Zorastrianism

First of all, I just thought I would point out something that I found very interesting. Quoting from Mallandra's An Introduction to Ancient Iranian Religion:
(p. 39) "One of the initially bewildering features of Zarathustra's exposition is his use of verbal tenses. This difficulty is rooted in the fact that the Indo-Iranian languages possessed a special verb form, the injunctive, which is reserved for the expression of myth and timeless truths. Whereas one tends to regard all events, whether mythological or not, as taking place in a nonrecurring historical order, archaic man understood mythical events, which took place in mythological time, as being everpresent."

Fascinating. This reminds me of the aliens from Slaughterhouse Five. If "archaic man" (and I shall presume "archaic woman" as well) understood mythical events in this way, where along the way did we lose this ability? Here Mallandra has made a bit of a jump. It is not that archaic people had an ability that we do not possess, but that Zarathustra's language provided him (and by this I mean the later scribes who wrote as him) with the ability to present the world in this way. Navajo language also affords story-tellers this ability, a point which Basso drives home in his book Wisdom Sits in Places as a part of his discussion of cultural geography/ecology. What is interesting here is that the infinite, timeless continuity of this language form drives home both the immediacy AND ancient authority of moral teachings. I wonder if there is a similar medium in contemporary society. The closest thing I can think of would be that of cinema.

Now, continuing on to my discussion of Zorastrianism proper. What does everybody think about this concept of twin Divinities, one Evil and one Good? In the Abrahamic religions (the cases with which I am most familiar) God is held up in contradistinction with the Devil, Shaitan, or Iblis... yet parity between the two parties is never inferred in official dogma. However, one gets the sense that at least in folk Christianities, that the Devil holds an equal position in terms of Judgement: the promise of Salvation is met with an equally powerful Temptation. Interestingly, the same imagery that appears in Zorastrianism resurfaces in Christian lore. God is the Light (as in  Jesus' claim "I am the Light, the Way, and the Truth) and the Devil is the Darkness. God's retribution is meted out in terms of flame. The examples go on.

Do you think that this imagery is built directly into the human psyche, perhaps as an effect of our species' evolution as diurnal and an ancient recognition of the immense adaptive advantage of fire? After all, we see a similar adoration of fire cross-culturally. Or perhaps this imagery was appropriated by Judaism from Zorastrianism long ago. Or perhaps such similarity is an effect of the manipulative translation and rendering of Zorastrian texts by monotheist-biased scholars.