Note 4 — Chapter VIII · The Book of Proverbs and the Avesta.
Reading edition
“The sons of men” is not an Avestan phrase, for to Armaîti her daughters are as dear as her sons, but we find in the Vendîdâd “the seeds of men and women.” These are sprung from those who were selected for preservation in the Vara, or enclosure, of the first man, Yimi, made by direction of the deity, when the evil powers brought fatal winters on the world. The deformed, diseased, wicked, were excluded; the chosen people were those formed of “the best of the earth.” From long and prosperous life on earth, the Amesha of immortality, the good angel of death, conducted them to eternal happiness; they are the immortals, children of the demons being mortals. There was something corresponding to this in the Jewish idea of their being a chosen people, as distinguished from the Gentile world (see Deut. xxxii. 8), and no doubt the phrase “sons of men” represented a divine dignity afterwards expressed in the title, “Son of Man.”4