The present round table gathers together investigations on both Zoroastrian (e.g. Ardā Wīrāz Nāmag, Vīdēwdād, Patit, other) and Manichaean (Sogdian confession texts) literatures. It attempts at configurating various dimensions (religious, social) of the phenomenon of culpability, in Iran and Central Asia, by the Late Antiquity and the first centuries after the Arab conquest.

One of the goals is to explore in depth these mentalities, in use from the Middle East to Central Asia, and to provide a response, based on Oriental sources, to historical investigations such as Jean Delumeau’s Fear and Sin. The Emergence of the Western Guilt Culture, 13th – 18th Centuries, based on Western sources.

The round table is the result of the cooperation between Dr. Götz König (Institut für Iranistik, FU) and Dr. Mihaela Timuș (Institute for the History of Religions, Romanian Academy, Bucharest), being framed by the latter’s Humboldt research fellowship on a related topic. A collective volume is supposed to be published.