Over the Easter weekend a Facebook friend posted links to a youtube archive of a BBC documentary about the possibility that Jesus lived out his post-crucifixion life in Kashmir.
A little research shows that the thesis has ancient roots, revived for example in modern times by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and more recently by Helger Kersten. Kersten also follows the evidentiary trail marked by Notovitch in arguing that Jesus traveled to India for a spiritual education during his 15 or more “lost years” prior to his campaign for Messiah, a thesis that is the subject of another film by Paul Davids.
Perhaps the most radical and most recent elucidation of the connection between Jesus and India is Christian Lindtner’s website, jesusisbuddha.com, “the first and only website devoted to the original Buddhist sources of the New Testament Gospels.” According to Christian Lindtner’s Thesis (CLT) the Greek Gospels are modeled upon classic Buddhist scriptures. Lindtner goes so far as to argue that there is no historical basis whatsoever for the Gospels other than the Buddhist literature.
Lindtner’s scholarship raises interesting possibilities for a history of theology, including a new way of thinking about the emergence of trinitarian dialectics.
Was there a historical Jesus? Did this historical Jesus travel to India for education and then return to Kashmir to work among the “lost tribes” of Israel? Or was there no historical Jesus, but simply a story created by inserting “Greekskrit” names into classical narratives about Buddha? The questions are fascinating and dizzying.
Even supposing that Lindtner is correct to identify Sanskrit and Pali models for the Gospel writers, it would not settle the question of fact or fiction, since the Gospel writers could have been seeking a perfect model of expression for an authentic spiritual journey.
At the very least, I think these approaches to the story of Jesus help us to understand that the world of ancient Palestine does not have to be approached provincially. Travel, commerce, and ideas were flowing in several directions.
From an ethical point of view, these researches indicate that the teachings of Jesus and Buddha have something important in common when they stress our duties to alleviate suffering in this world. In this case, the question for ethics remains the same. Is there a better approach than this?
And from a religious point of view, one could argue that the cross currents of swirling interpretations are exactly what Kierkegaard addressed when he said to the Christian that it hardly matters what are the facts of the matter, because the really important question of Christianity has nothing to do with any fact whatsoever.
Where did Jesus go? With Kierkegaard we would answer that depends entirely on where you were looking for Jesus in the first place. And it’s still true today as it was in Kierkegaard’s time that mostly the name of Jesus is understood in terms of the letters that spell it, not the spirit that defies spelling, grammar, and historical justifications for a life of radical love.