Jesus in India

[david]

Hello all!
I'm seeking for scholary, historical and archeological help. Please try to answer on lower question.

Here I have one book, about guy, who is claiming, that Jesus probably survived crucifixion and went to the Indija. But he is not like the others, he is not an atheist, but he is Hindus. He said, that Jesus was in one sense divine, but not like Christianity teach. He represented one very old hindu text, which mentiond words of Jesus, which is called in ther language Issa or Iša. The full name is: Iša(Issa) and Juz asaf or Iša-masiha[Jesus Messiah]. His words are writen in the hindu book called something like: Bhavišja purana. Then he is also noted Notovich Nicholas and Holger Kersten(author, Jesus lived in India). And then he also represent one citation from hindu book: In the middle of the land of Huns he saw a shiny man, who lived on the mountin. His skin was gold and he was dressed in white clothing.
The king asked him: "Who are you sir?"
"I'm Išaputra," answered the man, "and I'm the son of virgin."
And then author explain the word "Išaputra" mean the son of God.

And in the end of this chapter, then said, that the teaching of Jesus and tradition of Bhakti is the same.

Here he mentioned some scholars who claim the same: dr. Klaus Klostermaier(author Hindu and Christian in Vrindavana and dr. Harvey Cox, protestant theologian from Harvards spritual school.

And he also said, that the real Jesus grave is in one cave in Cashmere. He said, that there are one rosary with cross and footprints of wounded foot of crucifixion. He said, that a lot christian, muslims and others, confirm, that this is the real grave of Jesus.

[bjorn]

Dec 13, 2010 9:58:11 GMT david said:

Hello all!
I'm seeking for scholary, historical and archeological help. Please try to answer on lower question.

Here I have one book, about guy, who is claiming, that Jesus probably survived crucifixion and went to the Indija. But he is not like the others, he is not an atheist, but he is Hindus. He said, that Jesus was in one sense divine, but not like Christianity teach. He represented one very old hindu text, which mentiond words of Jesus, which is called in ther language Issa or Iša. The full name is: Iša(Issa) and Juz asaf or Iša-masiha[Jesus Messiah]. His words are writen in the hindu book called something like: Bhavišja purana. Then he is also noted Notovich Nicholas and Holger Kersten(author, Jesus lived in India). And then he also represent one citation from hindu book: In the middle of the land of Huns he saw a shiny man, who lived on the mountin. His skin was gold and he was dressed in white clothing.
The king asked him: "Who are you sir?"
"I'm Išaputra," answered the man, "and I'm the son of virgin."
And then author explain the word "Išaputra" mean the son of God.

And in the end of this chapter, then said, that the teaching of Jesus and tradition of Bhakti is the same.

Here he mentioned some scholars who claim the same: dr. Klaus Klostermaier(author Hindu and Christian in Vrindavana and dr. Harvey Cox, protestant theologian from Harvards spritual school.

And he also said, that the real Jesus grave is in one cave in Cashmere. He said, that there are one rosary with cross and footprints of wounded foot of crucifixion. He said, that a lot christian, muslims and others, confirm, that this is the real grave of Jesus.

This is an old and well known story, which I wrote a chapter on in a book back in the 90's (based on sensationalist stories from the 70's and 80's).

Notovich's story about Issa and Jesus in Tibet has been thoroughly discredited by a lot of researchers. He was a journalist and a spy (no scholar), there is no manuscript evidence and his story about the buddhist Jesus shows he didn't know Buddhism - see more at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Notovitch.

"Edgar Goodspeed describes the debunking of Notovitch's claims as a hoax.

Notovitch's writings were immediately controversial. The German orientalist Max Mueller,professor of indian philosophy in Oxford who'd never been to India himself, published a letter he'd received from a British colonial officer J.Archibald Douglas, which stated that the presence of Notovich in Ladakh was "not documented.". The head of the Hemis community signed a document that denounced Notovitch as an outright liar.

The story of his visit to Hemis seems to be taken from H.P. Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled. In the original, the traveler with the broken leg was taken in at Mount Athos in Greece and found the text of Celsus' True Doctrine in the monastery library."

To paraphrase the Scandinavian historians Beskow ("Jesus i Kashmir – historien om en legend") and Skarsaune ("Den ukjente Jesus"), the story about Jesus in Kashmir is based on rather new traditions within the Ahmadiyya Movement (founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, 1835–1908), from the late 1800's.

The connection is not found in historical sources, it is in stead simply a story about a long linguistic road from an old Buddhist legend about Buddha and his teacher Bilawhar.

The legend later became popular among Muslims and Christians, though they changed the names.

Buddha is in the original version a ”boddhisattva”, and first changed to Bodisaf (in an arabic version Budhasaf) which then becomes Yudasaf and later Yuzasaf.

In the Greek Christian version the name is Joasaf, so similiar to the Biblical king Josaphat that the latter name eventually prevailed.

The teacher Bilawhar became in the Christian version Barlaam, and the legend is in it's medieval form known as The Story of Barlaam and Josaphat en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlaam_and_Josaphat.

In a medieval Arabic version it is told that Yuzasaf died in Kashmir and a document from the late 1700s tells that his grave still is in Srinagar.

To conclude:

The connection between Jesus and this grave was not made until the late 1800s, and the stories about "Jesus in India" are not older than 150 years. They are typical examples of modern mythology in the making.

[david]

Thank you very much bjorn. This is really something. But what about Helgen Kersten and his book? Do you have some response on him?

[bjorn]

Dec 13, 2010 23:39:50 GMT david said:

Thank you very much bjorn. This is really something. But what about Helgen Kersten and his book? Do you have some response on him?

Kersten is not better, he is just another of those "Dan Brown"-guys (or rather Baigent/Freke/Gandy/Thiering) who build "sensations" and Moslem or Aquarian Christs on speculation and conjecture, with no evidence or ancient sources, doing the standard "If possibly so - then not impossible that also..."-argumentation. It is not an academic or scholarly work, not peer reviewed etc.

He jumped on the whole Issa-bandwagon, Jesus faked his death (taking a drug), married Magdalena and lived for 50 years in India (strangely enough with little impact, after having started a quite different world religion in the Middle East...).

It is important when looking at such matters to see how the author argues (and what "obvious truths" he does not feel the need to argue for), how sources are used (and which) and the (often a mix of modern and mystic) tradition it is part of.

In short, Kersten is not taken seriously be historians, for obvious reasons.