“There is no record of the final days of Jesus, says Thiering. He had married Mary Magdalene, fathered a family, and later divorced. He was seventy years old in AD 64, and it is probable that he died of old age in seclusion in Rome. That leaves the legend about Jesus having died in Kashmir open to conjecture.” – Abu Abraham
The text for my sermon this morning is from Barbara Thiering, Australian theologist and scholar extraordinary. For over twenty years she has been involved in research into the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the result is a new version of Christ’s life, titled Jesus the Man.
This is not a book for fundamentalists but for those who have a curiosity about the actual life of Jesus and the historical and social background of the time.
My text is the opening paragraph of Chapter Twenty-Five, “A death that failed.” Here it is: “Jesus did not die on the cross. He recovered from the effects of the poison, was helped to escape from the tomb by friends, and stayed with them until he reached Rome, where he was present in AD 64.”
The “poison” referred to here was in the “vinegar” that had been given to him on the cross. It was snake venom, taking a number of hours to act but which rendered him unconscious in a short time. It was 3 pm then, after six hours on the cross. He was thought to be dead but wasn’t.
This is not conjecture, asserts Barbara Thiering, but comes from a reading of the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls by the pesher method. Pesher is a technique that she had to master before interpreting the Scrolls. The Hebrew word is used in the Old Testament to mean “interpretation of dreams.” Pesher in the context of the Scrolls is like a solution to a puzzle, something like a cryptic crossword. “The clues do not look as if they make sense, but anyone who knows the technique and has the necessary knowledge can solve the puzzle.”
Pesher apparently was known to the Greeks as well as the Jews. Allegorical meanings were often found in the Old Testament, but the Scrolls, says Thiering, give us, for the first time, historical meanings.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, it appears, reveal many more historical facts about the life of Jesus and his followers than do the gospels. The gospels quote Jesus as saying, “To you (his inner circle) is given the mystery of the Kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything is in parables.” The insiders, those who ‘have ears to hear’, will understand the mystery.
The miracles and the parables, understood this way, indicate that much in the gospels, as in the Scrolls, have two levels of meaning, one for the common people, the other for the sophisticated. On the surface are found the magic and the miracles, the raising of the dead, the turning of water into wine, the feeding of the multitudes with five loaves and two fish; but on a deeper level, a more realistic historical-account is revealed of the life of Christ and the origins of Christianity.
If Jesus didn’t die on the cross but recovered inside the cave where he was laid, and walked out of it, then his “appearances” need no explanation. When Jesus “appeared” in a “vision” to Peter and Paul in subsequent years as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, it was the real flesh and blood Jesus holding an audience with the ministers.
The evidence for resurrection has always been weak; an empty tomb providing only that it was empty. But the disciples wanted to believe in the resurrection. Paul goes to the extent of saying (in the first part of Corinthians), “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain.”
But in the newly-discovered Gospel of Philip, says Thiering, there is a passage that denies resurrection: “Those who say that the Lord died first and then rose up are in error, for he rose up first and then died.”
Theologians and critical thinkers outside the Church have pointed out that throughout Christian history, the resurrection was not treated as central to the faith but something that developed in recent times. What is new, according to Thiering, is that we now have knowledge of a technique for reading the gospels “which shows us that the Evangelists themselves did not believe it, and which shows us what really happened.” They had a difficult task—how to meet the religious need for myth and at the same time to be truthful.
There is a detailed description in this book of a “final journey” by ship, of Jesus, Luke, Paul and Peter. This was in June AD 60 and it took them to Crete, Malta and to Rome, where they remained. The emperor was the fanatical tyrant, Nero. When Rome was partly destroyed by fire in July AD 64, the rumour spread that Nero started it, and he immediately looked for scapegoats. The Christians were an obvious choice.
The book records: Knowing the danger he was in, Peter tried to flee from Rome. He got as far as the church near the Appian Way, now called Domine Quo Vadis. Jesus met him there and persuaded him to go back and face martyrdom. “The legend says that a visionary Jesus appeared to him, but it was the real Jesus.” Peter was crucified “in imitation of his master”, and Paul was put to death.
Tacitus, the Roman historian has recorded details of Nero’s persecution: “To scotch the rumour (that he started the fire), Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the region of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator, Pontius Pilate, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself….
“First, then, the confessed members of the sect were arrested; next on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the count of arson as for hatred of the human race. And derision accompanied their end: they were covered with wild beasts’ skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed, were burned to serve as lamps by night.”
