Abstract
The Avesta we possess is not a book whose contents have been haphazardly pruned by the passage of time, as Karl Hoffmann's approach may have led us to believe, but the direct and complete culmination of a liturgy of variable composition and, in all its variants, very ancient. The full extent of this upheaval in Avestic philology and its impact on the reconstruction of Zoroastrian origins can be seen by comparing the opening lecture and the closing lecture. I wanted the latter to be devoted to future prospects, explaining that recent research had not yet produced a complete representation of the Avestic corpus, that it was both fraught with uncertainties and fraught with future upheavals.
