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) religious beliefs steered the direction of the economic and technological forces that were already in motion. Max Weber takes an objective, distant view of the sociological traditions of the institution of religion. He is standing on the outside, looking in, contrary to the believers whose journey of faith causes them to examine their religion from within. This detached, objective view of religion embodies the objective, modernist practice of the sociological perspective of religion today. 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