The Relation between Human, Home, and City in Religious Texts of Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam

The mainstream of the developments that have guided and shaped the contemporary human dwelling, has been the subject of concern and criticism by many diverse groups of thinkers. Many theorists have tried to re-think the concepts of dwelling and have created new perspectives. Human happiness is the center of attention of all religious traditions. With this premised, it seems that an effort from this point of view can explain things that -in the current view of architecture- have been neglected or forgotten. The purpose of this research is to find out what are the principles and criterions to the body and the container of human life by referring to religious texts, and what is the relationship between the human and the container of his dwelling. The research method is comparative and interpretative, and its resources are the texts of Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam and some of their interpretations. In the first part of the article, human’s existential relation to his dwelling containorin the context of thinking based on the mentioned religions has been investigated, and in the second part, the comparative analysis of the basic differences and commonalities has been discussed. The findings of the research show that, despite the differences in categories and terms to human and the levels and scales of his dwelling, the studied religions have one thing in common, and is that they do not make a fundamental and essential distinction between city, home, and human body, as they do for the human soul, the home dweller and the city dweller and consider the same principles for all these. From the point of view of all three religions, the world in which a person lives, the body, the house, and the city, is a whole unit that consists of a metamaterial or heavenly area in addition to the material or earthly area.However, in modern thought, withthe domination of specialization and its expansion, has put forward a new approach in understanding and dealing with human and his dwelling, which is accurate but in comparison with religious thinking, in terms of the ranks are limited, different in terms of priorities, and inconsistent in terms of scales.