Phil,

What’s your relative thinking about the years between 12yrs old and 30 yrs old as it relates to the St Thomas beliefs that those years were spent with other philosophical positions?

You're right. And both Nestorianism and Monophysitism were in a way a result of rigidification and radicalisation of orthodox low and high Christological positions. In the fire of debate both sides tend to exaggerate. Nestorius was initially completely orthodox, he probably wanted to focus on the human Jesus more. Some so called anathematism of St.Cyril of Alexandria sound to us like monophysitism while he was attacking Nestorius. Monophysites claimed they are just following St Cyril... that is the way all debates tend to go, unfortunately. T

Right, Mt. Sometimes it seems that different teachers forced the Church to state what we didn't believe moreso than what we do. And sometimes critics of Christianity lacking knowledge of Church history maintain that no one believed in the divinity of Christ until the 3rd or 4th C. But the beliefs of the early Church we find expressed in the New Testament clearly attest to belief in his divinity, and his humanity was never in doubt (except by some gnostic sects).

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Les, to my knowledge, there's no credible record of how Jesus spent his "hidden years," though the common belief among Christians has been that he, like other young Jewish males, helped with the family business, availed himself of what religious and other educational opportunities were available to him, and was a faithful, practicing Jew. There's really nothing in the teachings and practices he taught to suggest training by gurus or deep familiarity with non-Jewish resources.

Hi Phil,

quote:

Les, to my knowledge, there's no credible record of how Jesus spent his "hidden years," though the common belief among Christians has been that he, like other young Jewish males, helped with the family business, availed himself of what religious and other educational opportunities were available to him, and was a faithful, practicing Jew. There's really nothing in the teachings and practices he taught to suggest training by gurus or deep familiarity with non-Jewish resources.

You are probably already aware, but the St. Thomas Christians believe that Jesus spent the 18 years wandering through India, Tibet, and spent time in the Himalaya's. I guess there were two priests that claimed to have evidence, and both were murdered just before they were to submit proof. I'd have to go back to the texts to find their names, dates, etc. AAR, it seems to be more than a smoking gun, but like the alternative narrative, there seems to be little proof.

There are some similarities between Buddhist and Christian teachings, but these could easily be the result of either coincidence or cultural exchange via trade.

For example, in the Veludvara Sutta (SN 55.7), the people of the village of Veludvara approach the Buddha and ask for a teaching. The Buddha teaches that everyone wants to be happy, and therefore one should treat others as one would wish to be treated oneself. Compare this with, "And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them" (Luke 6:31, ESV).

Another example: In the Second Sarakani Sutta (SN 55.25), the conditions leading to stream-entry are contrasted with their opposites. This situation is compared with sowing a seed on either good ground or bad ground, an obvious parallel to the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:3-8).

However, there is absolutely no need to give credence to the story of Jesus having visited India in the years between ages 12 and 30. This appears to have been fabricated in the nineteenth century by a Russian named Nicolas Notovich -- the "fake news" of the Victorian era.

Les, Christians believe that all that is relevant about Jesus's earthly life was transmitted orally by the apostles and written down in the second part of the 1st century in the four Gospels which are hence called "canonical". There are numerous other sayings and legends about Jesus, in the apocrypha, but it is not a part of what Christians believed was true and salvific. Historically, it is not likely for a poor Jewish carpenter to travel to India. Travels to India were extremely hard and in that period some philosophers used to join imperial army heading East. But why would a Jewish man WANT to go to India in the first place? A Pagan country?

Oddly, there is an Ashokan inscription at Kandahar that is bilingual in Greek and Aramaic.

quote:

. . . St. Thomas Christians believe that Jesus spent the 18 years wandering through India, Tibet, and spent time in the Himalaya's. I guess there were two priests that claimed to have evidence, and both were murdered just before they were to submit proof.

That's what always happens in conspiracy theories, isn't it? Never mind that they didn't tell anyone else, didn't write anything down, etc.

