The Conceptualization of Religion and Incipient Secularity in Late Sasanian Iran: Burzōy and Paul the Persian’s Parallel Departures from Tradition

This article examines the parallel conceptualizations of “religion” developed by two intellectuals of distinct backgrounds in late Sasanian Iran, Burzōy and Paul the Persian, and the broader climate of incipient “secularity” their ideas, and the convergence between them, may reflect. The article shows how these authors made similar innovations within their respective religious and scholarly traditions (Zoroastrianism for Burzōy, specifically the genre of andarz or wisdom literature; East Syrian Christianity for Paul the Persian, along with late antique Neoplatonism), significantly breaking with their antecedents and contemporaries. Both Burzōy and Paul delineate a certain sphere of discourse, focused above all on questions of cosmology, eschatology, and the otherworldly consequences of action in this world, in which the members of various “traditions” or “religions” participate. These authors also share the assumption that the choice between these traditions or religions should be made on the basis of reason, and not tradition, and they are also each, in their way, emphatically noncommittal to any individual tradition or religion. Aspects of Burzōy and Paul the Persian’s shared late Sasanian context, including the popularity of the interreligious disputation, are brought forth to explain their parallel departures from tradition. The transmission and reception of these authors’ respective works and ideas in the medieval Islamic world are also considered, along with the broader intellectual legacy of the Sasanian Empire.