SPENTA MAINYU

YOU ARE IN DARKNESS.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: "Ignorance is an attitude, change it!"

home page

THE NAME

‘Yahuahshua’ (yhuhshua) - ‘yshua’ (shortened version)- Jesus. Probably the most mentioned, most referred to, most debated etc. personality in history. But who is he? Is he really the person presented to us today? The New Testament, four Gospels, ‘letters’ supposedly written by Paul, and various texts authored by other early Christians which came to be regarded as sacred scriptures are the sources which provide us with information about him. We shall look at those later on.

Some say that Jesus has really existed, in other words he is ‘historical’, and some maintain that he is a mythical person. Two Roman historians Tacitus and Pliny wrote about someone called Jesus. They are in agreement that the person they referred to has lived in Palestine at the time of the Roman emperor Augustus. But there were lots of similar characters around Palestine in those days, and they all had the same name: yhuhshua -Jesus. They were all around the place. A few of them show up in the New Testament like Jesus Justus, Jesus (Joshua) the son of Nun, Bar-Jesus (Bar is Aramaic for son) who is described as a sorcerer and a false prophet. Therefore can we say that Jesus actually is not a specific name, but a description of a certain type of person? Most probably, yes. It is interesting to note that the Egyptian hieroglyph for saviour is a cross, which means that the symbol of Jesus is actually his ‘name’ written in Egyptian.

He was to have been given the name Immanu-el (Immanu-el = ‘God is with us’; ‘el’ is the name of the Canaanite god) upon birth, but the plan was changed and he was called yahuah-shua (‘YAHUAH’- ‘YHUAH’ - ‘YHWH’=God, ‘shua’=salvation’) - Jesus. One of his previous names was YAHUSHUA-YHUSUA - Jehoshua - Joshua, but Gospels refrained from calling him that, because he would have come to be known as the Second Joshua. He was called Jesu in Aramaean, Yuzu-Yusu in Urdu, Yuzu in Farsi-Persian, Issa in Arabian. They know him as Yuzu or Yuzu Asaph in Kashmir (Yuzu here stands for Jesu and Asaph stands for ‘gatherer’). His mystical name in the Dead Sea Scrolls is said to be Asaph adn Ya Asaph.

Jesus Christ is at the heart of Christianity. He is supposedly a ‘God in flesh’, a man, an icon. Where does this Christ come from? From Greek of course! Khristos in Greek is a translation of the Hebrew word mãshïah (anointed one). This is the name Jesus came to be known when the early teachers carried Christianity beyond the region.

Let us look into the possibility of his name being a title. When Jesus was supposed to have been around prophets coming from everywhere were wandering around in Palestine. If we go back again to the name Jesus - ‘yahuahshua’ it means ‘YH is salvation’ (YH/YAH is another name of YAHUAH-YHUAH; later YU became the shortened version). When these Jesuses were around, Jews remembered Joshua as the prototype of a liberator from foreign rule, and the Hellenistic belief in rebirth was widespread in the Jewish community. Against this background great personalities were seen as different embodiments of the continuity of their spirit as the ‘chosen people’. These personalities were seen by their followers as the reincarnations of Yahushua-Yhushua-Joshua. Therefore we would  not be off the mark very much if we said that the name Jesus might have been used more as a title for someone embodying this divinely ordained office. Jesus might have had a different name, and around the time of the Jewish war his followers might have preferred to call him Jesus. Like other Jesuses the Jesus of the New Testament also went up the Mount of Olives (locals call it the ‘Olive Mount’), where he told his disciples about the last days (the end of time) that were ahead. (The Mount of Olives was covered with olive trees once. But when Titus, the son of Vespasianus put down the uprising of the Zealots, he had these trees cut to make crosses for the Jews he had captured. So the Mount of Olives was left bare).

The accounts we have on Jesus today are just traditional narrations included in the Gospels and the collection of texts called the New Testament, all of which were supposedly written by his followers. So we should ask: Did his followers call him Jesus just to put him alongside other rebellious Jesuses - the self-styled ‘messengers’? Then, how much credence could be accorded to a person whose biography is interchangeable? This interchangeability must naturally have an effect on his difference from the others, and on his ‘uniqueness’. The next question should be about how much historical credibility should be accorded to the traditional accounts of Jesus? The possible answers to this question are crucial for our understanding of the Jesus’ fairy-tale.

GENEALOGIES

Let’s start with the genealogies. When we read the genealogies in both Matthew and Luke, from Adam to Jesus we detect that these genealogies are not based on the biological descent. They are designed for a specific purpose of confirming the mythological prophecies. But do they accomplish this aim? No. The genealogy of the ‘Son of God’ must be immaculate. But Matthew’s genealogy shows a descent for Jesus through a cursed line. God cursed the line of Jehoiacin and said that none of their descendants should be on the throne of David. Could someone from a blemished line be a messiah, forever to be on the throne of David? According to the genealogy in Luke Jesus seems to have his descent from David (of the tribe of Judah-YAHUDAH-YHUDA-YUDAH), through Miryam rather than Joseph then who is going to answer the question: “How is it that Miriram’s cousin Elisheva (Elizabeth) is a descendant of the house of Aaron, of the tribe of Levi?”(Luke 1:5).

Moreover these genealogies are self-contradictory and irreconcilable. Yosef/Joseph (YAHUCEPH=‘YAHU will add’; He was addded to the story by the supreme creator wasn't he?) is presented as the husband of Miryam (Mary, Myrhiam meaning ‘princess’) and the father of Jesus. These names reflect the ‘reality’ presented in the Gospels. Didn’t God choose Joseph as Jesus’ father? Isn’t Miryam presented as a descendant of David or the tribe of Levi, thus from ‘royalty’? Joseph’s genealogy is there, but there is not one for Miryam. Apocryphal Gospels may furnish more information. About fifty of these Gospels were discovered, but all of them were declared as heretical by the Church hundreds of years ago. Some of them were destroyed but a few managed to reach our day. Concerning Miryam the Mother, the Gospel of James says that she was the daughter of Joachim and Hanna. Her cousin Elisabeth was married to Zacharias, a high priest, who arranged the marriage of Joseph and Miryam. Miryam is said to have been given to the Temple at the age of three and stayed there until twelve years of age. Where, we are told, angels visited her and fed her. When she was twelve years old she saw an angelic apparition. She supposedly gave birth to Jesus the following year. Imagine! Miryam is given to the Temple by her parents and there a man impregnates the child (read the Essene account on the virgin birth). With a twelve year old girl, with her ignorance topped by the fiery imagination of childhood, any persuasive man could have played ‘games’ with Miryam presenting himself as the ‘angel of God’ or the ‘Holy Spirit’. Miryam supposedly had other children as well. All these children are accepted as brothers and sisters of Jesus. They are thought to be from a different father. People of Nazareth accepted James (YA’AKOV-YAH-KOBE=’the supplanter’; Didn't he become the leader after Jesus? ), Joses, Judah and Simon (SHIMON-SIMEON) as brothers of Jesus. The names of his sisters are not given. Following the return of the family from Egypt, there is no mention of father Joseph, and Joseph never talks about Jesus as his son.

THE VIRGIN BIRTH

“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanu-el” (Isaiah 7:14).

Thus the prophecy in Isaiah is fulfilled; or is it? But  didn’t the God of Isaiah (YESHAYAHU-YSHYHU='YAHU is Salvation') promise  a different name for the child of the virgin. The name was to be ‘Immanu-el’ as the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 tells us. The reason why God has changed his mind and wanted this child called yshua is not clear. Nothing is written in the New Testament on this matter. It seems to be just the choice of the author based on the expectations and requirements of his day. Consequently Immanu-el (‘God is with us’; ‘God is on our side’) was changed to Yshua (‘Jah-YHWH is salvation’) because the day necessitated a redeemer in the name of YHWH.

When we get more into the fairy-tale we detect that the aouthor of the Gospel of Matthew refers to Isaiah, and uses also the word ‘virgin’. He most probably quotes from the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament. In the Septuagint we see the Greek word parthenos which is ‘virgin’. But Isaiah did not use the word ‘virgin’ in the prophecy. The original Hebrew word was not translated into Greek properly, which is ‘almah’. This Hebrew word means a ‘young woman’. The proper word for Isaiah to use for ‘virgin’ would have been ‘bethulah’, which means sexually pure, undefiled and untouched. In fact he has used bethulah when referring to the “virgin daughter of Zidon” (Isaiah 23:12).

In addition to this translation mistake we have another indication that this passage could not be about the birth of Jesus. It is the example of re-interpreting history, inventing events and correlations, and remoulding all into one final story. Let us try to understand what Isaiah might have been referring to. Read Isaiah 7:1, where you will see that there is an alliance between Syria and Israel against Judah and they “went up towards Jerusalem”. Hence “God is on our side”. When we take the Isaianic revelation in its context where the prophet urges king Ahaz, in a time of trouble and under the threat of foreign invasion, to ask God for a sign. Ahaz refuses to do so, prophet tells him that God would give him a sign. This sign would be the birth of a child to an unnamed young woman, the child would be named Immanu-el, and would grow up to experience the hardships which would result from the Assyrian invasion of Judah predicted by the prophet. The name of the child was to be Immanu-el (‘El is with us’; ‘El is on our side’ - El is the Canaanite God). The intention behind this name is to tell the king and the people that God is with his people and in command of the situation. Go to Isaiah 7:16 where it is written that “..before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that you abhor shall be foresaken of both her kings”. According to Jews a child shall be able to choose between good and evil at the age of eight, which is the age of accountability. Therefore Isaiah has put a time limit to his prediction about the end of the war: eight years.. This is a period at the end of which Judah will win. Though seemingly they did not win the war (read II Chronicles 28). As you will be able to see there is nothing in this ‘prophecy’ about a child to be born centuries later. Matthew uses Isaiah out of context to invent a historical foundation for his invented Messiah. When Isaiah wrote that passage the priority was the war. They needed God on their side, whereas when Matthew wrote his passage the priority was the need for a redeemer. That is all! 

ISAIAH

Isaiah has reportedly prophesied the coming of Jesus, hasn’t he? Well, who is this Isaiah? He is the first of the three major prophets in the Old Testament - Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. The book of Isaiah is about the times before, during, and after the Babylonian exile of the Jews. The Book is centered on a collection of prophetic oracles by and narratives concerning the prophet Isaiah the son of Amos. The book is thought to be the work of at least two prophets. Isaiah is one of the four 8th century prophets, who are Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah. The Book of Isaiah is the most referred to or the quoted book of the Bible because of its references to the ‘Messianic age’ and to the ‘witness, rejection, suffering, death, and exaltation of the chosen servant of the Lord’. Isaiah personifies the redemptive and creative power of innocent suffering, willingly accepted, as the cost of bearing witness to the will of the God. In this portrait lies the main clue that the writers of the New Testament employed as to the meaning of the crucifixion of Jesus. The oldest material of the book are the oracles of Isaiah’s early period shortly after his call to prophesy in 742 BC. He was persecuted, suffered and died for the sins of others in obedience to YHWH’s will. Isaiah accepted with determination a painful death rather than give up his faith.

Isaiah 9:6-7 tells: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace..upon the thone of David.” Here one can detect a Messianic feeling and a reference to a future Davidic king, but there is no suggestion in the Hebrew text of a miraculous ‘virgin birth’. Which all adds up to a probable mistranslation of the original Hebrew text. But the interpretation by Matthew of this revelation shows that the belief in ‘virgin birth’ has already taken root in the early Christian society. When the canonical Gospels were in circulation the divine(!) sonship of Jesus and his consequent complete sinlessness was already fully recognized. He was sinless because his conception was without the intervention by a human father (as if that was possible). The contamination caused by Adam’s sin (the original sin) was not transmitted (what a sick mind!). This led to Miryam’s acceptance as the mother of God in the popular belief. She was declared the mother of God officially at the third Ecumenical Council in Ephesus in the year 431. Later on the dogma of the ‘Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin’ was established as an article of faith in 1854 by the Papal Bull ‘Infallibilis Deus’. In the year 1950 Pope Pius XII declared that Miryam was “taken up body and soul to heaven” at the end of her life. Presently Miryam is about to become a ‘Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix of All Graces and Advocate for the People of God.’ Petitions are written to Pope John Paul II asking him to make this declaration. Who are doing all these? Human beings. Miryam was a human being, wasn’t she? Her mother was also a human being? In this process we see the repeat of the basic age old progression towards the concept of a supreme being and the fortune of the perpetrators - the ‘lowly’, ‘despicable’ human beings who are sinners all! Unbelievable..

This claim called ‘immaculate conception’ or ‘virgin motherhood’ was in circulation long before Christianity in India, the whole of Mesopotamia, and the Middle East. Even Buddha, Socrates, Platon and Alexander the Great were all born of a virgin mother(!) according to folklore. These myths may have played a part in the creation of the belief in the virgin birth of Jesus. We know that the Hebrew writers have drawn on heathen mythology for their belief system (i.e. the Creation story). The Jewish-Christian writers have continued with the tradition. Jesus was seen as the new Moses. Jesus is the pivotal figure in the ‘New Creation’. Therefore there should be nothing wrong if a divine activity is also involved. Furthermore the creation of this myth fulfills another need amongst the illiterate and ignorant masses: The need for a mother-goddess. Who is she? Well, Miryam of course.

The tale called the ‘virgin birth’ which we read in Matthew and Luke does not exist in Mark, John or the Epistles. Could Matthew and Luke have meant a miraculous birth by ‘virgin birth’? After all we are dealing with religions and faiths, therefore everything is possible(!). According to Matthew, Miryam was found with the child of the Holy Ghost before she married Joseph. Luke writes that Angel Gabriel came to Miryam and told that the Holy Ghost would ‘overshadow’ her and she would bring forth a son.

Who was this man called Joseph, the supposed father of Jesus? He is ‘Joseph the Carpenter. ’ He is presented as a carpenter, but some authorities on the New Testament say that this Joseph might have been a scholar. Why? Because when the Aramaic word for carpenter is translated, in Jewish commentaries on the law, it means a ‘learned man’. Well, Joseph was supposedly a member of the Qumran community, and like every member he worked at ‘trades’ when out in the world (out of Qumran establishment). When he was inside the monastery he taught. According to the Essene/Qumran account Joseph the carpenter taught the pilgrims who came to Qumran to receive instructions in their ‘Eden’. These laymen were called ‘trees.’ The learning they were given was derived from the ‘tree of life’, and the higher ‘tree of knowledge’. Since Joseph was involved with the shaping of the ‘trees’ he might as well be called a carpenter - a learned man. Here is another unknown for you: Was he a carpenter or a scholar? Should we stick to the official meaning of the word or opt for the Essene account, which seems to have an all enveloping story? This is a choice which makes a fundamental difference in our understanding of the fairy-tale.

There is another fairy-tale: The second Book of Enoch tells us that the sister of Noah, and the wife of Nir, Sophoneim conceived a son without a sexual union with her husband. The name of the child was Melchizedek (MELECHI-SADAQ, MELECHI-SEDEQ=‘My King is righteous’). Like this one, virgin birth tales appear elsewhere. H. W. Bellow who accompanied the British Embassy to Kashgar in 1874 writes in his book, Kashmir and Kashgar (London 1875): “This is the shrine over the grave of Alanor Turkan in Artosh. The history of Alanor resembles that of Miryam, the mother of Jesus. One night the angel Gabriel appeared and poured a drop of light into her mouth. It pervaded all her body with a sense of ecstasy. Finally, after some months and days, Alanor gave birth to a son .. While the people were amazed, the king ordered an assembly to investigate. She was fully questioned, and later was pronounced a chaste lady.. The shrine which stands on the bank of a deep ravine is called Mazar Bibi Miryam, or the Shrine of the Lady Mary. The legend attached to her name resembles that of Allan Coa, the mother of the great ancestor of the Mughal, as given in the Rauzat-us-Safa of Mir Khwand. Her case is comparable to that of the mother of Lord Jesus.” Who would believe in this ‘drop of light’ theory or ‘the God would overshadow’ explanation?

The Essene Version of the virgin birth is extremely interesting. First let us have the questions: Why should the birth of Jesus be different? How could this have happened? Why shouldn’t his birth be a natural one? Perhaps the first writers of the Gospels have invented everything to fulfill one of the basic requirements of building a religion: Create a mystery; envelop the ‘invented’ extraordinary events with this mystery; create a peculiar terminology; stay in the realm of the out-of-the-ordinary. These will create an incomprehensibility, which is the perfect ground on which a belief system could be built.

“..I will tell you the parentage of this man (Jesus), who love all men and for whom we feel the highest esteem. He was from his infancy brought up for our brotherhood. Indeed, he was predicted by an Essene, whom the women thought to be an angel. This woman was given to many imaginings delving into the supernatural and into the mysteries of life. Our brother the Essene has acknowledged his part in these things and has persuaded the brotherhood to search for and protect the child secretly. Joseph a man of great experience in life and of deep devotion to the immortal truth, was influenced, through a messenger of our Order, not to leave the woman nor to disturb her faith in the sacredness of her experience. He was told to be a father to the child until our brotherhood should admit him as a novice. Thus, during their flight to Egypt, Joseph, his wife and the child were secretly protected and guided by our brotherhood.”

No wonder Joseph never called Jesus his son. Everything becomes vague when one deals with religions, and here is a written document. Should we question its authenticity? Do as you like, but if the supreme examples of fiction written in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament are believed in as the fundamentals of a faith, why shouldn’t one take into consideration the Essene account? There’s nothing strange in that..Myths and religions are inventions by the human mind, and decision is yours.

“..He exhorted Mary to describe distinctly the differences between reality and dreamy imagination, things as different as the day is from the night, and instructed her how to quiet her mind through prayer and devotion. Her mind was filled with fiery imaginings that often lifted her thoughts to heavenly things and made her indifferent to the things of the earth. In consequence she strongly influenced the mind of her son to the study and contemplation of immortal truths.”

Now do you have a clearer picture than the one presented in the Gospels? The author of the letter giving us the Essene account (The Crucifixion by an Eye-Witness, 1907) further narrates how Joseph instructed child Jesus in knowledge and wisdom, and protected his pure mind against the power of overstrained imagination. Now can you imagine the problems the brain of the child Jesus had to deal with even at that very early age. On the one hand the ‘out-of-this-world’ ideas coming from his mother and on the other the instructions of his father in knowledge and wisdom - basically about ‘things’ out-of-this-world as well. Poor child!

Therefore this is the summary: Miryam’s visitor was not the angel of God. That is definite. How could a ‘being’, presented as a ‘holy ghost’, with no physical body have a sexual union with a woman? Since we are not speaking about an artificial insemination, sexual union is the only way to a conception. This necessitates a male(!) divine entity. You must refresh your memories! The supreme beings don’t need genders, or anything like that for that matter, to influence the state of affairs. They just will and it happens! These are all ridiculous and nonsensical inventions of the human mind, first examples of which (the male and female deities) could be seen in Sumer.

Who invented this symbolism? Who thought about this worship of Shakti? Who invented the story of Adam and Eve, the forbidden fruit, and the ‘original sin’? Who turned the concept of the worship of the female energy into the concept of ‘evil woman’? The human mind of course! Ever since Augustine, Christians have understood their eating of the forbidden fruit as the ‘original sin’, which has established the need for Christ’s redemptive death. But the text of the Book of Genesis says nothing about sin. The concept of sin must have been created by an unhealthy mind later on, as it is usual with almost all of the belief systems.

We are talking about human beings and there is only one method for them to make a child, a sexual union. So there must have been an actual, physical ‘event’ at the convent where child Miryam was staying at the time. Who was the person participating in this ‘event’? No one knows. But he was certainly not a non-physical being, an angel, a light, or a shadow. This event, if it has ever taken place, must have been a sexual union between two human beings, and there is nothing divine about it. On that line there are those who claim that there was no divinity involved; that Jesus’ birth story was completely normal; that the man, the real father of Jesus was Judas of Gamalah, who was the son of Hezekiah of Gamalah (Gamalah is a place to the east of Lake Tiberias/Lake Galilee). Hezekiah was a rebel and a zealot. He was the head of the Davidian dynasty while the king of Israel and the head of the Hasmonean dynasty was Hyrkanus II. Herod the Great was recognised by Rome as the legitimate king of Israel. When he took Jerusalem, the Hasmonean dynasty fell and Hyrkanus II was killed. Hezekiah was proclaimed the enemy of Rome, arrested and crucified. Davidians saw this development as a chance for them to repossess the throne. Judas of Gamalah started his zealot movement. He married Miryam (the cousin of Mariamne II, who was the daughter of Hyrkanus II and the wife of Herod the Great). Judas and Miryam had many children, amongst them Jesus, James, Joseph, Judas, and Simeon (these names also appear in Mark 6:3). The zealots made their first strike during census, at the end of which they were massacred. Judas ended up on the cross, but prior to his end he managed to send his family away (probably to Egypt). Therefore Miryam and the children were saved. So this is another proposition.

THE TRINITY STORY

There are other trinities as well like Buddhist, Egyptian, and Chinese.

Taking refuge in this holy trinity is at the centre of the Theravada cult up to the present day. Christian theology has the trinity of father-son-holy spirit, whereby the son, the second person, is equated with logos and the third person, the holy spirit, is at work in the community of the faithful.

The most sacred authority in Buddhism is the trinity represented by Buddha-Dharma-Sangha. The Father-Son-Holy Spirit of Christianity when compared with the Buddhist trinity exhibits the following correspondences: The Son - the Second Person - is equated with the Logos (that is to say the Dharma) and the third person - the Holy Spirit - is active in the community of the faithful (the Sangha). The concept of Holy Trinity, a deity in three persons or manifestations, has been in existence in religious doctrine since the dawn of history, from Egypt to eastern Asia.

Egyptians of early dynasties conceived their prime trinity of a Sun God+Earth Mother+ a combined Sun-over-Earth Son. Chinese equivalent was the trinity of heaven+earth+ human individual made perfect (Emperor-‘the son of heaven’). The Hindu Trimurti of Brahma+Vishnu+Shiva is thought to have developed into its present form during the medieval times. But it is rooted in much older ideas of ‘Three’.

The doctrine of trinity does not make sense at all but it is there and it seems to have been borrowed from the long existing and wide spread doctrines of three divine beings existing as different manifestations of the single entity, all around the Middle East, Egypt, India, and in the land of the Hittites to the north. Yes, Hittites   seemingly have had a trinity of their own as well; a trinity comprising of the sky-father, the earth-mother, and a divine son. Therefore this idea of trinity is not particular to the organized belief system called Christianity, and it must have been introduced with a special purpose to conceal the Biblical discrepancies about the nature of Jesus Christ behind a veil of mystery.

