The Capture of Christianity

No execution in human history has been as minutely researched as the crucifixion of Jesus nearly 2,000 years ago. There has also been no myth like the story of his resurrection that was so powerful as to become one of the main foundation stones for the world’s most widely practiced religion with over two billion followers. Jesus however was not named Christ that was a Greek word (Khristos) meaning anointed with oil and much later became Christus in Latin. Christianity also, was not the religion that Jesus preached as his sermons, in the old Aramaic language, were intended for “the lost sheep of Israel� who he wanted to rescue from the corruption that had crept into his own Jewish faith.

Jesus’ Aramaic name was Issa and it became Jesus in Christianity and Issa, pronounced Eesa, in Islam. According to recent evidence, including many documents found among the Dead Sea scrolls, he may have belonged to the clan of Essenes who followed many Buddhist ideas even though the doctrines of the Buddha were not called Buddhism in his time but Dhamma. He belonged to the Essene order of the Nazarenes and had been called Issa the Nazarene. The later appellation of Jesus of Nazareth is not correct because there was no town called Nazareth in his time. It was the slaughter of sheep in the Jewish temple apart from it having become a “den of moneylenders and thieves� that had so angered Jesus that he toppled the tables and incurred the wrath of the Jewish priests leading to his trial and crucifixion. The agonizing institution of public crucifixion was widely practiced in the Roman Empire as an institution designed to make a public statement of the terrible fate awaiting those who were guilty of serious crimes.

There is considerable evidence that the gentle and joyous ideas of Dhamma had, by this time, spread far from India through Persia right up to ancient Egypt and that the cult of the Therapeutae, or the followers of Buddha’s Theravada, were known even in Alexandria. (The word therapeutic in the English language is owed to these healers). The sermons of Jesus reveal the Buddhist ideal of love and compassion that was to later make Christianity so powerful.

There is however a harder to prove myth that the Israelites, or perhaps their twelve lost tribes, had once lived in Kashmir. This is described in Holger Kersten’s very well researched book on the subject called Jesus Lived in India (Penguin). The supposed burial site of Moses can be visited today some 70 Kms North of Srinagar where the Jhelum River opens into the Wular lake near the plains of Mowu at Sopore that had been earlier called Behatpore. 12 Kms away there is a village called Aham Sharif near a village of Buth where some believe is the tomb of Moses on the slopes of a hill called Nebo below a peak called Pishnag. The Old Testament interestingly mentions a Bethpoer, the plains of Moab and a mount Pishgah. On the river bank just north of it is a place called Sangimusa that is considered to be the place where Moses bathed. The Haran of the Old Testament is the birthplace of Abraham and might have been a town with the same name12 Kms from Srinagar. The Shankara temple above the Srinagar is still called Takht – i – Suleiman or the throne of Solomon.

Legend has it that Jesus, who had to be whisked out of Israel as an infant to escape the slaughter of male children by Herod, had first lived in Egypt and then in India before returning to Israel at the age of thirty. They also believe that he returned to Kashmir a few years after the crucifixion to live till the age of 80. There is a tomb of Yaz Asaf (another name of Issa) at Rosabal just outside Srinagar. A tomb of Mary locally known as Mari da Asthan can be also found near the cease fire line at Mari (Murree) in Pakistan.

If Jesus had lived after the crucifixion it means that the legend of his resurrection was a gigantic hoax. After twenty centuries hard evidence is impossible to establish but the facts of the crucifixion had been recorded by numerous witnesses to the event. The myth of his resurrection however rests on fewer and less reliable accounts. Though the precise dates are still debated there is complete agreement about the days and times. Jesus was crucified at noon on Friday (either April 23, 34 or April 3, 33 AD.) that was the Preparation Day before the annual Jewish Passover festival.

