Home

News

CLT

CV & Contact

 

News 

 

 

 

[19-04-2017] "Resurrection cancelled!"

 

...says science journalist Lone Frank in Copenhagen church. Outraged Lutheran wizards deeply offended. Bad news  for good business. "Resurrection of Jesus  is a FACT that cannot be discussed", howls wizard Lilleør.
Irrefutable proof of resurrection of Jesus is provided by  Paul, 1 Cor. 15, says grand wizard Troels Engberg-Pedersen - ignoring the  Buddhist source about the "more than 500 brothers", etc., pointed out by Chr. Lindtner long ago and known to all Danish theologians.

 

[16-04-2017] Er tiden løbet fra Luther?

Den danske folkekirke står og falder med Luther og hans udlægning af evangeliet – eller Guds ord. Overalt i landet forberedes eller fejres de 500 år, der er gået, siden den tyske munk påbegyndte sit opgør med den katolske kirke. Som det kan læses på en reformationsmedalje fra 1717, betød Reformationen, at troen blev fri fra pavens tyranni, dvs. fra bl.a. afl adshandel, helgendyrkelse og munkevæsen. Hundrede år senere, fejredes Luther for at have »genoprettet evangeliets sandhed«. Det var under Frederik VI. På Luthers tid troede man på mirakler, på djævle og hekse, og – i lighed med paven – mente reformationens mænd, at jorden var det midtpunkt i verden, hvorom solen drejede. Disse og andre former for overtro har kirken i takt med videnskabens fremgang diskret valgt at skrive i den store glemmebog.
Hvad med Jesus? Men tilbage står store spørgsmål, som mig bekendt slet ikke tages op til diskussion i forbindelse med nogle af de mere end 400 arrangementer, der fi nder eller har fundet sted i 2017. Hvad med Jesus selv? Er han et produkt af samme uvidenhed, der frembragte hekse og djævle og anden overtro? Luther mente, at Jesus eller Kristus var at fi nde i selve Bibelen, men moderne teologisk forskning mener nu, at Det Nye Testamente er en slags genskrivning af ældre bibelske skrifter og derfor ikke giver pålidelig viden om hovedpersonen bag
det hele. Og på samme måde kan den moderne religionsvidenskab påvise, at næsten alt, hvad der siges om eller gøres af »Guds søn«, allerede blev sagt om og gjort af de mange andre gudesønner, der fandtes i den gamle verden. Hvem skal man så tro mest på? Alt dette havde Luther af gode grunde ingen anelse om. For ham var det nok, at man blot troede på de ord, man læste i tysk eller dansk oversættelse. En veluddannet moderne teolog ved udmærket godt, at Det Nye Testamente er en samling fortællinger og myter, akkurat som de gamle græske, romerske og indiske gudefortællinger. Mig bekendt har man aldrig på noget dansk universitet rejst det helt afgørende spørgsmål: Har Jesus overhovedet eksisteret? Er alle disse fortællinger blot fortællinger?
Videnskabeligt holdepunkt Er svaret, at der ikke er videnskabeligt holdepunkt for troen på en historisk Jesus, ja, så er den logiske konsekvens heraf indlysende: Så hører de teologiske fakulteter slet ikke hjemme på et moderne universitet. Man kan dog ikke dyrke videnskab om noget, der slet ikke eksiste
rer. Hvad afl adshandelen indbragte paven, blev bl.a. anvendt til at opføre Peterskirken i Rom. Den står der stadig til glæde for alle med interesse for kunst og arkitektur. Jeg kender ikke regnskabet i detaljer, men gætter på, at det har været småbeløb set i forhold til, hvad lønninger til reformerte præster med tiden har ophobet sig til. Og netop nu i 2017 ser det ud til, at Luther er blevet forvandlet til en moderne helgen, i hvis hellige navn folkestyret gerne åbner for pengekisten. Siden 1536, da Reformationen blev gennemført under Christian III, for hvem Luthers ord nærmest var Guds ord, har først kongekirken og dernæst, fra 1849, folkekirken forstået at slå mønt af, hvad der muligvis blot er en gammel myte. For uden en historisk Jesus eller Kristus er hele reformationsjubilæet jo ikke meget andet end fejringen af et kæmpemæssigt bedrag, der stiller de pavelige afl adsbreve helt i skyggen. Hvis man ellers kan forlade sig på traditionen, så skal Luthers modpart, pave Leo X (14751521) have udtalt: »Hvilket udbytte vi og vore har haft af den fabel om Kristus, er vel erkendt af alle slægtled.« Leo X var et kvikt hoved og veluddannet, og selvom citatet måske ikke er ægte, udtrykker det en opfattelse, han ikke var alene om dengang og endnu mindre i dag, 500 år senere. Mange kvikke hoveder deler Leos åbenhjertige mening. Den danske folkekirke er gået hen og blevet en rigtig god forretning. Ikke blot for mere end 2.000 præster, teologer med fl ere, men så god, at det ikke kan forventes, at det kan komme til en off entlig kvalifi ceret debat om det altoverskyggende spørgsmål: Er Jesus overhovedet en historisk person? Luther skal have lagt vægt på frihed og frimodighed, hører man, men hvor er den præst, der er frimodig nok til at rejse spørgsmålet, om Kristus blot er en gammel fabel, og ærlig nok til at indrømme, at tiden er løbet fra Luther?

 

 

Debatindlæg af Chr. Lindtner bragt i Information, d. 19. november 2017.

 

[15-04-2017] Jesus on the coins of his Dad

Jesus Christ (JC) is, as we must learn to understand, one of the numerous mythical sons of God, who likes to puzzle and tease all those who believe that they believe in him. To solve his puzzles you must, as a rule, know not only Greek, but also Latin, Sanskrit and Pâli, as well as a bit of mathematics and numismatics.
How come JC is said to sit or stand at the right hand of his Father?
How come JC says that his Father is sitting on a throne up there somewhere in the sky, a location that has never been identified by modern astronomers?
How come JC, a Galilean, compares himself to a hen, in Greek: ornis, in Latin: gallina?
How come JC takes an interest in the image of a ruler on a coin?
Why do the soldiers, who mock JC, place a rod in his right hand and call him king of the Jews?
To answer these questions, or to crack the code, you merely need to have a look at one of the most common coins from the Hellenistic period, shown here:

Greek God became Jewish God

What you see here is the Father of all men and gods, as Homer says, and as all Greek and Romans knew for sure.
What you see in the right hand of Zeus is supposed to be an eagle, but it takes only a bit of imagination to take the bird as being a hen. On some of the coins, it even seems to have laid an egg!
So what the enthroned Father of men and gods is holding in his right hand is simply the Galilean Gallina, i.e. one of his many sons.
The simplest explanation for the rod in the right hand of JC is that it was the famous scepter of Zeus, who, on the coins, holds it in his left hand. The scepter, an old symbol of monarchy, is now handed over to the king of the Jews, who holds it in his right hand. Thus it makes perfect sense when JC is said to be son of God, for, as all Greeks know, all kings - including the one of Israel or of the Jews - are sons of Zeus. And as such Zeus is enthroned somewhere up there in the sky.
The Lord's prayer is a prayer to Zeus, who, also according to old Homer, has his abode in the sky.
Naturally, his name must be "holy", which means that the name of Zeus, his father, must never be mentioned! The true ID of JC is a secret, just as the true name of his Father, i.e. Zeus, must be kept secret!
Of course, if you ask your local pastor or bishop, he will tell you that you need not know a word of Greek or Latin, and certainly not Pâli and Sanskrit, in order to make sense of the "Word of God", or of the so-called "Gospel". No bishop will admit the simple truth that the Greek word for Gospel, euaggelion, is a simple translation of the Sanskrit synonym sûtram.
Very often, JC likes to tease his opponents by inviting them to solve a mathematical paradox.
Thus, in a famous incident, he asks his opponents how it can be that Christ is, at the same time a son and a lord, i.e. younger and older in relation to king David. (See Matthew 22, 41-46, and my paper in Brahmavidyâ 78-79, pp.  47-157 for many more examples of Jesus as a mathematician.)
They cannot solve the puzzle because they know nothing about numbers.
The simple solution is: Khristos is 1480, and the sum of Son, huios, and Lord, kurios, is 680+800 = 1480.
So, these idiots don´t even know that 1480 is 800 + 680!

There is, in the body of the Greek text of the NT, almost no end to such paradoxes and puzzles posed by the words of JC.
But, as said, without the Greek, Latin, Pâli and Sanskrit etc., you are bound to be lost, exactly as were the Pharisees in Matthew 22, 41-46.
Luther and his modern followers claim to be true to the word of God as found in the Gospel translated into modern languages.
Luther was wrong, and so are bishops who not only deny that euaggelion translates sûtram, but who also claim that the New Testament has nothing to do with numbers or geometry. They are, in other words, exactly like those poor Pharisees, who were not able to say a word in reply to JC.
One of the most striking characteristics of Zeus is that he can undergo transformations, and the same applies to his numerous sons, many of whom were kings. And so, to sum up, a look at the famous coin provides us with the main source of the fable of the transformation of a Galilean Hen who eventually became the king of the Jews. Keeping this transformation in mind, it also becomes evident why JC claims that he and his father are one. And, since a father comes before a son, it is Zeus who becomes the father of JC, not vice versa.

 

[26-12-2016] It is easier for a Camel than it is for a Bishop...

It is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle, than it is for a bishop to be honest about the Christmas hoax. How can a Jewish king, who never even existed, have been born by a virgin!

It is easier for a turtle to thrust its neck through the hole of a yoke flowing on the ocean, than it is for a pope to reveal the Buddhist sources of the Mass mysteriously celebrated on Christmas Eve.

It is easier for the son of a barren woman to marry his own daugther and have twelve children with her, than it is for a Dalai Lama to make much sense of the Dharma, if he does not know Greek. For how can he explain Tathâgatas if he is ignorant of a kaloskagathos or a kathêgêtês!

It is easier for a man to catch his own shadow, than it is for a scholar to grasp the New Testament, if he is ignorant of Sanskrit and Pâli.

It is easier for water to run upwards, than it is for anyone to understand the puzzle of the Son of Man, if he has never studied Euclid.

It is easier for two to be four, than it is for anyone to explain why Christians worldwide would worship a god willing to sacrifice his own innocent son in order to please a gang of revengeful Jews calling for his blood.

It is easier to calculate the number of grains of sand in the Nile, than it is to figure out why a Dalai Lama lets a pope get away with pretending to be the legitimate successor of Sâriputras (widely known as Simon Peter, first fake bishop of Rome).

Is it not easier for all our priests to walk on water, than it is for a decent individual - a kaloskagathos - to applaud the meretricious gaudiness of Rome!

It is easy to figure out why Lutherans are busy celebrating the so-called Reformation of a brave and brutal German run-away monk. Luther enabled them to make an easy life merely by fooling the gullible masses for half a millennium with advanced Buddhist fairy tales about an imaginary Buddha who was reborn out of love for his people.