Some sections of Christianity and some theologians do not accept trinty and also have difficulty in accepting the resurrection of Jesus. But do not forget, a religious idea or a thought or a doctrine has to be out-of-the-ordinary and incomprehensible to have an impact on the brains of the credulous ignorants; exactly like the incomprehensibility of God. When one tries to explain the trinity by attributing a divine character to God, or defining the three different personalities as the three different manifestations of God, the endlessness and incomprehensibility of God comes to an end. That is the problem facing Christianity.

In Vedic philosophy, the core of modern Hinduism, God or the deity is described as Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence-Awareness-Blessedness). As one can easily see these have clear parallels with the personalities of the Christian Trinity.

THE ORIGINAL SIN 

What is this thing called the ‘original sin’? Who committed it? When? Where? Here is the story: There was no sin in the beginning. It was not the part of of the creation by the supreme being. From the theological point it was impossible because the supreme being could not have committed a sin and did not create religion. Therefore the supreme being could not have delegated something which he has not created. Religion was invented by the brain of the ‘lowly’ humans. For what? For cleaning themselves of the self-created concept of lowliness, dirtiness, sinfulness in the first place, and to reach the exalted state of the divine beings to attain immortality eventually. And the ‘original sin’ wasn’t invented until the texts written - or supposedly written - by Paul. The original sin does not appear anywhere else in the both Testaments. Adam (Adamah) and Negebbah (Hawwah-Eve) ate the forbidden fruit to know the good and evil, to become wise and become God-like. Genesis 3:22 gives us the story: “And the Lord God said, behold, the man is become one of us, to know good and evil: and now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” There is no mention of sin here. Moreover God expresses his will for man: “take the tree of life, eat and Live forever”.

The Book tells us that the humans were created perfect. This alleged ‘imperfection’ tagged on by the human beings makes the God - the creator of the human beings -imperfect as well. But the same human beings consider their invention - the supreme creator - as perfect, and without a blemish. How could a perfect omnipotent being create an imperfection? Negebbah means ‘noble’. If mankind thought that her nobility was based on blood then Adam must be noble as well (Negebbah is created(!) from Adam’s rib, remember?), which leads us to the conclusion that mankind is noble, being the offspring of a noble couple. If initially both Adam and Negebbah were thought to be noble, then what happened later on which led to the present contorted conception of man of himself and the woman? Mankind thinks of its kind as lowly sinners and the woman almost as ‘Satan’. God has never told them that they had sinned or that they were sinners. On the contrary what God said was, “Adam has become one of us by knowing the good and evil.” This story suggests that by eating the forbidden fruit Adam has not become a sinner but acquired wisdom.

In the first six days of creation the ‘supreme creator’ did not tell the mankind to love each other. The ‘supreme creator’s plan was not Eve getting carried away with the passion to have a child. The creator wanted them to have children but not with animalistic instincts. So, are we to presume that the ‘natural way’ the creator has intended for their procreation is probably a virgin birth? The mankind might have thought that the immaculate conception was appropriate and also Adam and Eve has committed something which was not in God’s plan. Again this is ridiculous! When the Old Testament is interpreted we have the feeling that man has got his identity from the creator but acquired his personality via the female. When a human being deviates from the right path God may consider him at fault. But a human being commits a sin within his self. When man acquires a body he starts to ‘know’ (It is not a coincidence that ‘knowing’ according to Jewish tradititon is identical with having sexual intercourse). According to the writers of the Old Testament the history of mankind begins with man becoming conscious of ‘shame’, which means becoming conscious of his physical self, and what he could do with his body. Mankind cannot commit sin unknowingly, he just errs. And the one who errs can always return to ones previous untainted state (Jews call this T’shuah). But committing a sin necessitates God’s forgiveness. Adam did not commit a sin he just erred. Erring may not necessitate the loss of fundamental righteousness. On the other hand committing a sin is a conscious, calculated act and has nothing to do with honesty. A man cannot be both righteous and a sinner.

The doctrine of ‘original sin’ stems from the Orphic roots as well. According to the myth mankind comes from the line of titans who killed the young Zagreus (a variant of Dionysus), and mankind carries the weight of this crime. Anaximander tells us in a passage that a primitive (pre-historical) sin had destroyed the unity of the world and that everything originating from it should be punished. In the Christian myth it seems beyond doubt that the original sin was committed against the father God. In other words the Christians are acknowledging the pre-historical crime as openly as possible, because they have paid the compensation for that by sacrificing a son (Jesus).

Consequently the Son has become God, side by side with the father or better still he has replaced the Father and became God himself. The belief system of the father is replaced by the belief system of the son. The blood and flesh at the ancient totem dinner of the Father, has become the flesh and blood of the son (bread and wine).

WHEN WAS JESUS BORN AND WHO WAS HE?

But can we be more precise about his birth date? Yes, because there are three indications: The Star of Beth-lehem (Matthew 2:2); Herod was still alive (Matthew 2:1 and the following); a census ordered by Caesar Augustus (Luke 2:1-2). This Star of Beth-lehem was a conjunction in Pisces between Jupiter and Saturn which happened at least three times in 7 BC. This is said to be a very rare event which happens every 900 years, and called also the ‘wise men’s star’ which lead to fish becoming a sign of recognition amongst the Christians. The only census that took place when Herod was still alive, and ordered by Caesar Augustus, was in 7 BC. The astronomical conjunction, Herod and census came together in the year 7 BC. That must be the birth year of Jesus, if he has ever existed..

There is another story about ‘the three wise men from the East’. We read it in Matthew 2:1-2: “Now when Jesus was born in the days of Herod, behold there came wise men from the East to Jerusalem, saying, ‘ where is he that is born the king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and are come to worship him.’ And when they were come into his house, they saw the child with Mary his mother and they fell down and worshipped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrhh. And warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.” If we go by the striking similarity between this story and the priests travelling to find the reincarnation of Dalai Lama, we could say that they were Buddhists, or they may have been magi from Persia, or the whole story may be an adaptation of the Dalai Lama story to Jesus, to glorify him.

The bottom line is: Due to the basic discrepancies in the story his actual date of birth is not clear. Moreover his birth-date is given not real. It was the beginning of the 4th century, Emperor Constantine declared catholic Christianity to be the state religion. This was a momentous victory for the Christianity. But they needed a liturgy. They had no alternative but to take over the liturgy of the popular Mithraic Church.

Here we must pause and remember the Mithras cult and those aspects of it which were taken over by Christianity: In its early years the mightiest competitor of the Christian Church was the movement that came to Egypt from the East, two hundred years before Jesus, reached Rome around the turn of the millennium, and soon became the Roman Empire’s most important religion - the cult of Mithras (Check the pages on Mithraism in this site). Mithras is a God from the pantheon of the Indians and Persians. Vedic India worshipped Mithras as a patron of human relationships, the preserver of heaven and earth and a God fighting against lies and error. Mithras started his victorious progress across the Graeco-Roman world, and the Buddhist saviour Maitreya started his journey in the east. As the saviour of the Buddhists, Maitreya’s future coming was promised by Sakyamuni. The name Maitreya is seen as related to the Aramaic meshia - the messiah. There are very interesting parallels when the etymology of the word Maitreya is considered. The word means ‘friendly, loving’ and is derived from maitri (friendship, compassion, friend, ally), the sanskrit form of Mithras. Used as a personal name Maitreya even means ‘Son of Mithra’ (Mithra is the God; Son of Mithra is the ‘Son of God’. Does it ring a bell?) Like Maitreya, Mithras is thought to be waiting in heaven for the end of time, when he will descend to earth (This is also Jesus’ line, is it not?). According to legend, the redeemer will be born of a virgin (Jesus is said to have been born of a virgin; this shows that his story has its origins in the earlier myths), a goddess, thrusting through animal skin to the light of day. His birth will be watched by shepherds (Remember the fairy tale about the birth of Jesus), who will worship the newly born..His earthly mission culminates in his victory over the bull..From the body of the dying bull grow corn (bread) and grapes (wine) (Here is the origin of the eating of bread and drinking of wine which is a Christian ritual) until Mithras finally mounts to heaven in the sun-chariot and is enthroned by the God of light as the ruler of the world, to return to earth when the time comes, awaken the dead and pass judgement (Jesus was taken up(!) to the heaven to wait for the end of time, doesn’t he?).

The legend does not specify whether this birth is a past or future event but those who believed in Mithras celebrated his arrival every year on the night of 24-25 December, when the community had its important festivity (Isn’t this celebration called Christmas - the birthday of Jesus?). Romans worshipped Mithras as the saviour of the mankind, and these December celebrations were for ‘Dies Natalis Invicti’ (‘Birthday of the Unconquered’). In short, when the Romans were converted to Christianity they just simply converted the Mithra festival into a Christian festival. This date was arbitrarily fixed by a Scythian monk - Dionysius Exiguus in the year 533. (Jesus in Heaven on Earth, Nazir Ahmad Khwaja). Furthermore Exiguus moved 1 BC to 1 AD. Prior to Exiguus, Jesus’ birthday was fixed as January 6, which is still celebrated in the Orthodox church, in the Balkans and Mexico. So where did this first birthday come from? The Christian feast of the epiphany was the celebration of Christ’s birth. Then it became the celebration of Christ’s baptism. There are still some scholars who feel that epiphany has always been an ‘idea feast,’ celebrating the manifestations of Christ’s power. The epiphany originated in the Eastern Church probably as early as 3rd century, and came to be celebrated in the West in the 4th century. The choice of date, January 6, is presumably an adaptation of rival pagan feasts. In Egypt, the waters of the Nile are reputed to acquire special powers during the night of January 5-6, which is the festival of the god Aeon, who was born of the virgin Kore. (Here is another story of immaculate conception which fits Jesus’ stature.) Another big annual festival was held at the start of spring (This is now called Easter - the resurrection of Jesus. After all, all the agriculture gods did come back to life with the spring, didn’t they?).

The weekly divine service was held on Sunday (Christianity adopted this practice), the day of the God. The predecessor of the New Testament, the Old Testament, established the seventh day (Saturday), when God rested, as God’s Day. Didn’t it? No one can find a Biblical support for the Sunday worship. Church services on Sundays were started with rituals taken over from the Mithras cult. Mithra was called ‘Sol invictus Mithra’ - Mithra the unconquered Sun; Sunday was God’s day, Sun’s day, Mithra’s day.

The ‘mass’ is said to be nothing but the celebration of the Mithraic mysteries, and the call “dominus vobiscum” (“Lord is with you”, is literally the utterance of acceptance: chron-k-am, p-ak. The most important cult activity was a meal of wine and bread - offered as consecrated wafers bearing the sign of a cross (Does this remind you of another cultic activity this time in Christianity?). The Mithras cult has other sacraments which also correspond completely with those of the Catholic Church. The spiritual leader of the hierarchically organized Mithras religion was entitled Pater Patrum - ‘Father of Fathers’ - who corresponds to the Roman Pope of our day. The centre of Christianity, Vatican has its Church of St Peter built over a Mithraic cult site.

Now back to the Jesus story. First the narrative about the family of Jesus moving to Egypt for a while? Following the visit of the ‘three wise men from the East’ Joseph the father supposedly received a message from God. He was ordered to take his family with him, go to Egypt, and stay there until a second communication, because Herod had ordered all the male children up to two years of age to be killed. Apocryphal works point to numerous places where Jesus stayed on the road to and in Egypt. The family stayed in the monasteries of Wadi-el-Natrun, Mataria, and Al-Moharraq. These monasteries belonged to the Essenes. The village of Mataria is on the right bank of the Nile, and the holy family found refuge there. During their stay in Egypt Essene brotherhood provided all kinds of facilities to the family. They were conducted as guests to their dwelling near the slope of the mountain ‘Cassius’ where the Romans had built a temple dedicated to Jupiter. They were also introduced to the Essene congregation where they learned prayer ceremony as well as the eating of consecrated bread and drinking of holy wine. Here is a question for you: Wasn’t Joseph an Essene himself, therefore he must have already known all these? In addition to that it must be clear to the inquisitive brains that Christianity did not exist then, but the ritual is there, Essenes are practicing it. The following is the written account of the ceremony in The Crucifixion by an Eye-Witness:

WHERE WAS JESUS BORN?

Where was Jesus born? There is supposed to be a mythical reference to the birthplace of Jesus. Beth-lehem is mentioned as his birthplace only in Matthew and Luke. But apart from the birthplace the rest of their stories are completely different. Paul never mentions Beth-lehem as Jesus’ birthplace. Mark and John also have no reference to Beth-lehem. On the contrary, according to John those who knew Jesus and his family thought that he was born in Galilee (John 7:27-28; 41-42).

Beth-lehem was the town of King David’s family; David was anointed there by prophet Samuel to be king over Israel; there are many Old Testament writings which refer to the hope that a descendant of David would one day restore the people to greatness; this person would be the ‘Messiah’ - the anointed one. Prophecy is in Micah 5:2, where prophet Micah had foretold: “..But you Beth-lehem Ephrathah, though you are little amongst the thousands (‘clans’) of Judah, from you shall come forth for me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth (origin) is from old, from everlasting.” The Old Testament uses Ephrathah (name of the second wife of Caleb, Joshua’s colleague) as an alternative name for Beth-lehem, and also Ephrath. Genesis 35:19 speaks of the burial place of Rachel (Jacob’s wife) as “in the way to Ephrath, which is Beth-lehem”. But at the time when David was born and brought up in Beth-lehem around 1000 BC. Rachel’s tomb was believed to be at Zelzah on the other side of Jerusalem; Samuel is talking to Saul in I Samuel 10:2: “..then you shall find two men by Rachel’s sepulchre in the border of Benjamin at Zelzah.” Which is the right description? Just another inconsistency.

The New Testament authors were very clever in locating the birthplace of Jesus as Beth-lehem, a town which allegedly had already produced Israel’s greatest king - David. Matthew 2:6 draws attention to Micah’s prophecy that it would produce another ‘ruler’: “And you Beth-lehem in the land of Juda, are not the least amongst the princes of Juda: for out of you shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.” For these authors the importance of Beth-lehem rests either on its connection with David, and his ancestors Boaz and Ruth, or on the fact that it was built by Rehoboam among other cities for defense purposes as told in II Chronicles 11:6 and fortified as a garrison (II Samuel 23:14). Furthermore don’t forget that Beth-lehem was already a sacred place - house of goddess Lahama. Beit-Léhem in Hebrew and Beyt-ul Lahm in Arabic have the same meaning: ‘house of bread ’. Back in history, texts found in Tell-el Amarna, dating from the 14th century BC. mention a town south of Jerusalem called Bit ilu Lahama (‘house of goddess Lahama’). Lahama is a goddess. This town is thought to be the Beth-lehem of our day. Which place would be more suitable than Beth-lehem for a supposed Saviour, a Messiah?

Another possible reason why Beth-lehem must have been considered an appropriate birth place for Jesus is as follows: Christian apologist Justin Martyr wrote after AD. 155 that Miryam bore Jesus and laid him in a manger in “a cave very close to the village.” This cave and the manger were shown to the theologian Origen in 248 AD. Martyr and Origen knew Beth-lehem when it had pagan as well as Christian inhabitants. St. Jerome and later writers say that there was a cult of Adonis near the cave. In the words of St. Jerome Beth-lehem is the “most venerable place on earth..was foreshadowed by a grove of Tammuz (Adonis)..in the cave where the infant Christ once wailed, the lover of Venus (Adonis) had been mourned”. This is another indication that this town already had connections to local gods and was a place of cultic practices. Emperor Constantine ordered the building of the Church of the Nativity on this location, and the Adonis cult left its place to another cultic activity - Christianity - which has its roots in the Mithras cult. What a coincidence! A ‘God’ who dies and rises from the dead is born in the very cave in which once the rebirth of another God - Tammuz - had been rejoiced. This must be the one of the main reasons of the choice of Beth-lehem as the place where Jesus was born.

Is there any evidence which shows that Jesus was born in Beth-lehem? Apart from the Biblical texts no. Gospels are unreliable. The nativity story appears in only two of them anyway. Matthew and Luke give the story, but John and Mark don’t touch the matter. Paul seems to be ignorant of the birthplace of Jesus. Matthew writes that Joseph and Mary lived in Beth-lehem, Jesus was born there, wise men from East visited them there, then the family moved to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod, they moved back when Herod died, and went to Nazareth instead of Beth-lehem. Matthew 2:19-23 gives us the story of the supposed return of the family of Jesus from Egypt to Palestine. An angel appears to Joseph in a dream, tells him to take his family back to the land of Israel, because Herod is dead. They come to the land of Israel, but when Joseph heard that Archelaus, Herod’s son was the new ruler of the land, he feared to go to Jerusalem and “he turned aside into the parts of Galilee.. And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene.” This is a story clearly invented to link Jesus to the prophecy. Was this the reason or was there something else? We read elsewhere that “when the peril in Galilee was over and the Roman ‘Warus’ was pillaging in Judea, making the county unsafe, Joseph went to Nazareth, which is situated near by the steep mount of Tabor.” We are told in another place that Archelaus starts terrorizing Galilee and Joseph was persuaded to go to Jerusalem. Luke in the meantime writes that Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth and came to Beth-lehem to register themselves in a census; that shepherds visited infant Jesus there. Luke does not mention Herod’s alleged massacre of the little boys in Beth-lehem. There is no record of a census which might support Luke’s story. A census under emperor Augustus is mentioned, but it was in 6 AD. not in 4 BC. Furthermore Quirinus/Cyrenius was not the governor of Syria then. Christian writer Tertullian describes the census at the time of Jesus’ birth and gives the governor’s name as Saturnius.

Let us take up the Nazareth connection. Was Jesus born or stayed there? Werner Keller in Bible as History writes: “On the other hand, there is absolutely no historical or archaeological proof of the flight to Egypt any more than there is for Jesus’ stay in Nazareth.”

Where was he born then? The most likely (maybe the true birth-place) place is Gamalah to the east of Lake Tiberias. This is a new proposition, which is based on the supposition that it was the city where Judas of Gamalah, allegedly his real father, resided. If one tries to keep a person’s (Jesus) real identity a secret, one also tends to conceal all possible connections, especially like his real parents. Jesus’ connection to Judas of Gamalah remaining a secret seems crucial for the Jesus myth to survive.

In Matthew 9:1 it is written that Jesus “ entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city”. This body of water must be the Lake Tiberias (Sea of Galilee). But which city is “his own city” and why? Was he born there? Did he preach there? Did he live there? Did he take refuge there? Which one? According to Matthew’s Gospel Jesus’ disciples lived on the shores of Lake Tiberias, possibly in Capernaum. Again we read in Mark 6:1 : “and came into his own country, and his disciples follow him”. Is this place the shores of Lake Tiberias? The town of Capernaum?

So choose as you please: Beth-lehem, Nazareth, Gamalah, Capernaum.. There is one more possibility which evokes the worst scenario for the Christians: How about if he wasn’t born in those towns or anywhere else for that matter, and it is only in the myths, in the writings of the architects of Christianity that ‘Jesus’existed? Your guess is as good as mine. 

WHAT DO THE TEXTS AND THE GOSPELS TELL US?

One can understand why it is important for Christianity to accept Jesus as a historical figure (a figure who actually had existed), because Christianity’s central themes and claims depend on real people, and real events. Anything to the contrary would destroy the myth Paul andGospel writers have built carefully.

Someone must explain the problem created by the fact that apart from the books of the New Testament no contemporary records exist which deal with the events of those days? In his important book History of Israel Professor Martin Noth writes: “..World history at the time took no notice of him. For one short moment his appearance stirred men’s minds in Jerusalem. Then it became an episode in the past history and the people had to concern themselves with what seemed important things. And yet this was a final decisive crisis in the history of Israel. It was only when the numbers of his followers made them a force to be reckoned with in terms of world history that his name began to be mentioned at all.”

It is extremely difficult to find out who, and what kind of a person Jesus was. At first, the Christian Church destroyed almost all the existing evidence to prevent the rebuilding of the personal history of the man called Jesus. Secondly, like the Essenes amongst whom he supposedly had spent a considerable time, Jesus probably had to conceal the secret about his real personality in order to keep his enemies away.

Read the question in Matthew 11:3 in this new context: “Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” Who asks this question? John the Baptist of course. If Jesus was a ‘known quantity’ as the story about him tries to portray, this question was unnecessary. If the need to have John the Baptist ask this question were real, then there must have been something else.. We will try to find out.

Another written source is the Paul’s epistle (‘letter’), which is thought to have been written in the period of 20-25 years after the departure of Jesus Christ. The writings attributed to Paul are older than the Gospels. Paul is thought to have been simply fascinated by the possibility of becoming the spiritiual leader of a religious mass movement then coming into existence. Modern research has revealed that many of the letters later attributed to Paul are forgeries or patched together from a few genuine fragments. Teaching introduced in Paul’s letters is fundamentally different from what research has recognized as being authentic ‘sayings’ of Jesus. What we know as Christianity today is not the teaching contained in these authentic sayings; it is the invented theology disseminated by Paul and by those who doctored his writings. The theology of ‘original sin’, God’s expiatory death on the cross, and the administration of his body (Church) - and thus of salvation - by a hierarchy of priests are the main pillars of this teaching. This theology is a complete departure from what Jesus taught like love of one’s neighbour. It derives its fundamentals from the early Mediterranean and Semitic tribal cults which demanded of every father the bloody sacrifice of his first-born.

A large part of the Gospels was probably written in or around Alexandria where gnosticism (infiltrated by Buddhism and Zoroastrianism) was strongly represented. Some researchers believe that there was a Buddhist colony in Alexandria even in those early days (during the Roman empire). We cannot be sure, but one thing is clear: In the 2nd century AD. a delegation of Buddhist monks from Egypt took part in a major Buddhist conference in Sri Lanka. If there were followers of Buddha in Alexandria decades before and after Jesus’ birth, one wonders about what they called themselves? Certainly not Buddhists! Could they have used the name adopted by their brothers in India: The followers of Dharma? Dharma may be translated into Greek as Logos, ‘word’. Consequently the adherents of this teaching could be described as Logicians. Do remember that one group of Gnostics was actually known as the ‘logicians’.

