A Critique and Study of the Zoroastrian Origin of Plato's Doctrine of Ideas

Some basic concepts such as the Ideas and farvahar hold a particular and precious place in Plato’s philosophy and the Zoroastrian religion. In Plato’s philosophy, the doctrine of Ideas introduces the origin of the forms of the material world through explaining the concept of being. Similarly, in the Zoroastrian worldview, the creation of the forms of this world has been considered to depend on their spiritual forms (farvahar). Because of certain similarities between these two key concepts, some believe that Plato modeled Zoroaster’s teachings and maintain that the doctrine of Ideas is indeed a Zoroastrian doctrine. This paper aims to verify this claim by comparing these two concepts and checking the differences and similarities between them in terms of their characteristics and functions. Apparently, the differences between them are too great to allow the easy acceptance of the modeling theory.