ABSTRACT
THE WORLD of Late Antiquity, in the east as well as in the west (i.e., both in the Iranian and in the Greek-dominated world), was deeply concerned with the hereafter. The hereafter was a powerful presence in both its aspects: both as an expectation of a world-to-come that, lying as it were beyond the horizon of the future, could nevertheless be deduced from scriptures, and then described and studied; and as an awareness that there is something there even now, as we lead our lives on earth. That something may be hidden by a barrier of invisibility, something like a curtain, expressed in the Jewish tradition by the Iranian term pargod.1 This curtain is capable of being lifted from time to time, at least by certain people endowed with special gifts. All this is true for the three major religions of the period with which we are concerned, Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. It is also true for their several offshoots and the related faiths, such as Manichaeism and the Gnostic groups. We shall concentrate here on the Iranian world of the period, and more particularly on Western Iran, and shall try to understand its main characteristics.