Out of a multitude of Gospels only four were included in the New Testament and 26 were left out. Amongst those that were left out we have the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel According to the Hebrews, the Gospel According to the Egyptians, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of the Ebionites, the Gospel of Barnabas, Gospel of James, which are similar to the general line of the canonical Gospels, but none of them was recognised. What could be the reason behind it? The Church wanted so much to keep the created picture intact that it rejected everything ‘unacceptable’. Some of them were branded as ‘unauthentic’, others were found fundamentally ‘heretical’ (like the apocryphal gospels on the life and teachings of Jesus). About 50 apocryphal gospels were found and the majority of them were declared extra canonical and destroyed. Some copies have survived. Out of a traditional list of 26 apocryphal gospels, seven Acts and ten Epistles, some exist only as titles and only a few parts of some have come down to us. The Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip are called the Coptic gospels because they were written in Coptic and found in Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Both these gospels shed light on the secret life of Jesus. We understand from these gospels that early Christians did not believe that Jesus had died on the cross. On the contrary they believed that he was resuscitated, that he went into hiding together with his disciples, and that his death was from natural causes.

The Gospel according to Thomas might have been banned by the Roman Catholic Church because it rejected the ‘virgin birth.’ It was denounced by a decree by Gelasius in 495 AD. The Gospel of Thomas mentions a meeting between Thomas and Jesus in Taxila, India years after the crucifixion. Gospel of James mentions the marriage between Mary and Joseph. Gospel of the Ebionites on the other hand tells us that Jesus was born naturally to Joseph and Mary. The gospel of Philip was banned because it tells us that Jesus together with Mary the mother and Mary Magdalene have migrated to the East. Mary Magdalene is presented as Jesus’ consort in this Gospel.

Dead Sea Scrolls are also the texts rejected by the Church.

Majority of these banned gospels could not have been accepted by the Church because they all presented Jesus as a normal, ordinary human being.

The apocryphal texts were formed in the early days of Christianity to supplement the first five books of the Old Testament. The later discovery of the sixth and seventh books of Moses show us a return to the Egyptian traditions. They are comprised of a mixture of spells, sorcery, magical incantations and texts on esoteric doctrines. The apocryphal Christian literature was permeated by Gnostic and Buddhist thinking. Since the Gospels came into being in that environment they couldn’t have escaped those influences. The first Gospel in Syrian or Greek, known as Diatesseron (‘Through four’) was assembled by Tatian around 170 AD. Tatian was a Syriac scholar from Edessa (modern day Urfa in Turkey). He put together a gospel comprising of five gospels in the 2nd century AD. He derived from Greek and Hebrew texts. This Tatian ‘eu-angelion’ was used by the Syriac Church for centuries. All the copies of Tatian’s eu-angelion are thought to have been seized and burnt when Rome conquered the region. Tatian claimed that Miryam (Mary) and Jesus were not from the line of David, and that Jesus did not die on the cross, and he was a living person when he met his mother and his disciples after regaining conciousness.

According to Irenaeus, Tatian was the leader of Encratics. This group was formed by the sectarian Christians. They did not marry, and preached the renunciation of meat. Apostle Paul attacked them for having fallen away from belief (1 Timothy 4:1-4). They may have represented a religious stand closer to the beliefs of the original Jesus. Those who defended this viewpoint claimed that it was Paul himself who had fallen away. To help clear the situation read Hyppolitus, who maintains that the Encratics’ doctrine had its origin in the teachings of the Indian Gymnosophists. He was one of the first Church fathers who left us a detailed account of Brahmins and their beliefs. But for the Church authorities an harmonization of the Gospels on such a basis was unacceptable. Early in the 5th century all copies of the Diatesseron were destroyed, including the commentary by Ephraem. Leading churchmen introduced their versions of the New Testament Gospels after the elimination of the alternative versions. They declared their versions canonical after purging (!) them of the undesirable passages.  

CHILDHOOD OF JESUS

It is only natural that almost nothing could be found on Jesus’ childhood and adolescence in the Gospels, because that period in his life carried no weight in the grand design of the Church. As a result of this approach Jesus’ biographers had to create, albeit with difficulty, a childhood for him. But since they knew nothing, they improvised.

Scholars believe that the Christian monastries have evolved along with the Therapeut communities in Alexandria, Egypt. The bishop, priest, deacon hierarchy in the Christian power structure is the exact copy of the hierarchy amongst the Therapeut clergy. Epiphanius described the first Christians as therapeutae and jessians (could this be the corrupted version of the word Essenes).

If you remember also, the Gospels leave Jesus at twelve years of age. Nothing is known about his next eighteen years, at the end of which period he is reported back in Palestine. Where do you think he was? 

18 ‘LOST’ YEARS - YOUNG JESUS IN INDIA 

The Russian archaeologist and painter Nicolai Roerich had spent the greater part of his life in India. In his works he made references to Tibetan scrolls he found in 1925. These scrolls reportedly show that Jesus had departed for India from Palestine when he was thirteen years of age. In addition to that we have other sources pointing in the same direction. Johan Forsström, in his book The King of Jews quotes Jami-ut-Tawarikh by Faqir Muhammad ben Qazi Muhammad Raza that “Jesus was thirteen when he left for the far-eastern countries”. Meanwhile in The Life of St. Issa Nicolas Notovitch writes: “In his fourteenth year, young Issa came to the Sindh”. A book compiled by Elizabeth Clare Prophet includes the testimonies of four eye-witnesses to the Tibetan scrolls, which when taken together, reveal the pilgrimage of Jesus from Jerusalem to India, between the ages of 12 and 29, during which time he was a student of Buddhist teachings and a teacher of his own right. Jesus has reportedly returned from Himalaya to Palestine at the age of 29. Lady Henrietta Merrick confirms the existence of the writings on Jesus in India in her book In the World’s Attic, where she writes, “In Leh (Ladakh, India) is the legend of Jesus who is called Issa, and the monastery at Hemis holds precious documents fifteen hundred years old which tell of the days that he passed in Leh where he was joyously received and where he preached.”

The Gospel of the Hebrews informs us that Jesus journeyed towards India via Assyria and Chaldea (Mesopotamia). We know that in those days the trade route from Jerusalem to Sindh went through Damascus, Kharax/Charax (on the confluence of Euphrates and Tigris rivers), Nisibis and Babylon. Then the land route (there was a sea route also) passed through Elam to Hormuz, and finally ended at Sindh.

It is impossible to find documents which will invalidate the fact that Jesus lived in India. On the contrary, evidence suggests that Jesus has stayed for six years in the temple of Jagannath in India. During his stay he also visited Rajagriha, Varanasi (Benares) and other holy cities. Varanasi is the holy city of Hindus on the banks of the river Ganges. Jesus has reportedly given his first sermon amongst the people at Varanasi in which he spoke about the equality of all people before God. Arabs and Moslems would surely find the attributes of their God in this sermon like, “..the omnipotence..the God wills and creates..the God existing from eternity and existing without end..having no equal..being the cause of the mysterious life of the humanity, in whom he has breathed a part of his being..having subordinated to humanity the land, the waters, the animals and all that he has created, and which he maintains in immutable order by fixing the duration of each”.

Brahmin priests in Varanasi resented the ideas of Jesus and became his enemies. Jesus left Varanasi for the birth-place of Sakyamuni Buddha. From there he proceeded to Kapilavastu in Nepal. There he stayed with Buddhist monks in a monastery. During his stay he grasped the teachings of Buddha, achieved mastery in the Sutras, the Vinayapitaka and the Abhidammapitaka. He started giving sermons like a Master. The monks included him in the list of outstanding masters or Arhas. A few years have passed and monks even accepted him as a Bodhisattva. The chief monk in a special congregation is reported to have made the following declaration: “We stand today upon a crest of time. Six times ago a master was born who gave glory and light to man. And now a master sage stands here. This Hebrew prophet is a rising star of wisdom. He brings to us a knowledge of God. All the world will hear his words, will heed his words and glorify his name” (The Aquarian Gospel). Jesus has reportedly stayed at this monastery for six years and started his journey back to west. He passed through Punjab, proceeded towards Persia, and then to his native land, Israel in 22 AD. But there are those scholars as well who propose later years as Jesus’ return to Palestine, some as late as 28. Choose the year you like.

JESUS BACK IN PALESTINE 

When Jesus made his public appearance in Palestine he was with the people of Qumran and the baptists, in other words amid Jewish sects obviously linked with the Essenes. These relationships were to characterize both the dissemination of his teachings and their mutilation. The main assumption is that Jesus was raised in an environment under the influence of the Essenes. The majority of his followers are said to have been Essenes, and he is thought to have spent some time as a novice in an Essene monastery. But Jesus distanced himself from the Essenes with clearly defined precepts. Because he opposed the method of achieving the personal salvation through a strict adherence to the rules and regulations. By adopting this personal attitude Jesus has created a new and much more tolerant version of the Nazarene-Essene teaching when he opposed the killing of the breakers of sabbath. He said, as reported in Matthew 12:8, “..For the son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.” The Qumran text called the Damascus Document also banned the killing of sabbath breakers. This is anathema to the followers of the Mosaic Law. As if this is not enough he goes on as told in John 5:16-17: “My father worked hitherto, and I work”. This was the last straw for the Jews, because Jesus meant that “God was his father, making himself equal with God”. How could a figure like this fulfill the whole of the Law? How could he be an unblemished sacrifice for the sins of the mankind (those who beieved in him of course)?

Jesus is presented as ‘God in flesh’. He was a human being of Godly(!) substance. Consequently, sharing the substance that ‘created’ the mankind, with the Creator. This means that a human being becomes a co-creator. Yes! It sounds strange and unbeleivable, but it is a fact, and the background of the story is in the Zarathustran belief system. Ahura Mazda (the father of gods of the Zoroastrianism) has created six Amesha Spentas - ‘divine entities’ - also called as the ‘Beneficient (or Holy) Immortal Ones’. Following the death of Zarathustra/Zoroaster these six ‘divine entities’ were associated with six branches of creation: Fire; Ox; Metals; Earth; Water; and Plants. These ‘divine entities’ also appear as ‘archangels’ and ‘angels’ in the Old Testament and in Qoran which took over many many aspects of the Old Testament. The important thing is, all of these qualities are also present in the world and in the human spirit. The seventh divine entity Ahura Mazda has created is the ‘sacred spirit’, Spenta Mainyu. He is a divine entity, the greatest of all powers, the ‘Sublime Constructive Force’. It is the driving force behind constructiveness, creativity and positiveness, and these are shared only with the human spirit, in other words Spenta Mainyu’s association in nature is man. If these qualities are shared only with the human spirit and Spenta Mainyu’s association in nature is man (this may be the origin of the Islamic belief that man is the pinnacle of creation. What do you think?) then man becomes a co-creator with Ahura Mazda. In other words, as it is summarized by the priests in every mass, Spenta Mainyu was representing the ‘God incarnate in man’. Can you detect the possible origin of the ‘holy spirit’ in Christianity and Jesus’ descending to earth as the ‘God incarnate in man’?

But one must point out the difference between this picture of ‘God in flesh’, and the original Jesus of the Q1 (Q source is the collection of original sayings by Jesus pushed to the deep background by the writers of the Gospels and the New Testament) who was filled with compassion and love, and a genuine pacifist. It is probable that the upholders of the Jesus movement - the Q people - shaped the eschatological Jesus. The Jesus people might have wanted to build up their master as the outstanding prophet. Their Buddhist teacher, the original teacher from Q1, was replaced by an angry, unyielding prophet who hurled apocalyptic scenarios at the Jews of the day. When the leading representatives of the Jesus movement pushed ahead with the structuring of their sect they had to go through a very critical process, because their Gospel of sayings was now intended to become the basis of a new faith. Their sights were no more on just the salvation of the lost sheep of the house of Israel (as was originally envisaged, perhaps by Jesus himself) as mentioned in, Matthew 10:6, but was directed towards the people of all religions and nations.

The meeting between Jesus and John the Baptist is thought to have been an addition to the text. One short sentence in Luke 1:80 provides us with some sort of an information on the earlier days of John: “..and the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel.” We are told in the form of an insertion, that John was the one who “prepared the path for the Lord”. Could this be taken as a sign that he was accepted as another reincarnation of a particularly holy soul? This insertion and the style could be an attempt to make Jesus acceptable to those hoping for the Messiah. This is the pivotal moment when Jesus was transformed from a Buddhist teacher into a Messianic saviour. Here we must look into the meaning of this word, ‘Lord’ which appears in the English translations of both Testaments. ‘Lord’ is the creator, the supreme being, the master, Jesus himself etc. But what does it mean in English? Here it is: in Old English it was hla ford from hla f=loaf+weard=keeper, ‘loafkeeper’, ‘loafward’, ‘guardian of the loaf’; in Middle English it was loverd, and now it is Lord. Does he still keep loaves? No. Therefore he does not have a function anymore if we are to stick to the real meaning of the word given in the dictionaries.

The question in Matthew 11:3: “Are you he that should come, or do we look for another?” Is this a record of an actual occurrence or is it the evidence of an invention inserted there to prepare the way for the transformation of Jesus into a messiah? Jesus appears beside John as a similar kind of prophet with his disapproving style. Was he like that? What is the truth behind Jesus’ baptism? There is no reference to Jesus’ baptism in the Q tradition. The oldest Christian Gospel by Marcion also does not mention Jesus being baptized. Many evangelical churches deny the necessity of baptism for salvation, but the New Testament says it it necessary. What is the reason behind this discrepancy?

THE RIDDLE OF BAPTISM : WAS HE OR WASN’T HE?..WHO PUSHED FOR IT?

How about the story in the Ebionitic Gospel According to Matthew? But before the story we must see who these Ebionites are. They are the early Judaeo-Christians who believed in the celestial mission of Jesus, however regarded him as an ordinary man born of Joseph and Miryam. They cherished similar beliefs to those upheld by the Buddhists. Ebionites followed James the Just who was the head of the Church at Jerusalem. As such they denounced Paul and his teachings. They observed the law of Moses, for which they were declared heretics. Their Gospel was known as Gospel According to the Hebrews which has a more original version of the baptism story. Here John asks Jesus to baptize him. This Gospel was modified, altered and revised in the form of the Gospel According to Matthew. The Gospel According to Matthew tells us that John initially even refused to baptize Jesus because he thought himself unworthy of doing that for such a great man. The apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews also tells of similar problems with baptism. Here it is Jesus’ followers who pushed him to baptism, while he himself thought that unnecessary. Moreover especially after the baptism (we do not know of his or Jesus’) John still had disciples. How could this be? Because all those disciples should really have been disciples of Jesus. All the Gospels tell us that John was only a precursor, don’t they?

Here is another matter to discuss: We are told that when John was in prison at Machaerus he was still not sure whether Jesus was the hoped for Messiah. This narration and the others show that the Christian theology has specific difficulties with Jesus’ baptism.

Some more troublesome points: How can it be that Jesus was baptized when the baptism conducted by John was of “repentance for the remission of sins” (Mark 1:4). Was the ‘God in flesh’ a sinner? How is it possible that this ‘God incarnate’, ‘the being made of Godly substance’ needs an initiation? This is absurdity beyond belief. The idea that Jesus needed a purification of sin or even an initiation ceremony to enter a messianic sect is simply ridiculous. The authors must have been out of their minds or better still they were ignorants, trying to dupe people much more empty-headed than themselves. The person being discussed is presented as the Messiah, whose coming was supposedly prophesied years and years earlier. Therefore the Messiah, the ‘God in flesh’ requiring purification and initiation is simply impossible to accept for Christianity. The inventors had done something which put the interpreters in a very difficult position. What to do to put things right? A solution was found and Jesus’ baptism was hurriedly interpreted as the consecration of the Messiah.

There is a reference to the baptism of Jesus in the Essene account: “..we were accompanied by Lazarus as far as Gilgad. Thence he (Jesus) went further on alone in the night, and in the early morning he had come to the river Jordan, in the place where through John he was baptized by the Order.” John was baptizing at Salem on the bank of Jordan as the story is told in Matthew 3:7-8, where many of the Pharisees and Sadducees came to him. Was this the place where John baptized Jesus? Mark 1:4-9 tells us further that “John did baptize in the wilderness and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And John was clothed with camel’s hair with a girdle of a skin about his loins, and he did eat locusts and wild honey. And preached saying, there comes one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan.” But Luke 3:16 tells us the story with a different ending, where John says that “..he (Jesus) shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” Which story is true? Probably neither.

Eccentric persons of the day, like John, were considered ‘prophets’ by the credulous ignorants living in those lands. According to I Samuel 9:9 “..(Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for he that is now called a prophet was beforetime called a seer.) So, seers have become divine(!) messengers. What did they see or did they really see anyting, or better still, were they just crafty deceivers is a matter of conjecture. These people and their fabrications were obviously not considered strange in those days, but there are millions and millions of people who still believe in the words of cunning people like those eccentric ‘prophets’. That is strange.

In another of the narratives on the Baptism of Jesus given in the official fairy-tale we are told that Jesus’ ministry had started with his baptism by John, after which he spent 40 days in the desert before beginning to preach. The ancient prophets supposedly behaved similarly. So, did Jesus do the same, or is this just an earlier story adapted to Jesus as is usual?

We are also told that Jesus went to John for his baptism. Here is the crucial question: Who went to whom? Since it could not be found out definitely let us continue with the official fairy-tale: In Palestine in those days (and presently also) the younger went to the elder; the inferior went to the superior; the one who is disadvantaged went to the one who had the advantage; the lesser person went to the person of importance etc. The story is damaging to Jesus. Mark’s Gospel starts with Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist. What are we to understand from this? That Jesus regarded himself a sinner? The implication is there, because as the story goes, John was preaching a ‘baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.’ If this is the truth then one who asks for the baptism must be asking for forgiveness of sins. Another crucial point is, who was of lesser importance, Jesus or Paul? If what we read in the Gospel is true, John should have gone to see Jesus, having known his divine destiny. But Jesus went to see Paul. Why?

If we stick to the official version of the story, Jesus is thought to be thirty years of age when he returned to Palestine and began to teach when John was most probably preaching and baptizing in the Jordan valley, south of Jericho. He was a religious figure with a following. Jesus was yet a ‘no one’ as far as the Palestine and the Jewish society were concerned. So, Jesus might have wanted a spiritual guidance, or to link himself to a movement. He might have gone to John to achieve that goal. If this version is true it makes Jesus a disciple of John. But the official ‘anointed one’ is Jesus not John. Then what about the statements by John where he acknowledges Jesus as his superior. Likelihood is that Jesus’ superiority, John’s acknowledgement etc. must be later additions to the text of the Gospel. No one has seen John except the persons mentioned in the Gospels. But not even the writers of the Gospels could have seen him.

So could we say that Jesus started as a disciple of John, but took over the leadership of the movement when John was executed? There is another assumption that may be taken as an indication in that direction: With John becoming the leader of the movement (call it the Nazarenes, Mandaeans, or Zealots) Jesus and his brothers lost their chance to lead. As rumor has it, at this point Jesus decided to take the matter in his hands and used princess Salome, Herod Antipas’ niece and step-daughter. She was also Jesus’ blood relative (because Mariamne II was her grandmother), and some even say they were lovers. Please remember at this point that it was Salome who tricked Herod into killing John the Baptist. When John was killed Jesus became the leader of the Zealots and the head of the Church in Jerusalem. The leadership remained in Jesus’ family ever since with his brother James assuming the leadership, and after his death a list of their relatives took over.

Whatever happened then - the truth - could not be known now. But there are indications in the texts that Jesus did make an appearance amongst the baptists around Jordan. Whether Jesus ever met John there, is still a mystery. It is interesting that the Mandaeans, the legitimate successors to the group around John, viewed Jesus as an apostate (One who renounces a religious faith). In the book of John, their most important religious book, John is presented as reluctantly baptizing Jesus, since for the Mandaeans Jesus did wrong in establishing his own religion. Are we to understand that the ideas of Jesus were already known prior to his baptism? Or did Mandaeans when writing their books have invented this ‘reluctance’ on John’s part, to emphasize their dislike of Jesus?

These Mandaeans were a gnostic sect surviving in Southern Iraq and Khuzistan, known to Arab and Iranian neighbours as Subba (‘Dippers’ - they practiced baptism by water and are often mixed wrongly with the Sabians. Check the pages on Sabian belief system in this site). They submerged themselves completely in water for purification. Their priests are called ‘tarmidia’ (disciples) and those priests initiated into the secret doctrine are called Nazuraiia (Nasoreans). The religion as taught to the laymen is syncretistic. The personifications of qualities, aspects and emanations of the Great Life, as they call their supreme being, appear in a number of myths, which are often self contradictory. The religion survives chiefly through its insistence on cult. Amongst other practices, baptism particularly, is looked upon as necessary for purification from all kinds of pollution and essential for salvation. Some personifications are saviour-figures such as Manda-d-Hiia (Knowledge of life), Hibil-Ziwa (a light bearer), Yawar-Ziwa (Awaking or Arousing light) and kushta (good faith, truth, also a personification of the ritual handshake which symbolizes pact and alliance). Beneficient spirits (utria) and demons are innumerable. Illness is caused by possession by disease-demons. Devout prefer exorcism to medicine. Baptism is followed by the administration of simple sacraments of water (mambuha) and bread (pihta) and this rite is one of a series of razia (mysteries) of which the most important is the masiqta, a solemn ritual meal celebrated by priests only for the raising up (or resurrection) of the dead. Other ritual meals are lofani, a lay meal eaten in commemoration and the benefit of the dead, and the blessed oblation at marriage and burial. As in other gnostic religions, the body is called ‘the tomb of the soul’ and death is looked upon as a release from prison. The name ‘Christians of St. John’ was given to Mandaeans by medieval travelers because their priests claim John the Baptist as a member of their sect (the Nasoreans) but Jesus to them is a false Messiah. Mandaean tradition, supported by internal evidence and scholarly research, claims the west as the original home of the sect, although the language of their texts is an eastern dialect of Aramaic. References in Mandaean literature to a flight from Judaea and persecution there point to a connection with early Jewish Gnosticism. Libraries consisting of scrolls and codices in Mandaic characters are composed chiefly of fragments of pre-Moslem compositions, collected directly after the Moslem conquest (7th century AD.).

When John was made Jesus’ precursor in the Gospel texts many exegetists started facing contradictions. Because this story is another obvious example of invention. Here it is: John supposedly baptizes Jesus and asks whether this is “the man who should come”. But we are told that during the actual baptism the heavens opened and a voice rang out with the exceptional statement, “Thou art my beloved son; in thee I am well pleased”.. Either what is told did not happen during the baptism, or more probably, Jesus was not baptized, or John’s hearing was not up to the standard so he did not hear the ‘Almighty’s voice’(!).