Phony Sâri-putras begging Buddhas to keep the secret by blessing the poor in spirit.

 

[30-10-2016] Christ's Burial Place - a Buddhist stûpas

A few days ago, National Geographic  created headlines worldwide by posting a bit of "sensational"  false news: Christ's  Burial Place  Exposed  for First Time  in Centuries!
Correctly, National Geographic informs us that  the tomb chamber has served  as a focalpoint of veneration since it was  first  identified by Helena,  the mother of  the Roman  emperor Constantine, in A.D. 326.
What  the reader is not informed about is the fact that for centuries Greek, Roman and Buddhist priests had identified  numerous locations where their gods and saints had been born,  worked miracles, passed away etc. - often in different places at the same time. Helena was thus just repeating an old story, pouring new wine on old bottles.
The list of pious frauds  knows no end. Students familiar with the Lotus Gospel  know how to set the record straight: When a Buddha, a  so-called Tathâgatas, passes away, a stupas is typically erected for worship in his memory. He and his gospel is then considered to be contained in such a stûpas. Hence its worship.
One must know the Greek term for the grave or tomb of Jesus - taphos. The Greek taphos renders the Sanskrit stûpas. As always  one must know gematria to solve the puzzle precisely. The number of stûpas is 200+300+400+80+1+200 =  1181, which then  is translated into Greek: ekei ho taphos = 40+70+½071 = 1181. The Greek means: Here is the  grave. The Greek thus points to the Sanskrit stûpas. But only a Buddhist would know the trick!
When you read what the Lotus Gospel and the MPS  write about Tathâgatas, his passing away, and his body, bones or ashes   being  located in a stûpas, it becomes obvious that the Christian cult of Jesus in the taphos is but an echo of the Buddhist ritual. For obvious reasons a stûpas is often empty.
There is no Tathâgtas in there! But that does not really matter. The important thing is that you  worship the stûpas in faith  as a sort of symbol of the teacher and his teachings. The Christian worship of the empty taphos is thus a typical example of the Buddhist worship of an empty stûpas.
But would Buddhist missionaries really be willing to play such tricks? According to their own words, they most certainly would. When you study the Buddhist sources of the Eucharist, you cannot fail to see that here, too, we are dealing with  a sort of secret worship of the Buddhist hero, the Tathâgatas. The point of the Eucharist is to make you "eat and drink" - i.e absorb the Lord and his teaching so that  it all becomes a part of yourself. These tricky Buddhists  even have a technical term for this sort of hidden  propaganda - "skill in means".

 

[29-10-2016] ODD GALILAEAN REPLACES OLD BUDDHA

Jesus, according to Mark 11,12-14, cursed a completely innocent fig tree - a sukê in Greek. But why? Failing to  go ad fontes, New Testament scholars have offered various  subjective speculations to explain the  plain absurdity.
Matthew 11,18 brings us a bit closer to the solution of the puzzle, when  he refers to the fig tree as a sukên mian, in the accusative case. We come even closer, when we read about another tree, a suka-minos, a mulberry tree. If you have faith, you can order it to pull itself up by its roots and plant itself in the sea. This is Luke 17,6. Again, poor tree! The fig tree and the mulberry tree now belong to the past!
Students familiar with the Lotus Gospel have no problem when it comes to the correct solution of the absurd story. In the Lotus Gospel we learn of the old Buddha called Sâkya-munis, now about to pass away and to be replaced by a new Buddha.
In Buddhists gospels, the rareness of their  appearance is often compared to that of the rareness of  a flower on a fig tree. So, here we have the fig tree once again combined with (a) Buddha. The Sanskrit for this fig tree is udumbaras. So, obviously, the sukên mian as well as the suka-minos are to be taken as puns on the original Sanskrit: Sâya-munis. Jesus is, here as always, a new Buddha who replaces the old one.
The  belief that if you have faith, then you can even move mountains, is also typical Buddhist. See  my essay "Faith  as Small (or as Big) as a Mustard Seed", reprinted in Michael Lockwood,  Mythicism, p. 116, where the Sanskrit sources are  given.
Once you know what to look for, you will also be able to trace the udumbaras behind the  words ascribed to Jesus, the new Buddha who replaced the most famous of the old ones.
New Testament scholarship that ignores Sanskrit and Pâli sources  can, I fear, be expected one day to share the sad fate of the fig and the mulberry tree! Nor must the  geometry  always involved be ignored. In this case the first  question is: What is the  geometry behind the transformation from Sâkyamunis to sukê mia?
The second question is: What is the geometry accounting for Sâkya-munis turning up as Suka-minos? Here, as usual, whoever has intelligence, must figure out the number of the beast!

 

[17-09-2016] Chr. Lindtner and dr. Robert M. Price in a conversation about fairy tales and fables common to Buddhism and Christianity on Radio Lindtner.

 

 

[06-09-2016] Buddhas bloody body. The Lord's (Last) Supper - the Eucharist - its Sanskrit Source.

 

The most holy of all Christian sacraments is certainly that of the Eucharist, also known as the Lord's Supper, or the Last Supper.
Surrounded by his disciples, Jesus offered them his blood to drink and his body to eat. They still do so, mainly on Sundays.
In order to make some sort of sense of this absurd nonsense all sorts of  suggestions have been offered.  Wrong options have cost innumerable lives that could have been saved by going to the Buddhist sources, the most important of which  is found in Sanskrit.
Lord Buddha, who typically refers to himself as Tathâgata(s) is surrounded by  his disciples, and this is their last meal together.  Soon, he will pass  away.
Here is what  Tathâgatas said to his closest disciples (MPS  42,10):

The Tibetan version corresponds exactly to the Sanskrit. No Pâli version is available.
The Chinese version runs (in the German version of Ernst Waldschmidt, Berlin 1951,  p. 395):
"Betrachtet jetzt den  Körper  des Buddha!  Betrachtet jetzt  den Körper  des Buddha!  Warum?  Tathâgatas, Arhats,  wahrhaft  Erleuchteten begegnet man  schwer  wie einer Udumbarablume."

But this is only the  first part of the story. In this Buddhist source there is no mention of shedding blood.  Now, all Buddhists are familiar with the idea that  in a previous life, before being reborn as a real Buddha, he sacrificed himself for the benefit of other living creatures.
For instance,  he cut off his arm and gave it to a hungry tigress who then gave it to her hungry cub. By drinking the blood and by eating the flesh the cub survived. This well-known Buddhist fable, or Jâtrakam, is the source of the New Testament fable about Jesus shedding his blood for  many (Matthew 26,28 par) and even giving up his life for the world on the cross.
Thus two different Buddhist sources have been combined and Buddha has been reborn once again now under a new name. The story will repeat itself. In reality he will never die; he will be back to enjoy eternal life along with his closest disciples.

Commentary:
Tathâgatas invites his disciple - twice - to have a careful look at his body. Why? Because  such a Buddha only occurs very rarely - like the flower on a fig-tree.
In the mad Christian copy, the disciples are invited to eat and drink the Tathâgatas!  The flower of the  Udumbaras is changed into the fruit of the vine. Thus the point about the rareness is almost lost.
When you compare the  Sanskrit and the Greek words, you will hear typical puns:
Ta-thâ-ga-tas-ya becomes tês di-a-thê-kês, etc.
To spell that out:
Buddhists are invited to  think of the Buddha who appears in this world so rarely.
Christian readers are invited to swallow Tathâgatas completely - blood as well as flesh. Originally, it was the hungry cub that did so in order to survive. The cub has been transformed into a Christian carnival, as it were.
The purpose of  participating in the Holy Supper is thus clear: You must become a Buddhist - without the Christian priest telling you the deeper meaning of this profound mystery. It makes some sense if you imagine yourself to be a hungry cub.
The Pope has the bad habit of speaking of a profound mystery of transfiguration.
Well, had he been a bit more honest, he would have told you that  what is  actually at stake, is a rather typical case of  mysterious Buddhist translations.
That a Pope promotes Buddhism is to be expected, once you recall that Simôn Peter is just Sâri-Putras in disguise. Buddhist monks will tell many stories about the rebirths of Sâri-Putras. Most famous is his rebirth as the first bishop of Rome.
It goes without saying that the Buddhist and the Christian episodes must be seen in the original textual context.
If you do so, you will find that  similar events  occur in both sources.
So, as usual, we are dealing with pirate copies.
The unknown Buddhist authors of the Eucharist achieved what they wished to achieve: Their intention was to convert "the entire world" to Buddhism - without them knowing it.
They did quite well.
In Mahâyâna there is something called skill in means, upâya-kausalyam. It has to do with hidden propaganda.
The Eucharist provides the  most splendid example of this sort of  Buddhist propaganda.

Buddhas bloody body served by John Huss and Martin Luther - little did they know! Engraving from the second quarter of the 16th century.

 

[19-08-2016] Chr. Lindtner in a candid conversation with Kenneth Humphreys, author of Jesus Never Existed. On myths and deceptions of professional theologians, and their ignorance of sacred geometry and the Buddhist sources of the New Testament.

 

 

 

 

[13-07-2016] New light on early Christianity in Denmark. King Harald's Christ was both name and number, as in the New Testament. No silly Lutheran belief in a historical Christ at all.

Link to article in Vejle Amts Folkeblad, click picture below.

Christian Lindtner and Niels Bandholm in front of a copy of king Harald Bluetooth's runestone. Jelling, 2016.

