Avesta people. The term "Avesta" is from the 9th/10th-century works of Zoroastrian tradition in which the word appears as Zoroastrian Middle Persian "abestāg", Book Pahlavi "ʾp(y)stʾkʼ". In that context, "abestāg" texts are portrayed as received knowledge, and are distinguished from the exegetical commentaries (the "zand") thereof. The literal meaning of the word "abestāg" is uncertain; it is generally acknowledged to be a learned borrowing from Avestan, but none of the suggested etymologies have been universally accepted. The widely repeated derivation from *"upa-stavaka" is from Christian Bartholomae ("Altiranisches Wörterbuch", 1904), who interpreted "abestāg" as a contraction of a hypothetical reconstructed Old Iranian
Sociology of Religion (book) Sociology of Religion (book) Sociology of Religion is a 1920 book by Max Weber, a German economist and sociologist. The original edition was in German. Max Weber studied the effects of religious action and inaction. He views religion by simply categorized different religions in order to fully understand religion's subjective meaning to the individual ("Verstehen"). By viewing religion strictly in the scientific sense, Weber was striving for objectivity, attempting to ignore value judgments, and to understand religion as those human responses that give meaning to the inescapable problems of existence, such as birth, death, illness, aging, injustice, tragedy, and suffering.