In the light of the points discussed the following conclusion seems to be the closest to the truth itself: The whole thing is a fiction. Jesus’ criticism levelled at the Pharisees is indicative of his concept of purification: “Shame on you Pharisees! For you clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are full of greed and incontinence. Foolish Pharisees! Clean the inside and the outside will also be clean” (This is another parallel between Jesus and the Buddhism). The outer acts of consecration did not carry a meaning for Jesus. For him the efforts should be for the inner purification. In the end, those who say that Jesus probably was never baptized would not be off the mark.

JOHN THE BAPTIST

..According to the popular legend, an angel appeared to Zacharias one day in the Temple and said: “Fear not Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.” The rest of the story is in Luke 1:13-20. Upon Gabriel’s words Zacharias started thinking how his wife could become pregnant because he was very old. But it happened. The story goes that Miryam was staying with Elisabeth in the same house; upon a request from Elisabeth, Miryam stayed in the house for another three months (probably until the birth of John). But according to the official story at the end of three more months Miryam left Elisabeth’s house and married Joseph. Furthermore this story tells us also that John thanked God immediately upon his birth (This reminds us the stories of Tulku the Tibetan and the reincarnated Lama, who are said to have spoken(!) immediately upon birth and started teaching(!) people around).

..Six months after his visit to Elisabeth angel Gabriel “was sent by God to a city of Galilee, named Nazareth..To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the House of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary..And behold thou shalt conceive in your womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS..The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God…For with God nothing shall be impossible.” The narration is in Luke 1:26-38. The story has it that this angel Gabriel told Miryam that her niece Elisabeth had conceived a son six months earlier. Spenta Mainyu should bring to your attention that there are those people who say that this same ‘angel’ might have impregnated Elisheva (Elizabeth), and also Miryam during her stay in Elisabeth’s house.

This is the usual method of the God of Israel: He speaks always through his angel Gabriel, always warns the husbands not to fear, gives the good news of a son and announces a special name for him. Gabriel’s assumed visit to Miryam was the last recorded one in history (there wasn’t another visit since then because the number of credulous ignorants was decreased and only the ones that were captured by these fairy-tales kept on believing). In the mythology of Islam angel Gabriel performed a different function.

ARE JOHN AND JESUS COUSINS OR FRIENDS?

The question remains: Are John and Jesus cousins or friends?  We read in the account by the Essene Brotherhood that the Brotherhood learned the death of Zacharias, and when they informed Joseph and Miryam that child Jesus was lost in Jerusalem, they also mentioned the loss of Zacharias. Miryam was in ‘double grief’. On the fouth day they found child Jesus at Sopherim (the synagouge, where he was lured by the Pharisees and Rabbis), and Miryam wanted to go and see her friend (Elisabeth). “Thus it came to pass that Mary, her husband and her son returned to Jutha. Here she found her friend Elisabeth in great grief, with her son, whose name was John.” This narration gives us the impression that Miryam and Elisabeth were far apart for a long while, therefore Miryam met her friend at Jutha for the first time after a long period, and she didn’t know the name of the son, and naturally Jesus and John must have met there for the first time.  The Crucifixion by an Eye-Witness does not mention a kinship between John and Jesus, and describes them as friends, and that John and Jesus were accepted to the Essene community at Jutha near Massada.

ONE GOES OFF TO PREACH, THE OTHER CHOOSES SOLITUDE

..The story goes on telling us that John shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; that he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother’s womb (Luke 1:13-17). At the end of their (John and Jesus) trial time and following their acceptance as full members into the Brotherhood, apparently at the complex of the Brotherhood, Jesus chose to teach, but John chose to become a ‘therapeut’, a physician (the Essene version tells us that this means an ‘elder’). Jesus is said to have returned to Nazareth, and John to Jutha to live in solitude and wilderness.

WHO WAS JOHN? HAS ANYBODY SEEN HIM? 

Spenta Mainyu cannot help but point out that no one has come across John the Baptist anywhere except in these sacred texts, and the Essene account quoted above. Which means that we have to follow the Baptist through the lines of those texts:

..John appears to have been what the historians call an eschatological prophet. ‘Eschatology' comes from the Greek word for ‘last’. So John must have been a prophet warning of the coming of the last things, the end of time, and the day of judgement. Many many Hebrew prophets in history included a warning of divine judgement in their preachings. So John must have seen himself as the inheritor of a great tradition. He seems to have modelled himself on Elijah (ELI-YAHU, ALI-YAHU,  ‘My mighty One is YAHU’ 'EL is YAHU'); imitated Elijah’s dress; Elijah’s preference for living in the wilderness; and Elijah’s fiery preaching style. This deliberate attitude of John must have had a special significance for his contemporaries, because Elijah was due to return to announce the Day of the Lord. But John must have had other things in his mind. He was not a prophet of cosmic doom only, foretelling the end of space, time and universe. That would be too simple.. There were many prophets back in history who, mainly Moses and Joshua, prophesied that God would save his people from foreign rule. So he must have believed in some kind of a great deliverance was about to take place.

Here is what the Jewish historian Josephus wrote scathingly of people like John, supposedly preaching divine teaching: “Deceivers and impostors, under the pretence of divine inspiration fostering revolutionary changes, they persuaded the multitude to act like madmen, and led them out into the desert under the belief that God would there give them tokens of deliverance.” Hundreds and hundreds of years have passed since? Nothing has changed, deceivers and impostors in various disguises are still acting in a similar fashion, relentlessly. 

JOHN AND JESUS - RIVALS?

If Jesus has started as a follower, a disciple of John, was he an eschatological prophet also? Did he intend to follow on where the Baptist left off? Many historians maintain that “Jesus has believed that the promises to Israel would soon be fulfilled; the eschatological restoration of Israel was at hand” (this could only be an image projected by the authors of the New Testament). There are other scholars who do not agree of course. Some scholars believe that after he started preaching in Galilee Jesus has changed: “The law said to you but now I say.” This is not a statement by a prophet, is it? It is the utterance of a Messiah, establishing a new order. Jesus must have come to the conviction somehow that he was more than a prophet, that he was the last agent of God for the salvation of Jews.

JOHN’S END

..At one place we are told that people ran to John from everywhere; Antipas became alarmed; John was put in chains; taken to Machaerus (a stronghold built by Herod the Great, to the east of the Dead Sea) and there beheaded. Stories in Matthew 14, Mark 6, and Luke 3 tell us that Antipas had John put behind bars for the sake of Herodias. Josephus has the details: “Herod Antipas (son of Herod the Great) went to Rome and got to know Herodias (his brother’s wife), he proposed to her, she accepted.” So Antipas brought Herodias and her daughter Salome to Jerusalem. But the Mosaic Law banned the marriage with a sister-in-law. According to the Gospels John the Baptist denounced it. In the eyes of the enraged Herodias this was an offence and could only be expiated by his death. John was executed at the stronghold at Machaerus (now El Mashnaka - ‘the hanging place’). According to Mark 6, the execution evidently took place in Galilee, presumably in the new palace which was recently built by Herod Antipas at Tiberias on the lake Galilee. Salome is said to have asked for the head of John the Baptist. Bible makes no mention of Salome, and in the story of John the Baptist she is simply called the ‘daughter of Herodias.’ The name is given by Josephus. Which is the true story? Where was John killed? Was he killed? Has someone called John the Baptist - as we know him today - really ever existed? No answers!

JESUS TOWARDS THE END

..The first people to listen to Jesus’ words and to become his disciples were plain men, fishermen of Galilee. Jesus often wandered into the hills around Capernaum, preached in the villages, but always returned to this little fishing town. It remained the main center of his mission. And when, one day he left with his disciples towards Jerusalem it was his last journey. Jesus crossed Jordan at exactly the same spot where children of Israel under the leadership of Joshua had passed, and arrived at Jericho. He spent the night there at the house of the tax collector Zacchaeus (Luke 19). Jesus gathered his disciples around him in the garden of Gethsemane on the slopes of the Mount of Olives, immediately Judas arrived with a multitude of people with swords and staves and arrested him. Jesus was brought before the High Council - The Sanhedrin - the highest Jewish authority, the centre of all the spiritual and worldly power. At the same time it functioned as the highest judicial court for the Jews. It met below the Temple near the bridge which gave access to the upper city…and the story continues..

THE CRUCIFIXION

PILATE

HEARING, VERDICT AND THE CRUCIFIXION

WHAT ABOUT THE JEWISH BURYING RITUAL?

Matthew 27:58 tells us that after the dead(!) body was taken down the cross, Joseph (of Arimathea) took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb which he had hewn out in the rock, and he rolled a great stone to close the entrance of the sepulchre, and departed. If we accept this account as correct, there is something wrong. What about the washing of the corpse prior to burial which was and still is very important for Jews (Moslems have the same practice). Either there was no intention to bury Jesus or he was not dead and could not be buried - therefore no washing of the body.

JEWISH WAY OF EXECUTION : STONING, BURNING, DECAPITATION, STRANGLING

Crucifixion was alien to the Jews. Their methods of capital punishment were stoning, burning, decapitation and strangling. But according to the Mosaic Law as formulated in Deuteronomy 21:21-23 “if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree..His body shall not remain all night upon the tree..(for he that ishanged is accursed of God) that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.” Hence under no circumstances a crucified person is permitted to defile the sabbath. Well, if ibis in crucem (‘you shall ascend the cross’ - the official Roman death sentence) was passed, care was taken to see that the execution was completed before the beginning of the sabbath.. 

DID HE DIE?

The writers of the Gospels, whoever they were, report that Jesus is nailed on the cross at the 6th hour (noon) and give up his spirit at the ninth hour (about 3 pm). Towards the evening he is taken for dead and was removed from the cross. This unexpectedly rapid death puzzles Pilate. A closer study seems to show that Jesus is taken unconscious from the cross. When the Centurion drives his lance into Jesus’ side blood and water flows out which shows that Jesus is still alive (when the heart stops the circulation stops, capillary pressure ends and there is no bleeding). According to some, Jesus might have been given opium dissolved in some fluid while on the cross. Opium kills pain, isolates the person from outside, strongly lowers the heart rate, and slows the breathing, and makes the body completely limp. If it is administered in the correct dosage, as was known to the experienced Essene therapeuts (‘elders’ or ‘healers’) it involves no danger to the heart; on the contrary it strengthens it.

WHAT HAPPENED REALLY 2000 YEARS AGO - THE FINALE?

NAZARETH/NAZARENE? ANOTHER RIDDLE

Almost all the ancient Greek manuscripts descibed Jesus as a ‘nazarene.’ This description was translated into English almost always wrongly as ‘Jesus of Nazareth’. In most translations of the New Testament it is written that on the road to Damascus Paul had heard a voice calling “I am the Jesus of Nazareth whom you have persecuted” (Acts 22:8). But in the ancient Greek manuscripts there is no such statement. In the Jerusalem Bible, Paul is reported to have heard the voice say “I am Jesus the Nazarene, you are persecuting me”. If there is a need to tie Jesus’ name to his birthplace we should really call him ‘Jesus of Beth-lehem.’ Apart from the extremely unreliable and biased texts like the Gospels and the New Testament stories there is nothing that would support the claim that Jesus has lived in Nazareth.

In the Acts of the Apostles the first Christians are presented as Nasoreans. In The Greek-German Dictionary of the Writings of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature (1963) we read: “It is difficult to find a linguistic connection between the words Nazarene and Nazareth.” M. Lidzbarski in his work Mandaean Liturgies has shown that it is impossible to extract nazarene out of nazareth in a standard etymological process. In the texts prior to Jesus, Nazareth is not mentioned, because some say that Nazareth was founded in the 8th century AD., in other words 800 years after Jesus. Furthermore, references to Luke 4:29, (where a ‘town’ - thought to be Nazareth - built on a hill is mentioned) are met by objections to the effect that the present town of Nazareth is not built on a hill but on a plain and there are no cliffs around, and the nearest mountain - Mt. Tabor - is kilometers away.

The root of nazarene/nasrani/nasorean is the Aramaic word nazar. It has meanings like to pick out, to discern, to observe, to put to one side, to preserve. This word could also have meanings like ‘to be devoted’ or ‘to consecrate oneself to the service of god.’ When used as a noun it means the symbol of an anointed head, ‘diadem’. In this context nazarene/nasrani/nasorean may have the meaning of one who practices and guards the sacred rites.

Nazaria/nasoraea are a branch of the Essenes. Together with the Ebionites the nazareans/nasoraeans/nasranis are amongst the first real Christian communities called as nozari in the Talmud. These were the gnostic sects, and they used magic in their rituals. By the method of etymological derivation nazarene as a description is related to the nazarites in the Old Testament. Nazarites existed in a period long before Jesus. Samson, who is supposed to have lived hundreds of years earlier is thought to be a nazarite/nazoraios/naziraios (Judges 13:5,24; 14; 15; 16), in other words he was an ascetic.

JESUS THE NAZARENE?

Crucifixion of Jesus as a result of pressure from Sanhedrin provided the followers of Jesus with a prime facie evidence against Sanhedrin. The members of Sanhedrin became violators of the Mosaic Law, because the punishment method for heretics was clearly stated in Deuteronomy 13:8-11: “And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.” But Sanhedrin insisted on crucifixion, which was the method of punishment for thieves and killers. Everything went according to the prophecy with which Jesus has identified himself: “..and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

Here is how Prof. Martin Roth sees the grounds on which the Council condemned Jesus to death: “The expectation of the old Jewish prophets which centred on a future Messianic king had developed during the long period of foreign domination into hope of a political liberator; and the greater the resentment of the Roman government of the country, the more his picture of a Messianic conqueror who would destroy the hateful foreign power, filled their minds. Measured by these standards Jesus of Nazareth could not be the Messiah they were waiting for..But if Jesus of Nazareth was not the Messiah, ‘the Christ’, then he must be a fraud, an impostor. And if he was a fraud and an impostor then for the safety and peace of the religious life of Jerusalem he must be got rid of..The fact that Jesus during his trial claimed to be the Messiah and therefore, on the basis of the Old Testament teaching, the Son of God was sufficient ground for condemning him to death on a charge of outrageous blasphemy.”

MORE ACCUSATIONS

1. Jesus is the confirmed and anointed Messiah.

2. Jesus is the only Son of God and consequently he is God.

3. He is the spirit of God.

These are all blasphemy in the eyes of the Jewish establishment. The fact that Jesus is created in the image of man is a problem (Paul’s epistle to Philippians 2:2-11), because this means that God has created himself in the image of man. But the Law says that man is created in the image of God. Jesus as a human is created in the image of God, but as God and the holy spirit he is ‘created in the image of man.’ In both cases the creation of Jesus is subjected to the law of likeness. According to the Jews, connecting an ordinary, mortal human to the Creator like this was a secular claim and alien to Mosaic Law. Thus Jesus has become a breaker of sabbath and a heretic. 

DATE OF THE CRUCIFIXION?

Prof. Fida Hassnain referring us to the copper plate mentioned above writes in his book A Search for the Historical Jesus: “Without entering into controversy about the genuineness of the copper plate, I feel that the information contained in it deserves serious consideration. For the first time, we learn the names of the witnesses who have condemned Jesus. Secondly, the death warrant gives a definite date when Jesus was sentenced. The date is 27th March in the 17th year of Tiberius Caesar. Thus, according to the account given in this copper plate, Jesus was crucified in 30-31 AD..Both of these men (Pilate and Caiaphas) were removed from their posts by the Romans in about 36 AD. We can deduce therefore that Jesus was put on the cross prior to 36 AD., and very likely within one or two years of this date, since both of them were removed in connection with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. In view of the above, I am inclined to fix 35 AD. as the most probable year of crucifixion. This question remains to be firmly answered.” Prof. Hassnain couldn’t have been more to the point: “this question remains to be firmly answered.”

Another proposition as to the date of the crucifixion, based on a novel approach is presented by Barbara Thiering in her book The Book That Jesus Wrote: Friday, 20 March 33. Elsewhere the possibilities related to the year of crucifixion have been narrowed down to 29,30,32,33 AD. The markers we have are the reign of Pontius Pilate - 26-36 AD., and the term of office of the High Priest Caiaphas - 18-37 AD.

When we consult the official texts for this event, Matthew, Mark and Luke wrote that it took place on the day after the Passover (Hebrew’s liberation from slavery in Egypt); according to John on the day before it. There is even less convergence concerning the hour of his death.

NOW THE LAST WORDS - WHAT DID HE SAY?

Now another problem: What did Jesus say just before his supposed last breath? How did Jesus address his ‘father’ who has abandoned him? Did he say “Eloi, eloi lama sabachthani” (“My god, my God why hast thou forsaken me?”) like we read in Mark 15:34? Jesus on the cross was abandoned by the same God which promised the Children of Israel through Joshua (Yesu, Yshua): “I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee” (Joshua 1:5-7).

The writers of Gospels report these last words differently. Whatever there were in the Gospels were translated into Greek, but this last call, the last cry, or maybe a last question by Jesus was left untranslated, in Hebrew and Aramaic. This call in Hebrew is “Eli, Eli, Lamah shavahhtani”, which means “God, God, how Thou hast glorifed me.” Has God forsaken him or glorified him? Here is a serious problem. Where is the solution? A researcher proposes the Sumerian version of the call as a solution. According to him this call shows us that Jesus was speaking in Aramaic, and gives us a supposedly much more correct translation. “Elo-i, Elo-I ” which is translated as “God o God” should rather be Elauia in more accurate Hebrew. This means ‘El-Eloh is the only God’, ‘there is no God but Elohim’. Then the rest of the call must be “Li-mas-ba (la) g-ants” which is Aramaic, and means “There is no God but the Lord, glorious and praised One sent forth.” Here ‘One’ stands for Jesus. This version gives a totally different meaning. The similarity between this call and the Islamic profession of faith is striking: “There is no God but God. Mohamed is sent by God” or “Mohamed is the apostle of God”. Mohamed in Arabian means, ‘most praised’, ‘praiseworthy’, ‘glorious’. ‘Elo-i’ or ‘Eli’ appear in other languages as well. In the war between Kauravas and Pandavas Krishna used this word and cried out ‘Elia, Elia’, and Buddha when faced with the opposition from his people repeated the word ‘Elia’ during his prayers. As you see there is nothing original when it comes to the faiths and belief systems, they all adopt from one another.

At this point let us consult the Crucifixion by an Eye-Witness as to what Jesus might have said just before he lost conciousness: “..Jesus recognised his mother amongst the weeping women of Galilee, standing close by the silent John (the Evangelist). Jesus called out loudly, in the anguish of his pain, citing the twenty-second Psalm, praying God thereby to deliver him from his sufferings.” What is this Psalm 22? Here it is: My God my God why hast thou forsaken me: Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?” These are the words in the beginning of the Psalm 22. So, what did he say?

Jesus made his own choice. He presented those who would like to follow their own ways with a golden rule: “Whatever the people say, walk your way”.

What could be said as an end note? There might have been an actual person called Jesus; he could well have been crucified for some reason or another.. The rest is a fairy-tale of unimaginable proportions.

WITHOUT RESURRECTION THERE IS NO FAITH

What does the public think about Resurrection 2000 years on, especially when the existing accounts in the scriptures cannot be reconciled? Did Jesus rise from the dead more than once, and every time in a different fashion (Read the accounts on resurrection)? When resurrection is crucial for Christianity as formulated in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, these differences become all the more important: “If Christ is not raised then our preaching is in vain and so is our faith.” As he insisted, risen Christ is the center point of the Christian faith, without which there would be no church, no hope of eternal life, no living Christ to encounter in Eucharistic bread and wine. In short no organized religion.. Did you get the picture? The Old Testament was written to create a nation out of the tribes of the region. The New Testament is written around the invented myth of a Messiah to create a Church, which in those days was one of the principle weapons of power.

OTHER RESURRECTION STORIES IN HISTORY

This invention called ‘resurrection’ is not unique. There were other resurrected ‘Christs’ before Jesus in history:

The first one comes to mind is the bloody cult of Cybele-Attis where Attis was said to have been born of a virgin. Cybele loves this young male god. Attis dies one day and comes back to life the next. Both Cybele and Attis are their origins in Asia Minor, and Attis is the slain and resurrected god of the Phrygians. Cybele and Attis are older than Jesus.

Then there is Tammuz, the vegetation God of Babylonia. Sumerians had the myth of Dumuzi and Inanna, which became the myth of Tammuz and Ishtar (Astarte of the Phoenicians and Hebrews) of the Assyrians and Mesopotamia. The descent of Tammuz into the nether-world came to assume great importance and to be related to the death and rebirth of vegetation. Tammuz was known as the ‘Lord’, who is ‘Adon’ of the Paslestinians. Remember Adonai is the name given to God (Adoni means ‘my Lord’), which was taken by the Greeks as a proper name and turned into Adonis - the beautiful young God. The lover of ‘Venus’, who is really the Greek version of Inanna, Ishtar, and Astarte. Women of the plains of Mesopotamia came to mourn the death of Tammuz and rejoiced like mad at the resurrection of him.

What about the lands to the southwest of Palestine - Egypt? Didn’t Moses start his saga from there? Didn’t therapeutae in Alexandria have a very important influence on the development of the original Jesus? So can we find there anything in connection with the slain and resurrected gods? Osiris (Osiris is Khent-Amenti, Lord of the underworld) is the slain and resurrected God of Egypt. He is the “Resurrection and Life”. He is the judge of the dead. ‘Powers of darkness’ embodied in his wicked brother ‘slays him’. Isis (his sister and wife) puts his fragmens together, and he rises from the dead, gets enthroned in the world of the souls, thus judges every man according to his deeds. Osiris’ resurrection was seen by the Egyptians as the hope of eternal life.

Zagreus (a variant of Dionysus) is also a slain and resurrected god.

On the other side of the region in the neighboring land of Persia there lived(!) Mithra, he also dies and rises from the dead.

RESURRECTION MEANS IMMORTALITY, AND THAT COUNTS!