 

[20-02-2016] THE SANSKRIT KID IN THE LOTUS MANGER

It is about time that  good Christians started asking themselves and their brothers, why their  pastors and bishops do not want to learn Sanskrit, and why Sanskrit is being expelled from  European universities that used to have a glorious tradition of Sanskrit and Buddhist studies. How can that be? Why are they afraid of Sanskrit??
I have asked the Copenhagen bishop, to be sure, and his reply was that he had no time to look at the Buddhists sources of the New Testament, and certainly no time for Sanskrit! I have asked countless professors of the New Testament, and  precisely a year ago, Århus professor of theology Anders-Christian Jacobsen made his position clear: "I will not learn Sanskrit!" Are they just lazy? Perhaps so. But there is much more at stake: Their daily bread.
So, good Christians should start asking serious questions, just little ones for a start. For instance: How can it be that the mother "in those days" placed  the little boy (Greek: to paidion) in a "manger". To answer the puzzle you must know the Greek and the Sanskrit, and then compare the two.
As all Buddhists know the proper place for a Buddha and a Bodhisattva is in or on a Lotus. The Sanskrit for "in a Lotus" is pad-me, the locative form of padmam, a lotus. In Greek, the bo-dhi-sat-tvam becomes the little boy: to pai-di-on. The Sanskrit -sat-tvam means "be-ing". That becomes to...on, meaning in Greek: be-ing.  Next, the bo-dhi becomes pai-di. Thus, bo-dhi-sat-tvam has changed into to pai-di-on. He has been reborn! Ask your local pastor to think it over, or take a chat with the bishop!
But the manger, please!
Well, the Greek says "in a manger", en phat-nê. So, again, a locative form. Just as you can hear, how bo-dhi becomes pai-di, thus you can also hear, how pad-me becomes phat-nê. And there are hundreds of similar examples of the same sort. One or two examples  prove nothing, but hundreds do. When you read the Lotus Sûtram, even in a modern translation, you will find that the Lotus, i.e. the Buddha, orders his disciples and missionaries to spread the Lotus all over the world by means of puns and plays on words of the sort given here.
Just to listen to the sound of a Lotus is sufficient, he assures us. The idea is - as all Japanese Buddhists will agree - that merely by hearing and reciting  the sound of pad-me and of bo-dhi, you will achieve the greatest happiness in the world. That is why Loukas writes phat-nê and pai-di. But it will not work in a modern translation, where all is lost! Hence, good Christians must take up a bit of Greek and Sanskrit! - if they want to follow in the steps their Saviour.
The evangelist called Luke shared this conviction and followed orders when "translating" into Greek. His name, in Greek, is Loukas, an echo or pun on the Sanskrit original: Lokas, meaning "world". When you have come that far, you may ask for a solution to the old paradox of bo-dhi-sat-tvam (accusative case of bo-dhi-sat-tvas) having been  born of a virgin.
Here, again, you must first pick up a bit more  of Greek and Sanskrit, and then compare. The Greek for "virgin" is PaRTHeNos. In Sanskrit there are many synonyms for Lotus apart from padmam. One of these is PuNDaRîka-, as in the very title of the Saddharma-pundarîka-sûtram - the Lotus. To be born from a virgin is in Greek: ek parthenou (genitive of parthenos). Behind eK PaRTHeNou you hear, exactly as above, PuNDaRîKa. That, again, solves the old puzzle about the number of man - i.e. Buddha aka Jesus - being 666:
Thus the number of p-u-n-d-a-r-î-k-a = 80+400+50+4+1+100+10+20+1 = 666. This means, of course, that the son of the virgin is to be found in the Lotus, and in that sense the apparent paradox of parthenogenesis proves to be perfectly true: The Lord is born in a Lotus. So, should you find any modern rationalist ridiculing the notion  of parthenogenesis, it may well  be that he is just as ignorant of Greek, Sanskrit, maths and comparative Gospel studies as the average pope and bishop.

 

I remain perpetually astonished. Thanks for this!

Robert M. Price

 

 

[17-02-2016] The Purpose of the Church of Denmark

In the well-considered view of Anders Sandøe Ørsted, the main pupose of the Church of Denmark, was, as this great man  wrote in his autobiograhy: "to serve the enlightenment and ennoblement of the souls of Denmark's  youth."
Now what a contrast to the misery, ignorance and vulgarity that haunts the current state of the Lutheran Church of our old kingdom! Who has not heard tags  like "spaghetti service" and refrains of  "equality and equal rights and love", oozing  from the lips of the white clerical slime - but antiquated  words like enlightenment and, worst of all, if you will excuse the term,  "ennoblement" who has ever heard - if only by way of  rumour - of  such an out-of-place  gospel shedding its light  from a modernizing  church?

 

[06-02-2016] JESUS wants YOU to carry the Lotus Sutra!

Jesus says: "And whoever does not take his CROSS (Greek : STauRoN)  and follow after me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10,38).  And according to Luke 14,27, he said: "Whoever does not carry his own CROSS (Greek: STauRoN) and come after me cannot be my disciple." So the message is clear enough: To be a  true disciple of Jesus, you must carry your STauRoN.
Accordingly,  some Christians are still seen to carry a cross around their neck, in Denmark one of his followers - his name is Moses - enjoys to amaze  the public by taking the burden of a huge cross on his back.
And where in the world do we see a church without a cross! Still, all Christians must be a bit puzzled. Does the Lord want his true disciples to let themselves be crucified? If so, why? Very strange, all of this!
If you are, however, among the millions of followers of the SûTRaM called the Lotus (Saddharma-pundarîka-sûtram), and if you are among the few who know a bit of Sanskrit, you will immediately see what Jesus has in mind. Scholars have already pointed out long ago that the New Testament writings contain numerous quotations from and allusions to the Lotus Sûtram, a work of Mahâyâna propaganda, and still popular in Japan and China.

The Lotus Sutra

The last words of Jesus are, for instance, taken from the Buddhist gospel! The great hero in this SûTRaM is called a SûTRa-dhârakas, and dhârakas, in Sanskrit means "one who carries". What Jesus therefore is sayng is that YOU, too,  have to be a SûTRa-dhârakas to follow him, otherwise YOU are not his true disciple! To carry the STauRoN  really means to carry the SûTRaM. It is expressly stated that a true disciple carries a book of the Lotus on his shoulder!
Behind the Greek euaggelion we have the Sanskrit synonym sûtram, often taken by Buddhists as meaning good message. The disciple  who carries the good message of the Lotus is what in the NT becomes an evangelist. The NT does not confine itself to four evangelists; others are also mentioned.
Behind these we have Buddhist missionaries. Even the term apostle, Greek apostolos can be traced back to a Sanskrit synonym (upasthâyakas or upasthâpakas). One of the main disciples in this SûTRaM is Sâri-PuTRaS. He followed his master's command, and eventually turned up under the name of Simôn PeTRoS. He even  found his new home in Rome, where a few bones are  now on display.
All of this is of course just Buddhist and Christian fantasies. But they certainly have sold well! This means that we here have yet another obvious case of Christianity as crypto-Buddhism, or Mahâyâna propaganda.
In this connection another  puzzle finds its solution: The Dalai Lama has paid several visits to Denmark, and I personally recall him having expressed his wonder that many  Danes want to turn to Buddhism. "Why", he said, "you already have Christianity! Why Buddhism?".
From these words  I can only assume that he, too, is aware that Christianity is a sort of crypto-Buddhism. And the same goes for the Holy Father in Rome. When the Dalai Lama visited Rome in December 2014, it aroused some wonder among Buddhists worldwide that the Pope declined meeting his colleague, for he "did not have time to see the Dalai Lama". The two would certainly have had something to talk about - above all the  historical foundations of the Roman church.
The public seems ignorant of the fact that at least some educated insiders in the Vatican  know about their own Buddhist roots. This includes the former Pope, Benedict, who has personally supported the publication of a German translation of the Lotus Sûtram. And those who may wish to dig deeper into this embarrassing truth need only consult the scholarly book by  Michael Fuss, Buddhavacanam & Dei Verbum. A Phenomenological & Theological Comparison of Scriptural  Inspiration in the Saddharmapundarîka Sûtra & in the Christian Tradition,   Leiden 1991.
Here, the learned author  concludes that the teachings of the Lotus and the New Testament are much the same. He does, however, avoid the most interesting of all questions: How can it be that the New Testament often looks like a copy of the Lotus Sûtram?
Instead, in a note hidden  on page  421, Dr  Fuss admits that this is "an intricate problem", and then refers to an old book from 1906, wherein the author wrote: "Where the  Gospel narratives resemble the Buddhist ones, they seem to have been independently developed on the shores of the Mediterranian and in the valley of the Ganges...".
So, in this way, by using the verb "seem", these authors try to avoid what they  very well know to be "an intricate problem". Openly and honstly to admit the simple historical fact of crypto-Buddhism  would be very bad for Vatican business, indeed.
In Denmark, Lutheran professors and bishops are now busy baking layer cakes to celebrate the 1517 Reformation (read: Deformation) of Dr Martin Luther, who was, of course, completely ignorant of the fact that his beloved eu-aggelion, or Gospel, was originally the Buddhist Sûtram.
One does not have to be a prophet to foresee the future. In Denmark, Sanskrit and Buddhist studies have been banned from the universities. It is now up to Japanese, Chinese  and other  scholars carefully to compare, word for word, the Greek text of the New Testament with the Sanskrit text of the Lotus Sûtram and other Buddhist gospels already identified by the few competent European and American  scholars active  in this important field of research.
Eventually, opposition to Comparative Gospel Studies, will diminish, and even Lutherans will find themselves willing to confess that they were, all along, deep in their hearts, Buddhists. A good English translation of the Lotus by H. Kern from the Sanskrit is available online. It is a must for all Christians interested in their own roots - according to Christ's own words.

May Zeus have mercy upon their souls!

[23-01-2016] Acharya S. in memoriam

 

Ms Murdock was a brilliant scholar and an admirable American woman. Her defence of the Mythicist position deserves serious consideration.
Of her book “Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of the Christ”, the great American NT scholar, Dr. Robert M. Price wrote: “A really fine introduction to the problem of the historical Jesus… The best of this genre – written with clarity, precision and conviction.”
Students of the Buddhist sources of the New Testament will enjoy our late friend's review of Prof. Michael Lockwood's “Buddhism's Relation to Christianity”. I sincerely hope that her writings on comparative religion and astrotheology will continue to find the many grateful readers they deserve.

Dr. Chr. Lindtner

[05-01-2016] Roskilde Bishop sanctions Hypocrisy

Roskilde bishop Peter Abraxas-Møller has just announced that Annette Berg may continue as a priest in the Danish Church. If she still believes  in reincarnation that is a matter between her and God. It cannot be denied that this decision  reflects a certain humane and tolerant attitude on the part of the Roskilde bishop - now very busy taking care of the global climate and preparing for the  great Layer Cake celebration of  Luther's Deformation.
There is a problem, however. What has here been sanctioned will prove fatal to the Lutheran church: If a bishop finds it  OK for his pastors to have a personal belief that is opposite to his or her  public or official belief, this means a sanction of  plain hypocrisy. In his Press Release (4-1-2016) our Roskilde bishop himself  commits a serious error when stating: "The study of theology at a university provides us with the tools that enable us to interprete the Bible and the confessional scriptures of the early church as well as of the Reformation."
He is quite mistaken. The truth is that a study of theology at one of the Danish universities does NOT provide the student with the tools required to obtain an honest understanding of, most of all, the New Testament. These 27 books are to a large extent translations from the Sanskrit and Pâli. All Danish professors of the New Testament ban the study of Sanskrit and Pâli as being a requirement for serious NT studies. Chr. Lindtner has warned them again and again. NT professor Mogens Menschensohn Müller stated the official position most clearly at the infamous  Q-conerence held in Roskilde, June 2015: We do not want to hear about (Buddhist) sources (in Sanskrit and Pâli)."
Not one single of the many "experts" present objected to his exorcism! All Danish priest have promised to preach the Euaggelion honestly as it really is. But the Euaggelion is the Sûtram (in Pâli: Suttam).
To avoid the charge of hypocrisy, they must take up the study of Sanskrit and Pâli. Shame on all the NT professors who will not do their Buddhist homework! Who will be the first honest Danish priest?

 

[31-12-2015] Who is THE Christmas BOY?

