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In the modern era

An early reference to Zoroaster in English literature occur in the writings of the physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne who asserted in his Religio Medici (1643):

I believe, besides Zoroaster, there were divers that writ before Moses, who notwithstanding have suffered the common fate of time.

In E. T. A. Hoffmann 's novel Klein Zaches, genannt Zinnober (1819), the mage Prosper Alpanus states that Professor Zoroaster was his teacher.

In his seminal work Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885), the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche uses the native Iranian name Zarathustra, which has a significant meaning as he had used the familiar Greek-Latin name in his earlier works. It is believed that Nietzsche invents a characterization of Zarathustra as the mouthpiece for Nietzsche's own ideas about morality. By choosing the name of 'Zarathustra' as prophet of his philosophy, as he has expressed clearly, he followed the paradoxical aim of paying homage to the original Iranian prophet and reversing his teachings at the same time. The original Zoroastrian world view interprets being essentially on a moralistic basis and depicts the world as an arena for the struggle of the two fundamentals of being, Good and Evil, represented in two antagonistic divine figures. On the contrary, Nietzsche wants his philosophy to be Beyond Good and Evil.