Les textes vieil-avestiques by Kellens and Pirart
Jean Kellens and Éric Pirart, Les textes vieil-avestiques (vol. I: Introduction, text and translation; vol. II: Grammatical repertoires and lexicon; vol. III: commentary), Wiesbaden, 1988-1990-1991.
The Gāθās are ritual texts, but the ritual is speculative (discourse describing the state of mind and philosophical speculation that accompanies the ritual ceremony);
Doubts about the personality of the gāthic "I";
Agnostics on the historicity of Zaraθuštra;
Innovation: ban on night sacrifices. But Jean Kellens regrets this hypothesis, for in reality the GA attests to an auroral rite. The prohibition of nocturnal sacrificial practices is therefore linked to a specific rite;
Omnipresence of pastoral vocabulary: lavishing good grazing care on the cow is an antiphrase of immolation, which actually means cutting the cow's throat.
Negative reactions
Ilya Gershevitch, "Approaches to Zoroaster's Gathas", Iran 33, 1995, 1-29.
Gherardo Gnoli, Zoroaster in History, New York, 2000.
The attack on the identification of the gāthic "I", on the fact that this "I" might not be Zaraθuštra, has led to a situation of the character in history with precision: he has been located between 618 and 541 BC on the testimony of Middle Persian texts and Arab chroniclers.
Such a chronology is impossible for linguistic reasons. Indeed, such a dating creates a textual bottleneck, but also in the historical evolution of beliefs. What's more, linguistically speaking, certain forms could not have evolved as rapidly as such a dating would dictate. A case in point is the vp. patiyazbayam with the disappearance of the hiatus preserved in old-avestic in the present zbaya theme, which is still trisyllabic. From a chronological point of view, Old-Avestic texts could not have been composed after 800 BC.
There is no biographical-prophetic doctrine
Jean Kellens, La quatrième naissance de Zarathushtra, Paris, 2006.
The hypothesis of a prophetic, biographical and essentially philosophical doctrine is a postulate completely devoid of critical legitimacy from the point of view of historical criticism.
Gāθā or hāiti?
Almut Hintze, "On the Literary Structure of the Older Avesta", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 65, 2002, 31-51.
Stephanie Jamison, The RigVeda between two worlds, Paris, 2007.
Jean Kellens, "Current controversies on the composition of the Gāthās ", Asian Journal 295.2, 2008, 257-289.
Hintze and Jamison defended the independence of each hāiti while Kellens defended the organic unity of each Gāθā. There are 17 chapters (hāiti) divided into 5 Gāθās, each of varying length. For the authors of the Avesta, the division into hāiti had already been accomplished, as we can see from the intercalations in the Visperad, for example. The Gāθās are part of an ancient liturgy, texts introduced into a corpus of more recent texts according to a particular exegesis. The Gāθās have a role since the first stanza is supposed to correspond to the cosmogonic spark and the last represents the final moment with the ultimate sacrifice making the world perfect.
Original function of the Gāθās?
Indeed, we need to consider the gāthic text from a dual perspective: the Avesta as a whole with a reemployment role for the Gāθās and the primitive role of the Gāθās, which is another research pursued over the last two years here.