Christians all over the world have been busy celebrating the birth of a certain Jesus called (the) Christ. Of course, all the bishops and pastors know very well that there is no historical basis for the existence of Jesus Christ or for his birth on that day. They speak so much of love, but never of love of what really counts: love of truth. Otherwise they would have informed their ignorant sheep that this annual celebration is a celebration of mere myths, mainly Buddhist.
Any attentive reader of Matthew 2,8-14 must have been struck by the fact that the evangelist refers to "the boy" no less than six times. Obviously, Matthew wants  his reader to focus  on "the boy", the Greek being: to pai-di-on.
Why is this? Who is this to pai-di-on? Why these most unusual repetitions?
Any Buddhist familiar with the Sanskrit and Pâli sources of the first chapters of Matthew  can provide the simple answer to the question: who is to pai-di-on?
Matthew introduces the first book in the NT with the words: book of birth, Greek biblos geneseôs. The Sanskrit and Pâli original is Jâtakam, meaning book of birth, i.e. rebirth. All Buddhists are familiar with the numerous stories about the rebirth of bo-dhi-sat-tvas (nom. case). The accusative case is: bo-dhi-sat-tvam.What Matthew then goes on to relate is a new myth about the rebirth of bo-dhi-sat-tvam.
In Sanskrit sat-tvam means be-ing, which in Greek become to on (the first and the last syllable of the Greek to pai-di-on). No scholar will deny that the  Greek is a perfect synonym of the Sanskrit.
The Greek pai-di- is then a "translation" of the sound of the Sanskrit/Pâli bo-dhi.
If the reader finds this to be a strange way of translation, he is right, but he should also remember that this sort of bizarre rendering was very popular among even the best educated Christian "fathers", e.g. Origen. As was to be expected, Jewish rabbis also loved this sort of play on words.
When Christians celebrate the birth of their Saviour they actually celebrate one of the numerous rebirths of the Saviour of the Buddhists - bo-dhi-sat-tvas.
The holy scripture of all Buddhists is called a sûtram. The term is often taken by them  to mean "a good message", as if from su + uktam, well said. The Greek synonym is eu-aggelion, rendered as gospel. Often a sûtram contains a Jâtakam - or many stories of rebirths of bo-dhi-sat-tvas, or some of his disciples.
In 2015, the so-called Holy Father in Rome celebrated Christmas in what an honest historian would called Saint Putras Church.
There is a famous Buddhist Jâtakam according to which Sâri-Putras will be reborn as the head of the Church. Buddhist missionaries never forgot this famous prophecy (found in the ancient Sutta-Nipâtam and repeated in the Lotus Sutra.).
And so this Buddhist apostle eventually was reborn as the first bishop in Rome. His name had now been changed a little bit: He was now reborn or renamed as  Simôn Petros. The identity of the two SPs can be proved by any scholar familiar with the Buddhist scriptures. Virtually all the stories told about SP the First  are later on repeated by Christians now  speaking about SP the Second. In both sources SP is explicitly called "the first (among the other apostles)".
Strictly speaking we do not need to make the distinction, for both of them are mere products of Buddhist-Christian imagination. In a famous gospel  passage, the Christ - himself a mere Buddhist phantom - appoints SP as his successor. He uses the name Bar-Iônas in speaking to SP.
The bar- is Aramaic for son, in Sanskrit we have  -putras, a perfect synonym.  The second part of the word is -Iônas, which contains a pun of the Sanskrit Jinas, a synonym of Buddha(s). (Interested readers can identify the passages in the Lotus Sûtra).
So it is clear that SP - the First as well as the Second - is a son of Buddha, a Jina-putras = Bar-Iônas.
Summing up: When the Holy Father in Rome celebrates the annual  birth of to pai-di-on, it is obvious to a serious historian that it is the double SP who celebrates the rebirth of Bo-dhi-sat-tvam. The Holy Father loves to speak of the mystery of transformation.
We now see that this transformation is not that mysterious after all: It is the Roman ceremony that each year turns bo-dhi-sat-tvam into to pai-di-on.
That it is "mysterious" means that it is a simple hoax.
Normally, Christians reject the "Buddhist" belief in rebirth or reincarnation. They prefer something called resurrection.
But what they actually worship is the rebirth of bo-dhi-sat-tvam, which is also a sort of resurrection. So here we again have a simple hoax, or "pious fraud".

In 2008, the Swedish scholar Bert Löfgren published what is certainly  the best book on the great Roman hoax ever to appear in that language: Katolska kyrkans djupa  hemlighet. It can be ordered from www.recito.se. The title refers to the crypto-Buddhism  of the Roman church founded by the myhtical SP.

Our wish for the New Year is this: That the Holy Father and all the bishops will be honest about the source of their Christian beliefs.

Pope worships Bodhisattvam

 

[29-12-2015] Roskilde Bishop goes Layer Cake


As a rule, Danish bishops are willing to play almost any trick in the book so as to fool their white sheep into the fold of the Danish church. Nothing new about that. Roskilde bishop Peter Fischer-Møller now announces a huge layer cake contest in order to celebrate Luther and the reformation. In this game, a Danish woman, Annemette Voss, famous for baking cakes, plays a major role along with the bishop himself.
Not only can she bake, she can also write about what she bakes.  The title of her book "Kage-karma", i.e. Cake Karma.
On November 11, 2015, the bishop published a press announcement where he defined the belief of the Danish church.
The belief in karma, found in Buddhism and in Hinduism, is incompatible with the official belief of the church, which says:
1. Life in this world is valuable in itself and given by God,
2. Soul and body form a unit,
3. Only the grace of God can save us
4. Faith in our resurrection depends on the fact that Christ was resurrected on Easter Sunday.
Comments:
ad 1: It is a matter of common experience, that life in this world is anything but valuable in itself. To hold God responsible for the endless variety of suffering and miserable forms of life is simple blasphemy.
ad 2: If soul and body formed a unit, all would be lost once the body dissolves. Or we would have a soul separated from the body, in which case the two would not form a unit. We would be souls without bodies, i.e. ghosts (as claimed by veteran madcap theologian Old Ted Jørgensen).
ad 3. If life in this world is valuable in itself, as claimed, why would one want God to save us?  Who wants to be saved from something valuable?
ad 4. A recent debate involving many of Peter´s fishy colleagues has demonstrated that the doctrine of physical resurrection is plain nonsense. Apart from that, it has been shown by Indologists that all these stories about resurrection are Buddhist fables.

The alert reader can easily expand the list of lies and absurdities for himself.
The great Layer Cake contest is announced to celebrate the mad German monk - as Luther wrote about himself - and his crazy ideas adopted by dishonest Danish bishops.

Celebrating the Lutheran Deformation


Before the Reformation, bishops were among the richest men in the country. The current bishops are still very well paid, but on the average not as wealthy as their Catholic forerunners. But they are no less corrupt, if corrupt means prepared to fool the common people with silly theological lies.
All Danish priests know very well that if no coffee is served, their churches will be almost empty, and they themselves in the long run out of job. Add cakes to the coffee, and the future looks more promising.
Men, who make a good living by way of deception, will of course, abhor the prospect of being held responsible for their deeds.  Hence it is understandable that they reject any idea of Buddhist karma, a law of moral retribution. No normal criminal wants to face the music of the law of karma! The four fundamental truths of the Danish church (above) are simply based on deliberate deception. So perhaps, after all, a Lutheran layer cake may serve as a great new  symbol of the current state of affairs in the Danish church.
There is a unity of soul and body. The spirit resides on the tongue, the soul in the stomach, and the grace of God consists in the lie that this   primitive mode of life may go on forever and ever.
Annette Berg has been condemned for advocating karma, and Annemette, the new saint, will probably be ordered to remove the term karma from the title of her book about cakes.
Empty churches means empty pockets, and empty pockets means empty promises. And one of the most empty promises of all promises offered by bishops has to do with baptism, as understood by Luther.
In an essay from October 2015, our Roskilde bishop thus promises that God is so full of love to all of us - provided we are Lutherans - that he gives us human dignity even if we are quite unworthy of such dignity.  It is not at all a question of being a good, honest and decent human being.  Not at all!
Instead, you must go to church and let yourself be baptized by some Lutheran priest. Thus a bit of water will turn you into a saint in a jiffy.
Any human being who has not suffered some sort of induced cerebral damage immediately discerns that this is a simple trick designed to attract ignorant citizens so as to fill first the church, then the pockets of the priests, etc.
Along with the baptism bogus, we have the lie about the Eucharist. The Lutheran joke is that you eat and drink the flesh and blood of the Lord. This sacrament is NOT to be taken symbolically in any way. We are dealing with primitive Christian cannibalism.
The two sacraments are thus in harmony with the Lutheran layer cake.
A bit of water makes you a saint, and some bread and wine almost turns you into a god, like JC.
The bishops are, of course, smart enough to understand that all this is bogus.
What they may not know - but what they should know - is that the two fundamental sacraments have been stolen from the Buddhists.
Lutherans claim that faith is sufficient for salvation. Salvation is a gift, not something you can obtain by being a good, honest and decent individual.

Therefore, to sum up, it would seem that Julian, the great emperor, was right when he spoke of the wickedness of the Christians. To claim that human dignity can be obtained by way of deception is an irresponsible denial of true human dignity, a denial reducing humans to mere cannibals.

 

[05-11-2015] Gospel Denial in the Danish Church

Danish priests, including a bad  bunch of  bishops, are poorly  educated, very poorly  educated.  Thus the bishop of Roskilde, following in the tracks of the Copenhagen bishop - both of them called Peter - will not allow their  evangelical priests to use the word reincarnation. Instead, they should preach fairy tales about  "resurrection" -an extremely obscure term, that, if it has any deeper meaning, amounts to much the same as reincarnation.
Had they known the Buddhist sources  of the New Testament, they would have known that Buddha was reborn as Jesus, and that Sâri Putras was reborn as Simôn Petros. They would have known that the Greek term for "Gospel", euaggelion is a translation of the Sanskrit synonym sûtram. They would have known that the four gospels incorporate numerous translations from the Buddhists gospels (SDP & MSV).
Had they enjoyed a  decent education they would have known that without the  Buddhist doctrine about reincarnation there would have been no such thing as the New Testament - a typical product of Mahâyâna propaganda. Thus the traditionally  poor education of Danish priests has lead to Gospel Denial.

Resurrection! and/or
reincarnation?!

 

[02-11-2015] The possible origin of Matthew 27's resurrection of the saints in the Lotus Sutra.

At the head of the pantheon of  American theologians, we find Prof. Robert M. Price, aka Wodan, here offering a welcome solution to the old puzzle of the identity of the bodies of the holy men mentioned in Matthew 27.

Danish NT prof. M. Menschensohn suggests, in his commentary on Matthew,  that they may have been OT prophets. Good grief!  The historical truth is rather different, as already pointed out by Chr. Lindtner years ago in the oldest wooden church in Granhult, Sweden.

