Jesus in India

[Onasander]

http://m.speakingtree.in/spiritual-slideshow/seekers/pilgrimage/did-jesus-christ-visit-india/40374

 

 

The earliest known reference to Buddism by any Christian recorded was the first Manicheans missionaries  in 50AD.

 

Pyrrhonism was almost exactly identical with certain sects of Indic Buddhism, minus the yoga (It's not self evidentiary does anything, so went bye bye). We have only evidence of a single Upanisad in the west that has come down intact from history, though it appears we also had bishops debate against certain others.

 

Gymnosophists are usually identified as being naked Jains.

 

I don't see much evidence, if we were to assume Jesus did gain insights from the east, that he ever had to travel there to get it. Some was clearly available from time to time in the west..... but just some. Never a majority, till the Neo-Platonists. 

 

Even then, it was a gentleman's game wits, we had a few centuries of active philosophical debate, both sides taking from the other until they died off (lost too many arguments in the west to survive, but Neo-Platonism' root, Vedanta in India, did the opposite there to Christainity from Persian and Egypt.)

 

I don't see this need to assume he traveled way, way, way over there, then rushed back to teach a belief system that has local precedents, in the Jewish Diaspora under the Ptolomies and Assyrians, Platonism and Aristotelian influences from Alexandria, and a school of local Cynicism nearby in Gadara.

 

Many Greeks in this era were Buddhists in the east, and the old Selecuid Capital Antioch was a little north, and had been the far end of Indian travels since Hurrian and Hittite Times.

 

I have a decent background in Suzuki 's Zen, Nicheran, and Tibetan Buddhism, simply living in San Francisco and Hawaii ( and handing out on George Feuerstein's old forum).... I never had to travel through Asia to gain this knowledge..... I lived where Asians tended to travel and settle in the west, and had access.

 

Same with Antioch and Alexandria, and eventually Constantinople. Influence is felt, and vice versa.

 

 

[caldrail]

Indian religions would have been known to Greek and Roman merchants who had begun making seasonal voyages to India, also we can't ignore the possibility of foreign merchants reaching Roman territory. In any case, Syria was a hotbed of religious activity, responsible for nurrturing some very odd cults, most of which are not well documented and largely forgotten.

 

There is a tomb somewhere in India that claims to be the last resting place of Jesus.

[Onasander]

When you say the cults in Syria were not well documented, what do you mean?

 

We had fish farms immediately north of my base in Iraq, and all the guys civilian wise were homosexual. They treated women as breeding cattle, covered head to toe, and the men walked around holding hands and kissing.

 

You go back a few centuries, and the area had Holy Fish cults lead by transexual priests.

 

The.Syrian cults never seem to be left out of books on Roman Paganism. They are well documented, by the Romans and by modern scholarship.

 

Was there something even stranger going on in Syria?

[caldrail]

Actually no, they aren't, because there were far more diverse and obscure cults in Syria than reached Rome. Some travelled - there was a cult popular among slaves in mainland Italy for instance, but others didn't get mentioned, including one with a very liberal attitude to sex.

 

Incidentially, homosexuality is frowned upon by Islam. Are you sure all the Iraqi fish farmers were homosexual? That sounds a bit odd to me.

[Onasander]

Not just the fish farmers.

 

And it was very odd and disturbing to us too.

 

But you get used to it.

 

I just summed it up to how well Islam actually was accepted, a pick and choose. They dont do that in the Maldives or Bosnia, so its not the message of Islam, so I assume it was there before.

 

Lots of fish and mansex, and this cult overlapped in area. Even if we.could trace both to purely Islamic beginnings, it is.very easy for.me to picture it in my head. Fish and buttslave religion..... yep. Got that image, cant shake it.