Resurrection is the most radical of Christian doctrines. Jesus’ life, his teachings, his compassion for others even his martyr’s death all have parallels in other myths, stories and religious traditions. But of no other historical figure has the claim been made persistently that God had raised him from the dead. The resurrection was met by doubt and disbelief since the invention of the idea. The claim that a crucified ‘criminal’ was the Messiah was blasphemy for the Jews of the Biblical Jerusalem. The cultivated Greeks believed in the soul’s immortality, so the idea of a resurrected body is to say the least, repugnant for them. Even amongst gnostic Christians of the 2nd century the preferred view was that Jesus was an immortal spirit who just got rid of his mortal ‘prison’. The New Testament maintains that it was the appearance of the resurrected Christ that lit the flame of the Christian faith, and the power of the Holy Spirit that fired a mixed band of fearful followers to proclaim the risen Jesus throughout the Graeco-Roman world. German Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote: “It was not the morality of the Sermon on the Mount which enabled Christianity to conquer Roman paganism, but the belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead..Christianity was in competition for eternal life not morality.” How much can one be closer to the truth?

There are many Biblical scholars who argue that the Gospel stories of the empty tomb and Jesus’ post resurrection appearances are fictions devised long after his death to justify claims of his divinity. This whole story of resurrection is an affront and source of embarassment for the modern intellect. It is also a very serious offense done to the itinerant Jewish preacher from Galilee, jesu/yshua, whose thoughts could be read in The Crucifixion by an Eye-Witness, and also in Q source, which is the collection of original sayings by him pushed to deep background by the writers of the Gospels and the New Testament. Professor Gerd Ludemann at Vanderbilt Divinity School writes that “resurrection is an empty formula that must be rejected by anyone holding a scientific world view.” In his book What Really Happened To Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection he argues that Jesus’ body “rotted away” in the tomb, and “the risen Christ that appeared to the Apostle Peter was a subjective vision produced by Peter’s overwhelming grief and guilt for having denied Jesus when he was arrested. For the Apostle Paul who had previously persecuted Christians, his vision of the risen Jesus was the resolution of an unconscious Christ complex”, and what the New Testament describes as “Jesus’ appearance to more than 500 followers was a mass ecstasy.” John Dominic Crossan who is a Biblical scholar at DePaul University in Chicago claims that “the tomb of Jesus was empty because his body had already been devoured by wild dogs.” Crossan claims that “this was the faith typical of crucified Roman criminals.” In his book Who Killed Jesus? Crossan argues that “..the Easter faith...did not begin on Easter Sunday. Rather it began during Jesus’ lifetime in rural Galilee.” According to Crossan’s historical reconstruction “Jesus was a peasant philosopher preaching an inclusive kingdom of God amongst Israeli outcasts. Although Jesus’ revolutionary agenda challenged the Jewish religious establishment of his day.” Crossan insists that “only the Romans were responsible for his death.”

Eventually the original Jesus movement died. It fell victim to a developing Christian establishment - the organized belief system - that transformed the human Jesus into a divine ‘Son of God’. Contemporary researchers for the historical Jesus echo the findings of earlier generations of Biblical skeptics. For example, more than 150 years ago David Friedrich Strauss published The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, which argued that the early Christians applied to Jesus all the myths that had accumulated about the expected Messiah.

THE ‘RESURRECTION’ STORY

This is the important point. What happened in that tomb is crucial, because it was found to be empty next morning. Where was the body? How did the body leave the rock tomb?

THE ROCK TOMB

But first of all, what is this rock tomb? A typical Jewish tomb - kôk - is a chamber cut into rock; there are oven like cavities cut into the walls of it where the bodies were pushed in head first.

WHAT HAPPENED TO JEWISH BURIAL RITES?

From the narrations we have, Jesus’ corpse(!) was not washed as was necessitated by the Jewish burial rites. So, can we say that the people on the scene never thought of burying Jesus? Secondly the corpse was not pushed into one of the cavities, but placed on a bench. If it was a dead body it would have been washed and pushed into one of the cavities. Therefore can we say that Jesus was alive when he was taken into the tomb? Well, when his side (The Eye-Witness writes: “..one of the soldiers stuck his spear into the body in such manner that it passed over the hip and into the side”) was pierced by the lance of the centurion blood and water oozed out. A dead body does not have heart beat, thus no capillary pressure. If there is no capillary pressure nothing comes out of a wound. But if the body is still functioning, heart is beating, and there is capillary pressure, blood and serum come out. If the famous Turin Shroud, that supposedly covered the still alive Jesus, show blood marks (not stationery but flowing marks), we have no choice but to conclude that Jesus was still alive when taken into the tomb.

HOW WAS HE TAKEN FOR DEAD?

If he wasn’t dead how did the people around him believed that he was? Here the ‘Indian connection’ in Jesus’ life enters the scene as one of a number of possibilities. So let us check what is written in the Hindu texts. An ancient Hindu sutra known as Natha nama-vali, a holy sutra of the Nath Yogis, tells us the following story: “Isha Natha came to India at the age of fourteen. After this he returned to his own country and began preaching. Soon after, his brutish and materialistic countrymen conspired against him and had him crucified. After crucifixion, or perhaps even before it, Isha Natha entered samadhi, by means of yoga.” Samadhi is a state of deep trance where the bodily functions slow down to such a degree that the outside signs may resemble death. We know that there are yogis who can slow their hearts to almost stopping point. They also slow down their respiration to a breath every few minutes. A person in this state could easily be taken as dead.

Now check the Essene version: “..when many people had gone away, Joseph and Nicodemus arrived at the cross...they could not believe it (that Jesus was dead) and hastily went up to the place. Joseph and Nicodemus examined the body of Jesus and Nicodemus, greatly moved, drew Joseph aside and said to him: ‘As sure as is my knowledge of life and nature, so sure is it possible to save him.’ ” This account also tells us that Jesus was not dead when he was taken down the cross.

JESUS INSIDE THE TOMB

OINTMENT OF THE APOSTLES - ‘MARHAM-I HAVARIYYUN’

Let us have some additional information on these aromatic substances, aloe, myrhh etc. Ahmed Mirza Ghulam in his book Massih Hindustan Mein tells us about this ointment: “It is a prescription of an ointment known as Marham-i Issa (Jesus’ Ointment) which is recorded in hundreds of medical books. Compiled by Christians, some by Magi, or by Jews and some by Muslims. Most of these works pertain to old times. Researches have shown that its preparation was known to millions of people through oral tradition. It was recorded a little after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in Latin pharmacopoeia. It was also mentioned there that it had been prepared for healing the wounds of Jesus Christ.” This ointment was mentioned in the medical treatise Al-Qanun-fi-al-Tıbb by Abu Ali Hussain bin Abdullah bin Sena (Avicenna). Another important medical treatise known as Hesagps by Jarjani mentions the ointment. Liber Almansoris-Continens and other studies mention it. Jesus’ Ointment was known also as Marham-i Havariyyun (ointment of the apostles), Marham-i Rasul (ointment of the prophets) or Marham-i Shalikha. Here is the formula of this magic ointment:

THE RESCUE  OPERATION

JESUS IS TAKEN OUT OF THE TOMB, BUT STILL NEAR IT AND MARY ARRIVES..

THIS IS THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 

The supposition that Jesus had lost his life on the cross marks the beginning of the Christian theology (the resurrection doctrine), and this doctrine is the central point of the faith. At this point Jesus’ life as a man ends and the story of the mythically glorified Christ begins. Who formulated this resurrection doctrine? Who appended this Messiah/Christ idea to Christianity? Paul of course! Doctrine of resurrection was formulated by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:14: “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching in vain, and your faith is also vain.” In order for this supposed resurrection to be the promised one there is one vital condition: There must be a resurrection.

IT WAS RESUSCITATION NOT RESURRECTION

To speak of a resurrection there must be death. If there is no death there is no resurrection. In our case, Jesus did not die. Therefore we cannot speak of a resurrection. What was done was resuscitation. Jesus was revived by the people helping him. The Bible translations use the terms ‘rise’ and ‘come back to life’. What was the original Aramaic words used for the coming back to life of Jesus? Philologist and theologist Father Günther Schwarz explains: “The lexical evidence is conclusive: Not ‘resurrection’ but ‘resuscitation’ is the only meaning possible for both these Aramaic words, one of which Jesus would have used. I am referring to the synonymous words achajuta and techijjuta. Both nouns are derived from the verb chaja, ‘life’, and consequently mean - I repeat - resuscitation and nothing else.” That is that!

WHAT HAPPENED LATER ON?

THE PROPHECY?

The story in Isaiah 53 was written 500 years before the time of Jesus when Jews were in exile in Babylon. The writer is thought to have been trying to console his people by showing them that the sufferings of Israel were not in vain. This seems to echo the Passion story. The Church not surprisingly interpreted it as foretelling the crucifixion. By writing the Passion story as though it was a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy the Gospel writers reassured the first Christians that Jesus’ death was the part of the divine plan. Albert Schweitzer believed that Jesus thought the kingdom of God would come immediately, even in his lifetime, even before those poor souls hearing his words die (Luke 21:31-32), and when it arrived he would become the Messiah. This prediction is made by the ‘Son of God’. Shouldn’t he be aware of the alleged ‘end of time’, being the ‘creator’s son’? How could a ‘being’ of this stature be mistaken?

The early Church did expect also an early return of Jesus. This expected return was felt so imminent that Paul in his early letters to the Churches had great difficulty in explaining why Christians were dying before Jesus returned. He gradually realized that the return of Jesus was not going to come as quickly as expected. By the time Luke’s Gospel was written the return had been postponed to an indefinite future.

..Let us follow the Essene account. We are told that Jesus was weak and in pain, and pale. He set out for Jerusalem: “..when Jesus entered the city with Peter and John, his friends conducted him into a solitary house. Here he called to him the elders of the Essene Order. He said to them that his time for rest is near at hand, and instructed them to wait for him at the ‘Olive Mount,’ and thence accompany him to the place of solitude. Thereupon he gathered together his disciples, and went through the city and out of the gate that leads to the valley of Josaphat. And his soul was greatly moved, and his heart was filled with sadness, for he knew that this would be his last walk. Arriving at Kedron, he tarried for a little while and wept over Jerusalem. Thence he went forward in silence, and his disciples followed him. And Jesus led them to the place most dear to him, near the summit of Mount of Olives, where can be seen almost the whole of the land of Palestine; for Jesus longed once more to look upon the country where he had lived and worked..And the chosen disciples believed that Jesus would lead them to Bethania. But the elders of the Brotherhood had silently come together on the other side of the mountain, ready to travel, waiting with Jesus, as had been agreed upon..He prayed for the friends he was about to leave, and lifting his arms he blessed them. And the mist rose around the mountain, tinted by the descending sun..Then the elders of the Essene Brotherhood sent word to Jesus that they were waiting, and it was then already late. As the disciples knelt down, their faces bent towards the ground, Jesus rose and hastily went away through the gathering mist. When the disciples rose there stood before them two of our brethren in the white garb of our Brotherhood, and they instructed them not to wait for Jesus, as he was gone, whereupon they hastened down the mountain.”

“But in the city there arose a rumor that Jesus was taken up in a cloud, and had gone to heaven. This was invented by the people who had not been present when Jesus departed. The disciples did not contradict this rumor, inasmuch as it served to strengthen their doctrine, and influenced the people who wanted a miracle in order to believe in him.”

No more words are needed. It is all there. No wonder when this letter was first published in 1873 Church became so alarmed that the book was withdrawn from publication immediately, all the plates were destroyed, and the published copies were disposed of. But one copy survived, it found its way to the possession of a prominent Mason in the state of Massachusetts, U.S.A, it was accidentally discovered by his daughter some time in 1907.

..What happened following the scene described above is told in the letter: “The Essene friends took him to a place by the Dead Sea. Jesus was in deep suffering, so that only the physicians could care for him..But in Jerusalem none save John and Matthew knew that Jesus had returned to the solitude of the Order, that the people might not proclaim him their worldly king..But Joseph and Nicodemus had been with him the last time when the sixth full moon was waning, and they came to our Brotherhood as we were preparing to partake of the feast of love, and revealed the secret to the elder of the Order. And their hearts were sorely grieved, for the chosen one was taken up into the heavenly dwellings of the father..And he was buried by the physician close by the Dead Sea, as bids the regulations of our Brotherhood.” According to the letter this death occurred six months after the resuscitation, and in solitude. This ‘death’ in the Essene version maybe even be another well-thought-of-designs of this extremely secretive Order to safeguard the well-being of Jesus, because as we see later there are further clues which may be taken as indications that he lived, went to other countries, eventually ending up in India and dying there.

DEATH STORIES..DEATH STORIES..

JESUS HAS NOT DEPARTED.. HE STAYED ON..

..If we return to the official narration, we immediately realize that Jesus hasn’t risen to sky, because we are told of a meeting between him and Paul (the creator of Paulinism, the Christianity of our day). It was two years after the crucifixion. They met at a place near Damascus called the Maquam-i Isa (the ‘place where Jesus lived’, ‘place of Jesus’), about 200 miles away from Jerusalem. The spiritual centre of the Essene order was there. Jesus must have felt himself secure amongst the Essenes.

Sossianus Hierocles was the Roman governor of Phoenicia, Lebanon, Bithynia and Egypt and one of the most brutal persecutors of the early Christians. The following sentence is taken from his book To the Christians: “After fleeing from the Jews, Christ collected as many as nine hundred men all given to robbery.” The word ‘fleeing’ meets the eye immediately. This is another indication that Jesus did not die on the cross. Secondly Latin speakers described the members of the rebel and unruly communities like Essenes as ‘bandits’ and ‘robbers’. It is possible that The 900 men collected by Jesus could be this Essene community in Damascus, which also had nine-hundred members. The Persian historian Mir Khwand, lists a number of sources which tell us that Jesus lived and preached there for a while after the crucifixion. From there Jesus went to Nisibis/Nasibain which is called Nusaybin (in southeastern Turkey) today. Then he went to Paphlagonia (presently İskilip, also in southeastern Turkey). From there he started off along the Silk Route to India, probably staying in Persia for a while, eventually arriving in Kashmir more than 16 years after the crucifixion.

PAUL’S LIFE TAKES A TURN

..Now back to the ‘fateful’ meeting. Our witness now is Paul himself, the creator of the myth. This was a decisive event in his life. He used to be one of the fiercest and fanatical opponents of the New Covenant movement. He was called Saulus-Saul (SHAUL=’wanted’). He must have heard the rumours that Jesus was alive and still preaching. He went to the High Priest in Jerusalem and asked for letters addressed to the Synagogues in Damascus, and authorising him to bring back the male and female followers of Jesus to Jerusalem (Acts 9:1-2). Acts 9:3-8 tells us his meeting with Jesus while on his way to Damascus. This shouldn’t have been a simple vision or an hallucination during an epileptic attack.

Paul was baptized by Ananias - a follower of Jesus - who lived in Damascus. Acts 9 tells us that Ananias was asked by Jesus to visit Paul; Ananias was apprehensive because of Paul’s record to date; Jesus persuaded him; Ananias baptized Paul and introduced him into the teachings; Paul started spreading the new faith with greater zeal than the days when he persecuted Jesus and his followers 

PAUL HAS PERSONAL PROBLEMS

VERDICT ON THE NEW TESTAMENT

1. The New Testament was created by the believers whose main concern was to preach the “good news” ( eu-angelion) of Jesus Christ. Being believers they had to write the texts in line with what their faith has dictated.

2. The Gospel narratives were composed from oral traditions starting from at least 40-60 years after the death of Jesus. Each Gospel has its own theological predilection.

3. The Gospel stories like the Epistles and Luke’s Act of Apostles reflect the controversies in the early Church.

4. The New Testament authors were under the influence of the past and interpreted Jesus in light of various images and beliefs from the Hebrew scriptures.

1. Firstly there were no witnesses to the resurrection amongst the writers of the official scripts (supposedly those who have treated him in the rock tomb according to the Essene version of the events were appparently the only witnesses). Ignatius of Antioch expressed what had happened very effectively when he said less than a century later, “Jesus rose in the silence of God ”. No New Testament writer described what had happened.

2. Secondly the post-resurrection stories contain a variety of factual disagreements about the main characters, places, times, and the messages attributed to the story of the risen Jesus: Matthew has Jesus appear first to Mary Magdalene and other women. Luke gives the first appearance to Peter and - with the exception of a later addition to this Gospel - Mark contains no post-resurrection appearances at all. Luke’s Gospel writes that Jesus appeared to the apostles in the Jerusalem area; Matthew says it was in Galilee. In short the post-resurrection stories are misleading. No historian can hope to find what has really taken place by following the Gospels. The only truth is that God’s raising(!) of Jesus to ‘new life’ was an early Christian conviction.

INDICATIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT FOR RESURRECTION, AND..

The New Testament offers two sets of signs that indicate resurrection:

* The empty tomb: Some scholars think the story of the empty tomb was invented by Mark, the earliest Gospel, as a way of saying that Jesus had risen. Matthew has the resurrection story, but here there is an earthquake, angel of the Lord descends from heaven, rolls back the stone from the door and sits apon it. “..His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow” etc.etc. (Matthew 28:1-8).

* Various appearances of the risen(!) Christ: Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians which predates all the Gospels reports that Jesus had made several post-resurrection appearances: to Cephas (Peter); then to 12 apostles; to a group of more than 500 brethren at one time; to James; to all the Apostles; and finally to convert Paul himself.  

..WHO BURIED JESUS? PAUL SPEAKS

There is one last point which needs clarification: As you know Paul’s letters are accepted to be the first texts of the new organized belief system. Gospels came later. Therefore we must pay attention to Paul’s writings, and what he has said. Acts 13:27-29 relates us a speech made by Paul in the synagogue at Antioch, where he allegedly said that it was “the Jewish authorities who buried Jesus”. Did he or didn’t he say that? Could we say that Paul couldn’t have acquied the facts on what happened after the crucifixion; whether Jesus had died on the cross; whether he survived and went to India; if he hadn’t survived, who interred him, his followers - the Essenes - or the Jews; did the Jewish authorities put him in a common pit for the burial of crucified common criminals? Who did what? What happened? Nothing could be established for sure. That is why Spenta Mainyu just tried to put together, above, a probable course of events. Who could have done more?

HE IS AN APPARITION?..OR IS HE?

Jesus is said to have appeared to Paul near Damascus in about 35 AD., six years and forty days after resurrection [ This date given in Jesus in Rome, (1957) complicates the matters because it places the crucifixion in the year 29] . There is no better and fuller evidence than the Gospels to find that Jesus did not die, but lived for at least these ‘six years and forty days’ in and around Palestine after crucifixion. Gospels themselves admit of various interpretations. On the one hand they describe the risen Jesus eating with his dipciples. In John’s Gospel, the apostle known as ‘doubting’ Thomas refuses to believe in resurrection until Jesus allows him to put his finger into the hole in his side, where the lance had pierced him while he was on the cross. On the other hand several Gospel stories tell us that Jesus’ resurrected body is not at all like a normal human body. He mysteriously appears and disappears, passes through the closed doors and as in his appearance (in Luke’s account) to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, often goes unrecognized by his own close companions. To some theologians, quite naturally, this suggests that only those of deep faith actually saw(!) Jesus and then only in a God-given(!) vision. Similarly, human beings, barring the prophets, cannot see(!) God as well. Don’t be confused, there is nothing strange here, because there is nothing to see. Can anybody see(!) thoughts, beliefs, faiths? They are only in the brain.

REINCARNATION, MARTYRDOM ETC.

CHRIST RESURRECTED..WHY COULDN’T WE? 

From the very beginning of Christianity, as Paul formulated it, Christ’s ‘victory’ over death was not his alone. It was also a victory promised to those who were baptized into his body, which is the Church. What a wild idea! What a promise! What a trick! Throughout the two centuries of Roman persecution countless Christians went to their deaths convinced that in God’s kingdom which was imminent, they would rise again with a new, glorified body. Such naiveté ! Unbelievable. In her study The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, the medieval historian Caroline Walker Bynum traces the persistent Christian conviction that the body as well as the soul would inherit eternal life. “They saw the body as the carrier of particularity, including gender and race,” Bynum says, “Choosing for the body was choosing for individual identity for all eternity.”

OUR SUBJECT IS NEITHER ORDINARY NOR A FACT, THAT IS THE PROBLEM

Jesus’ rising from the dead is a statement of Christian faith and of human hope. This invented ‘event’ connects the first Easter message of 2000 years ago with our day. Connections and continuities like these sustain all religious traditions even if they are against the reason and everything we know of. Here is a question by Rabbi Jacob Neusner which explains the essence of the belief eloquently (He is a distinguished Talmudist at the University of Florida in Tampa): “If we can dismiss as ‘unhistorical’ most of the Gospels’ Jesus of Christianity, what can we of faithful Israel save of our rabbi, Moses, for Judaism?..Religion speaks of God’s intervention into the world, and that claim does not come before the court of secular history, to be judged true or false by historians’ ways of validating or falsifying ordinary facts.” Here, the last two words - ‘ordinary facts’ - explain the intellectual suffering of the human mind in trying to explain its own ‘brainchild’ since the Sumerians first formulated today’s stories, starting with the ‘Creation’. This ‘brainchild’ is neither ‘ordinary’ nor a ‘fact.’ It is extraordinary and abstract which only exists in the brains of the individuals; which introduces another dimension: This human invention is individualistic, there is no universal formula, form, shape or meaning which can describe it for all. It changes with human priorities, external conditions, individual leanings, sentiments, needs etc. There is no single concept of God which is accepted by all, and which has the identical meaning for all. This is the unsolvable problem that the man has created himself, for himself.

The ‘resurrection’ came to the rescue of Christianity. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been the faith, the Church, and all the accessories that go with it. Remember the Old Testament with all its myths, legends and fairy tales. If the Old Testament hasn’t existed there wouldn’t have been the Law, Judaism and the Jewry. So, without the New Testament with all its adopted myths, legends, and fairy tales there wouldn’t have been the Church and the organized belief system called Christianity. Has anyhing changed?

JESUS LEAVES PALESTINE

..Back to the fairy tale called ‘resurrection’. We have further indicators that Jesus did not die on the cross. A.J. Dierl (an anthropologist from Luxembourg) who has spent many years studying the tribes people of eastern Turkey has reportedly told Holger Kersten (Jesus Lived in India) that many legends are in circulation about Jesus residing in what is now southeast Turkey after the resurrection. According to Persian folkore, he lived at the town of Nisibis near Edessa (presently Urfa). This town of Nisibis which was a town in Syria in Jesus’ time is now called Nusaybin and is near the Turkish border with Syria. Other scholars record a tradition amongst the Alawites /Alevis of Anatolia that Jesus had survived the crucifixion, he was nursed back to health by his disciples, and then forever left the territories that were under imperial Roman rule. The lands north, west and south were all in Roman hands, so Jesus had only one direction to migrate to save his life - East.

