ABSTRACT
In the pre-Islamic period, Zoroastrian institutions coalescing under Sasanian state sponsorship contended with three significant rivals originating at the western margins of the Iranian cultural sphere: Manichaeans, Christians, and Mandaeans (as well as Jews). All three traditions, in turn, developed distinct interpretive and polemical discourses dealing with the differences they perceived between the hallmarks of their own identity and those they identified as characteristic of Zoroastrian identity. These discourses reveal different approaches to religious rivalry, and, more specifically, different relationships presumed between their respective religions and the Zoroastrian tradition.
