Written by My testimony does not end with rejecting Yahweh’s identification as the Father of Truth. There is an older, positive identification that must be placed beside that rejection.
Ahura Mazda is described in the Gathas as the Father of Aša.
In Yasna 44.3, Zarathustra asks:
“Who was the father and creator of Asha, the Truth?”
That is the wording presented in FEZANA’s translation. Yasna 47.2 likewise identifies Mazda as Aša’s Father. The fatherhood relationship belongs to the ancient text; I did not invent it to answer a Christian theological problem.
When I speak of cosmic Aša, I mean Truth-Order: truthfulness, righteousness, and reality rightly ordered, opposed to Druj—the Lie. My understanding of the Father therefore reaches beyond someone who merely makes accurate statements. It concerns the source and foundation of the true and righteous order of existence.
6. The language preserves the Father relationship
The Gathas preserve this relationship in Old Avestan. Their linguistic antiquity is independent of Christianity: scholars compare Old Avestan with Vedic and distinguish it from the later Iranian language represented by the Achaemenid inscriptions. Their exact composition date remains debated, but their pre-Christian antiquity is established.
That matters to my testimony.
I am identifying a Father-of-Truth relationship already present in an ancient religious tradition. The comparison begins with an independently existing name, an independently existing text, and an independently existing relationship between Mazda and Aša.
7. Around 520 BCE, the opposition to the Lie was carved into rock
At Behistun, Darius’s monument names Ahura Mazda and places divine assistance against the Lie. Work on the relief began around 520 BCE. In the inscription, Darius attributes Ahura Mazda’s assistance to his claimed rejection of lying and wrongdoing.
The evidence must be stated precisely: the Gathas supply the Father-of-Aša relationship; Behistun supplies the monumental witness to Ahura Mazda and opposition to the Lie. Behistun does not itself inscribe the title “Father of Aša.”
Together, these are two distinct witnesses: an ancient linguistic and religious witness, and a dated inscription in stone.
Centuries before Jesus’s ministry, Ahura Mazda was publicly named in a religious framework that condemned allegiance to the Lie.
8. This gives my identification a positive foundation
My first testimony examines the deception attributed to Yahweh and explains why I reject that character as the Father of Truth.
This second part supplies the positive foundation of my belief:
The ancient Gathic Father of cosmic Aša is Ahura Mazda.
When I read Jesus’s opposition between truth and falsehood, and his distinction between his Father and the father whose character is expressed through lies, I recognize a correspondence with the older Aša–Druj opposition.
That correspondence is the basis of my theological recognition. It does not depend on claiming that John contains the Persian name or that Behistun contains the Gathic fatherhood formula.
It depends on taking the ancient identities and their attributed characters seriously.
9. This is whom I recognize as Father
I recognize Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord and Father of cosmic Aša, as the Father of Truth whom Jesus reveals.
That is my conviction and my testimony.
The history establishes that Mazda and the Father-of-Aša relationship were not inventions created after Christianity. My identification of Mazda with Jesus’s Father is the theological conclusion I draw from that ancient evidence and the character test set out in the first part.
I want both parts of that testimony preserved: why I reject the identification I inherited, and whom I recognize when I seek the Father through Truth.
The Father of cosmic Aša already had a name: Ahura Mazda.
— Diesel the Magus