Bismika Alllahuma

Michael Baigent e Richard Leigh, autores de O mar inoperante enrola o Deception, discuta que um Jesus pacifistic era muito improvável. Como os autores indicam, as frases de Qumranian fluíram de seus bordos, exprimem às vezes para a palavra. Tradicional, os scholars concede que pelo menos alguns Zealots compuseram o círculo interno de Jesus. O Bible próprio revela-o que age em a Zealot-como a maneira, dirigindo os cambiadores do dinheiro fora do Temple. Indica nos gospels: “Eu sou vindo não trazer a paz, mas uma espada”. Na mesma veia, quando um cohort dos soldados Roman vem para ele em Gethsemane, Peter levanta sua espada de encontro a eles, mal o ato de um cristão meek. Porque revelar é o número dos soldados em um cohort Roman, seis cem. Por que emita seis cem soldados exceto em antecipação a resistência armada? E o crucifixion, recorda, era o método da execução para rebels, não rabbis. Estes eventos biblical, no conflito com tradição Christian, não opõem ao contexto de Qumran. No contrário, couberam.

Com os gleanings dos gospels, entretanto, e de umas fontes mais obscuras que nós exploremos, Jesus aparece nada menos do que um revolucionário, albeit profundamente mystical, extraindo em tradições de um contexto geográfico e espiritual distante mais largo do que mesmo os renegades do scholarship moderno ousam speculate. Era o mestre de Galilee longe de Palestina, como alguma reivindicação, durante o tempo do unrest? Poderia ter estado em India, ou em Tibet, e ter retornado ao caos político? O Bible próprio, especificamente as letras de Paul, fornece alguns indícios.

Tecido com a língua poética e mystical, os scrolls revelam uma devoção à lei Jewish que, se nós estivermos tratando do Christianity adiantado, parece impossibilitar o evangelism de Paul entre o Gentiles, que estava estritamente fora dos limites ao Qumranians suposta xenophobic. Infelizmente, o Bible fornece pouca informação histórica sobre a igreja adiantada. O que é sabido foi recolhido dos historians que escrevem séculos mais tarde. Os clientes de confiança desapareceram com a queda do Temple Jewish em A.D. 70, a queimadura da biblioteca em Alexandria e, como Morton Smith sugeriram, com a supressão possível dos textos escritos por Jesus ele mesmo. The writings of the apostle Paul, however, help explain how early Christianity may have evolved from a fervent nationalistic Judaism into the spiritual movement that swept the Western world. Also, Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus may provide another piece in the puzzle, mystical communion.

After the death of Jesus, Paul traveled and preached beyond Judea and Palestine, actions inconsistent with the religious nationalism of the Qumranians, or Judaism for that matter, although his language resembles that of the scrolls. Was he a Roman agent infiltrating the Jewish rebels, co-opting the movement, as Baigent and Leigh suggest? Or was he a mystic teacher inspired by progressive revelation? Let’s look more closely at his story.

After being struck by his vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul sets out for Rome, Greece and Asia Minor, spreading a new religion that extols Faith in Christ, in contrast to the scrolls, the writings of James Jerusalem Church, which, we are told, extol Jewish law and works over faith. Keep in mind the New Testament did not yet exist. Christian doctrine, as we know it, did not manifest until the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. Yet Paul makes Jesus into an Eastern-style avatar, like Krishna, capable of leading his followers into a divine state, a mystical promised land. He preaches joint heirship with Christ, a oneness through inner contact, the force of the Star Wars trilogy, a blend of eastern mysticism and Persian dualism that to this day, though biblical, defies orthodoxy (where spiritual parity with Christ is blasphemy). Paul speaks of an inner man of the heart, much in the way the Vedas of ancient India speak of a inner spiritual identity united with Brahman, the All. The Dead Sea Scrolls also speak of this identity, suggesting ties, or at least shared knowledge, between Eastern mystics and the Jews of the New and Old Testament. That the scrolls resemble the Jewish mystical writings known as Kabbalah, support this as well.

