Traditions: Zoroastrian Gathas; Bahá’í Hidden Words Motif: Integrity of speech and action Connection verdict: Ethical resonance; no direct reuse proven Article status: Expanded Date: 2026-11-01
Summary
Both require moral speech to be enacted, not merely pronounced.
Read the two scenes
Yasna 47.2 refuses a separation between utterance and performance: the tongue and hands are parallel instruments of a holy Spirit working with Good Thought and Piety. Hidden Words 28 gives the negative case. A teacher who orders justice but acts unjustly cannot claim belonging by invoking the right name. The Gatha is a positive hymn to aligned faculties; the aphorism is a pointed judgment on hypocrisy. Their agreement concerns the lived verification of a claim, not an identical theology of divine action.
What connects—and what does not
Yasna 47.2 pairs the tongue’s good words with the hands’ pious work; Hidden Words Arabic 28 denies authority to one who enjoins justice while committing injustice.
The Avestan verse speaks in a sacred cosmological idiom of Spirit, Right, and Piety; the Bahá’í aphorism attacks a recognizable human inconsistency.
Why read them side by side?
The comparison clarifies why neither virtuous vocabulary nor religious identity alone counts as enacted justice in these passages.
Sources and reading notes
- Yasna 47.2 — In Bartholomae’s translation the tongue speaks good words and hands perform the action of Piety. Gathic Avestan hymn, likely pre-Achaemenid but scholarly dating varies; medieval manuscripts are much later. This chapter uses Bartholomae via Taraporewala English translation, as marked by Avesta.org.
- Bahá’u’lláh, Hidden Words, Arabic 28 — A person who commands justice yet acts unjustly is rejected even if he bears the divine name. Bahá’u’lláh’s 1858 text in Shoghi Effendi’s English translation; numbered aphorism in the official Bahá’í Reference Library.
Research limit
A named parallel can establish literary reuse or related tradition; a general resemblance alone cannot prove borrowing. Linked editions and translations vary. Where a source is identified as secondary orientation, the comparison does not claim direct close reading of that tradition’s primary text.