The first fact about Zoroaster is that the century is unknown. Encyclopaedia Iranica’s general survey at https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroaster-ii-general-survey/ (opens in a new tab) states that one does not know when and where he lived, and that proposed dates range from the second millennium BCE to a few centuries before Alexander. Britannica at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zoroaster (opens in a new tab) refuses a civil-registry birthday. Stanford at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zoroastrianism/ (opens in a new tab) and IEP at https://iep.utm.edu/zoroastrianism/ (opens in a new tab) independently mark later redaction of the Avesta. Country is stored as Iran.
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Aryanist print used Zarathustra as a racial ancestor for European politics. That misuse is a polarising reception, not a Gatha, and it is stored as a later instrument he did not write. Sasanian Zoroastrianism as later encyclopedia and museum history — Iranica’s historical review at https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroastrianism-i-historical-review/ (opens in a new tab), Met Heilbrunn at https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/sasan/hd_sasan.htm (opens in a new tab), British Museum at https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection (opens in a new tab) — describes an imperial state religion that could coerce Christians, Jews, and rival Iranian groups. Fire temples were political instruments of kingship as later described. Darmesteter’s public-domain Zend-Avesta at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17921 (opens in a new tab) and avesta.org at https://www.avesta.org/ (opens in a new tab) print a later corpus, including purity books, not a founder notebook. Dualism in that English could be weaponised against neighbours. Closed purity codes could mark bodies. OHCHR minority pages at https://www.ohchr.org/en/minorities (opens in a new tab) frame later communal squeeze without making the founder a modern legislator. The Wiley Blackwell Companion at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118785539 (opens in a new tab) is a later handbook of the same limits.
The offsets are dated public carriers, not a recovered autograph. Gathas as received ethical hymns appear in the same English: asha as truth-and-order against the lie, not a ballot and not a racial myth. Iranica’s 2009 survey is honesty about the gap. UNESCO Yazd at https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1544/ (opens in a new tab) lists later urban fabric of a small community. The Met’s Sasanian essay is museum fire-temple interpretation for a general reader, a learning object rather than a licence to back-date a founder. Parsi educational and hospital philanthropy in the nineteenth century, including Maneckji Hataria’s 1854 mission as Iranica records at https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hataria-manekji-limji/ (opens in a new tab), is communal access work he did not endow. British Library collection items at https://www.bl.uk/collection-items (opens in a new tab) and the Endangered Archives Zoroastrian manuscript cluster at https://eap.bl.uk/collection/EAP1014-1 (opens in a new tab) show later copies, not autographs. Library of Congress print holdings at https://www.loc.gov/ (opens in a new tab) keep the cheap English. Mary Boyce’s later scholarly reception is a handbook neighbourhood, not a recovered vita.
Complex contribution is the honest type. Confidence is high on UNESCO dates, Iranica’s uncertainty, and Aryanist misuse existing; medium on Sasanian coefficients; low on any founder-century civil file, because there is none here.
1898 English is a translation. 2003 is UNESCO. 2009 is Iranica. 1854 is a Parsi mission. A fake 628 BCE birthday is not a Fact on this page. Keep Aryanist misuse, Gathas, Sasanian cult, fire-temple politics, and UNESCO fires on separate dates rather than averaging them into a temperament.
