclusive content that feels worthwhile. If you have any wishes for what you would like to see here, let me know.
For starters, I want to do another Q&A, but one that will only be shared with you guys. So please feel free to leave your questions in the comment section here! :)
I would also love to get some suggestions on videos you would like to see in the near future. I have a bunch planned, of course, but I want to involve you more in the process of picking video subjects. So let the ideas flow!
As you've probably noticed, I haven't been as consistent with my weekly uploading. This is because I've started working full-time at my day job, which makes video editing, writing and recording even harder to accomplish in such short time. I will keep making videos continuously, but sometimes I might skip a week to stay sane. I will hopefully have more days free starting March, so then the content might pick up a little more again.
Hope all of you are doing well.
/Filip
Comments
Dan Bromberg
Seconding the people asking for more Buddhist content! Especially the evolution of the Buddhist Tantras/Vajrayana/Tibetan Buddhism and how they relate to Shaivism vs Early Buddhism
Filip Holm
That's an incredibly interesting topic actually! This is something I would love to explore in the future, thank you for the suggestion!
Thomas Blase
Maybe not a full fledged topic but something to think about for any future videos on Zoroastrian: a treatment of Zoroastrian modernism would be interesting. The "back-to-the-Gathas" movement, exemplified by scholars such as Ali A. Jafarey and groups such as the largely-online Zarathustrian Assembly, is basically the Zoroastrian equivalent of Quranism. The goal is to create a modern ethical religion by going back to the very earliest Zoroastrian scriptures and greatly deemphasizing all the problematic traditions (sexist attitudes, opposition to conversion, etc.) that accrued on top of it. Like Quranism, "Gathic" Zoroastrianism is not without historical precedent. During the Sasanian dynasty, the heterodox Mazdakites ditched the emphasis placed on ritual purity by the priestly Zoroastrian orthodoxy in favor of a simple and surprisingly modern ethic of equality, consent, compassion and nonviolence (and got killed for it) that, from a modernist perspective, seems rooted in the Gathas. (I haven't seen any scholars draw parallels between Mazdakism and Zoroastrian modernism. They prefer to focus on Mazdakism's proto-Communist elements or its relation to Manichaeism. But the parallels are there, ripe for the picking). Later esoteric Shi'i groups such as the followers of Abu Muslim and Babak Khorramdin seem to have been messianic/utopian crypto-Zoroastrians with a Mazdakite ethic (which gets into the much larger topic of Islamic-Zoroastrian syncretism, which also deserves attention). At least their enemies accused them of such. I think it's a relevant topic to cover if you plan to make a follow up video on Zoroastrianism, because the distinction between modernist and traditional Zoroastrians is the most significant distinction within the religion today, more so than the distinction between Iranian and Indian Zoroastrians (Iranian Zoroastrians tend to be more modernist and Parsis tend to be traditionalist despite a form of modernism starting among them after interactions with orientalists and Protestant missionaries. But only in general). The modernists see their approach as the most authentic form of the religion, and the traditionalists see it as an imposition of Western values. It has implications for academic Zoroastrian studies and translations of the Gathas (which vary enormously due to the ambiguity of the original language). If Zoroastrianism does survive, it will likely be in the modernist form, seeing as the traditional Zoroastrians generally don't accept converts and their numbers are declining.
