Avesta Avesta The Avesta is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the otherwise unrecorded Avestan language. The Avesta texts fall into several different categories, arranged either by dialect, or by usage. The principal text in the liturgical group is the "Yasna", which takes its name from the Yasna ceremony, Zoroastrianism's primary act of worship, and at which the "Yasna" text is recited. The most important portion of the "Yasna" texts are the five Gathas, consisting of seventeen hymns attributed to Zoroaster himself. These hymns, together with five other short Old Avestan texts that are also part of
Violence and the Sacred Brown writes that Girard's purpose in "Violence and the Sacred" is to frighten people into returning to orthodox religion; Brown claims that Pope John Paul II liked the book. The religious studies scholar Catherine Bell writes that Girard uses "Freudian notions of desire, guilt, and an original murder at the hands of the group" to present "a theory of ritual sacrifice as the central act of a cultural system generated by primal violence." Bell finds Girard's views similar to those of the classicist Walter Burkert, as expressed in his book "Homo Necans" (1972). Chris Fleming writes that "Violence and the