HOLY CROSS AND HOLY FIRE: CHRISTIANITY AND GEORGIAN MAZDAISM IN LATE ANTIQUE IBERIA

Abstract

The aim of the article is to focus on the issues of the spread of Zoroastrianism/Mazdeanism in Iberia in late antiquity and its relationship with Christianity, which Georgian historiography has paid less attention to. These issues are - Iberia as part of the Sasanian Commonwealth, the formation of a local, Georgian/Caucasian variant of Zoroastrianism (which an American historian Stephen Rapp, Jr. calls ‘Georgian Mazdeanism’),2 and the contrast between the hagiographic/historiographic narrative and the actual situation.