The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (808 page)

(1801–75).
Bohemian
rabbi
. Frankel was the first rabbi to preach in German; he acted as
Chief Rabbi
of Dresden and founded what he called ‘the positivist-historical school’ which influenced the Conservative movement. His seminary set a standard of rabbinic training which was imitated by all similar academies.

 
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Frankists
:

see
FRANK, JACOB
.

 
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(Pahlavi,
Frasogird
). Literally, the ‘making fresh’ (or ‘restored’) in
Zoroastrian
eschatology
. In Zoroastrian
cosmology
(
Bundahisn
) the world and humanity are created perfect but are assaulted by evil. Zoroastrianism is, however, an optimistic religion and teaches that evil will ultimately be eradicated. Frasokereti is the process by which the good is triumphant. There are two aspects to Zoroastrian eschatology: individual and cosmic. At death, every individual faces judgement by the balances whereby good thoughts, words, and deeds are weighed against the evil. At death, the soul is led by its
daena
(conscience), either to a heavenly existence or to the abyss of
hell
. However, this stay in hell (or heaven) is not eternal, for eternal punishment could not be corrective, as punishment should be. Zoroastrians, therefore, believe in a resurrection and a second judgement which forms part of the cosmic Frasokereti. This in turn is related to the teaching of the four ages.
The last of these is broken down into three periods, each of a thousand years, in which a saviour (
s
yant
) is born. With evil expunged from the Good Creation all can finally dwell with God as the heaven and earth come together in what is the best of all possible worlds. Evil is defeated, and Ahura Mazda is now not only all-good, but also for the first time all-powerful.

 
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Fravasi
.

The ‘heavenly self’ or ‘eternal soul’ in
Zoroastrianism
. There are many Zoroastrian theological analyses of human nature. The most common is to divide a human being into five parts: the
tan
(body, i.e. the material or
getig
dimension); the vital spirit (
jan
); soul (
urvan
); ‘image’ (
adhvenak
); and fravasi. The
tan
is that which remains on earth after death, and the
urvan
is that which proceeds to the judgement to be confronted by its
daena
(conscience). The fravasi is thought of as the aspect of human nature which pre-exists birth. In some
Pahlavi
literature there is a concept of human destiny. Each person has his/her
khwarr
, the destiny which Ahura has set before them, but all have the freedom to reject that destiny. The essence of a person is sometimes said to be his/her reason (
khrat
). Although there are these various parts of human nature, nevertheless the person is by nature a unity.
Angra Mainyu
seeks to destroy that unity, that balance of the parts, and thus to destroy them, through greed, arrogance, despair, and the Lie.

 
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(1854–1941).
A British cultural anthropologist whose views were, for a period, influential in the study of religion. His major work,
The Golden Bough
(13 vols., 1890–1937), is vitiated by crude evolutionary assumptions. As E. Leach pointed out, he wrote little of originality, except perhaps as concerns the ethnographic ‘facts’; facts which he often devised so as to suit his picture of the ‘savage’.

 
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