Introduction

This blog is to work through the evidence that Jesus either was or was not in India/Kashmir/Tibet, during his adolescence and/or some period later in his life.

I will not be referring to visions or experiences during meditation or trance-states as evidence of anything in the ancient past. I will not rely on any orthodoxies, either western or eastern, though I may use their documents as evidence. I will do my best to document my reasons for my conclusions and point out the sources for my data, so that the interested reader may cross-check my findings (and hopefully point out any errors I make).

I will start with reasons to assume that Jesus of Nazareth was an historical Jewish teacher during the late 2nd Temple period, probably being crucified by the Romans in the early 30's. In this upcoming post I expect to be responding to some of the claims of Acharya S. and others, and hope to get (at that time) some reasoned responses.

Questions of the religious or spiritual implications of any particular view on Jesus are outside the scope of this blog, and I hope to avoid them. I request that all respondents avoid comments on the religious or spiritual implications. If you wish to discuss that, make sure your mail address is accessible, and indicate in the comment that you wish to discuss the religious or spiritual implications. I am willing to have an email exchange on religion or spirituality, but would prefer to keep that out of the blog.

This is a broad and complex topic, involving several cultures and several languages. At the end we should have sufficient evidence to support a conclusion, with adequate 'sign-posts' to allow anyone else to follow our path.

Be Well,
Bob Griffin

A preliminary answer to Acharya S etc.

Some claim that Christianity is an adaptation of an Egyptian myth. The data on the other hand shows that Christianity entered Egypt from the Greek-speaking community in and around Alexandria and progressed up the Nile from there, adopting Egyptian terminology for shared concepts and maintaining Greek terminology for foreign concepts.
The following terms are pure Egyptian:
PNOUTE -- the god/God
NOBE -- sin
AMNTE -- Hades/the place of the dead
PDJOIS -- the Lord
TPE -- Heaven
PKAH -- Earth
OUAB -- Holy
The following terms were borrowed from Greek:
PECHRISTOS -- The Christ
PEPNEUMA -- The Spirit
TEPSYCHE -- the soul
Any Coptic grammar or lexicon will confirm this. Crum's Coptic Lexicon is accessible online and is the most authoritative Coptic Lexicon in English

What should we expect to find about Jesus

Coming from centuries of Christian culture, we assume that Jesus of Nazareth must have been well documented by both the Jewish and the Roman authorities. I think that we should instead look at the documentation for other figures of the time, and base our expectations on what we see in other cases.

There are four Jewish leaders whom I think present a sufficient parallel or might even have had a greater importance for the Romans. These are
Hillel, who died about the time Jesus would have turned 10,
Yokhanan ben Zakkai, who approached the Romans for permission to start the Jewish academy at Jamnia after the destruction of Jerusalem
Aqiba, who was a major spiritual leader at the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt,
and Simon bar Kokhba, who lead a rebellion against Rome in the early 2nd century.
The question I will pursue regarding these men is what sources we have for their history.