Kitap 1
prol.9
The last-named author says that according to the Magi men will live in a future life and be immortal, and that the world will endure through their invocations.In this clause the word ἐπικλήσεσι is usually taken as equivalent to ὀνόμασι (names). The meaning then would be: What exists now will exist hereafter under its own present name. Diels would alter ἐπικλήσεσι to περικυκλήσεσι, thus obtaining something very like the Heraclitean union of opposites: the things which are will continue to be through all their revolutions. But ἐπίκλησις like ἐτικαλεῖσθαι can be used of prayer, and there is some evidence that Avestan religion fully recognized the efficacy of prayers and spells. The testimony of Theopompus, who wrote in the fourth century, to the Zoroastrian doctrine of immortality is regarded by J. H. Moulton as specially important: cf. Early Zoroastrianism, pp. 177 sq. and 416. This is again confirmed by Eudemus of Rhodes. But Hecataeus relates that according to them the gods are subject to birth. Clearchus of Soli in his tract On Education further makes the Gymnosophists to be descended from the Magi; and some trace the Jews also to the same origin. Furthermore, those who have written about the Magi criticize Herodotus. They urge that Xerxes would never have cast javelins at the sun nor have let down fetters into the sea, since in the creed of the Magi sun and sea are gods. But that statues of the gods should be destroyed by Xerxes was natural enough.
prol.10
The philosophy of the Egyptians is described as follows so far as relates to the gods and to justice. They say that matter was the first principle, next the four elements were derived from matter, and thus living things of every species were produced.