JESUS BACK IN INDIA

When he returned to India Jesus is reported to have stayed in Kashmir. If Jesus had lived the rest of his life to the age of over 80 in Srinagar, India, as the tradition has it, then there must be documents on how he spent these 30-40 years. The experts on Indian history agree that there was not orderly written historical records before the spread of Islam in the region. The ninth book of the Puranas written in the ancient sacred language of Sanskrit, the Bhavisya Maha Purana (written between 3rd and 7th centuries AD.) has an addendum which tells us how Jesus had come to India. This Purana mentions the coming to India of the Israelites and settling there. It describes the appearance of Jesus in verses 17-32. Another indication that Jesus had visited the region of Himalayas is a tomb 10 kilometers from the city of Kashgar, north of Ladakh (Eastern Turkestan) in the Sinkiang region of China. This tomb is known as the tomb of Mary who was one of the group that has accompanied Jesus. At this point we must remember that the Gospel of Philip writes that three women had stayed with Jesus after he survived the crucifixion. All three are called Mary. First one is his mother, second one is his sister (probably the wife of Cleopas), and the third one is Mary Magdalene, described as the ‘companion’ or ‘consort’. Pof. Fida Hassnain writes in his book A Search for the Historical Jesus that his investigation into the matter has shown that Mary Magdalene has actually died in Kashgar. So, he writes that this tomb may indeed belong to one of these women.

The port of Muzuris in SW India was an important Roman settlement at that time. There was a Jewish colony there, as in nearby Cochin. This colony still exists today. There are two Jewish tribes in Cochin, they are known even today as ‘white’ and ‘black’. The latter date their arrival in Kerala as 587 BC. Legend tells us that they are the descendants of the Jews exiled to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. This legend may have truth in it because American researchers have reportedly detected ancient Babylonian influences in the music of Cochin’s Jews. Another legend has it that Solomon’s trading ships brought their forefathers to India. The ‘white’ Jews believe that their ancestors fled here in 135 AD. after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. According to some scholars these Jews may be the descendants of an Alexandrian trading colony. They are thought to have stuck in India and could not return when the Roman emperor Caracalla carried out a mass execution at Alexandria in 215 AD. Christianity also reached southern India at that time by way of Muzuris and other harbours on the Malabar coast. The oldest indisputable evidence dates from 180 AD. when Pantainos of Alexandria found an Aramaic copy of Matthew’s Gospel during his missionary trip to Kerala. The southern Indian Christians believe that Christianity reached India immediately after the crucifixion. The Portuguese landed on the Malabar coast in the 16th century. They were surprised to find synagouges and many churches where the priests maintained that “the Gospel had been brought to India by the apostle who had touched the wounds of the risen Christ.” Who was this person? Thomas of course. He was called ‘doubting Thomas’ because he could not believe that Jesus was not an apparition. ‘Doubting Thomas’ is said to have reached Muzuris in 52 AD. Acts of Thomas/Actae Thomae reports that after the Ascension(!) the apostles drew lots to decide in which country each of them should preach the Gospel. India fell to Thomas. The early Christian communities in Persia claim Thomas as their founder. This must be taken as an indication that the apostle has first reached India by land. There is much evidence to show that Jesus himself, after surviving the crucifixion also took the land route to India. While Thomas preached the Gospel in the south of the subcontinent, Jesus remained in the northwest, where he ultimately died. Tradition has it that the grave of the prophet Yuzu Asaph at Rozabal, Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, is indeed Jesus’ grave. This tomb is known as ‘the sacred tomb in Kashmir’. The people believe that a prophet, Yuzu Asaph, came to the valley of Kashmir, 2000 years ago, from Egypt. He is said to have preached the same parables as Jesus, and he was a prophet of ‘the people of the Book’. Who are these people? They could only be the followers of Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Those who want to learn more should read the excellent books titled A search for the Historical Jesus, The Original Jesus, The Jesus Conspiracy, and Jesus Lived in India.

Bhavishyat Maha Purana is an ancient Sanskrit manuscript. We are told that it is written in the Sharda alphabet of ancient Kashmir on brick bark papyrus. This manuscript was compiled by Sutta in 115 AD. It was published in 1910 in Bombay, India. It mentions the existence of the followers of Moses in India amongst other things. It is basically a book of events, information and prophecies started by the devotees of the solar cult which existed in the 3rd century BC. This copy by Sutta is a copy of the previous writings and continuation from it. Sutta gives us an exciting narration on Jesus. According to this narration the king of Sakas met a saintly person, fair in complexion and wearing a long white robe, when the king inquired about the saint, he described himself as “ Know me as Ishvara Putaram (‘Son of God’), and Kanaya Garbam (‘Born of a Virgin’)..I appeared as Isha Masih (or Jesus Messiah). I received the Messiahood (or Christhood).”

In Parthia (Basra) Jesus was evidently known by the name of Yuz Asaf. An ancient work on the history of Persia, Farhang-i Asafia, gives us the meaning of this name. Farhang-i Asafia relates that Hazrat Issa (Jesus) healed some lepers who were thereafter called Asaf (‘the purified’). Yuz means leader, so Yuz Asaf can be taken to mean the ‘leader of the healed’. There are numerous documents on what Jesus had preached in Persia and how he had won many people to his teaching. Like Agha Mustafai’s work Ahwal-i Ahaliau-I Paras, details of Jesus’ teaching show us time and again that Yuz Asaf and Jesus are one and the same person. The royal poet at the court of the Moghul emperor Akbar addresses Jesus as Ai Ki Nam-i-to Yus o Kristo (“You whose name is Yuz or Christ”). Though variations of Christos (Greek) were in use in the west for hundreds of years the only preserved name of Jesus in the east has been Yuz Asaf. 

WHAT A TOMB TELLS US?

There is a community in Afghanistan calling themselves the ‘Muslims of Issa’. O.M. Burke writes in his book, Among the Dervishes: “The followers of Issa..inhabit a number of villages scattered throughout the western area of Afghanistan whose center is Heart…There must be about a thousand of these Christians. Their chief is Abba Yahiya, who can recite the succession of teachers through nearly sixty generations, to Issa, son of Mariam of Nasara, the Kashmiri.” The description of this Issa as ‘Issa of Nasara, the Kashmiri’ is very interesting. The implication is there: Issa comes from Kashmir to teach them. So they thought of him as a Kashmiri. But at the same time the other word possibly referring to something else is there also: Nasara.. Could this be the name the locals give to Nazareth, or could this word be the localised version of nasrani/nasorean? And the designation ‘Muslims’ surely cannot be denoting Islam, but expressing the meaning the Arabs and Moslems give to the word: ‘Surrendering and submission’ to God.

JESUS AND PAUL - START OF PAULINISM

There was a Jew living in Tarsus in Asia Minor.

This Jew had an inquiring mind, and very strong ambitions. He was knowledgeable in the pagan religions of the region from Mithraism in the East to cults of the Graeco-Roman lands. Among these there were the cult of Attis; the cult of Adoni-Adonis at Byblus and Paphos; the cult Tammuz of Babylonia. He might as well have heard the cult of Osiris in Egypt. These were all cultic deities of the region, who were killed and risen from the dead. Being a resident of Tarsus this Jew must have been very well acquainted with the rebirth celebrations of the young God Attis. He must have witnessed the celebrations for the ‘awakening of Heracles/Hercules’ in Tarsus. Heracles was born of a virgin. His mother was Alcmene. She was married, but due to her vow she was still a virgin. But either Zeus visited her or the power of the Almighty overshadowed her (How close can you get to the stories in the New Testament?)..The life of the baby was threatened and he had to be born in secret and hidden away. He didn’t have a natural end; his wife poisoned him; he made a funeral pile to be burned, got on top of it; got a shepherd to fire it; and his followers saw him ascending to heaven from the top of the pile in a cloud; “he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight”.. No, no! This sentence is from Acts 1:9 about the end of Jesus. Josephus mentions this Hercules celebration in Tyre where an effigy of the great God Melcarth (Moloch) is burnt. We may liken him to Hercules. So in this Jew’s mind all the components of a new belief system were ready. All he needed was to write his first letter to create a new belief system and a mythical personalty.

This Jew was Saul-Paul.

JESUS’ DIVINITY

According to some researchers the New Testament shows that belief in the divinity of Jesus arrived very early. How early? As early as the first decades of Christianity. They quote the earliest written evidence where Paul refers to and quotes from things which may well predate him; “..there are passages in Paul where, almost as a throwaway remark, he puts Jesus and God together”. These are the examples: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”... “For us there is one God and father from whom are all things, and for whom we exist, and one lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we exist.” This statement by Paul shows that in his monotheism he combines the God (father) and Jesus (son). So Paul is a Jew and a ‘God-and-Jesus monotheist’ (as if that is possible!). Which also means that 20 years after his death, Jesus had been elevated to the position of divinity by the Christians of the day. Do you know where Paul got this idea? Jewish scriptures mentioned a passionate and compassionate God who led their nation out of Egypt. That God promised to rescue the nation at hard times. However he did not keep his word(!). But concurrent with the appearance of Jesus, Jews were expecting some ‘divine’ intervention; Jesus was thought to be the God’s long-expected act of mercy; Jesus was offering forgiveness to sinners, thus claiming that he had the power to exercise the God’s prerogative. But he died not a redeemer, nor a Messiah, but a ‘sinner’. If the story was left there, there would not have been the Christianity. But as told by Paul “a divine intervention took place and Jesus had resurrected(!).” Hence the Christianity. Now you know who had invented all those nonsensical machinations to create a church out of nothing.

JESUS WAS A JEW..BUT DID HE HAVE THE SIGN OF IT?..WAS HE CIRCUMCISED?

Jesus was not a Christian because Christianity came after his departure, thanks to Paul. This Jesus ‘Christ’ may be an invented personality, but was he an orthodox Jew? If we are to stick to what we have, there appears to be fundamental differences that distinguish his outlook from orthodox Judaism. He could even be said to have denounced all that were most sacred to the traditional Jewish culture. Let us start with the sign of Judaism, the ‘covenant’ with Abraham - circumcision. Was he or wasn’t he circumcised? Gospels do not actually state whether he was or wasn’t. Luke 2:21 merely says that when Jesus was eight days old and the statutory circumcision was due, he was given his name. There is no definitive statement anywhere that he was circumcised. The apocryphal Gospel of Thomas relates a saying of Jesus on the subject of circumcision: “His disciples asked him, ‘circumcision - is there any real point in it or not?’ He answered, ‘If it was really important, your heavenly father would have seen to it that you came into the world already circumcised from your mother’s womb. But certainly circumcision in spirit may well be of great importance.’ ” This paragraph may be a distortion of the real person, and an attempt by Paul to prepare the ground for one of the rules he was about to introduce, or just an attempt by the writers of the scriptures to ‘create’ a person fitting their needs and expectations. But if we are to stick to the official narration it should be enough to express what Jesus’ position - and the position of those people who were initiating a new belief system behind his figure - was vis-a-vis the most fundamental principle of the Mosaic Law. No more words are needed. Keeping in mind that Jesus has a connection with the Essenes can we find a clue as to what the Essene position was on this matter? Yes. They are known to have recognized only such a ‘spiritual circumcision’, and not to have required the physical removal of the foreskin.

In this way Paul, who was strongly opposed to circumcision as a religious requirement, managed to override the objections of the Jewish Christians and to get the rescinding of the obligation consequently affirmed by the apostles at the Council of Jerusalem.

WHO WAS THIS SHAUL/SAUL/PAUL?

CHRISTIANITY = PAULINISM

What is called Christianity, should in reality be called Paulinism. Because Christianity is not based on the message of Jesus anymore. The doctrine as we now know it, rests in all its main points on the totally different teaching of Paul. The religious historian Wilhelm Nestle says, “ ‘Christianity’ is the religion founded by Paul; It replaced the Christ’s Gospel with a Gospel about Christ.” Modern Christianity developed only when Paulinism was proclaimed as the state religion. Emil Brunner has called the Church “..A misunderstanding. From a call a doctrine was constructed; from a free communion, a legal corporation; from a free association a hierarchical machine. You might say that it became, in all of its elements and in its overall disposition, the exact opposite of what was intended.” During his life in Palestine Jesus openly declared his disaffection with the (Jewish) religious officialdom. He distanced himself from the laws of the religious establishment and the scriptural authorities. He distanced himself from the establishment’s insistence on preserving verbal niceties with conflicting interpretations based on requirements, its complicated hierarchy, and the associated cultic worship and idolatry. Jesus pursued the creation of an immediate link between God and mankind, he never wanted to set up bureaucratic channels to go through. Moreover, the followers of Jesus in those days didn’t think of Jesus as a god; he was just a kingly figure that will liberate them and reinstate the old tradititon of Judaism.

The supposition that Jesus died on the cross marks the beginning of the Christian theology (the resurrection doctrine). The claim that he was resurrected is the central point of the faith, because at this point Jesus the man ends and we enter the carefully organised stage of the Christian Church with the mythically glorified Christ playing the ‘star’. Paul’s understanding of Jesus, and his specific inventions ended with a dogmatic belief system far away from the teachings of the Jewish rabbi and the prophet from Galilee - yshua (Jesus).

ORIGINAL SIN..REDEMPTION..SACRIFICE..SALVATION..AND WHAT ELSE?

Death of Jesus and his resurrection are fundamentals of Paul’s doctrine. Paul conceived the death of the ‘Son of God’ as an important act of most far-reaching consequences. Otherwise the whole event would have been irrational, inconceivable. There must have been a special purpose behind the death of the ‘Son of God’. In his first letter to the Corinthians he says unequivocally, ‘Christ died for our Sins.’ Which is the official form of the Easter message. In this way he makes his own personal idea the actual foundation of the Christian faith, on which everything is built up. This is the doctrine of salvation from sin (sin is the cause of the suffering in the world!) by the vicarious sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. Without the death of Jesus, Paul claimed, there could be no release from sins. “Christ died for our sins” he said. So, if you have faith in Jesus you are not a sinner! This is the first lure employed by Paul. But we know that there was no sin in the beginning. Sin as a concept was introduced by the belief systems. Belief systems in turn were invented by the mankind. Therefore, sin does not exist in the original design(!) by God. Paul was clever, because no one can claim not to have sinned.

This doctrine of salvation in traditional Christianity rests almost exclusively on the work of Paul, who is a human being, a ‘lowly’ creature before the might of the God, a member of the mankind stained by sin! Here again a human being is setting the stage and establishing the ground rules. There is nothing divine about them. Moreover this doctrine was never taught by Jesus. But Paul neither passes on a single syllable of the direct teaching of Jesus in his letters nor does he tell a single one of his parables. Instead he builds up a philosophy based on his own personal understanding (or misunderstanding) of Jesus’ teaching. Paul insists that on account of the sin of Adam all people are subject to the wrath of God from the start, and are lost without exception, for all are subject to sin. God has given his judgement of condemnation against all people. The good news (eu-angelion) brought by Jesus, has turned into a dark and threatening message in the hands of Paul. He makes himself the only person who is able to show the way out of the ‘menace’ (he has created). This ‘way out’, according to Paul, was the salvation of humanity through the sacrifical death of Christ. Human beings individually and through their acts cannot do anything in the way of salvation in this miserable life. According to Paul it is exclusively the grace of God which brings us to salvation. A person may be saved merely by the single act of baptism, becoming child of God and a completely new being. Every claim to cooperating in salvation by one’s own effort is, by his teaching, to be regarded as a belittling of the sacrifice of Jesus, as an attempt to save oneself that cannot but fail. Conversely, every person, however good and exemplary a life he may have led, must in this scheme be considered lost if he fails to accept the sacrifice on the cross for himself personally as his complete salvation.

Such ideas are totally alien to Jesus. Death by crucifixion, raised to the level of dogma, ended with the falsification of the teachings of Jesus. Paul based the hope of salvation on the expiatory death of God’s first-born(!) - Jesus. By doing this he actually took a step back to the primitive Semitic religion of the prehistoric times, when every father was obliged to give up his first-born son in bloody sacrifice. Paul has prepared also the way for the later doctrines of ‘original sin’ and the ‘divine trinity’. 

STICK TO INCOMPREHENSIBILITY..IGNORANCE WILL DO THE REST

Most Christians are of the opinion that the greatness, the uniqueness of Christianity stands and falls with this teaching about salvation. But it is a fiction, far removed from the ideas of Jesus. Not even a hint of this so-called Christian doctrine of salvation is to be found in the Sermon on the Mount - which is thought to be the core of Jesus’ message - or in the Lord’s Prayer, or in the traditional parables told by Jesus. When we think about the parables, which are basically lessons of morality based on tales, we immediately detect nearly always the incomprehensibility of the message; and mostly the impossibility to get to the real meaning behind it all. Think about it! This person allegedly ‘has come down’ to teach something to the ignorant and expectant masses, and he envelops his message in unintelligible and mysterious wording. It doesn’t seem right, does it? Especially when poor souls around him need to understand the message to be saved in the first place. Read Mark 4 where you come across alleged words by Jesus like: “He that has ears to hear let him hear”; “the sower soweth the word”. So what? And in between he tells his parables like in Mark 4:11-13: “Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without all these things are done in parables.” Shouldn’t it be the other way round and done in the simplest and clearest examples possible for the people to understand? The story goes on: “That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear and not understand; lest any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.” Does conversion provides an automatic pardon and an instant enlightenment which leads to salvation? Ridiculous! But the reality is different. If you are out to claim extraordinariness and and divinity you have to be unfathomable like the expanse and incomprehensible like the ‘being’ of the supreme authority in whose name all this is done. 

WHAT DID JESUS TEACH?

Jesus was not concerned with constructing a philosophy that might be based on his life and on his message that might free people from the sufferings of earthly existence - he actually lived what he taught. Toleration at all times, care or the welfare and benefit of others (human and animal), giving and sharing, selflessness in helping others to carry the burden of their suffering, a universal and unconditional love for all - this is the way of perfection that Jesus demonstrated in his life. According to the texts found by Nicolas Notovitch, on the life of Issa, Jesus challenges the authority of the priests which makes his position quite clear: “So long as the people had no priests they were ruled by natural law and they preserved the flawlessness of their souls. Their souls were in the presence of God and to commune with the father they had no need to resort to the mediation of an idol or a beast, nor to fire as is practised here.” (This, together with the Zoroastrian rule to the same effect must be the sources of the Islamic doctrine that there is no need for intermediaries between the believer and the believed.)

PAUL CONTINUES WITH HIS WORK..THIS TIME IT IS INTACT RESURRECTION(!)..IMMORTALITY

The second central doctrine Paul had introduced is the resurrection. He was clever enough not to use the open grave for his resurrection teaching. He was too far away to hear about this invention or heard the rumor but have omitted it intentionally. He may have thought that the ‘open’ tomb with the rock closing the entrance rolled to a side was too ‘suspicious’ to be the basis of a doctrine. Someone may have opened and taken away the body of Jesus. So Paul built his doctrine on the apparitions (Jesus on the contrary, tried to persuade his followers that he was alive and not a ghost). The general public had no knowledge of the rescue operation. This gave Paul the chance to interpret the crucifixion and ‘death’ of Jesus differently. He formulated the doctrine of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:14: “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching in vain, and your faith is also vain.” The faith would be pointless if Christ had not been resurrected. For Paul and the whole early catechesis it was the basic object of faith. Paul made quite clear that without the resurrection there could be no release from sins. He started digging up very old pagan ideas. Jesus’ death was made into the ‘death of atonement’ - God had offered his beloved son for the sinful humanity. But Jesus was of ‘Godly substance’, ‘Son of God’, ‘God in flesh’, ‘God incarnate’. A God could not die, could he? An immortal god has to rise again. The old rebirth ideas, which are found everywhere in the New Testament, were well known but they were not suitable for a Christ. They were too generally widespread, almost common - every prophet could be a reincarnation. But the ‘Son of God’ Jesus was exceptional, unique. He could not reembody himself in another person. Therefore his must be a physical resurrection. He must rise again as Christ in person. This was unheard of in those days. The early Church had to find a solution. Paul was quick to find the way out. He introduced the idea of ‘intact resurrection’ (this is an example of how far an impaired imagination could go). Do you know where this intact resurrection takes us? To immortality of course! The eternal dream of mankind. By resurrecting physically Jesus allows Christians (not all mankind only those who believe in him!) to share in his bodily immortality on the day of judgement. This is the most profound offering by Paul to lure people into Christianity.

Telling us that John the Evangelist was on location when Jesus was crucified here is what the author of The Crucifixion by an Eye-Witness has on resurrection: “But in the city there arose a rumor that Jesus was taken up in a cloud, and had gone to heaven. This was invented by the people who had not been present when Jesus departed. The disciples did not contradict this rumor, inasmuch as it served to strenghten their doctrine, and influenced the people who wanted a miracle in order to believe in him. John who was present, knew all of these things, but he had not spoken nor written anything about it. Likewise Matthew. There are others who have gathered the rumors thereof into an illustration, which they believed themselves, as they were moved by the spirit to glorify Jesus. Thus one of them named Marcus wrote to a congregation in Rome and gave an account of this event, but inasmuch as he had not been present, his source of information was only the rumors amongst the people. Even thus is it with Lucas who tried to do the same.”

But the people, millions after millions of them, swallowed Paul’s bait and started expecting the return of Christ - the Messiah, so that they will be able to become immortals. Regardless of faith, who would in his right mind believe in this? It is absurd and nonsensical to say the least. But there is immortality linked to it, and the lowly(!) sinners, the mankind, have always wanted to be god-like. Christianity was their chance(!). Paul has introduced this myth, and the human yearning to become immortal played a crucial part in its taking root. This was the second lure Paul employed to make his ‘creation’ catch.