 

[17-10-2015] Madcap theologians agree on real historical event that never really took place

Old Ted - said by the CPH bishop  to be the highest Danish authority in these matters, claims that there was no physical resurrection of Jesus Christ! - CL then asks: But, surely, the disciples saw and one even touched a living person considered by them to be Jesus Christ.
So, this fellow must have been someone else than their old teacher! And if the only evidence for physical resurrection and presence is the one provided by the disciples, we cannot even rely on that. The only witness left, therefore, seems to be  Old Ted! The disciples could only see JC if he was physical.
Old Ted said he was not physical.  And so Old Ted must have seen something that could be seen by no human eye. But if JC was invisible - how could even Old Ted have seen him? And if Old Ted could not see JC, how could Old Ted - especially after such a long time - claim that he was not physical? CPH bishop claims that he does not understand all this - but still believes it all to be true. The third main authority on resurrection is surely Mogens Menschensohn Müller. 
With regard to the more than 500 brothers, Dr. Menschensohn claims that they are never mentioned in any other source than 1. Corinthians.  Dr. Lindtner has shown the Buddhist source to Dr. Menschensohn, but Dr. Menschensohn claims that it cannot be seen - that it is, in other words - not physical. So much for three main authorities on Christianity in the kingdom of Denmark.

 

The usual suspects! From left to right: Old Ted, Bishop Peter Skov-Jakobsen and Dr. Menschensohn Müller. Physical resurrection = phoney baloney! Peter's 2015 Hokuspokus Confession:

Credo, quod nescio. Nescio, quod credo.

 

[14-10-2015] New book by prof. Z. Thundy

The Buddhist sources of the celebrated myth of the Death and Crucifixion of Jesus were first presented by Dr Lindtner at the International Conference at Klavrestrom in September 2003.
The Sanskrit text along with an English translation and comments  was then reprinted by Michael Lockwood in his book, Buddhism's Relation to Christianity, Chennai 2010, pp.  267-274.  Here is now Prof. Z. Thundy´s most recent book on  Buddhist Sources of  Gospel Narrative. (Available on amazon, click image below.)

His first book, Buddha & Christ: Nativity Stories  and Indian Traditions was published by Brill, Leiden 1993. Traditional New Testament scholars now recommend their students NOT to go ad fontes. 
Their jobs depend of the existence of a "historical Jesus" of whom they best admit that they know next to nothing. Kenneth Humpreys recently published a nice introduction to what he calls the ultimate heresy: Jesus Never Existed. It should serve as a fine introduction to New Testament studies in all universities.

 

[10-10-2015] THE FINGERS OF MARK  & THE  FEAR OF Q

According to an ancient Christian tradition, Mark the Evangelist, was called Stumpfinger - poor chap! But wait a moment! Now here  you have a painting by Titian showing Mark with his handicap.

Next to Mark Stumpfinger  you have an image of Eve Marie Becker, a German expert on Mark,  and professor of New Testament fairy tales, University of Aarhus. Could it be that Eve Marie wants to remind us of Mark? A glance at her left hand might suggest so. As for  the fingers of Mark, here is an extract from the African Christian Biography providing a fanciful interpretation of  Stumpfinger:

The most ancient prologue to the gospel "According to Mark," the so-called "Anti-Marcionite," preserved only in Latin, unfortunately begins within a lacuna but resuming just where the first preserved word is "Mark," of whom it is then stated that he had related whatever is now missing from this text, but of whom a most peculiar description is found indicating he "was called 'Stumpfinger' (Latin "colobodactylus" from the Greek "kolobodaktulos") because for the size of the rest of his body he had fingers that were too short"; this prologue also knows Mark as "interpreter for Peter" who after Peter's death "wrote this gospel in the regions of Italy," a notion reaffirmed in the completely preserved comparable prologue for the gospel "According to Luke" known in both Greek and Latin texts (Grant 1946: 92-93; Aland 1978: 532-533).

The descriptive comment on Mark's handicap, "he of the 'maimed finger'" or "a man whose fingers were thumbs" (Goodspeed 1937: 145; McNeile 1953: 26-27, with other suggested interpretations), though uncertain whether to be taken literally or metaphorically, is reiterated rather exclusively only in one later Greek context by Hippolytus (c. 155-235) [Refutation VII. xviii; cf. ANF V (1885) 112; Aland 1978: 541].

The real explanation is rather different. As so often when you have a puzzle in a Christian text, you have to trace the Buddhist source for the proper explanation. The Latin term, based on the Greek, is a compound: colobo-daktylus.
The Greek is based on the Sanskrit compound, a synonym: kutila-angulikayâ, with a stump or crooked  finger. The Greek/Latin compound is as unique as the Sanskrit original. In the Buddhist source it says that KuMâRaS - the Buddha as a baby -   bends his fingers so that they form a  hook that enables him to draw an extremely heavy golden bowl that not even 500 horses were able to pull!
The Sanskrit term  for the golden cup is PâTRî. That explains  not only how KuMâRaS becomes MaRKoS, but also how PâTRî  becomes the interpreter of Peter (genitive form: PeTRi). The bowl becomes Peter! The consonants are the same. The Sanskrit kutilla-- becomes colobo-, and the finger(s) remain finger(s).
The example is by no means unique, but rather quite typical of  how Buddhist fairy tales were transformed into Christian fairy tales. Plays on words thus turned old fables into new fables. Once this had been done, the next task for the theologians would be to pretend that the fables actually contained profound historical facts.
Nearly all the fairy tales of KuMâRaS and his Buddhist buddies are like that, making, in the final analysis, New Testament exegesis a lucrative play on words. References to the Sanskrit source etc, may be found in Michael Lockwood: Buddhism´s Relation to Christianity, Chennai  2010, p. 233. Danish students may want to compare Holger Mosbech: Nytestamentlig  Isagogik, Copenhagen 1946, p. 178.
Mosbech offers further fanciful interpretations. When Chr. Lindtner tried to point out the Buddhist source of Mark Stumpfinger at the Q Conference in Roskilde, June 2015, he was immediately interrupted by another German New Testament professor, Heike  Omerzu. Here is a quote from Heike Omerzu spelling out  the purpose of the Q Conference (email to participants, May 21st):

"The issue  we would like  to address is NOT an 'identification' of Q, but to question what is at stake in the quest   for sources and which difference  this makes for gospel interpretation."

In plain words: The leading Danish New Testament theologians do NOT want to hear about the sources of the New Testament. Prof. Mogens Menschensohn Müller made that point even more clear, when he yelled to Dr Lindtner on the last day of the conference: "NO MORE SOURCES!"
The general conclusion seems evident: Leading Danish theologians are not really interested in the historical  Jesus, and certainly not interested in  Q being properly identified. What is at stake is simply their own survival.

 

[06-10-2015] Warning! More new Greek sources of Buddhism and Christianity!

Several veteran scholars of Sanskrit, Buddhism, Christianity and comparative religion have made the sad experience that it is virtually impossible to find an independent publisher willing to bring out research dealing with the historical origins of major world religions.
There are many  good reasons to maintain that  the major religions have purely mythical origins. But who will publish a book or a paper claiming that Jesus or Buddha never existed!
One of the few exceptions to this  deplorable rule is the BRAHMAVIDYÂ,  Adyar Library Bulletin published by the  Adyar Library and  Research Centre (based in Chennai). Since 1937 it has presented valuable  studies on   religion, philosophy and various aspects of Sanskrit and other Oriental  literature as well as editions  and translations.
The most recent volume appeared a few weeks ago: Radha S. Burnier  Commemoration Volume (actually Vols  78-79/ 2014-2015). There are eight scholars on the Board. The Director is Dr.  T. Narayanan Kutty. Before his appointment as Direcor in April 2014, he was a Professor of Sanskrit with specialization in  Advaita Vedânta. Anyone interested in the controversial question of Buddhist sources of Christianity and of Greek sources of Buddhism as well as Christianity, may find new materials in the most recent essay by Chr. Lindtner: "What do you think about the Christ" (pp. 47-157).
Other papers dealing with Buddhist sources of the New Testament were published in previous issues of the ALB. There have been several attempts on the part of European theologians to suppress this sort of research. Danish NT professor Mogens Menschensohn Müller spoke for many, when he shouted, at a recent international conference, when Lindtner offered to show Buddhist sources of the New Testament: "NO MORE SOURCES!".

Radha S. Burnier (1923-2013). Not for earning, but for love of learning.

 

[27-06-2015] Report by Christian Lindtner on the international conference: "Gospel Interpretation and the Q-Hypothesis". Roskilde, 21-24th of June 2015.

 

 

[25-06-2015] POPE  AND CATHOLICS SUDDENLY INVITE  BUDDHISTS TO FRIENDLY DIALOGUE

The pope, as known, is a Buddhist Sâri-Putras disguised as the successor of Simôn Petros - the first mythical Mahâyâna  bishop of Rome. The Christian SP is a "reincarnation" or "transformation" of the famous Buddhist SP. This will be obvious to anyone who compares the relevant  Buddhist sûtras with the corresponding Christian eu-aggelion, or "gospel". The Greek term is a synonym of the Sanskrit.
That SP would turn up again was predicted already in Buddhist canonical scriptures. All Buddhist scholars are aware of this fact.
Jesus, i.e. Buddha in disguise, calls SP Bar-Iônas (Matthew 16,17), and Bar-Iônas translates the Sanskrit Jina-putas, son of Jinas (= Buddha = Jesus). At the same time, PuTRaS contains an obvious pun on PeTRoS, i.e. Peter. A Jina-Putras is, in turn, a synonym of a Bodhi-sattva(s).
The main source for the true ID of SP is, of course, the Lotus Sutra.
In the Lotus Sutra, chapter 7, the Buddha tells his disciples that they have all been his disciples in former states of existence, and that they will also be his disciples in future worlds, in other realms - although under different names. (See W.E.Soothill, The Lotus of the Wonderful Law, Oxford 1930 (and later reprints), p.  136.
The NT  proves the truth of this prophecy.
The pope knows very well that he has, as it were, a real identity problem.  It is very easy for Buddhist scholars to expose  him and his 264 predecessors as imposters - Buddhists under different names. The same goes for educated Catholic scholars (See Michael Fuss, Buddhavacanam & Dei Verbum, Leiden 1991).  They know that Rome has a problem, a real problem.
Why not try to solve problems in a friendly way?
He, therefore, has very good reasons for inviting Buddhists to a "friendly dialogue", with emphasis on "peace" and "fraternity".

But the path to friendship, peace and fraternity must be paved by honesty and courage and historical truth.
How will Buddhist scholars handle this challenge? Can there be friendship without honesty?
Lutherans also have a problem of their own with regard to the Buddhists sources of the New Testament gospels. This became abundantly clear during the past few days  at the Roskilde conference on "Gospel Interpretation and Q-Hypothesis", organized by the Faculty of Theology,  Copenhagen University, and sponsored by the Velux Foundation.  As veteran Danish professor of NT, Mogens Müller, dictated: We do NOT want to hear about Buddhist sources!
Finally, be sure to listen to what the brilliant and broadminded  American  theologian Dr. Robert M. Price, has to say about the Lotus Sutra and the New Testament, on Bible Geek, June 10, 2015.

