Jesus In India etc.
©Lúcio Mascarenhas: June 2002.
Revised November 2003, December 2004.
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Intro
Islam, when confronted with the evidence that it is based upon nothing more than a falsification of the word of God as set out in the Bible, set out to vengefully disprove the claims of Jesus Christ. To this end, the Sufis and other Muslim sects invented the myth that Jesus Christ had fled to India after his alleged crucifixion (which Islam denies happened to him: Islam claims that God confused the Jews and that they crucified Judas in his place!) Further to this myth, is the insinuation that Christ took his doctrine from the pagans of India.
(Another, more mainstream myth that the Muslims have invented is that Christ after escaping his crucifixion, was taken up into a lower, sensual paradise, from where he will return to live as a Good Muslim: marry himself a harem, have children and die; in preparation, there is a grave prepared to receive him kept ready in Mecca!)
This convenient fabrication has been eagerly latched onto even by those who are the enemies of Islam, such as the Indian pagans, as a means of discrediting Christianity.
Time and again, I have been 'told' by non-Catholics, or asked by ex-Catholics whether there is anything to this idiotic myth... This article was specifically written in response to one such query by a Jacobite from Malabar. However, some time before he had raised the issue with me, a reiteration of this myth appeared in one of the despicable yellow rags that "grace" Bombay:
The Afternoon Despatch & Courier, on 21
st January 2002, in the form of a book review.
The book in question is Holger Kersten's
Jesus Lived In India and subtitled,
His Unknown Life Before And After The Crucifixion. The reviews (including of three other books) was by "Anil Sadarangani, Anuradha Sainath and Deepa Suryanarayan."
This is what the particular review, titled "The Indian Connection," has to say:
"This compelling book presents irrefutable evidence that Jesus did indeed live in India, and died here in his old age. The result of many years of investigative research — Jesus Lived In India
— takes the reader to all the historical sites connected with Jesus in Israel, the Middle East, Afghanistan and India.
Holger Kersten points to the following startling facts about Jesus before the crucifixion and after:
- In his youth, Jesus folowed the Ancient Silk Route to India. While in India, he studied Buddhism, adopted its tenets and became a spiritual master.
- Jesus survived the crucifixion.
- After the 'crucifixion' Jesus returned to India to die in his old age.
- Jesus was buried in Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir, where he continues to be revered as a saintly man.
- The tomb of Jesus still exists in Kashmir.
The author has given a complete history of his journey to India where he has meticulously discovered that Jesus was not only a part of India, but that he may have been a incarnation of Buddha. That his mother, Mary's tomb exists in Pakistan. That St. Paul has in fact passed on the gospel of Jesus and not his gospel.
This makes for good reading as it throws light on truth about a legend like Jesus and shatters the myth behind his super stardom."
End of Review. Read below my refutation of this pompous, malicious and satanic concoction of bullshit!
My reply concentrates on three aspects of this fabricated myth of Jesus' connexion with India:
There is a popular myth that Jesus came to India during his lifetime, or after fleeing his ('atempted') crucifixion and death, learnt from the local peoples and developed his own ideology according to what he learnt in India.
This is just another anti-Christian lie, designed to confuse and seduce souls from God and into the fires of hell.
Jesus was a Jew. But more than a Jew, he was the unique Son of God, God Incarnate. Now, while there were and are many claims of incarnations, none of them have the status that Jesus had.
The claims of each of these 'incarnates' emerged suddenly without any root in history and traditions. On the contrary, Jesus was foretold for millenia, from the first man. Coming to more recent times before his coming, he was specifically foretold by Jacob Israel, by Moses and by the traitor prophet Balaam, by David, and countless others. They foretold all the details surrounding him, and he came in the exact fulfilment of those promises.
As a Jew, Jesus knew the first commandment, which forbade any thing to do with any of the pagan, false, man-made religions of the nations around him. And while there were always Jews who betrayed God and violated his commandments, to allege the same of Jesus is the height of stupidity and of cultivated spiritual cupidity.
Whatever Jesus taught was already taught in the Jewish religion, and was foretold of him. He merely amplified and purified them, while other provisions were abolished or modified as they were fulfilled by his coming.
Again, it is the grossest stupidity that Jesus had to come all the way to India to learn from the pagans. Israel of his day was surrounded by pagan nations on all sides. Pagans who ruled the country from the Greek times had settled in colonies that in his time was called the Decapolis. The ruling Roman Empire was pagan. The eastern neighbours of Israel, Moab, Ammon, Adam (Edom or Seir), the Arabs, etc, were pagans. The Egyptians to the south were pagans. The Graeco-Phoenicians to the north were pagans. The Aramites of Aram, modern 'Syria' were pagans. A little further were the pagan nations of the Assyrians and Chaldaeans of modern 'Iraq,' the Hittites and other Anatolian nations, the Cypriots, Greeks, Iranians, etc.