Jesus ate the Last Supper with his disciples on Tuesday and was later arrested. The trial by the Sanhedrin, or council of Jewish authorities, began on Wednesday on the charge that he claimed to be the long prophesized messiah of the Jews. On Thursday the Sanhedrin announced its judgment and he was interrogated by Pontius Pilate the Roman Prefect, as the Romans enforced local laws in their empire, and he was then passed to Herod Antipas the Roman ruler of Galilee where the trial continued with scourging (flogging with a multiple whip with hooks and iron balls at the ends to strip the skin) and the crowning with thorns. On Friday he was made to carry the cross up the tortuous path towards the hill of the skull (Calvera) before a hostile mocking crowd till he reached Golgotha where he was nailed with thick wrought iron spikes to the cross through his wrists and feet along with two convicted thieves. A sign reading `King of the Jews’ was placed above his head.

John seems to have been the only apostle to give a first hand account though the gospels of Mark and Matthew concur on most details. All these gospels were however only known some forty years later when the oral accounts in Aramaic were written down in Greek. Luke only came to the Holy Land forty - two years after the crucifixion but his well researched gospel cites many other witnesses. They all agree that Jesus had been offered some wine mixed with bitter gall on a sponge that he drank before his head sank down and he `gave up the ghost’ with a loud cry.

The Roman authorities were very anxious to conclude the crucifixions on that very day because the next day was Sabbath when all Jews would be attending to rituals in their homes. It was also Jewish law that the crucified had to be buried before dark. So a Roman soldier proceeded to verify whether the three victims were dead or not. He pierced Jesus’ right side with a thin spear that drew a little blood and water and evidently judged him to be dead. The thieves were however still alive so he broke their legs that had up till then been partly supporting their bodies. When the broken legs sagged, the intolerable weight of their bodies pulling on their arms compressed their chests making them slowly suffocate to death. As the centurion did not break the legs of Jesus it means that he either judged him to be dead or that he had been part of the conspiracy to keep him alive. If his heart had stopped blood may not have flowed. This centurion named Longinus later became a Christian bishop at Cappadocia.

One of the senior Jewish officials, Joseph of Arimathea, who had been secretly sympathetic to Jesus along with Nicodemus now asked Pontius Pilate for the body. The request was granted and he with a few companions wrapped it in a large shroud and took it to a nearby cave (sepulcher) carved in the rock.

It has been conjectured by some scholars and many that the seriously injured and unconscious Jesus may not have actually been dead having been given opium or other drugs in the vinegar to arrest the pain, stop his breathing and other signs of life. If he had lived in India he might have also learned yogic methods of suspending his breathing and pulse. Many accounts concur that his body was laid out and covered with about 100 pounds of healing herbs like myrrh and aloes that are not sent to a corpse that has to only be washed and clothed before burial. The body had to however be moved on the third day as their Jewish persecutors would then be around after their Saturday Sabbath.

Early on Sunday Mary Magdalene came to the cave when it is still dark and saw that the heavy round stone barring the entry had been rolled away. She ran to Peter and John crying that someone had taken the lord out of the sepulture. They all rushed to the cave and saw it to be empty. Mary now asked a gardener standing nearby if he had carried the body away and then recognized him to be Jesus. The apocryphal gospel of Peter later relates that the guard of the tomb saw three people emerge and that two of them supported a third. If he was Jesus he could hardly have been ascending to heaven. According to Luke, two women named Salome and Mary (not the mother of Jesus) went to the sepulture and found the cave empty and beheld two men in shining garments. According to Mark they saw them clothed in long white garments. These may have been people in the long white robes of the Essenes.

It has been argued that the Jews, who could not guard the cave on their Sabbath, wanted the Romans to post a guard and fix a seal to ensure the sealing of the sepulcher. If Roman guards had been posted they would have been severely punished if the corpse had been allowed to escape but there is no record and this assertion rests solely on the Gospel of Peter.

None of these witness claim that they saw his spirit leave the body to rise to the heavens. The gospel of Mark says that Jesus rose after forty days and was received in heaven to sit at the right side of God. In John he says “touch me not as I ascended to my father…� Luke and Peter also comment but many scholars believe that all these were later inclusions into their gospels.

Over the next forty days Jesus appeared, as if miraculously, to most of his disciples including the doubting Thomas who loved Jesus as a great human but refused to believe in his divinity. These appearances would certainly have been miraculous if Jesus had died but if not if Jesus was alive. He had to however keep moving or face certain execution from the Jewish and Roman authorities. So he first went at Bethlehem and then moved northwards. Two years later on the road to Damascus he appeared before Saul of Tarsus who was to later be known as St. Paul but who had earlier been a prominent persecutor of Christians and witness to the stoning of Stephen.

