Did Jesus Learn from the Tibetan Buddhists? - www.ezboard.com

>

SRF Walrus

Mt. Washington, Ca

Open discussions about SRF

SRF Walrus > Catch All > Did Jesus Learn from the Tibetan Buddhists?
	<< Prev Topic \| Next Topic >>

Author	Comment
Secret Wind Registered User (3/28/06 3:48 am) Reply	Did Jesus Learn from the Tibetan Buddhists? You ever wonder where the popular New Age myth originated about Jesus traveling to Tibet and having spiritual training there? (There's other versions of it as well involving him going to India, which Yogananda seemed to support.) This is the story of how these types of things get started and become popular 'truth' ... ------------------------------------------------------------ Nicolas Notovitch In 1894, the Russian war correspondent Nicolas Notovitch published a book entitled "La vie inconnue de Jésus-Christ", later translated and published as "The Life of the Holy Issa". He claimed to have made a sensational manuscript find in a Lamaist monastery in Tibet. The monastery of Himis still exists, near Leh, the capital of Ladakh at the border between Tibet and India. Notovitch claimed to have been taken there after breaking his leg in an accident, and during his recovery to have discovered that the monks worshiped a prophet named Issa. When they read their scrolls about this person to him, he realized that Issa was none other than Jesus. The scrolls told that in his youth, Jesus had traveled to India and Tibet, years before he began his work in Palestine. He there met with Jainists, Brahmins and Buddhists, learned Pali and studied the holy scriptures of Buddhism. Notovitch wrote down the text as it was read by the abbot and translated for him by an interpreter. According to Notovitch, the Tibetan scrolls were translations of Pali documents which the abbot claimed were still kept at Lhasa. (In fact, Pali is the language of southern Buddhism and has never been used in Tibet. Most Tibetan translations are from Sanskrit.) Notovitch's book "The Life of the Holy Issa" was published in France, Britain and America. But criticism hit hard. None less than Max Müller, the foremost expert on Indian literature in the Western world, pulverized the hoax in a magazine article, pointing to numerous errors and inconsistencies. Further, an English lady traveling in those parts of the world went to the Himis monastery and asked around. She was told that no Russian had visited the monastery for many years and nobody had been treated for any leg injury there, and that they never heard of an "Issa". The final judgment on Notovitch's hoax came two years later from professor Archibald Douglas in Agra. He also went to the monastery and read aloud from Notovitch's book to the abbot, who was very surprised at the account of what he himself was supposed to have said to Notovitch a few years earlier. Douglas published his interview with the abbot, who claimed to have been abbot there for 15 years and denied every syllable of Notovitch's story. He also remarked that he could not think of a punishment suitable for scum who invented such lies as Notovitch. The interview was witnessed and signed by Douglas, the abbot and the interpreter, and officially sealed by the abbot. Notovitch tried for some time to defend his story with various dodges, but finally gave up and returned to being a war correspondent. Unlike most hoaxers, he had no ideological motives for the hoax, just a desire to create a sensation. His thin story would probably not have received much attention at all if it had not been published at the peak of the 19th century Indian romanticism, just after Queen Victoria had been crowned Empress of India. It's still going on... With this, the case should have been closed. But successful lies have a tendency to return. Notovitch's book was printed again in 1926 by an American publisher who hoped (not without justification) that the debunking of the hoax had been forgotten. Even more, the story has inspired other hoaxers to fantasize about Jesus traveling to the mysterious East. Probably neither "The Gospel of the Holy Twelve" or "The Aquarian Gospel" would have existed without Notovitch's ideas. Others with similar fantasies are the half-islamic Ahmadiyya sect who believe that Jesus survived the crucifixion and died of old age at Srinagar where he is also said to have been buried. To support this, their founder Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad quoted another hoax, the "Barnabas gospel". Modern Ahmadiyya books quote both the "Essene epistle" and the "Life of the Holy Issa" as if they were authentic documents about Jesus. The story of Notovitch demonstrates the incredible survival power of lies that capture the popular imagination, and the powerlessness of science to eradicate belief in even the most absurd hoaxes. Conclusive proof is apparently not enough. "The world wants to be deceived." ------------------------------------------------------------ home.swipnet.se/corbie/Fu...notov.html
maggie mcclintock Registered User (3/29/06 11:13 am) Reply	Re: Did Jesus Learn from the Tibetan Buddhists? Every Buddhist who knows anything will tell you that there were no Buddhist monasteries in Tibet at the time of Christ. Buddhism hadn't arrived. Plus the monastery at Leh was not built until way after the time of Christ. So while Yogananda and Daya Mata claim that this story is true; history says otherwise. Plus, in this text that Notovich quotes from, Jesus talks about God. The Buddha clearly stated that there was no creator God. So Christ could not have been a Buddhist. And while the Buddhists teach about many Gods, these Gods did not create, and they have little power to influence us on earth. Plus, Buddha was against the use of miracles being displayed in public, and Christ used miracles throughout the Bible.
Used Yogi Registered User (4/2/06 9:18 pm) Reply	Re: Did Jesus Learn from the Tibetan Buddhists? The story I heard was the monks refused to show Notovich the manuscript at first but then when they brought him in with his broken leg they let him see it. Something about having to satisfy a wish of a guest or of someone who was injured or something like that. Swami Abedananda from the Ramakrishna Order wrote about going to the monastery at Himis as part of a pilgrimage to that part of India/Tibet in the 1920s. In the book where he wrote about his journey, he met with the abbot of the Himis monastery. Swami Abedananda translated some passages of what Notovich wrote, and the abbot agreed with the translations. That was according to Abedananda. Even in Abedananda's day (and maybe even today), large parts of Tibet still weren't Buddhist. They practiced the older animal/devil worship Bon religion. Used Yogi

<< Prev Topic | Next Topic >>

Add Reply

Email This To a Friend

Email This To a Friend
Topic Control Image

Topic Control Image

Click to receive email notification of replies

Click to stop receiving email notification of replies

jump to:

- SRF Walrus - Catch All -

Powered By ezboard® Ver. 7.32
Copyright ©1999-2005 ezboard, Inc.