Eisenman offers the following revealing translation from a Dead Sea text, called The Beatitudes for its similarity to the biblical passage of the same name. His translation reads: Bring forth the knowledge of your inner self. This phrase (among others in Western scripture) appears to derive from the Vedas of India, just as Jesus referring to himself as the Light of the World evokes Krishna’s language in the Bhagavad Gita. Implicit in the translation is that this self, or atman in the Sanskrit, is the identity of Brahman, or God, residing mysteriously within the individual. (the force?) This teaching is not Judeo-Christian in the orthodox sense. So, do the traditions of East and West have a common origin in eastern mystical experience?

Other evidence tells us that Jesus taught the initiatic mysteries, the science of immortality, like the great Eastern mystics. In 1958 at a Greek Orthodox monastery in the Judaean desert, Morton Smith discovered a letter written in A.D. 200 by Clement of Alexandria. The letter speaks of a secret gospel of Mark, a more spiritual gospel, Clement writes, “…read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.” This intriguing letter, written long before Eusebius, speaks of a secret mystical tradition without nationalistic borders. That Jesus taught and participated in this tradition is more than likely. So doing, he, in all likelihood, was no slave to regional agendas, rising beyond symbols of relative good and evil, Jew and Gentile, while fiercely opposed to spiritual evil embodied in corrupt priests.

Could it be that Paul seized the kernel of Christian and Vedic wisdom, leaving behind the rind of politics, that as a mystical initiate in Eastern wisdom that he attempted to bring to the Western world? The teachings of Joint Heirship and the inner man of the heart seem to do exactly that, suggesting spiritual parity with Christ, the path of oneness in the Dead Sea Scrolls, stated as: Bring forth the knowledge of your inner self. Could this be the real threat the scrolls present, spiritual freedom, individual enlightenment as opposed to subservience to orthodoxy? Going a step farther, was this pursuit of mystical oneness at the heart of early Christianity?

Texts from a Tibetan monastery provide some clues.

For many years rumors have suggested that the Vatican holds exotic texts about the life of Jesus Christ, which would drastically alter traditional beliefs about Christian origins. In 1887 a Russian traveler, Dr. Nicholas Notovitch, claimed he discovered these texts in a monastery at Himis, Tibet. Returning to Russia he wrote The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ, a book about Jesus journey eastward as a young man, his lost years. Another book by Notovitch, The Life of Saint Issa, describes Jesus studying and teaching the Vedas in India. Taking up with a caravan at an early age, the story goes, Jesus traveled the Silk Road, then to Kapilavastu, birthplace of Buddha. While in India, he fiercely denounces the Hindu priest-class, the Brahmins, in much the same way he denounces the Pharisees in Matthew’s gospel, which, as stated, resemble the tone of the Dead Sea texts. An Indian Swami, Abhedananda, published a Bengali translation of the Buddhist texts in 1929. The same year, Nicholas Roerich, the painter and explorer, traveled the far East. Transcriptions from his diary reveal a mystical teaching on the Divine Feminine given by Jesus in India, again, similar to teachings in the scrolls, and a decidedly different view of reality than that of the Vatican.

If it seems a stretch that Jesus traveled to India, studied the Vedas, that Vatican clerics stashed away Buddhist accounts of his journey, then remember the Vatican-founded Ecole Biblique and its handling of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Consider that Thomas, the follower of Christ, journeyed to and built a mission in India, where faithful Christians worship to this day.

If Jesus spent much of his short life in India and Persia, as the texts say, far from the din of Palestine, the alleged militancy of early Christianity becomes less of an issue. On his return, Jesus would have found himself in the midst of zealotry and rebellion, which he would have, it seems likely, honored in principle. If he was God, he was also man, as the gospels point out, telling us he wept and got angry, much like the rest of us. Why should we deny him the right to be caught up in the struggle of his people?

Pieces of this puzzle, scattered across time, tell us there is more to early Christianity, more to ourselves, than Western tradition reveals. The truth reaches from crumbling texts, barren landscapes, into the most inward part of us, prompting us to remember the force, to solve the mystery from within. The battle over the nature of Christian origins rages nevertheless, like the battle over the Holy Land itself, as if the most sacred treasure stands to be won or lost, and this is more than likely the truth. As the veil parts above the Dead Sea, the real treasure revealed may prove to be that of our own history, our origin. Our soul.