There is no record of the final days of Jesus, says Thiering. He had married Mary Magdalene, fathered a family, and later divorced. He was seventy years old in AD 64, and it is probable that he died of old age in seclusion in Rome. That leaves the legend about Jesus having died in Kashmir open to conjecture. – Deccan Herald, Bangalore, 19??
Editor’s Note: We have learned to our astonishment that the RSS promotes the Jesus-in-India story as official propaganda. If it is true, then the old men who guide and manage the great nationalist organisation are to be condemned for their cynicism. They offend all Indians, Christian and Hindu alike, with this fabulous story created by Nicholas Notovitch and published in Paris in 1894. Notovitch was immediately exposed and his travel tale debunked by Prof. Max Muller who asked him for proofs. Notovitch could not provide any proofs. The Abbot of Hemis Monastery in Ladakh, where Jesus allegedly studied and where the alleged manuscripts of “Saint Issa” were kept, condemned Notovitch as a liar, and the British official who administered the Ladakh area stated that Notovitch had never visited the monastery or its environs. In fact Hemis Monastery did not exist until the 11th century. Later renditions of the story by various authors declare the Hindu religion to be superstitious and degenerate and present Hindus as bigots who will not accept the superior teachings of Jesus. But the question that should concern Hindus in India, is why the RSS would accept and promote this Hindu-baiting, anti-national tale in the first place. What can be their possible motivation? – IS
» Abu Abraham (1924-2002) was a cartoonist, journalist and author. This article originally appeared in the Deccan Herald at an unknown date.
» Barbara Thiering is an Australian historian, and Biblical exegete specialising in the origins of the early Christian Church.
See also
- Swami Devananda’s letter to Sadhu Rangarajan concerning his Jesus-in-India story on Sulekha
- Jesus Christ: An Artifice for Aggression by Sita Ram Goel
Filed under: india | Tagged: christian history, christian mythology, christian theology, jesus christ |
BHARATA BHARATI 
The problem with this theory is that it assumes there is such a person as Satan/Devil/Lucifer.
There is no evidence for such a person. He is the fictional creation of a theological mind.
Nowhere in Hindu texts do you find a Satan or Devil as described in Christian and Muslim texts.
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what would be the opinion of these writers if someone has this to say about jesus’ identity as an incarnate son of lucifer? It’s in a book written by a south Indian thinker who cliams that Jesus is neither the son of man nor the son of god. He is but the only son of the Devil. His.analytical and synthetic examination exposes the bible book as the SELF EXPRESSION OF THE MIND OF LUCIFER–THE DEVIL SUPREME–REBELLIOUSLY AUTO REGARDING HIMSELF INITIALLY TO BE THE GOD AND SUBSEQUENTLY UPON EJECTION BY MARY TO BE THE SON OF GOD.
To know further, visit his site http://www.identitypublishers@yahoo.co
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IS,
Murdoch is a lady, just for your information and I am in regular mail exchanges with her. She is a very high grade researcher and has produced a lot of work on this issue as you know. Unfortunately I don’t get much time to go through her brilliant work. She is very strong in her views and I fully support her. That is besides the point.
With due regard to you; you have raised some pertinent points but perhaps mere raising points doesn’t answer them easily. You are running a blog inspired by Sitaramji who was a strong historian and Hindu nationalist. So am I but I ask these to myself. Today we are passing through a very difficult time at global level and this requires a deep indepth analysis. Churchill said, “History is written by Victors”! I agree in just as much as a lamb has no voice but a tasty food.
I have written in my one post, sex and religion are two such weaknesses of humans that will fail every other thing. Remember the story of Aamrapaali in Vaishali, Bihar. One single entity destroyed the entire kingdom. Vaishali is said to be the world’s first democratic kingdom as the historians claim. She was young, beautiful and intelligent. Once I have remarked on Murdoch aka Acharya’s blog that if a woman is beautiful, young and intelligent – there is no other bigger power on the earth to defeat her.
Take other examples that have plagued this unfortunate nation where its own inhabitants have become foreigners we proudly call India. Hindu word has become communal in a majority Hindu state. Give me an example of such a state anywhere in the World? Entire west is composed of branded Christian nations and openly invoke christianity in the name of a vieled democracy but can you ask this question as you expect the RSS or Hindu Saints to answer? Perhaps it is a difficult situation. Religion of dominant rules.