The Gauls followed the Druid religion. The Gauls occupied most of modern France, parts of Spain, England, Northern Italy, Asia Minor (Galatia), and also had contributed to the mixture of peoples that made up the communities of the Decapolis, Graeco- enclaves in Israel. If Jesus needed to learn from anyone, he needed go no further than the Druids.
Egypt, though it had politically waned, still followed strongly its ancient paganism. The Egyptians were past masters in the occult. Why would Jesus Christ, if he wanted to learn these subjects, bypass Egypt, where he spent a few years of his childhood, in favour of a more distant India?
Before Alexander the Great overthrew the Persian Empire and inaugerated the Greek domination of West Asia, the Zoroastrian Persians and their magician-priests, the Magavan or Magi, dominated the region. But this did not end with the Greek Ascendancy. On the contrary, the Magi survived into the first few centuries of the Christian era. Why would Christ bypass Iran in favour of the more remote India?
Is there any sane reason that Jesus would ignore all of these and go all the way to India to study paganism? Why India? Why not China or Japan, or Korea or Siberia further afield? Why not to the pagan nations of the Americas? Could he not have gone to Timbuktu? Or the Eskimo lands? Mars? Krypton?
The claim that Jesus went to India, then, is merely hogwash!
What is the myth of the 'missing years' of Jesus Christ? It is the lie that the time from when he, with his parents settled in in Galilee till the time he took up his public mission, is unaccounted for.
This myth is born out of pure ignorance. The Bible itself clearly tells us that "he went with them (his parents) to Galilee and was subject to them."
The Bible does not pretend to give a voyeuristic and detailed account of Jesus's life and doings. Instead, it teaches only the main points. Therefore the Bible does not provide the details of his life with his parents in Galilee, but briefly tells us that he lived with his parents till the time he began his public ministry.
And so the child grew and came to his strength, full of wisdom; and the grace of God rested upon him.
Every year, his parents used to go up to Jerusalem at the paschal feast. And when he was welve years old, after going up to Jerusalem, as the custom was at the time of the feast, and completing the days of its observance, they set about their return home.
But the boy Jesus, unknown to his parents, continued his stay in Jerusalem. And they, thinking that he was among their travelling companions, had gone a whole day's journey before they made enquiry for him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances. When they could not find him, they made their way back to Jerusalem in search of him, and it was only after three days that they found him.
He was sitting in the temple, in the midst of those who taught there, listening to them and asking them questions; and all those who heard him were in amazement at his quick understanding and at the answers he gave. Seeing him there, they were full of wonder, and his mother said to him, My Son, why hast thou treated us so? Think, what anguish of mind thy father and I have endured, searching for thee.
But he asked them, What reason had you to search for me? Could you not tell that I must needs be in the place which belongs to my Father?
These words which he spoke to them were beyond their understanding; but he went down with them on their journey to Nazareth, and lived there in subjection to them, while his mother kept in her heart the memory of all this.
And so Jesus advanced in wisdom with the years, and in favour both with God and with men.
Mark, The Knox Version of the Holy Bible
One of the popular misconceptions, often deliberately spread by mischievous elements, is the allegation that Jesus had merely developed his latent powers that is innate in all of us, whether by meditation or by any other means.
I have already pointed out that Jesus was no ordinary being, but, in fulfilment of the Scriptures, the promised Incarnation.
Now, if it is true that his powers were merely natural powers that is present in all of us, then we must necessarily believe that Jesus was a liar and a fraud, for he specifically used his powers as proofs of his claims to be something special and different from the rest of us: the unique Son of God, God himself become incarnate.
But, keeping in view the prophecies concerning him, we know that this is not so, that he is true, that he is the truth.
Therefore, we must necessarily dismiss as false and highly mischievous the insinuation that Jesus had merely developed some innate powers that is present in all of us, and affirm rather that he is the Son of God, indeed, that he is God, and that he did and does his work by his natural divine power which is not natural to any human being.
To claim and believe otherwise is to set oneself against God and on the path to damnation.
But this lie is nothing new. Did not Satan first seduce our first parents with this same lie: that if they ate of the forbidden fruit, they would become gods?
Lúcio Mascarenhas
©Lúcio Mascarenhas
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