I've heard other Jesus-in-India stories, and what's struck me is the apparent belief that Judaism could never have produced such a man without a little help from India!

But, again: where the evidence for any of this in the teachings of Jesus or the beliefs and practices of the early Christians? Nada.

quote:

Originally posted by Derek:
Oddly, there is an Ashokan inscription at Kandahar that is bilingual in Greek and Aramaic.

What significance do you see here, Derek?

Ashoka had his inscriptions written in local dialects. It means there were large numbers of speakers of these languages near Kandahar at the time.

3rd C. BC in what we now call Iraq. OK. Might have been some Jews left over from the Babylonian captivity?

No -- this is Kandahar, Afghanistan. So that makes it even more unexpected that there were a sizable number of Aramaic-speakers in the region.

Wikipedia says about the presence of Aramaic:

"The usage of Aramaic reflect the fact that Aramaic (the so-called Official Aramaic) had been the official language of the Achaemenid Empire which had ruled in those parts until the conquests of Alexander the Great. The Aramaic is not purely Aramaic, but seems to incorporate some elements of Iranian.[6] According to D.D.Kosambi, the Aramaic is not an exact translation of the Greek, and it seems rather that both were translated separately from an original text in Magadhi, the common official language of India at the time, used on all the other Edicts of Ashoka in Indian language, even in such linguistically distinct areas as Kalinga.[5] It is written in Aramaic alphabet."

If this is true, the Aramaic would have nothing to do with any potential Jews travelling to Kandahar or living there and all to do with the fact that the Persians used to rule there for a couple of centuries.

This idea of the "journey East" for some wisdom is often found in Greek and Roman culture (philosophers travelling with Alexander to India, earlier Greeks interested in the wisdom of Egypt and Babylonia), but I didn't find anything in the Bible which would indicate that Jews were similarly interested in studying the wisdom of other nations or cultures. It is peculiar to the Jews that they believed that God planted only fragments of wisdom in other nations, but "dwelled" fully in Israel
Wisdom says:

"[I] have stood in all the earth: and in every people,
And in every nation I have had the chief rule: (...)
And he said to me: Let thy dwelling be in Jacob, and thy inheritance in Israel, and take root in my elect." (Sirach 24,8-13)

So it is highly unlikely that Jews could be interested in other cultures, if they believed so strongly that God revealed himself fully to themselves:

"He declares his word to Jacob,
his statutes and rules to Israel.
He has not dealt thus with any other nation;
they do not know his rules." (Psalm 147, 19-20)

OK, good exchanges. I had the wrong war zone in mind -- was confusing Kandahar, Afghanistan with Anbar Province, Iraq.

And Mt's point about non-Jews is sound: they were called Gentiles, even pagans. We know what a stretch it was for the early Jewish Christians to recognize Gentile converts to Christianity. Perhaps the biggest decision ever made in the history of Christianity was whether these converts should also receive instruction to be Jews, and this was resolved at the Council of Jerusalem (around A.D. 50, see Acts 15). The answer was "No!" A new world religion was born that day.

Just adding this very perceptive review to this meandering discussion.

http://enlightened-people.com/...tory/#comment-135864

That link didn’t work for me. Maybe your comment is held for moderation? This link worked, though the page was very slow to load: http://enlightened-people.com/...enlightenment-story/

Oh, sorry. Try this one.

http://enlightened-people.com/...tory/#comment-135864

Well, the link works now. It must have been a temporary glitch in the website. Yes, that is an interesting take on BR by someone who claims to be sensitive to people’s inner states, even if he spends only an hour with them. He must have confidence in his judgment to call it “for the record.”

Ha, yes: good point.
What he shares resonates with my experience after spending a week with her in 1991 and having had extensive correspondence with her.

For me, looking back, it's a good example of how one can have gone very far into religious conversion and still have psychological issues. I really like the way Lonergan speaks of four conversions: psychological, intellectual, moral and religious. They're not all the same, and do entail different kinds of work with different fruit.