In this paper, the author has reviewed two essays from two famous"Iranists, James Russel and Shaul Shaked, which their articles lately have been translated into Persian. Important points of those essays have been mentioned and some critical observations have been proposed. According to this paper, zoroastrian esoterism can be found in the Gathas of Zorathustra and also in some estoric schools of ancient Iran, such as Zurvanism and Mithraism and Mazdakism.

The discussion of the question of Zoroastrianism has a long precedence in the history of Islam. At the time of the Prophet (PBUH), the question discussed was whether Zoroastrianism was a divine religion and whether its followers were to be regarded as People of the Scripture. The question was discussed in the centuries that followed as well. The writer has made an attempt in this article to clarify position of Islam on this question and the way the Prophet dealt with it. To do so, she first discusses the word majoos, its history and the people who were referred to as majoos and then she discusses the word as appeared in the Koran and the traditions

Ever since ancient Greece, up to the Islamic period and even today, one of the most frequently debated issues regarding the ancient Iranian religion, Mazdaism, has been whether or not we face some form of dualism between the good and evil deity at the core of this religion. In this article, the writer starts with the views of Thomas Hyde, the Anglican bishop of Oxford, in the eighteenth century. Based on the scattered texts and accounts available at the dawn of Orientalism, Hyde reaches the conclusion that the Zoroastrian dualism has a philosophical rather than a religious essence. Later, in 1762, Anquentil Duperon presented the Royal Library of France with some manuscripts which were in fact parts of the oral tradition of Mazdaism and not parts of Avesta as it was believed then. Around 1860, the German philologist, Martin Haug, comes to the conclusion that Zoroaster has been a real historical figure whose followers are to blame for the distortion of his faith and the emergence of dualism and hierarchical polytheism in it. In contrast to Haug's perspective, James Darmesteter, who first translated Avesta to French, was of the opinion that Mazdaism is essentially a dualistic religion which has in turn stemmed from an older religion and a polytheistic Hindu-Iranian mythological tradition. Reviewing these points of views in the light of text of Avesta, the writer goes on to examines the views of some of the scholars in the twentieth century such as W.B Henning, I. Gershevitch, Gnoli , and some others on the subject. Finally, he concludes his discussion with a careful and comparative deliberation on the concept of the Millennia in Zoroastrianism and the relation between this concept and the dualism in this religion based on Zoroastrian and Greek texts.