The short, frail, energetic and almost fanatically zealous Paul, who had never heard any of the sermons of Jesus, claims that he was blinded by the vision of Jesus and says that he `received the gospels not from Man but the revelation of Jesus Christ’. He now became an ardent believer and quickly took control of the thoughts and traditions of Jesus that was to evolve into the great religion of Christianity. As an educated man his sharp intellect eclipsed the other mostly illiterate fishermen and other disciples of Jesus. Fourteen of the epistles and many Christian customs are attributed to him. He was also an excellent organizer who established many congregations and churches in West Asia and Greece and helped move Christianity from an informal religion like most others to an ordered hierarchy that was to later make it so powerful.

He however also imposed his own strong personal convictions upon the evolving faith. He introduced the very appealing idea of redemption where any believer in Jesus could be absolved of their sins. He had a strong puritan streak and had references to all the women in the life of Jesus deleted or minimized and he strongly opposed the idea of reincarnation that many apostles had believed in and that had remained a part of Christian thinking till it was declared a heresy at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 AD. Though Jesus had often declared that his mission was only with the Jews, Paul hijacked Christianity and made it into a religion of the Gentiles, or non Jews, towards whom Jesus had clearly expressed his disinterest. Thus Christianity quickly became more the religion of Paul and subsequent revisionists than the religion of Jesus.

The concept of resurrection had no place in the Jewish faith but was a popular idea in the Egyptian rites of the dead. As the Egyptian slaves of Rome were among the first converts to Christianity it is possible that the evolving faith adopted some of their traditions. According to the Egyptians, the body and soul (Ba and Ka) separated at death to be reunited on the Day of Final Judgment. But how can there be a Final Judgment without a First Judgment that too was an old Egyptian custom on the banks of the Nile but is not mentioned in the Bible or the Quran? The Egyptian worship of the mother and son as the gods Isis and Horos may have also led to the worship of Madonna with the infant Jesus. The Egyptian influence on Roman Catholicism can be seen to this day in the costume of the Pope with a hat similar to the twin crown of the Pharaos with his crook and flail across the chest.

Early Christianity, in the Jewish tradition, had also been bitterly opposed to pagan gods and their idols or `graven images’ but quickly succumbed to the appeal of idols so Catholics today worship the idols and portraits of over ten thousand saints. The `Thomas Christians’ converted by St. Thomas in 52 AD were appalled by Portuguese Catholics who arrived in 1498 wearing crucifix’ and worshipping statues and images of Jesus and Christian saints and were also uncircumcised.

Over the centuries many other customs evolved that had no place in the teachings of Jesus. The festival of Christmas incorporated many customs of the popular Roman Winter Fest corresponding with the popular birthday of Mithras on December 25. If Jesus was born in a manger when the lambs were giving birth to ewes the date would have been in October. The festivals of Easter, while claiming to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, similarly corresponded with the very popular spring festival. Like the priests of all religions many local customs from all over the world, including many Native American Indian customs and festivals were readily made into acts of Christian piety.

The greatest heresy to this Jewish faith was however to divide the great, omnipotent and indivisible Jewish God Yahweh (Jehovah). Catholics believe in a Father, Son and Holy Ghost while the Orthodox Christians only believe in a Father and Son. As there were no known utterances of Jesus after the crucifixion he could not have spoken about the resurrection or about sacrificing his life to atone for human sins that were to become so important in practiced Christianity.

The priests and scriptures of all religions foster myths of great miracles to impress their less educated followers. The myth of the resurrection of Jesus was to therefore become central to the Christian faith. St. Paul was very clear about this and his first epistle to the Corinthians that speaks of 500 witnesses to the ascension and emphatically states… “If Christ is not raised then our preaching is in vain and so is our faith�.

With this myth of resurrection, Jesus was elevated from a mortal human being to become a divinity. It was proclaimed to be a miracle that held the promise of many more miracles that the worship of Jesus would bring to Christian believers.