 

[14-06-2015] Why is the Gospel fourfold?

Scholars of the New Testament will be taking up this old problem of the fourfold Gospel at the Roskilde Q-Conference 21-24th of June 2015. Professor Francis Watson has discussed the puzzle in his recent book: Gospel Writing. A Canonical Perspective. Here is a youtube-interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuA6OBR_abA

A possible solution ignored by Watson is offered here by the great American theologian Dr. Robert M. Price. A Buddhist key to the puzzle of the fourfold Gospel canon.

http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-20430/TS-983542.mp3

Dr. Price has just published "The Human Bible" 2014. This very important work contains references to Buddhist sources normally ignored by other NT theologians.

On May 22. 2015 Dr. Price also discussed the problem of Buddhist sources to the New Testament.

http://recordings.talkshoe.com/rss20430.xml

Here is an image of Dr. Price in one of his possible previous incarnations as Wodan.

 

[14-06-2015] The Temptation of Buddha/Christ and the Fourth Gospel by Zacharias P. Thundy

 

[03-04-2015] A few good reasons for a more 2015 Happy Easter!

On March 31st 2015, Jørgen Demant (JD), vicar at Lyngby Kirke near Copenhagen, spoke about resurrection, doomsday and eternal life according to the early Christian church. Some thirty persons attended, among these Christian Lindtner and his son. Unexpectedly, Lindtner was invited by JD to give his views about the important but rather obscure idea of eternal life.
Finding it impolite to reject a kind invitation, Lindtner stood up and explained: First of all, it must be clear that Jesus Christ is not a historical person but a geometrical figure and a Jewish buddha. Bishop Irenaeus, whose name was mentioned by JD, wrote that Jesus is a name the number of which is 888.
To understand this, CL explained, you must be aware that the New Testament is a typical Pythagorean document. All words are numbers and all words and syllables have been carefully calculated according to certain rules.
To a Greek, a name is also a number. And, as we all know, the Greeks loved geometry. Since this fact — that Jesus is a geometrical figure — was new to all, CL continued, using the white walls of the ancient church as a blackboard, as it were: Among the most beautiful forms that meets the human eye, you will find, in two dimensions, the circle, in three dimensions the sphere. Start then with the 888 circle of Jesus, i.e. I+ê+s+o+u+s = 10+8+200+70+400+200 = 888.
Once the 888 circle is given, the inscribed polygons etc. are also given. That is an eternal truth of all life! Thus, the inscribed square is 800, and 800 is the number of the Greek kurios = Lord; or 800 is the number of the Greek pistis = faith. The 888 circle with the inscribed 800 square thus shows you an image of faith in Jesus. It also says that Jesus is Lord.
The cross, i.e. the two diameters add up to 565.6, i.e. 565 or 566. Here, you see Jesus on the cross of the two diameters! Here, 565 says estin = is; 566 says ho monogenês = the only begotten. So far, then, the drawing tells us that Jesus, the only begotten is the Lord. The pentagram is 1344.5, and 1345 is  ´Ioudaiôn, of the Jews. So we learn that Jesus is the Lord of the Jews. The hexagon is 848.4; and 848 is basileus, or king. So, he is also king of the Jews. Moreover, the "fish" in the 888 circle is 592; and 888 and 592 add up to 1480 — which is the number of Christ, Greek Khristos.
Double up, and you get 2960, the number of the title Son of Man, huios tou anthrôpou (680+770+1510). Numerous other names, titles and surnames of Jesus Christ are given in the New Testament. All of these are, without a single exception, derived logically from the 888 circle.
This is the meaning of the phrase "the word of God" — ho logos tou theou = 1697. 1697 is the number of six diameters inscribed in the initial 888 circle. It is also the number of two inscribed hexagons. The Greek logos, being the Latin ratio, refers to the basic mathematical or geometrical ratio. The ratio that determines the numerical relationship between e.g. the circumference of the circle and its inscribed polygons, will never change.
The life of the given ratio is "eternal". It is eternal, and it is only in this geometrical context that we can speak of eternal life. "How can we gain comfort from such an understanding of Jesus", I was asked. "Keep Pythagoras in mind", was CL´s answer. According to Pythagorean wisdom we must create geometry in our soul. This also means harmony, for the number of Christos = 1480 is also the number of the Greek phrase: The law of Harmony = ho nomos tês harmonias = 70+430+508+472 = 1480. Coming back to the 888 circle, the octagon is 864, which is the number of Pythagoras.
The 1345 pentagram is the number of ho Orpheus. In other words: When we go to church to hear the word of God, we go there to learn more about, to worship, Orpheus and Pythagoras. A Christian church is, in other words, a place, a sanctuary, for all who admire the achievements of the ancient Greek theologians to assemble. The God in question is, of course, Zeus, the Father of Athena = Zeus Athênês = 612+276 = 888.
The father of Jesus is no other than Zeus, the heavenly father, known to all from Homer. His mother is no other than  Athena, mother and virgin at the same time. Need it be said that this is mythology and geometry — not history? Subsequently, the question of the source of all the myths and fables, that are transmitted in the New Testament came up. Lindtner explained to the good vicar that we are here dealing with translations done from Sanskrit and Pâli.
Without a knowledge of these Buddhist languages, the New Testament cannot be understood properly. Lindtner has often made this clear to Danish theologians, most recently when Anders-Christian Jacobsen defended his doctoral dissertation on Origen at the University of Århus. No Sanskrit, no Pâli: no serious New Testament scholarship. The 27 books of the New Testament are by and large a mosaic of Mahâyâna and Old Testament or Jewish ideas.
We are, in short, dealing with typical Mahâyâna propaganda, with a collection of Buddhist and Jewish fables on a Greek geometrical basis. Vicar JD was not unwilling to accept the term "narrative", but had problems with the phrase "Buddhist fables". Is it not sufficient that all these stories about Jesus etc. are "nice or good stories"? How, then, asked Lindtner, can we avoid pure subjectivity and contradictions etc.? How can we distinguish truth from falsehood?
Lindtner, as a historian and philologists, challenged the Lyngby vicar to arrange a synod of Danish theologians. Lindtner offered to demonstrate, by comparing the Sanskrit, Pâli and Greek word for word, how the evangelists had done their creative "translations". As an example of such translations, CL provided the Lyngby vicar and a few other interested with a copy of his handout from AIAS, Aarhus 27-02-2015: The Buddhist sources of the "more than 500 brothers", and other primary sources.
Asked why he wanted to bring all this up by the vicar, Lindtner, amazed, answered: Because it is my academic duty, and a question of personal integrity, we must do our utmost to  be true to history. But is historical truth that important, replied the good vicar?
Can we not do with nice fables? Being only too familiar with this objection from previous debates with Danish theologians, Lindtner spelled it out that to avoid insanity, we must make a sharp distinction between truth and fiction. The old tale about geocentrism, for instance, should no longer be told in church. Likewise with the fable of Jesus Christ. They may be nice, sure, but they are not true to fact!
Jesus is, Jesus was, and Jesus will remain an eternal geometrical figure. But he never was a historical person. Surely, you can, as the priests still do, tell all sorts of stories and fables about him. But the priest must also inform his audience that the fables are just fables, most of them Buddhist fables. The celebrated creed of the 12 apostles — all Buddhists —are but fables.
It is simply dishonest to pretend otherwise. This point has often been made by Lindtner, e.g. is his letter to the editor of "Det Grønne Område" (9-1-2015):"Præsternes fortællinger er sandt nok buddhistiske eventyr" - The fables of the priests are really Buddhist fables. The old church in Lyngby was, of course, not the place to talk about the Pythagorean sources of early Buddhism. Lindtner has done so elsewhere.
Nor was there time to talk about the Pythagorean sources of the books of Moses. But the main point was spelled out and will continue to be spelled out: Without the Pythagoreans and without the Buddhists, we would have no such things as the New Testament and the churches of Christianity. "I am the life" — eimi hê Zôê = 65+8+815 = 888.
Thus Jesus identified himself with the 888 circle.

Lyngby church

 

 

[16-03-2015] Alexandrian Crypto-Buddhism

For how long will the New Testament  teratologians go on ignoring the numerous and  obvious  Mahâyâna sources of the New Testament and the early Alexandrian school of Pantaenus, Clement and Origen? On February 27th  2015,  Dr. Lindtner  presented the Buddhist sources of "the more than 500 brothers" (1 Cor. 15,6), etc. at Aarhus  Institute  of Advanced Studies. 
The theology and soteriology of Origen often reads like a copy  of that of the celebrated  Lotus Sûtra. Buddhist sources have been available for so long that there is no longer any scholarly  excuse for ignoring them. As pointed out by Lindtner, opposing ex auditorio,  there can be no doubt that Simôn Petros called Bar-Iônas is no other than a "reincarnation" of the famous  Sâri-putras, the Jina-putras of the Lotus Sûtra. Behind Bar-Iônas we have Jina-putras.
He is, as known,  the first  among the 12(00) in both sources. We are here dealing with typical Mahâyâna propaganda.

 

To download the overhead on the picture above click: Alexandrian Crypto-Buddhism.

 

Photographer - Ib Nicolajsen

 

 

[14-03-2015] Emperor Julian on the Wickedness of the Christians

Recent commotions in Danish media concerning the resurrection and miracles of a certain  Jesus - who never even existed - have reminded us of  the words of Emperor Julian, as set out in the introduction to his admirable essay "Against the Galileans":

"It is, I think, expedient to  set forth  to all mankind the reasons by which I was convinced that the fabrication (skeuôria)  of the Galileans  is a fiction (plasma) of men composed by wickedness (kakourgia). Though it has in it nothing divine, by making full use  of that part of the soul which loves fable and is childish and foolish, it has induced men to believe that the monstrous tale (teratologia)  is truth. " (translated from the Greek by Wilmer Cave Wright).

Little  has changed since that great emperor wrote these words of truth!

 

[07-03-2015] Majority Rights Radio

Christian Lindtner speaks with GW and DanielS on Majority Rights Radio about the madness of Holocaust denial, the decline of the higher institutions of education since 1968 and the Buddhist sources of Christianity and Greek sources of Buddhism: Majority Rights Radio.

 

[03-02-2015] New book by Dr. Chr. Lindtner: REVELATION OF BODHICITTAM

 

Tibetan text, Sanskrit fragments, with English and German translations, Introduction and Notes.
- Includes a new Essay on the Greek sources of early Buddhism, and some of the Buddhist sources of the New Testament, e.g. 1 Corinthians 15 (Paul's two bodies, physical resurrection, etc.).
May now be ordered directly from the German publisher: www.angkor-verlag.de

 

[27-12-2014] We are not offended!