West has unlimited Nuclear weapons and are busy in spreading Christianity in Muslim nations under the guise of rehabilitation of war torn nations. A good Uncle Sham. Vatican wants to sell its Interfaith congregation to others and their exorcists are busy in abusing Hindus openly. Could we ask it to any one? A difficult question. Last night I was casually thinking, :Can Hindus sue Vatican for such atrocious open propanda”? Entire western media are behind it to malign Hinduism. Can we do anything. We know their utter nonsense but then again, “Rex non potest peccare”!
We all know, so does the entire world; the relationship between our beloved first PM Nehru Chaachaa and his beautiful young matching girl friend Lady Edwina. Even her daughter Lady Pamela has also acknowledged it to Mr Karan Thapar in his programme – Devil’s Advocate. Relation between my mother and Nehru was not physical but Platonic. Anybody’s guess in these words. There are books written, articles published in Western press. The bundle of letters found in the bag at her death are in UK custody and the letters in Nehru’s custody are in possession of Ms Sonia Gandhi. If anyone can lay their hand on them, it can reveal a lot brute truths of India’s independence and gory partition resulting in massacre of millions of people.
Hindus are now extinct in Pakistan and Bangladesh but who is their taker? LeT orchestrated the Godhra scandal in Gujrat but Narendra Modi has been villainised by entire world and so are unfortunate Hindus. Hafiz Saeed is out of their grip, so blame the weak and meek!
Thus whereas I realise the agony behind your Hindu feelings or its truth. But the world is not being governed on truth today. We everyday use the word :Diplomacy”; don’t we? It is a modern sophistication for telling blatant lies. Talk one thing and do the opposite. Look at the two brilliant crooks – US
and Pakistan. Who do you thing is right? None. Both are treacherous nations on the earth. They are the cause and scourge of the major world problems today. I tell you, both are going to come to bigger blows very soon. Let us wait and watch. God bless
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This editor also does not believe that the Jesus of the New Testament is a real historical person. After reading Xian history most of his life, he has had to conclude that the Jesus of the New Testament is a literary character created by Emperor Constantine’s editors and revisionists when Constantine had new editions of the Bible made a few years after the Council of Nicaea (325 AD). The New Testament Jesus may be modelled on a real person, such as the Essene Teacher of Righteousness or some other preacher-rabbi of the time–Israel was full of wandering religious teachers and prophets in the 1st centuries BC-AD–but the New Testament character himself is not real. There is also another reason for doubting the reality of the New Testament hero: after 2000 years of investigation and, more recently, first class scholarship, no definite conclusion has been made about the historical reality of Jesus. This itself would suggest there is no historical Jesus.
Murdock has got it right when he says, “From all the evidence, it appears that there was no single historical person upon whom the Christian religion was founded, and that ‘Jesus Christ’ is a compilation of legends, heroes, gods and godmen. There is not adequate room here to go into detail about each god or godman that possibly contributed to the formation of the Jewish Jesus character; suffice it to say that there is plenty of documentation to show that this issue is not a question of ‘faith’ or ‘belief.’ (The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ by Acharya S/D.M. Murdock)
Right. It is a question of history. And it is a question of Indian history when a great nationalist institution like the RSS promotes the Jesus-in-Kashmir story.
What this editor would like to know is why Hindus run after Jesus. What is the lacunae in Hindu religion and culture that Hindus should want anything to do with this man–real or unreal–whose Church has brought them only suffering even till today? Why do Hindu sadhus and Hindu nationalists promote the utterly fantastical story of Jesus having lived and learned Buddhism in Kashmir? What is the Hindu need? Are Hindus today simply so weak-minded and lacking in discrimination that they will accept any story regarding Jesus in India. Westerners promote the tale because they make money from it. But why does Sadhu Rangarajan and the RSS promote the tale? That is the question.
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To start with, “I repeat my oft repeated sentence on history, which is a dead live subject, kept alive the historian in his/her own style of claims and counter claims”. Again it depends on the attitude of the author, their affiliations, reasons for the work and etc. Hence mere reading an account by someone may not help in solving a mystery. One often reads such accounts from time to time every day. A similar controversy was raised on the tenth celebration of 9/11 in US when a post published in Los Angeles Times asked about the similar absent memoire of Vietnam War.
Regarding Jesus Christ there are lot of scholars who have carried out their researches from questioning the very existence of Jesus Christ to the various other accounts His travel to India and other places. It also includes the story of His impossible resurrection. One such author is Acharya S aka D M Murdoch who has questioned the existence of Jesus Christ in her well researched book. Please peruse the link: http://www.truthbeknown.com/origins.htm
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