THE WRATH OF GOD

Christianity has Paul’s (and other authors’) narrow-minded fanaticism to be grateful to for the numerous detrimental developments, which are diametrically opposed to the spirit of Jesus: the intolerance towards those of different views; the marked hostility to the body and the consequently low view of women, lust, and sexuality; and especially the fatally flawed attitude towards nature. According to Paul all are under the wrath of god from the start; and are lost without exception; all are without hope and without God; for Satan has power over all. There is a judgement of damnation by god against everyone without exception. This wrath of God (which also applies to newborn babies) according to Paul can only be averted by the death and the blood of Jesus, and only the death and the blood of Jesus can atone for the ‘original guilt’ (Colossians 1:22) “..and without shedding of blood (there) is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). By adopting this idea of vicarious sacrifice of the first born son, which is rooted in the primitive culture of the prehistoric semitic religions Paul turns Jesus’ teaching of salvation upside down, and opposes his reforming ideas; instead of the original joyous eu-angelion the Pauline message of threats was developed. Paul teaches that the human individual is unable to attain salvation and atonement before God by any good works of his own, or by any change however good (Romans 3:24, 3:28; 9:11; 9:16; 1 Corinthians 1:29; Galatians 2:16). “For by grace are ye saved through faith. it is the gift of God.” Thus the precondition for the action of God’s grace is the acceptance of the Pauline teaching on grace; which means membership of the Church of Paul.

The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ tells us that “The Jews of Palestine never believed in human sacrifice, nor in the crucifixion of the Messiah for the sins of the world. The Pagans believed that their gods, Adonis, Attis, Osiris and Mithra had died for the sins of the mankind. It was Paul who borrowed the idea of a scapegoat and laid stress on the crucified Jesus. The theory of ‘original sin’ and redemption by the death of the Son of God were inventions by Paul.”

COMMENTS ON PAUL

In referring to the teachings of Paul theologian Grimm writes, “However deeply these teachings may have become ingrained in Christian thought, they still have nothing to do with the real Jesus.” Theologian A. Deissman describes Paul as the ‘epitome of intolerance”. In keeping with this description Paul has opened up deep rifts betwen the ‘true believers’ and ‘non-believers’. Here are some more of the comments on Paul: Eduard Grimm: “No matter how deeply this teaching may have become established amongst Christians, the real Jesus new nothing about it.” Wilhelm Nestle: “Christianity is the religion founded by Paul, which replaces Jesus’s Gospel with a Gospel about Jesus - a religion that should rather be called Paulinism. This Paulinism is a misinterpretation and falsification of Jesus’s real teachings.” Ernst Käseman: “..Only a few words from the Sermon on the Mount, the dispute with Pharisaism, a number of parables, a scattering of other things date back in all probability to the historical Jesus.” Rudolf Bultmann: “..A clear-cut picture of Jesus’s personality and life can no longer be discerned.”

BELIEVE IN PAULINISM AND..

Believe in Paulinism and;

1. Become immortal (do not fear of death, have a God-like existence).

2. Absolve yourself of your sins (so have a chance to live in the realm of Gods in after-life).

3. Release your inner tensions (don’t think about sex anymore, mankind did it once and Jesus paid for it, didn’t he?)

PAULINISM (CHRISTIANITY) WINS IN THE END

According to the English philosopher Lord Bolingbroke there are two completely different religions in the New Testament, that of Jesus and that of Paul. Moreover, Kant, Lessing, Fichte and Schelling have clearly distinguished between the teaching of Jesus and what the ‘disciples’ made of it. A large number of modern theologians have also come to acknowledge this fact. A struggle for dominance went on fiercely during the first centuries of the present era amongst the Paulinist, Gnostic and Jewish-Christian groups. In the end, the Church of Rome, organized by Paul, emerged as the victor following the Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 313 AD. About 300-400 years later another religion pushing into Asia Minor from south started pressing Christianity forcefully. In a very short space of time it managed to win over much of the population of the region. This was the third belief system in the Abrahamic religions - Islam.

THE STORY OF THE EXPECTED SAVIOUR - MESSIAH

On the one hand Jesus is a phenomenon to be studied for theologians and historians, and on the other as a mythological personality he has acquired the status of the ultimate truth. So the only aspect which would bring in a new dimension and could add perpective is the ‘Messiah’ concept in the New Testament. But many of the supposed prophecies based on the Old Testament are taken out of context and actually not messianic prophecies at all. In Matthew 4:13-16 we read the movement of Jesus from Nazareth to Capernaum “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias (Isaiah) the prophet, saying”. This is re-writing history according to the needs of the times. Jesus does not fit at all the messianic prophecies in the Old Testament. He is rejected by the Jews of the 1st century AD., for which they are condemned by the Church. But no one cares if the portrait of Christ is real, because the Christians are attached only to the Messiah of the New Testament, not to the historical Messiah.

THE ORIGINS OF THE CONCEPT OF MESSIAH

At this point we must briefly look into the concept of messiah, and its possible origins. The word Messiah comes from the Hebrew verb ‘to anoint’ - to treat with oil. Messiah, according to some scholars is derived from the Egyptian word messeh, ‘the holy crocodile.’ The Pharaoh’s sister-brides used to anoint their husbands on marriage with the fat of the messeh. According to Sir Laurence Gardner (The Hidden History of Jesus and the Holy Grail) this Egyptian custom has its origins in old Mesopotamia.

Ancient magical texts claimed that the oil or balsam used served the specific purpose of enchanting demons so as to grant protection from them. It also helped medically in healing wounds and driving away diseases of mind and body. This ointment is thought to have sealed the body of a worshipper - assuring God’s protection. Celsus says that the snake-worshipping Ophites possessed a magic ointment thought to have had the power to transform anyone who received it into a ‘Son of the Father’. Origen says that “he has been anointed with the pure white unguent of the ‘Tree of life’.” Gospel of Philip tells us that “The tree of life is in the centre of Paradise. It is the oil tree that yields oil with which holy kings are anointed and by means of it resurrection (was made possible).” Anointing the holy kings was called chrisma. Please note the resemblance between christ and chrisma, and don’t overlook the immortality component. Irenaeus writes that the holy anointing was “a rite denoting salvation.” It was done on the temples and forehead, often in the form of a cross.

As usual we have many alternatives. Choose the one you like.. 

THE OIL..LEVITES..TEACHER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS..DAVIDIC KINGS AND JESUS

These examples show that the practice which is described by the Hebrew term ‘mãshïah’ was in existence centuries before the Messianic concept. The Biblical term simply meant ‘anointed’ and referred to Aaron and his sons. They were anointed with oil, and consequently, consecrated to the service of God. We read in Exodus 28:41: “And you shall put them upon Aaron your brother, and upon his sons with him, and shall anoint them and ordain them and consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests.” The legitimacy of the priesthood was supposed to descend lineally from Aaron through the Tribe of Levi who were with Moses as they came out of Egypt, through the Exodus and until they reached the borders of the Promised Land. The tribe of Levi has always enjoyed a privileged position in the establishment. Thus, throughout the Old Testament, the priesthood is the unique preserve of the Levites. The Levite high priests who attend David and Solomon are known to have been referred to as ‘Zadok’ - though it is not clear whether this is a personal name or an hereditary title. Zadok or sadduc means the ‘Righteous One’ and is symbolized by tzaddik (one of the two pillars which, according to Knight and Lomas, stood at the doorway to Qumran). Two gigantic bronze pillars flanked the entrance to the Temple of Solomon. “The doorway was created by the pillars of ‘sedeq’- ‘sadaq’ (‘righteousness’ - always doing good to others) and ‘mishpat' (‘judgement’- divinely appointed order) with the holy arch of ‘shalom’ (‘peace’ - prosperity, success, general well-being). When these two spiritual pillars are in place with the Teacher of Righteousness (sedeq-sadaq) on the left hand of God and the earthly Davidic king (mishpat) on his right hand, the archway of YHWH’s rule will be in place with the keystone of ‘shalom’ locking everything together at its center. But this sedeq-sadaq, which is the Teacher of Righteousness for the Jews was “..for the Canaanites a term associated with the Sun God. The Canaanite Sun God was seen as the great judge who watched over the world, righted wrongs and shone light unto the dark doings of hidden crimes.” The Christian tradition has taken many things from the Old Testament as a symbolic forecast of the events told in the New Testament. One can almost say that Moses is taken to foretell Jesus, who exhibits superiority and symbolizes the consummation of a progress.

THOSE WHO ARE ANOINTED

Raphael Patai, writes in The Messiah Texts that the High Priest, in particular, was termed mãshï ah, and with the establishment of the monarchy, the same term was applied to the king because he was ‘the Anointed of the Lord’ and was installed in the high office by receiving the sacrament of anointment as it is written in 1 Samuel 2:10. Solomon was anointed by Zadok, and became ‘the Anointed One’ (‘ha-mãshï ah’ in Hebrew). Prophets were anointed as well. In early monarchic days the person of ‘the Anointed of the Lord’ - the king - came to be considered sacrosanct: to harm him or even to curse him, was a capital offense. A further development of this concept can be seen in the belief that God provided special protection to His anointed king. The Psalms contain several references to the idea of divine intervention for ‘the Anointed of the Lord’, in other words the idealized Davidic king (Psalms 20:7). This belief developed, and in addititon to the king, his whole house also came to be regarded as having divine protection. While David is the king of Israel (10th century BC.), the concept developed into the belief that his House would have an everlasting rule, not only over Israel but also over all the nations. Read 2 Samuel 22:48-52, and Psalms 18:42-52.

THE PROPHECY

In the 7th century BC., Judah and its capital were besieged by the Assyrians. Micah prophesied deliverance by someone from Beth-lehem, the home village of the House of David, in terms which seemed to echo the Messianic expectations of centuries later: “Now you are walled about with a wall; siege is laid against us; with a rod they strike upon the cheek of the ruler of Israel. But you, O Beth-lehem Ephrathah, who are little to be amongst the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, who comes from ‘olam’(*). Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in travail has brought forth; then the rest of his brethren shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth.” (Micah 5:1-5).

(*)The word olam does not mean ‘infinitude’ or ‘endlessness’ as it has been translated in the King James Version. It expresses a duration of time during which a person, or a thing, or a state of a thing exists. In other words it means an age of time which has a beginning and a conclusion (Dallas E. James, Putting the Sword to Churchianity). It may be taken to mean ‘a very old time’, ‘from an ancient period’, ‘days of old’.

Anyway Jesus has never been a ruler of Israel. In fact, Jesus never ruled in his life. He has never united Judah with the Northern tribes, never even thought about it. He had his sight on a different objective. Those Northern tribes are no more, due to the fact that they had been assimilated into the Assyrian race ages ago, so this unification would be impossible even if he came for the second time. I hope I won’t make Christians hot under their collars when I say that Micah is an unfulfilled prophecy. They should wait for the second coming of Mithra - pardon me, Jesus.

WHERE DOES THIS MESSIAH COME FROM

The idea of an ‘expected saviour’ has its origins in the Mithras cult and Zoroastrianism. Frederick Thomas Elworthy writes in The Evil Eye “..The Persian Mazda worshippers looked for the birth of a Savior from a virgin mother.” This concept was formulated in the Sacred Book of Zoroaster : “We worship the guardian spirit of the holy maid Esetât-Jedhri, who is called the all-conquering, for she will bring him forth who will destroy the malice of the demons and of men.”

The ‘exile’ was the forced detention of Jews in Babylonia following the Babylon’s conquest of the kingdom of Judah. Many scholars accept 597 BC. as the year of the first deportation, when king Jehoiachin was deposed and sent into exile with his family, his court, and thousands of workers. Others say that the first deportation followed the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 586; which means that the Jews were held in Babylonian captivity for 48 years. Amongst those who accept the traditional dates (Jeremiah 29:10) which give a period of 70 years for the exile, some choose the dates 608 to 538, others 586 to about 516 when the rebuilt Temple was dedicated in Jerusalem. Whatever dates one chooses it is a fact that Jews were kept in Babylon for a certain period of time, which has naturally caused fundamental changes in the Jewish understanding of God, the Mosaic Law and the Jewish way of life. That is important, not the dates. The Jews had to endure difficulties and stood in the face of powerful cultural pressures. But despite all that they managed to maintain their national spirit and religious identity. Since their Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, this period of exile was possibly also the period when synagogues were first established. The Jews observed the sabbath and religious holidays, practiced circumcision, and substituted prayers for former ritual sacrifices in the Temple. “..We know that Zarathustra (Zoroaster) proclaimed a series or group of saviors or ‘bringers of benefit’ who would ‘heal the world’ and ‘make existence brilliant’ (Hom Yasht 30:9). We also know that Zarathustra believed he would lead this group. Similarly, although nearly one thousand years later, as their exile drew to a close the Jewish people began to develop a belief in messiah-type figures who would re-establish their fortunes” (Peter Clark, Zoroastrianism, An Introduction to an Ancient Faith). 

PERSIAN NOTIONS INFILTRATE

THE ESSENES

JESUS : THE TEACHER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS?

Edmund Szekely published a manuscript known as The Gospel of the Essenes in 1928. The original of the manuscript was in Aramaic. Szekely said he had found this manuscript in a secret vault in Vatican. In this manuscript which is in the Habsburg Royal Archieves in Austria, Jesus is presented as a “teacher of righteousness preaching renunciation, austerity, simple living, high ideals and intellectuel cleansing.” In this Gospel we read: “Jesus was sitting amongst those who were listening to him with wide eyes. He said: ‘Do not look for the law in the scriptures. Because law is life, scriptures are dead. Law is the living word given by the living God to living prophets for the living people. Law is in every living thing. You can find it in the grass, trees, river, mountain, the birds of paradise and fish in the seas, but look for it in yourself. God did not write his law in the books, but in your hearts and souls.’” (The Gospel of Peace of Jesus by the Disciple John). Could this ‘teacher of righteousness’ be the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’ mentioned in the Qumran texts? Essenes believed that the Teacher of Righteousness would pronounce the wisdom of all the future and past prophets; be an ‘anointed one’ and initiate a new order.

MENACHEM : A MODEL FOR JESUS?

Insofar as the figures of the Teacher of Righteousness and Jesus are concerned we have another possible origin. From Josephus we know of the fate of a Galilean called Menachem, who has astonishing similarities with Jesus. For example like Jesus he was ‘son of David’; from Galilee; as the leader of the Sicarians he has provoked a Jewish uprising; was born in Beth-lehem and moved into Jerusalem as king; has occupied the Temple; was betrayed and killed. Rudolf Augstein draws attention to these remarkable parallels and speculates that Mark has employed this information on Menachem as the basis for his narrative about Jesus. The name Menachem means ‘comforter’ and was later substituted for ‘Messiah’. Menachem is also suggested to have been Qumran’s Teacher of Righteousness. We know that the texts referring to this teacher date from the 1st century AD. So this character called Menachem could have been a Zealot from that period.

‘SUFFERING SERVANT’ : JESUS OR ISRAEL?

‘SUFFERING SERVANT’ : TEACHER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS?

TEACHER OF RIGHTEOUSSNESS..WICKED PRIEST..MAN OF LIES..ETC.

There are other personalities also who share some of their characteristics with Jesus: The character called ‘great healer’ in the Decapolis on the eastern shore of the lake of Gennesaret (Tiberias) sends the evil spirits possessing two men into a herd of swine which promptly rushed off the cliff to their death whereupon the incensed herders chased away the strange magician ( Matt 8:28-34; Mark 5:1-17; Luke 8:26-37).  

PLATO..EMPEDOCLES..PYTHAGORAS..MIRACLES AND MIRACLES 

The Christian authors are extremely inventive. Their selection of miracles supposedly performed by Jesus exist in the tales about the deeds of famous men of antiquity. Did you know that Plato was believed to be the son of Apollo (God)? Empedocles was said to have healed the sick, awakened the dead, gathered storms and predicted the future. Did anybody call him a prophet? In another tale Pythagoras tells the fishermen in Crotona that their catch would be bigger if they let down their fishing nets again. A parallel story exists in Luke 5:1-7 where Jesus calls on Peter to cast out his fishing nets once more. All these parallels and some more which we deal with elsewhere make clear that the personality, and the biography of Jesus was shaped by the views existing in militant Jewish groups and other sects in the Jewish society, and was not unique as Gospels would like us to believe.

ESSENES-QUMRANIANS-‘BAPTISTS’-JESUS

As mentioned earlier, following his return to Palestine Jesus is believed to have decided to join the ‘Baptists’ who could also be the people of Qumran. In those days people who had problems with the religious environment migrated to the barren region around the Jordan/Erden/Yordan river, and started living there in communities. Since Jesus was thought to have been with the Therapeutae he is assumed to be well versed in Buddhist teachings and he expected the people in this region would listen to him. These people were familiar with the teachings of John the Baptist, but in order to attract the maximum attention Jesus chose to present uniquely radical views which were in complete contrast with those of John. Jesus rejected baptism and the strict asceticism taught by the Baptist. When we read Matthew 10:5-7 we see that Jesus sends his disciples to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”, but in Matthew 28:19 he orders disciples “to go and teach all nations, and baptize them in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”. Which one is the real Jesus according to Matthew? The first order seems to be much more in line with a Jewish mendicant preacher, and the second order must be a later addition to the text with the purpose of creating a Messiah figure. Jesus never mentioned or referred to a clear-cut trinitarian doctrine of Fathet-Son-Holy Ghost. The Church decided on the doctrine of Trinity three centuries after Jesus. Therefore it is clear that this ending of Matthew 28 is definitely a later addition. Unquestionably later than the Church’s decision, most probably in the fourth century.

Q : QUELLE : THE SOURCE

Now we have to deal with this ‘Q’. It is the shorthand for quelle which means ‘source’ in German. Let us remember: The writer known as Mark supposedly wrote over tens of years after the crucifixion and the end of Jesus’ public mission (around mid 70s); another twenty years had to pass for the writers known as Matthew and Luke to write their stories (around 95 AD.). Therefore all these narratives are on a ‘reported’ basis. The writers had to rely on the existing texts and the oral tradition.

Matthew and Luke include a considerable number of statements by Jesus. Some of these sayings are common to both but absent in Mark. Therefore there must have been another source than Mark for Matthew and Luke to derive from. Scholars of our day call this second source the ‘Q’   According to Rudolf Bultmann these sayings were collected by the first communities in Palestine, they were amongst the oldest traditions of these communities, but there is no certainty that these sayings were uttered by Jesus, and these oldest communities might have had a much complicated historical past. It is extremely discomforting to realize how little of the things written about Jesus in the New Testament is authentic. Therefore Q is thought to be the lost original Gospel that preserved the sayings of the Master.

These sayings are now gradually being extracted from the texts in the New Testament. This collection of sayings would have been lost forever if the authors of Matthew and Luke hadn’t included it in their texts. Thanks to them we are able to rediscover the sayings of Jesus. But more precise analysis shows that the two evangelists - Matthew and Luke - must have relied on different versions of both Mark and Q. The differences in the dual oral tradition of Matthew and Luke seem to derive from a mixture of oral traditions and written versions of Q.

SAYINGS OF JESUS AND THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS

The contents of Q are characterised by three elements: wisdom discourse, prophetic and apocalyptic declarations, and biographical material. Prophetic and wisdom traditions which had been circulating in Judaism for two centuries, against a background of an expectation of the imminent end of the world, certainly influenced Q decisively.

Recent research has shown that Q consists of three clearly distinguishable parts in terms of content, structure and objective. Which means of course that Q was written, revised, reordered, and enriched at three different periods. The oldest layer, Q1 has only wisdom sayings by Jesus. Q2 layer, which is the apocalyptic and prophetic texts, was added later. Q3 has the story of the temptation and a number of additional linking sections, and it belongs to an even later date.

The authentic words of Jesus are to be found in the texts excluded and branded as heretical by the Church. Do you know why? The Church took a probably mendicant preacher; created the mythical person we know today; exploited him towards its aims; put words in his mouth; invented doctrines which he never preached; added its coloration to his sayings and acts which ended up in the ideas of resurrection, Jesus Christ, Redeemer, Saviour, and Messiah.

The phenotype of Jesus contrasts with the portrait presented in the narrative passages of the Gospels. If the Gospel biographies are to be believed, Jesus must have made his appearance to reform - or to humanize - Judaism. As the Jewish Messiah he criticised the Scribes and Pharisees. In Jerusalem he cleansed the Temple in the name of this authority, and prophesied its destruction. He promised to his disciples that in the future kingdom of heaven they would have a special place which they could share in if they did penance and turned away from the wrong path. But none of this is reflected in the sayings in Gospel Q.

THERE IS NO VIRGIN BIRTH IN 'Q'..NO RESURRECTION..JESUS IS JUST A TEACHER OF WISDOM

Q source and Q movement existed long before Christianity. Q has no birth narrative or resurrection. It portrays Jesus as a teacher of Wisdom. In Q there is no hint of a select group of disciples, no program to reform the religion or politics of Judaism, no dramatic encounter with the authorities in Jerusalem, no martyrdom for the cause, much less a martyrdom with saving significance for the ills of the world, and no mention of a first church in Jerusalem.

Neither Jesus nor the people of Q were Christians. Q shows Jesus’ first followers had little in common with this cult of Christ. Amongst the collection’s most important components, parts of the Sermon on the Mount; and other Q1 passages are closely related to those moral teachings. Q1 was preserved as the only Gospel until the period of the Jewish War (66-73AD).

WHAT JESUS TAUGHT WAS BUDDHISTIC

CHURCH IS OUT TO PURGE THE SYSTEM

The results presented at the end of the ‘Jesus Seminar’ of a group of American scholars in the second half of 1990s started a row. They were trying to establish what Jesus really said. They went through the Bible verse by verse and voted on every reported utterance claimed to have been said by Jesus. The result was, less than a quarter of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament Gospels were really said by him. There were those who claimed that all these efforts were futile and suggested going back to the German scholar Rudolf Bultmann who back in the 1920s advised against the search for the historical Jesus and warned: “..We can know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus.” Bultmann believed that the Gospels were so far removed from the original Jesus that they could not tell us much about him. Those Gospels reflect the struggles of the early Church, which had to invent stories to be sovereign. Thats all!

THE QUMRAN PEOPLE

Qumran is on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea (Sea of Arabah); about 3,5 kilometers south of its upper rim there is a place called Khirbet Qumran. It is all in ruins now of course. The archaeological evidence shows that Qumran was occupied late in the 2nd Century BC. during the Maccabean era. Over a period of time a larger area was occupied until an earthquake and fire seem to have destroyed the settlement probably around 31 BC. It was rebuilt early in Common Era, and the site was inhabited until the first Jewish revolt (66-73 AD.). Roman troops destroyed it before laying siege to Jerusalem in 70 AD. This place called Qumran is believed to have been an Essene community. It seems that we could not get rid of a possible link between the Essenes and the Qumran people. The matter is still being debated.

