Ma`rifat Adyan

Pahlavi texts were written in the third and fourth centuries AH; a time when Zoroastrians had lost all their socio-political power and were a religious minority in Iran and thought of reconstructing and reinterpreting their religion in a polemical and theological environment. Ethics-related issues was one of the topics that the authors of these texts sought to organize and integrate. The purpose of this research is to study the moral system of Pahlavi texts. This article studies ethics including the study of ethical concepts (semantics of "virtue" and "vice"), sources (good and bad in terms of substantiation and affirmation) and criteria (virtuousness or consequentialism or obligationism) in Pahlavi texts. This article’s research method is "descriptive-analytical" and uses library method to collect information. I conclude that "virtue" in Pahlavi texts is being adorned with any moral matter that brings one closer to the realm of Ahuramazda and away from the realm of the devil; and its scope extends from the substantiation of Amshaspandan’s moral virtues to faith and goodness, and "vice" is the absence of virtue. Although the moral good and bad in these texts are essentially rational in general, yet they are sometimes canonical. The predominant moral criterion in Pahlavi texts is virtuousness considering teleology.