Land sakes, email, PM, IM, send pigeons when something like that slips my mind! Yes, I'm working on a book; No, I don't mean to forget things like that.Kushana was going to instruct us, at one point, about the Zoroastrian foundations of Judaism, which I am eager to hear about, but I think she's working hard on her book right now.
Let me start out by noting that Zoroastrianism is a very old religion, at least as old as Hinduism, and both religions have common, ancient roots in Central Asia. Zoroastrianism is also very stable, doctrinally: I can think of one (short-lived) schism in its entire history.
Zoroastrianism is monotheistic: it has a supreme good God, lesser beings-worthy-of-worship, and an evil principle -- which is never worshiped. (Indeed the entire point of Zoroastrianism is resisting and undermining the work of the evil principle from one's own thoughts to the world at large. ) Creation begins with one man, in a paradise, with a tree (and an ox.) The intervention of evil creates the world as we know it: a salty sea, fire that gives smoke, and a world where good an evil are mixed (even in the human heart.) In the End there will be a general resurrection and everyone will have to walk through a river of fire: to the good it will be as warm milk, to the bad it will be - well - as a river of fire. Good and Evil will again be separated and Evil defeated.
The Babylonian Exile dispersed the Jews in the Persian Empire. (Chronology: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... xile2.html Note the Persian setting of the later books in the Hebrew Bible.) The state religion of the Persian empire was Zoroastrianism. The edict of Cyrus (the Persian Emperor) that allowed the Jews to return and rebuild the Temple was one of several similar edicts to other peoples. For this, Judaism hailed Cyrus as the Messiah. At this point several concepts enter Judaism: a Messiah (there are 3 in Zoroastrianism for different eras of history, one is born of a virgin), the general resurrection of the dead at the End, the idea of an End, itself; the Last Judgment, an evil principle, and anxieties not about their contract with God as a people but about God's goodness and the persistence of evil men and misfortunes on earth. Theses were not strong concepts in Judaism before exposure to Zoroastrianism, all of these ideas are Zoroastrian and (looking around the region at the time) can't be anyone else's. (There is a judgment of the individual dead person in Egyptian religion but it's quite different and there's no resurrection.) Jewish burial practices also change to resemble Zoroastrian practices where the bones are exposed then moved -- handling bones (or corpses at all) is otherwise viewed with horror in Judaism -- yet it is the bones that are necessary for the resurrection at the End. (Think of ossuaries.)
This same set of concept also appears in Christianity (from Judaism) and Islam (I'd argue from Judaism, although I know less than I should about Arab religion before Islam.) Yet Zoroastrianism has no "Problem of Evil": God has nothing to do with evil and does not in any way permit or allow it, all that is bad comes from the encroachment of the evil principle. Zoroastrianism has had no religious wars, that I know of. Zoroastrianism has (with the exception of Manichaeism...) tolerated other religions. Zoroastrianism has never, evidently, had a religious purge or inquisition. People of other beliefs are not associated with the evil principle or seen as embodiments or representatives of it; Zoroastrianism emphasizes "Good thoughts, Good words, Good deeds" for each adherent -- given the mischief the idea of the Devil has caused its younger siblings it is remarkable that it never did.
(It's also a religion that encourages the killing of wasps
there's no Johnny Appleseed "Oh, but there God's critters, too." (The bit of roof over my front door has become Prime Wasp Real Estate this Spring: it's hard to approach this with the proper zeal when one's, say, been studying Hinduism.)-Kushana
(I wrote all of this off the top of my head, please catch me if I've made any goofs.)
Note: the Zoroastrians (Parsis) are still around today ... not that you'd know that from reading most scholars in my field.
But there is possibly another hygienic reason for killing them: they produce nothing beneficial to humans but rather prey on the very beneficial spider. 
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