According to the news, Vatican arrests a young Ukranian woman for offending the faithful on St. Peter's Square. By baring her chest, she made the point: god is a woman. This is in part correct, for the father of the Jews, including Jesus, is called ho Abba = 70+6 = Athênê. The mother of Jesus is no other than Athênê, known to all as virgin and mother at the same time.
The Jews identified her with ho Abba, reducing thereby mom and dad to one. Zeus was once swallowed by his father, now the Jewish god swallowed the daughter of Zeus! Fair enough!
But quite as important: Since Saint Peter, or Simôn Petros, is certainly no other than the Buddhist Sâri-Putras in Roman disguise, the Pope should immediately have praised her for calling the world's attention to this simple and obvious historical truth that the Vatican has done its best to cover up for ages.
Here, in Denmark, Copenhagen bishop Peter - the Mirage in the Manger - also tells silly fables about Jesus and Saint Peter. Hence, we shall not be offended in case the young Ukranian blonde should decide to appear as a new Eve, e.g. here in Copenhagen.
Should the Vatican authorities be so unwise as to keep her in arrest, she may, if possible, seek solace in her confinement by consulting www.jesusisbuddha.com for further details about the Vatican delusions.

 

[23-12-2014] Merry Christmas: The Mirage in the Manger.

Here, on German TV, Guido Knopp interviews three erudite German New Testament theologians. The question is: Is Jesus a myth? Two theologians think or feel that Jesus is/was a historical person.
But they fail to produce any convincing rational argument for what they "feel" to be true. He is "certainly, probably" a real man! Dr. Annette Metz is so silly as to claim the story of Jesus must be true since Jesus has such a horrible end that it cannot simply be an invention! Does that mean that all horrible stories are real?
Dr. Detering, on the other hand, provides good, but insufficient arguments to support his claim that Jesus is just a typical Hellenistic myth, like that of Osiris, Attis etc. The basic fault or shortcoming of the three theologians is that they IGNORE two facts: 1) The obvious Buddhist sources, and 2) the common gematria of the Buddhist and Christian gospels. Germany still has many fine scholars.
It is a scandal that the NT scholars simply ignore the empirical evidence right before their eyes! - The second scandal is that German historians of religion still follow blindly in the tracks of the ignorant NT scholars.
In Denmark, Peter, bishop of Copenhagen, has still not found the time to have a closer look at the Buddhist sources of his Christian faith. Instead, he says, he now takes delight in "gazing at Jesus, the baby in the manger". In Denmark, at this time of year, there are thousands of theologians absorbed in dreaming about the mirage of the Jewish king who never existed.
NT Christianity is a typical example of the Mahâyâna propaganda. As Nâgârjuna often said: All things, including the Buddhas, are empty, like a dream and like a mirage. Christmas, then, is the time of the mirage in the manger.

The bishop as the baby...

Voltaire: Those who can make you believe in absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

Thomas Jefferson: I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.

Buddhist scholar: This is just a pirate copy of a celebrated Buddhist myth (found in SBV I, pp. 44-45). First, the baby was placed in a FUR JACKET (Sanskrit: ajina-sâtikâ) . Nice and cosy! Then the gods arrived to worship, bringing three different gifts, the last being a câmaram, which in Matthew 2: 11 obviously becomes smyrnan. The OT source (Jes 60:6) only mentions two kinds of gifts. The third  is from us! The OT and the Buddhist source were combined, as usual. Myth upon myth!

 

[19-10-2014] The new Danish Reformation comes to Koldmose Kirke in Jutland.

Unlike Copehagen bishop Peter, who speaks of the importance of openness and dialogue, but actually  has no time to talk about the Buddhist sources of the resurrection, reincarnation etc., the good pastor at Koldmose Kirke is a friendly and open-minded Christian.
Here, outside the entrance to the church, Dr Lindtner tells John about Jesus as the 888 circle; about the Buddhist sources of the  holy mass, about Jesus as the light of the world, i.e. the light of the sky and the sun  right above our heads.

Jesus is the light of the sun that "walks" on the surface of the water. - Note the geometrical windows below: The 800 square of Lord (kurios) and Faith (pistis) in the 888 circle of Jesus. The square inscribed in the 800 square is 565.5, which is "is" = estin, or 566 = the only begotten = Greek ho monogenês. So it says Jesus is Lord, etc.

Jesus 888 often says "I am" = Greek egô eimi, the number of which is 873 - the decagon inscribed in the 888 circle of Jesus. Once you know this, you can easily identify "the grain of wheat", "the light of the world", etc. All on the basis of the 888 circle.
You just have to know a bit about the Greek alphabet, with which Jesus identifies himself when admitting that he is the first and the last letter of that alphabet. The Greek alphabet consists of 8+8+8 letters!
The two faculties of theology in Aarhus and Copenhagen never tell you these things! Hence, a new Reformation is urgently called for.

What are we to think of bishops and professors who ignore the meaning of the Gospel of Jesus?

 

[14-10-2014] Dr. Christian Lindtner confronts the Bishop of Copenhagen with the Buddhist sources of the resurrection and reincarnation. Bishop does not know and does not want to know.

 

 

[07-10-2014] Lady Michele Renouf: Has philologist Dr. Christian Lindtner discovered the true basis of our mutual Christian tradition in Greek Geometria?

 

 

[17-05-2014] Chr. Lindtner speaks about the pythagorean sources of Buddhism and Christianity at the university of Saint Petersburg.

 

 

 

Time for the Lindtnerean Revolution

"What is needed is a paradigmatic shift - a Lindtnerian Revolution - in outlook, which, of course, will entail  a  change in outlook far more unsettling to traditional Christianity than  even Darwin´s Theory of  Evolution has been!" (Quote from Prof. em. Michael Lockwood, Buddhism's Relation to Christianity, Chennai & Delhi 2011, p. 241)
Also see the video on youtube with Norman Lowell and Lady Michele Renouf, click below:

 

 

 

[29-04-2012] Faith as (small or big as) a Mustard Seed

 

It is a great pity that NT theologians still have the chutzpah of ignoring the numerous Buddhist sources of almost all the parables of the mythical Jesus.
The German NT scholar Heinrich Weinel in his  book on the parables of Jesus (Die Gleichnisse Jesu, 1903 & 1910) , was willing to admit that Jesus had been influenced by Indian parables, above all that of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke 19:12-27).
It was the German Indologist  H. Jacobi who first translated it (from the Uttarâdhyayana 7:15-21), and it runs: " Three merchants set out on their travels, each with his capital; one of them gained there much, the second returned with his capital, and the third merchant came home after having lost his capital. This parable is taken from common life; learn (to apply it) to the Law. The capital is human life, the gain is heaven; through the loss of that capital man must be born as a denizen of hell or brute animal...He who brings back his capital is (to be compared to) one who is born again as a man...But he who increases his capital is (to be compared to) one who practises eminent virtues; the virtuous, excellent man cheerfully attains the state of Gods." (Quoted from Richard Garbe, Indien und das Christentum, Tübingen 1914, p. 42; reprinted Süderbrarup 2004)
Weinel admitted that Jesus may have been influenced by this Indian parable, but found that Jesus changed it so that it became more profound, more original, more poetical.
The reader may judge the poetical originality of Jesus for himself! -
Let us now look at the celebrated parable of the mustard seed! It is about the power of faith.
According the Matthew 17:20, if you have faith (pistis) as (big - or small?) as a mustard seed (kokkos sinapeôs, you can order a mountain to go from here to there, and it will do so.
According to Luke 17:6, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you can order a mulberry tree (suka-minos) to pull itself up by the roots and plant itself in the sea, and it will.
According to Mark 11:20, Jesus cursed a fig tree (sukê). He then said, that if you have faith in God, you can tell this mountain to get up and throw itself in the sea, and it will.
All this is about "little faith" - oligo-pistia - the word (a compound) only appears here (Matthew 17:20), and, as I have pointed out elsewhere (infra), translates the noun corresponding to the Sanskrit adjective  alpotsukas, from alpa(s) + utsukas ( = alpotsukas, " having little faith"). As a rule, it is used by the Lord only.
Jesus speaks of faith, of a mustard seed, of a mountain,  of the sea (ocean), and of a mulberry tree, or a fig tree.
The Buddhist source of all this is to be found - as to be expected by now - in the usual source, MSV, I, pp. 186-187.
The Buddhist legend in brief is this:
Udâyî (nom. ) has faith (prasâdas) in the Sâkya monk, i.e. Sâkya-munis (the Buddha from Kapilavastu). He goes to the king, the father of Sâkyamunis. The king is impressed by the peace of mind (upasamas) of Udâyî. He asks Udâyî , if Sâkyamunis also has such a peace of mind?
Udâyî confirms that this is so, but that the peace of mind of  Sâkyamunis is very different. His own is small like that of a mustard seed (sarsapa-vat) whereas that of Sâkyamunis is huge like  the Sumeru mountain. Moreover, his own is small like that of the amount of water in the footstep of a cow (gospada-vat), whereas that of the teacher in whom he has faith, is profound as the ocean (samudra).
I have already pointed out how MSV has served as a source for numerous passages and ideas found in the NT gospels. Hence there can be no room for doubt that the parables of Udâyî served as a source of the parables of Jesus.
I have also already pointed out elsewhere (infra), that if  Jesus was responsible for the parable of the ten virgins in  Matthew 25:1-13, then Jesus must have been  a great Sanskrit scholar. Only a Sanskrit scholar could have rendered it into Greek. This parable is to be found in the MPS (a part of the MSV; only in Sanskrit, not in the Pâli version).
The parable of the mustard seed presupposes a direct knowledge of the Sanskrit:
The version of Udâyî is so plain and rational that no further comments are needed. His own faith in Sâkyamunis has given him peace of mind, but his own peace of mind is very small compared to that of his Lord.
Comparing the original  to the "transcreation" in the NT gospels (cf. also the Gospel of Thomas 20), we learn a lot about the "poetical originality" of "Jesus". We are dealing with wild and irrational exaggerations. All is mixed up. The pirate copy is by no means more "profound" than the original, but - deliberately so - highly paradoxical. The intention of "Jesus" is to puzzle and thereby also to attract his readers.
Accordingly,  his obscure parables have puzzled his readers ever since.
It is now easy to identify the suka-minos in Luke (and the sukê in Mark). The suka-minos is a pun on Sâkya-munis. The mulberry tree as well as the fig tree refer to Sâkya-munis.
He was cursed by Jesus, he was thrown into the ocean by the new faith.
The Indian king of Dharma has thus  been replaced by the Jewish king of Righteousness.
That trick of transcreation  is a part of what - quite understandably - had to remain the Secret of the Christ. Behind Jesus we find the Buddha. Early "insiders" must have been aware of the true identity.
And it is still a question of faith, and the old Buddhist  ideal of heaven remains the same.

  (Note to the reader: Here and infra I have used a simplified transcription of Sanskrit and Pâli  words, leaving out some diacritical marks on sibilants etc.)

