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Pahlavi Texts, Part II (SBE18), E.W. West, tr. [1882], at sacred-texts.com
1. As to the seventy-fourth question and reply, that which you ask is thus: Do the angels have his dead body restored, or not?
2. The reply is this, that there was a high-priest who said that the angels do not have his dead body restored, because of the sin of the mutually-polluting, full of stench, and inglorious victims (khvâpîdŏân) 1, the terrible kind of means for the exculpation of creatures 2, and that practice when males keep specially imperfect in their duty; it being then suitable for mankind to become free from him who--like Az-î Dahâk 3, who wanted many most powerful demons--resists and struggles, and is not possessing the perception to extract (patkasistanŏ) a pardon, owing to the course of many demoniacal causes. 3. But innumerable multitudes (amarakânîhâ), happily persevering 4 in diligence, have with united observation, unanimously, and with mutual assistance (ham-bangisnîhâ) insisted upon this, that they have the dead bodies of all men restored; for
the good creator, granting forgiveness and full of goodness, would not abandon any creature to the fiend 1. 4. In revelation (dînô) it is said that every dead body is raised up, both of the righteous and of the wicked 2; there is none whom they shall abandon to the fiend.
5. And this, also, is thus decided by them 3, that even as to him who is most grievously sinful, when he becomes mentally seeking pardon and repentant of the sin, and, being as much an atoner as he is well able, has delivered up his body and wealth for retribution and punishment, in reliance upon the atonement for sin of the good religion, then it is possible for his soul, also, to come to the place of the righteous 4.
222:1 Victims of the deceptions practised by the demons (see Chaps. LXXIII, 3, LXXIV, 3); but the reading is uncertain.
222:2 Probably the punishment of the wicked in hell.
222:3 See Chap. XXXVII, 97.
222:4 Reading farukhvŏ-tûshisn, but it may be perkhûntŏ dahisn, 'having begged the boon;' and M14 has pôryôdkeshânŏ, 'of those of the primitive faith.'
223:1 Except for temporary punishment in hell. All ideas of the vindictiveness of implacable justice are foreign to the Mazda-worshipper's notion of the good creator.
223:2 Compare Bd. XXX, 7.
223:3 Probably by the 'multitudes' of § 3.
223:4 By delivering up his body and wealth to the will of the high-priest, as an atonement, and mentally renouncing his sins, he is saved from hell, and the beneficial effect of any good works he may have performed returns to him (see Sls. VIII, 5).