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
The Religion of the Future cooperation and love. Reviewing "The Religion of the Future" in the "Journal of the American Academy of Religion", Andrew B. Irvine wrote that “the book demands to be read not as a contribution to scholarly debate but as a direct intervention in the most important and urgent issues of today … No review could cover all the angles from which this book deserves to be appreciated—and criticized.” Irvine contends that Unger’s argument “dramatically ...simplifies the indefinitely complex data of religion, but it does so in the name of a single religious perspective.” Irvine asks: “What would this book look like