Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

the divers and they do not worship ahura mazda in the right way and at the right time and ahura mazda is the chief the great god of you know there's this wise lord this creator god and he said you know some of the there are some peoples who reject him altogether right so you've got to read between the lines and all of this who are these some peoples who are rejecting is is his

experience of greece on his mind you know or is it babylon that he's still thinking about but some somehow he's aligning of course theology to politics here okay but what about this word divers then divers well diver comes from a an indo-european word which is linked to things like the latin deus uh the welsh dew the french deer so it's a it's a word for god

But within its Persian context, da'iva can also be linked to a modern Persian and modern Arabic word, div, div, which means like a wicked spirit.

So we could call it something which is like something satanic or something evil, something dark.

So they are worshipping.

Evil gods.

Mesopotamian demons idea?

Possibly, possibly.

Lilith and stuff like that.

I don't think you need to do that.

I think he is applying this word to mean gods who are not Persian.

Ah, okay.

So, you know, this is really odd in a world of polytheism.

Nobody ever gets really bothered by other gods.

You know, people just recognize different countries have different gods.

The Jews in antiquity, you know, they get worked up about this, okay?

Because, you know, by the Second Temple period, they've got their monotheistic god.

Xerxes is kind of preempting that idea, I think, in this thing which we call the diver inscription.

You should be worshipping Ahura Mazda in the proper ways and at the proper times, he says, which suggests then that there is a kind of codified system of worshipping this god with certain rituals and certain festivals or certain times of the week or the day or whatever it might be.

So this is the only time we get this idea that