YOU NEED AN INTERFACE TO UNDERSTAND THE DIVINE MESSAGE

Here Spenta Mainyu must point out that in those days what people meant by knowledge was the ‘knowledge about the creator’, in other words the divine(!) knowledge, as if there was something to know about ‘out there’! Since this divine knowledge was coming from ‘up there’ it was not something for the ordinary man on the street to understand. It was something to ‘accept without questioning’. The man on the street, the layman, could not understand it even if he tried, beause it is a higher knowledge. Human mind is not equipped to do that. The only solution is an ‘interface’ between the invented ‘creator’ and his inventor - the human being. The inventor needs an interface to understand the ‘creator’ he has invented. It sounds ridiculous but that is what it is! The ‘interface’ relays the messages and in the process makes them intelligible by his interpretation. He or she is called a prophet. For the Qumran people this prophet was considered rightly as the ‘interpreter of knowledge.’ Damascus Document reports that those who ‘recognized their sins’ strayed for 20 years as if they were blind, “Then God took note of their deeds since they sought with all their heart, and he gave them the Teacher of Righteousness to guide them along the way of his heart..”

TEACHER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS..WICKED PRIEST..MAN OF LIES..AGAIN

THE NEW COVENANT BEFORE CHRISTIANITY

COMMUNITY OF THE RENEWED COVENANT

The War Scroll tells us that this community believed in a final battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, which will bring an end to evil and destruction in the world. This ‘cleansing’ will make the way for the coming of the Messiah and the creation of a New Covenant. That is why some scholars refer to this group as the “community of the Renewed Covenant.” Some others go further and express with certainty that the scrolls found belonged to the forerunners who became the followers of Jesus, the so-called Jewish Christians, who still observed the Jewish law. But there were differences between Qumran and Christianity. Here are some of them: In Luke 16 we read the words of Jesus, “..for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” The Qumranians were ‘the children of light’. Members of the early Christian communities were called upon not to imitate the Qumran people who isolated themselves and withdrew into the desert and consequently lost contact with the world. Christians’ message was not ‘justice’, but “judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7) and also “..love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15). This was a new message. The ‘voice from the desert’ of Qumran does not include that message. The basic difference between Christianity and Qumran is the compassion with its strict ordinances.

BAPTISM..SABIANS..MITHRAS CULT..CHRISTIANITY

Baptism (immersing in water) is originally a Babylonian, Mesopotamian practice deriving from the Sabianism, and the Mithras cult (Check the pages on Sabianism and Mithraism in this site). The word ‘sabian’ is a derivative of the Hebrew word ‘sab’ (dippers) which is used in the context of ‘those who baptize.’ There is full body cleansing in the Sabian belief system. This type of bodily cleansing is fundamentally a tradition of immersion in water. Also the new-born following the birth is immersed in water. This is basically the ‘baptism’ of Christianity. In addition to the bodily cleansing, ablution for daily prayers is also a must in the Sabian Belief system.

QUMRAN TEXTS AND THE ZARATHUSTRAN DUALISM

Jews hated their exile in Babylon. They hated Babylon itself. They brought back with them only isolated cult practices upon their return to Palestine. But the precursors of the Qumran people brought back with them actually some elements of the Zarathustran/Zoroastrian belief system. Zarathustra, as all the others, is most probably a ‘person’ of myth and legend. We do not know exactly if he ever lived or when he lived. Some written sources quote statements that “Zarathustra lived 258 years before Alexander” with a note that “there is little reason to doubt this statement.” If there is no reason to doubt then let us look into the matter in detail. This Alexander must be ‘Alexander the Great’, and the occasion must be the conquest of Iran by him in 330 BC. So Zarathustra must have been preaching around 600-550 BC., if he ever lived of course. But this date ‘around 600 BC.’ was thought to have been set by the priests of the belief system and magi in later years. But Mary Boyce (Zoroastrianism, a Shadowy but Powerful Presence in the Judaeo-Christian World, London 1987) quoting a recent research done on Avesta, suggests that he must have lived at least 600 years earlier than this date, most possibly around 1400 BC. Therefore Zarathustra’s existence and his epoch are not clear. But his teachings were around and being practiced during the exile. So, while in exile in Babylon, Jews were introduced to Zarathustran belief system, which was all about an eternal fight between the good and evil, Ahura Mazda and Ahura Manah (Ahriman) respectively (Check the pages on Zoroastrianism in this site). The origin of the dualism we find in the Qumran texts must be Persian, Zarathustran teachings. The Zarathustran ideas show themselves very strongly especially in the all important Community Rules of Qumran. Let us see an example on how this dualism appeares in the Qumran texts. Here is the Community Rule 1 QS 3:18-21: “The God of Knowledge has created man to govern the world, and has appointed for him two spirits in which to walk until the time of His visitation: the spirits of truth and falsehood. Those born of truth spring from a fountain of light, but those born of falsehood spring from a source of darkness. All the children of righteousness are ruled by the Prince of Light and walk in the ways of light, but all the children of falsehood are ruled by the Angel of Darkness and walk in the ways of darkness. The Angel of Darkness leads all the children of righteousness astray and until his end, all their sins, iniquities, wickednesses and all their unlawful deeds are caused by his dominion in accordance with the mysteries of God ... But the God of Israel and His Angel of Truth will help all the sons of light. For it is He who created the spirits of Light and Darkness and founded every action upon them and established every deed [upon] their ways. And he loves the one everlastingly and delights in its works for ever; but the counsel of the other he loathes and for ever hates its ways.”

QUMRAN PEOPLE AND BUDDHISM

ESSENES..QUMRANIANS - SOME COMPARISONS 

The Qumran rules of community requires those believing in the New Covenant, pray twice a day, one at sunrise and the other at sunset. The followers of Pythagoras (they were known to have been taught by the Brahmans/Brahmins in India) at the Crotona centre in southern Italy, and those who belonged to the Gnostic sect of Hermes Trismegistos (who believed in the worship of the Egyptian God Thoth but influenced by the Pythagorians later) had a similar method of worship. Turning to East in worship and employing the sun as a symbol reminds us the sun temple at Martand-Kashmir.

Essenes believed in immortality like the Indian sages and the Greek philosophers. They believed in an after-life. In this context Jesus added a new factor by resurrection. Jesus mentioned the resurrection of the dead without touching the resurrection of the bodies. If by this he meant the transmigration of souls and not a bodily resurrection then it is the cycle of births, the samsara. Which is the fundamental tenet of the belief systems in India. Pythagorians, the cultists of the Orphic mysteries, Empedocles and Plato were already introduced to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls long before the Essenes. The Gnostic sects and a few non-Arab Islamic sects are said to have been instrumental in bringing this doctrine to this day. Reincarnation was a matter of course to the early Christian communities until it became the victim of a historic error perpetrated by the ecumenical Council of Constantinople (presently İstanbul in Turkey) in 533 BC. In this historic error the reincarnation doctrine was condemned by a mere personal veto by the emperor Justinian and the anathematization has never become a part of the Council resolutions. The Council was hardly ecumenical. It could only be described as a ‘Council.’ Pope Vigilius was visiting Constantinople at the time, but he did not take part in the council in protest. In this Council reincarnation was declared heretical and it remained banned from Christian doctrine to this day. Who did all this? Human beings. The Church hierarchy was absolutely determined protect the establishment it has created. But in ancient North Africa, and in the Middle East, from Anatolia and Egypt to Persia the notions of transmigration of souls and rebirth were taken for granted. Believers of the Mosaic religion were very well acquainted with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls around 30 BC., and they called it the ‘gilgal’ (wheel, cycle). This doctrine of gilgal-gilgul was a normal matter also for the early Christians. The German encyclopaedia Konversationslexicon published in 1907 writes under the heading ‘Reincarnation in the Jewish Talmud’ : “..The Jews of the time of Christ held a general belief in the transmigration of souls. The authors of the Talmud took it for granted that God had created a finite number of Jewish souls that would continue to return to an earthly existence for as long as there were Jews, if occasionally in the form of an animal in order to teach a soul a lesson. But all would be purified on the Last Day, and rise in the bodies of the righteous in the promised land.”

DEAD SEA / QUMRAN SCROLLS 

OLDER THAN THE OLD TESTAMENT..CHRISTIANITY BEFORE CHRISTIANITY

ESSENES, THERAPEUTS AND NAZARENES 

CHRISTIANITY : ‘ESSENISM WITH FOREIGN ELEMENTS’

BORROWINGS RELATED TO JESUS AND CHRISTIANITY

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

BORROWINGS IN THE LIFE OF JESUS

17. Pythagoras’ view of reincarnation came from India. Despite all the cleansing the idea of rebirth remained in various places in the New Testament, and it even seems as if this un-Christian concept was taught by Jesus himself. Did Jesus acquire this attitude from an Indian source like Pythagoras half a millenium before him? The idea of reincarnation is amongst humanity’s oldest. It entered into Shamanism from the religions of the stone age hunters. Reappeared in the cult of the Great Mother amongst pastoral peoples and then later in the mystery religions of the Near East. In Hellenistic times Palestine opened to the ideas from the East, and Indian views of rebirth became known in the region. These views must have spread from Alexandria where such teachings were discussed. We could therefore say that the idea of rebirth and the transmigration of souls was rooted in Jewish popular sentiment in that age. The self-evident belief in rebirth in the New Testament was not familiar to the Jews of earlier times. Hellenistic philosophy has disseminated that view within its sphere of influence. The concept of rebirth (gilgul) only became established in the Jewish circles around the start of our millennium. It was an assumption by the Talmudists. They started from the assumption that God had created only a specific number of Jewish souls, which were constantly reborn. For punishment they returned in animal bodies. According to that view a human has to live through a prolonged transmigration of souls (gilgul-neschama) until salvation (tikkun - ‘right order, harmony’) is attained. The idea that salvation only occurs when the goal of earthly development is achieved indicates Indian and Buddhist origins. The ancient Indian pre-Buddhist belief was that a human being had to pass through many earthly existences in order to attain that degree of spiritual perfection which makes possible a ‘return’ to his or her divine home. The Upanishads from the pre-Buddhist epoch viewed that return as realization of the understanding that the self (Atman) is identical with the primal ground, with the highest divine totality (Brahman). For the Buddha who rejected the idea of either a highest god or a soul, that ‘return’ signified finding one’s way home through entering the void known as Nirvana. Soon after Buddha’s death his followers diluted that radical view of things. The Buddha was transported into heaven and Nirvana/Nibbana was declared to be a state of endless bliss. It was believed that before their earthly existence buddhas existed in a heaven and returned there after their death - until the next voluntary incarnation. When viewed in terms of rebirth Jesus’ ‘Kingdom of God’ almost certainly turns out to be the Buddhists’ ‘Buddha Heaven’. It is thought that the Jesus-Nicodemus story in the Gospel of John is adopted from the Buddha-Yasa story. If we check the way the teaching of rebirth is integrated in Jesus’s message and made a fundamental component in his understanding of salvation we can assume that an adoption from Indian roots sounds very convincing. Scholars maintain that reincarnation enjoyed a similar acceptance only in idea, and it was linked only in India with moral teaching akin to what Jesus disseminated in Palestine. That is why Jesus’ Buddhistic teaching sounded so strange to the Jews. An Indian version of the idea of reincarnation could be found in the Epistle of James (3:6). German translation speaks of the tongue inflaming the ‘circle of life’ (this is proven to be a wrong translation. It should really be ‘circle of births’ or ‘wheel of existence’) which constitutes the literal translation of the Indian concept of the Wheel of Rebirths (samsara chakra). The context of this passage from the Epistle of James gives away its Buddhist origins. It is concerned with the right use of the tongue, with restraining what one says since abuse of speech is said to keep the ‘Wheel of Rebirths’ in motion. According to Buddha the right speech is one of the demands of the Eightfold Path. There cannot be right thinking and action without right speech. The followers of Jesus knew(!) that Jesus was a reincarnation, but were still not sure about his identity and offered several suggestions. Jesus himself gives no direct reply to the speculations, but he does confirm the disciples’ ideas indirectly by encouraging their inquiry. Dhammapada and Udanavarga contain astonishing number of elements, passages and moral views that are mentioned in the Gospels. It is striking, above all, that the instructions of Jesus are based on these Buddhist texts. According to Josephus the Pharisees believed in ‘the power of (..) those returning to life’ and that the souls of the good pass on to another body.

JESUS-KRISHNA

Krishna is one of the incarnations of Vishnu. In the Bhagavad Gita,  Krishna gives us the reasons why God comes down to earth from time to time: “Whenever there is a decline of righteousness and rise of unrighteousness then I send forth myself. For the protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked, and for the establishment of righteousness, I come into being from age to age.” Vishnu is able to change his earthly form at will, while his divine being remains constant (here the Moslems may find the origin of their belief in their God’s absolute, total will and the particular, individual will of man). In contrast Christianity insists that incarnation happened once, and that the man, Jesus, is the permanent human form of god(!). Without Jesus there is no Christianity. Christians are made to acknowledge that the incarnation in their case (Jesus) was not only a historical figure, but also the one and only time that God came down(!) and lived(!) amongst mankind.

Following Brahmin tradition, Brahma is seen as the creator of the Universe, and sometimes even called Father. Vishnu, who became incarnate as Krishna is occasionally called Son. And Shiva, the third person in the Hindu trinity, who is spirit, corresponds thus to the Holy Spirit ‘who directs the eternal law of formation and dissolution, indwelling in all living creatures and all Nature.’ Krishna did not wish to propagate a new religion but simply to renew the religion that already existed and cleanse it of all its follies and abuses (Jesus allegedly wanted to do the same). His teachings are in the form of poetic parables, aphorisms) and similes. They are very much like the recorded words of Jesus. Krishna allowed an arrow to strike him in the foot, marking the end of his ordained life on earth. But when his followers searched for his body it was nowhere to be found, for he had supposedly ascended(!) to heaven like Jesus. The Krishna myth is most probably the oldest source contributing to the mystical Christ figure.

The mythical personalities like Dionysos of Greece (who was known to the later Greeks and Romans as Bacchus in the 8th century BC.), and the Saviour/Redeemer in Persia have also had a definite influence on the eschatological and apocalyptic notions of Christianity. Bacchus was the son of Zeus and virgin Semele. Wife of Zeus, Hera, was in rage, and Semele had to give birth in secret, in a cave, on a journey; and the child had to be sent away to escape the wrath of Hera (Does the story remind you of another one - about Jesus?).

The Doctrine of Great Redeemer was prominent in the Zarathustran/Zoroastrian belief system. The story was that men were sent several times during the course of history - those were historical prophets. They proclaimed the truth. But they would all be out-classed by the final envoy, the final ‘interface’ between God and the mankind. This would be the ‘saviour’, with whose arrival the ‘last days’ would begin. Being the saviour he would be the equivalent of God; he would teach humanity ‘the straight ways of salvation’; free the world of evil; take part in the resurrection; and direct the final battle against the Evil Spirit. This Saviour would be born of a virgin mother. Zarathustra calls her ‘the woman who surmounts everything’ (Zoroaster, A.V.W Jackson, New York 1898). Think now! John the Baptist and Jesus were very close with the Qumran people; Qumran people were very close with the Persian thought. The Saviour appears in Zoroastrianism; he will come back for salvation; that comeback would initiate the last days; he is the redeemer; he will take part in the resurrection; and he is born of a virgin mother. You must be wandering about where you might have heard all these. Refresh your memories! These are the fundamentals of the Jesus myth, existing long before the Jesus myth.

Qumran has expected a messiah - of Aaron and Israel. One Qumran text (1QSa 2:11) which foretold the situation in the community of Israel at the End of Time gives us the would-be-method of conception and the birth of the messiah. The followers of Jesus in the Qumran group must have seen this ‘Begotten Messiah’ in their leader and master. The Christian mythology did the rest: He was turned into a ‘divinely generated’(!) and resurrected(!) Messiah. This text links the appearance of the Messiah with the seating order during the communal meal at the ‘table of unification.’ It is absolutely necessary at this meal that no one should “..stretch out his hand before the priest for the first portion of bread and wine since it is the priest that blesses the bread and wine and first takes the bread. After that the Messiah of Israel stretches out his hands for the bread, and blesses the entire community of the unification, each in accordance with his dignity.” It is obvious that the narrative of the last supper is an exact copy of this eschalatogical meal at Qumran.. Well, the Qumranian followers of Jesus might have remembered the significance of their communal meal back in Qumran, and through them the Last Supper might have entered the compilation of stories called the New Testament.

In the Qumran manuscript 4Q 246 a ‘Son of God’ is mentioned. This ‘Son of God’ will bring peace to earth, will be blessed in God’s name as his son, and will be called ‘Son of the all-highest’. Who do you think this ‘all-highest’ could be? The supreme creator, the supreme overseer - God of course.. As you can see even the self designations of the Qumran people were taken over by the early Jesus groups and the first Christians. The ‘poor in grace’ or ‘poor out of grace’, the ‘community of the poor’, the ‘poor of thy redemption’ and even the ‘poor in spirit’ were how they called themselves. The ‘poor in spirit’ may even have been referred to in one of the beatitudes in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

THE BUDDHA JESUS

THE REAL JESUS (?)

As a human being ‘created in the image of God’ Jesus have secularised the position of the ‘Jew’ (including himself) by differentiating him from the house of Israel. As a God ‘created in the image of man’ Jesus has made his mission sacred by separating authority from the Law; and the position of Jesus as described in the New Testament made him a secular Jew. As a Jew Jesus is divine and anointed. His divinity was annexed to his mission later, and idealized him as the ‘Holy Spirit’ created in the form of man. Jesus has not been immortalized by YHWH. He has done it himself in the memories of the following generations, as the ‘Spirit created in the likeness of man.’

Jesus is thought to be around 30 when he started preaching. Since 6 AD. Jewish priests were spreading the news that Messiah would come (to restore their political power). Jesus made his public appearance amid the ranks of the people of Qumran and the baptists - in other words, within Jewish sects obviously linked with the Essenes. These relationships were to characterize both the dissemination of his teachings and also their mutilation. During the days of Jesus’ return, we are told that, John the Baptist started preaching in Judea’s wilderness that the ‘kingdom of heaven’ is near, and the ‘one who is coming’ is the one mentioned by prophet Isaiah. Jesus is thought to have started his preaching about 23-24 AD., done so until 30-31 AD. He has stepped up his activities until 35 AD., and thought to have been crucified that year. Spenta Mainyu feels obliged to remind you that these dates are all based on reports here and there. There is nothing concrete.

‘SON OF GOD’ DOES NOT EXIST ANYWHERE

What does this therapeutae mean? According to the Crucifixion by an Eye-Witness it means the ‘healers’ or the ‘elders’. But in his excellent research Zacharias P. Thundy, a specialist in the application of linguistics to religion, has other things to say. The word Therapeutae is itself of Buddhist origins. It is the Hellenization of the Sanskrit/Pali term Theravada which was the name of the Buddhist school whose members set off from Gandhara to the west. The key to the mystery of how Jesus chose the words of Buddhist disciples for his teaching reportedly lies in this sect called Therapeutae. It is the crucial link. Buddhists originally set out from Taxila to Egypt. Taxila was less than 30 miles away from the present day Pakistani cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The original name was Taksha-sila, the ‘hill of Takshaka’ a legendary ruler. In the Mahayana view, on his way towards Buddhahood the boddhisatva perfects six virtues: Generosity, morality, patience, energy, meditation and wisdom. After Gautama no one implemented those virtues so urgently as the original Jesus.

The first writings which doubted whether ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ really existed, appeared during the period of Enlightenment. The doubting views mainly derived from France. The proponents were anti-Catholic enlightenment philosophers like Voltaire and Holbach. Even Goethe doubted whether Jesus had actually established the Christian religion. In Goethe’s opinion Jesus’ disciples had themselves devised the teachings and attributed them to Jesus the Nazarene. David Friedrich Strauss bluntly rejected the historical factuality of the Gospels. Strauss said the Gospels were nothing but legends and pious stories about the figure of Jesus, inspired by the Old Testament. Bruno Bauer completely banned the figure of Jesus from historical research, and declared that the central figure of the New Testament was a mythical invention. Jesus and Paul are said to be nothing but literary fictions, and Christianity is seen as a belief system created by a fanatical group of people who concocted the faith around the invented ‘figures’ out of Jewish, Greek and Roman religious traditions. Those who make these claims, present as evidence the books written during the first two centuries AD. in which there is hardly any mention of Jesus as a real human being. Since the later sources are almost exclusively theological writings, they take for granted the belief in Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Son of God. So they cannot be of help in search for the real Jesus. A truly impartial written material is practically non-existent.

Jesus vanished after the ill-fated crucifixion, when friends saved his life. He had to disappear because he had absolutely no chance of preaching in Palestine where his very existence was at risk. The Jesus movement had its luck change for the better when the stand-off with Rome turned into an open conflict. When the doomsday atmosphere of the day and the yearning for a righteous kingdom combined, people joined the apocalyptic movement of Jesus. But a partisan, sectarian group dominated the movement and turned Jesus (the Buddhist master) into a Messiah and redeemer. The congregations of Christ devised only some of the mythologies surrounding Jesus. These took shape mainly on the basis of the letters attributed to Paul which centered around kerygma - the proclaimed word of God: Jesus died on the cross as a sacrifice for others and he resurrected to join the cosmic authority. That mythological presentation became the foundation of the Christian Church. Christians generally view and judge Jesus against that background. This Jesus myth arose in northern Syria, and it succeeded in almost completely eliminating memories of the original Jesus, replacing them by the cult of Christ. Prof. Fida Hassnain reports the statements made by the Monks in the region of India where once Jesus was thought to have stayed and preached. In these statements the monks say that groups of Christian priests sent by the Church have searched the monasteries in the region for the ancient records about Jesus and took them away. The fact that apart from Gospels there is nothing factual and textual about Jesus may be the result of these ‘cleansing’ activities by the Church. Could the documents on Jesus have been gathered and destroyed? There is food for thought here for the searching minds.

So this is the short story of Jesus, whose forerunners apperared in other lands under various names and disguises like Dumuzi, Tammuz, Buddha, Attis, Zagreus, Hercules, Krishna, Mithra, Spenta Mainyu, Adonis, and Adonai..

There is always the possibility of finding out something else and to extend this treatise but Spenta Mainyu finds no legitimate reason to carry on. What has been said until now exhibits the fact that this preposterous story was created by the humans for the humans to believe in, and be instrumental in the creation of an organized religion which obviously was the main weapon of power and hegemony in those days of ignorance.

Let me remind you that 2000 years have passed since.

bible