Demons, Archangels, Satan and the Apocalypse came into Judeo-Christianity from Iranian Mythology and the Talmud Scholars of Iraq between 200-400 AD
Rabbinical Judaism formed in Sassanian Iraq and produced canonical texts in the same period that Zurvian Zoroastrianism became codified as the state religion of the neo-persian Sassanids. Canonical Christianity, Gnostic Christianity, Jewish Christianity, Mani’s mix of Zoroaster, Buddha, Judaism and Christianity, and Plotinus’s Neo-Platonism were all fermenting in the Middle East of this time. Mahayana Buddhism was thriving and sending out Missionaries in the Eastern half of the Sassanid Empire. This was a great period of Religious Fusion and many doctrines and ideas intermixed.
The Babylonian Talmud also known as “The Talmud”, is arguably the foundation of Judaism. The text quoted below is the product of Karaite Jews. They are a later jewish reform movement. This is an attack on Talmudic Judaism by a rival Jewish Sect. It is not impartial, but it makes interesting reading because they are believers, rather than scholars. They are Jews who challenge official Judaism using Academic methods.
Interestingly, they view the Persian influence as superstitious, where I find in it the roots (along with Hermes Trismegistus) of European Esoteric Beliefs and Millenarian belief.
The Book of Revelation is also thought by scholars to be a fusion of Jewish and Zoroastrian Myth.
Rabbanism and Zoroastrianism: A look into the origins of the Talmud A Publication of the al-Qirqisani Center for the Promotion of Karaite Jewish Studies
DEMONS, FIENDS AND EVIL SPIRITS
As with angels, the Amora’im of Babylon were in the consideration of, and belief in, demons derived from Persian lore. Ahriman is known likewise as Satan who arouses the evil in man, afterwards bringing about his degradation and death. In the Zend-Avesta, he is also alluded to as the Primordial Serpent (Vendidad II, 384) . To him is ascribed the pains of menstruation that are visited upon this world (Vendidad I).His myriads of helpers are called devs (devils), and they infest the universe throughout (chap. 1,21). However their place of habitation is the cold North particularly, they revel in the vicinity of graveyards (Ibid. II, 337) .
