It is well known that many stories from the Old Testament are derived from the surrounding cultures of the Jewish people. This is how Noah's flood story comes from the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic. The first five books of the OT, including the flood story, were written around 600 BC, after the return of Jewish priests from the Babylonian exile. The Gilgamesh epic, which contains almost the same flood story, dates from many centuries before. The story of Joseph in Egypt was originally an Egyptian story, long before the OT was compiled.

Much less known is that the story about Moses climbing a mountain and meeting God there also has an earlier parallel. And that earlier story is about Zarathustra. 
Like Moses, Zarathustra climbed a mountain and met God there. An angel who introduced himself as 'Your destiny' took him up the mountain. God was waiting for him there. That God told him that although He had created the world and that He was very satisfied with it, it lacked something, something of Himself, namely love. And that is why he had created man:
“I created the stars, the moon, the sun, and the red-hot fire, the dogs, the birds, and the five kinds of animals; but better and greater than all these I created the righteous person. "(Gathas Y31)

The God of Zarathustra explains that He created man to complete the creation. You must understand the word complete as "to furnish, to decorate." Man must adorn creation with love.
To this end, He plants knowledge of good and evil in the hearts of the people. He also gives every person knowledge of his personal destiny and the necessary talents to fulfill that destiny. And God says to Zarathustra:
"Therefore let each judge for himself what he ought to do" (Gathas Y30)

If a person acts in accordance with the knowledge of good and evil that is present in him, he connects his own will with that of God. God adds the promise:
"Joy for him who acts according to his soul."

And:
"The union with Me can only be achieved through acts of mercy."

God instructs Zarathustra to tell all of this to the people. The reason why God wants that is that people have surrendered to the powers and therefore have come to live in a lie, the lie of their own existence. Acting in accordance with the knowledge of good and evil that is present in every person is living in truth. Living in moral slavery to the powers is living in a lie.

Of course I was already aware of the existence of Zarathustra, but I wanted to delve deeper into it last summer. However, there was very little literature about him. What was there seemed to be almost all copied and rather superficial. I have therefore studied the source texts for a few months, insofar as they still exist and of course in translation, because I do not master Parsian. And I have to say that I could hardly believe what I was reading. Also with regard to Zarathustra, I have not recovered from surprise. It has given me a new insight into the origin and purpose of the Old Testament, and has reaffirmed me in the good reason for my dislike of it.

The story about Zarathustra was written centuries before the Babylonian exile of the Jewish priests. The first five books of the Old Testament were written after the Babylonian exile. During the exile, the Jewish priests had learned about the doctrine of Zarathustra in Babel. The Babylonian exile takes place around 600 BC.

But what a difference between the story about the prophet Zarathustra, who is instructed to call people to live by the knowledge of good and evil in themselves, and the prohibition of the knowledge of good and evil in the paradise story. A greater contrast is hard to imagine.
Coincidence? I do not believe it. The paradise story is written by the Jewish priests who returned to Jerusalem after the exile and who, for example, clearly tell in the Bible book Daniel how horribly corrupt they found the pagan belief in Babel. The prohibition on the knowledge of good and evil can hardly be understood as an intended invalidation of the beautiful message of Zarathustra to love in freedom. It is intended to restore the power over the Jewish people of the returned priestly caste, a power based on fear.

And then 600 years after the Babylonian exile there is one Jesus. His message, certainly as recorded by the followers we call Gnostics today, is astonishingly similar to Zarathustra's message that preceded the Old Testament.
Coincidence? I don't believe that either. The agreement is too big, especially with the gnostic texts from Nag Hammadi.
This also makes it even clearer and more obvious to me that Jesus consciously broke with the frightening image of God as created by the returned Jewish priests, a God who had to fearfully confirm the power of the priests and who had to reverse the influence of the learn from Zarathustra. And with that he mainly broke with the power of the Jewish priests.
Jesus gives the moral power over his own life back to the individual, a power that is rooted in love. Exactly as Zarathustra had previously learned that God wanted and intended it that way.

Who was first? Moses preceded Jesus. But for Moses there was Zarathustra.
Zarathustra's message was first. The first five books of the Old Testament are an attempt by Jewish priests to reverse the influence of the new ideas of Zarathustra. And they do that again later by having Jesus crucify.
You might scare people with a mercilessly punishing God, with hell and vecedom, but we can encourage each other to overcome that fear. You can crucify people, but not love.
Now that the power of the churches over the belief of the people is growing, the ideas of Zarathustra and Jesus simply resurrect. In complete freedom. The beauty of that is that you don't have to become a Christian or a supporter of Zarathustra. It is enough to be human with people.

This is a text from the website www.thomasevangelie.info
You can download this text as a pdf document.