 

[25-04-2012] Mary Magdalene and the Empty Tomb, John 20

This is a legend based, as so often, on two or more different Buddhist sources, the SDP and the SBV of the MSV.
From the SDP we have the motive of the empty stûpa(s) that contained the Lord. The Sanskrit stûpas becomes  the Greek taphos, "grave". In John 20:7, the San. stûpas also becomes Greek topos, (empty) place, where the body of the Lord used to be located. The sense and sound (consonants) of the original Sanskrit have been preserved well. The "translation" is faithful to sound and sense at the same time, as so often.
The purpose of the legend is to "prove" the Resurrection of Jesus. All the NT "proofs" have, as I have shown by now, been taken from Buddhists sources. They do, therefore, not prove any historical event, but they do prove that the NT to a large extent is a "pirate copy" of Buddhist sources.
Things take place, not "out there", but "in here" -  in the imagination of the authors. We are, to be sure, not dealing with mere parallels, but with a direct literary dependence - as can be seen from the following observations:

John 20:1 starts out with the odd phrase:

tê de mia tôn sabbatôn,

which is a DIRECT RENDERING af the eight syllables of the very common introductory Sanskrit:

ekasmin khalu samaye

with the frequent  variant:

tena khalu samayena

On one, reportedly (khalu) occasion; on that, they say, occasion; once upon a time.

Note how nicely eka- becomes mia, how tena becomes tê de, how the final  samaye/samayena becomes sabbatôn. Even the Gr. de retains some of  the force of the San. khalu. The San. khalu indicates, in Mahâyâna usage, that this is something that is supposed to have taken place: "it is said, for sure, reportedly".

The legend of the woman who in the early morning sees the empty bed of Yasâh is reported in the SBV (I, p. 141) in these words:

1. adraksîd - (she) saw
2. anyatamâvaruddhikâ -a certain harem woman
3. sarâtram eva - while it was still night
4. suptapratibuddhâ - (when she) had woken up from sleep
5. Yasâh kumâro - prince Yasâs
6. mahâsayane - on the big bed
7. na drsyate - is not seen
8. iti - thus (she saw, or said).

John renders as follows, as a rule, with the same number of syllables, respecting the word order:

0. tê de mia tôn sabbatôn was, as said, based on a combination of San. tena khalu samayena, and ekasmin khalu samaye.

1. adraksîd, the verb, becomes erkhetai, she came; but the sense is retained in the blepei.

2. anyatamâvaruddhikâ, a certain harem woman, becomes Maria hê Magdalênê; but the anyatama- is also to be seen in the ho allos mathêtês, John 20: 3, 8.

3. sarâtram eva becomes prôi skotias, while still quite dark; the eti ousês renders the force of the emphatic San. eva.

4. This is applied to Jesus - Yasâh -  who was now raised, not from the bed, but from the dead, John 20:11. John refers to the graphê, scripture, i.e. the SBV, I p. 141. (Likewise, "Paul", in 1 Cor. 15.)

5. kumâras becomes kurios, and Yasâs becomes Jesus.

6. mahâsayane becomes eis to mnêmeion, to the tomb.

7. The na drsyate, he - kumâras/kurios = Jesus  - is not seen. This is the main motive.

8. The iti reflected in the ref. to graphê, John 20:9.

The story goes on: The woman runs to the father of Yasâh (Simon Peter), who suspests that his son may have been taken away by robbers, and therefore sends out his men to look for him etc. In the end, Kumâras turns up again - safe and sound. There is a sermon about rebirth in heaven - svarga-kathâ. There is a teaching that is like a pure cloth, suddham vastram - the sudarion, linen cloths, in John 20:7. Jesus refers to his "brothers", John 20:17, and the original also refers to the four brothers of Yasâs (I, p. 146). Jesus refers to his father, who, in the original, is the father of Yasâs. The wife and the mother of Yasâs are also converted (I, p. 144), as are his four brothers (I, p. 146).

What Matthew, Mark and Luke have to report about the alleged resurrection can easily be traced, with several  nice details, to the same Buddhist sources, above all the MPS in the MSV.

The strange  mother of Joses, Mark 15:47, was the mother of Yasâs. The Jesus from Nazareth of Mark 16:6 was here Yasâs from the town - nagarî - of Vârânasî (I, p. 146). The FOUR brothers of Yasâs accounts for the FOUR brothers of Jesus, Matthew 13:55. Their names are listed SBV I, p. 146. Each of them is - as Yasâs - described as an agra-kulika-putras, i.e. as a son, putras, of an agra-kulika, belonging to a prominent (agra-) family, the nobility, the chief family". It is because of this relationship, that Yasâs is called a kumâras, prince. Here, in Matthew 13:55, Jesus himself is described as "the carpenter's son", ho tou tektonos huios - a direct rendering of the San. used for Yasâs and his brothers: agra-kulika-putras - seven syllables in the original and in the copy.

What went on in the mind of "Matthew" when he chose to render San. agra-kulika-putras by ho tou tektonos huios? Well, first of all, the putras at the end of the compound was no problem: putras becomes huios, son. Then he faced the five syllables agra-kulika. According to our dictionaries, kulika- means not only "of a good family", but also refers to the chief or head of a guild, even  an artist of high birth. Now, the father of Jesus was certainly of high birth, being "the son of David", Matthew 1:20. Moreover, the Greek tektôn can mean a craftsman or workman of almost any sort, a master in any art. The Greek tektôn can, therefore, be accepted as a fine rendering of the San. agrakulikas.

A summary will make all this come out more clearly: The main person is Yasâs, a kumâras, the son of an agrakulikas in Benares. Yasâs becomes sick and tired of life in the palace. One night he wakes up, sees the harem women, and leaves his big bed.

A little later, one of the concubines wakes up and sees the empty bed. She runs to the father of Yasâs, who suspects that his son may have been kidnapped for the robbers to collect a ransom. He sends out two groups of men to seek for the son. The son is found in the company of Bhagavân, who, by way of a miracle, makes Yasâs invisible so that his father cannot recognize him. John follows this story, but faces certain problems. John cannot give any natural explanation for the tomb of Jesus suddenly being empty. Why would kurios want to leave the grave?

Mary Magdalene faces the same problem. She suspects that "they" may have stolen the body of her Lord - but why would "they" want to do that? Certainly not to collect ransom money - for who would want to buy the dead body of Jesus? She then suspects the gardener - the invisble Kumâras - to have removed the body. But what would his motive have been? Perhaps to sell the grave to another? We do not know.

John then has to resort to a supernatural explanation - resurrection.
But even this notion is taken by combining two different Buddhists motives. On the one hand we often hear that humans can stay in hell for some time, and then come up again. Such a person is called a nârakas - which becomes Greek nekros, dead.
The other idea is that of a human being who wakes up from his/her sleep. The compound is supta-pratibuddhas, being awake again after having slept. By combining these two entirely different notions, John and the early Christians find Buddhist support for the idea of resurrection from the dead.

The authors of the gospels combined the motive of the empty bed of Kumâras with the motive of the empty stûpa(s) of a Tathâgata(s). Nearly all the other events having to do with Easter can be traced back to these Buddhist sources, above all the MPS.

The empty grave has, of course, often been discussed by theologians. Here, I will only mention the rare and learned book by J. Duncan M. Derrett, The Anastasis: The Resurrection of Jesus as an Historical Event (published by P. Drinkwater, 56 Church Street, Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, England, 1982).

In 1982, Dr. Derrett took it for granted that we were here dealing with an account of an historical event. But later on, in 2001, in his important book, The Bible and the Buddhists, Dr. Derrett was much more open to Buddhist influence.

 

[24-04-2017] The Washing of the Feet (John 13)

Some days ago the world was witness to Benedict XVI washing the (dirty?) feet of twelve priests. This queer ritual is based on what John 13:1-17 has to report about the behaviour of Jesus.

As far as I am aware, there are no Jewish or pagan sources for the odd notion of a master washing the feet of his disciples. But there is a Buddhist source. It is the Pâli version of the Mahâparinirvânasûtra, i.e. the Mahâ-parinibbâna-suttanta of the Dîgha-Nikâya (D. xvi. 1.22). It runs:

"Then the Lord dressed, took his bowl and garb (pâtra-cîvaram) and went with the group of monks to the rest-house, washed his feet, entered the hall, and took a seat against the centre pillar, with his face towards the East. The group of monks also, after washing their feet, entered the hall, and took seats around the Lord, against the western wall, and facing the East. And the Pâtali-village laymen (upâsaka) too, after washing their feet, entered the hall, and took their seats opposite the Lord against the eastern wall, and facing to the West."

Then follows what in Matthew 25:1-13 becomes the parable of the ten virgins. (This has been reprinted in Michael Lockwood's Buddhism's Relation to Christianity, p. 230). Our episode is not to be found in the San. version of the MPS.

Before they entered the rest-house etc., a water-pot and  an oil lamp had been placed there. This accounts for the lamps and the oil in Matthew. An oil lamp becomes oil and lamps. (In San. you cannot see from the compound itself!)

John uses two very rare nouns, namely niptêr and lention to render the Sanskrit pâtra(m) and cîvaram respectively. So when Lord Jesus was taking (labôn) the lention it was originally the Lord who took (âdâya) the cîvaram (garb). Jesus, in John's wild imagination, uses the pâtram or niptêr for water for washing the feet of his disciples.
The word for the bowl, pâtram, also becomes Petron (p-t-r-m/n). This is why Peter comes into the picture.

In the original three different groups wash their (own) feet. They do so before entering the hall, and that is quite natural. In John the Lord washes the feet of his disciples, but the disciples are also asked to wash the feet of one another. Not their own. That is not very natural.

So here we have a picture of quite a few people busy washing other peoples feet - but not their own!

Certainly, John had a sense of humor! Would he not have had a good laugh had he seen the Pope washing the feet of the twelve priests in 2012?

In a learned paper, "Domine, tu mihi lavas pedes?" ( Studio su Giovanni 13,1-30) Dr. Derrett (in Italian, reprinted in his Studies in the New Testament, Vol. III, Leiden 1982, pp. 130-160) has discussed most of the different interpretations of this curious incident where a teacher washes the feet of his students.

Why do theologians always tend to take for granted that the NT gospels are written by people with little or no sense of humor? Imagine a famous professor washing the feet of his students in class!

John also refers to Judas, the famous "traitor". But we now know that this Judas was concocted by combining various words etc. from the MPS having to do with Cundas, the last meal, the theft and with the unknown monk who was a traitor (see Lockwood, op. cit., p. 203).

All these events took place shortly before the death and resurrection of the Lord - in the Buddhist and in the Christian gospel. The Christian account of Easter is, in other words, a fanciful combination of Jewish and Buddhist elements.

 

[21-03-2012] Walking on Water and Peter´s Faith (Matthew 14:28-33 par)

 

According to Buddhist lore, a Buddha is in possession of supernatural faculties allowing him, the "God above the Gods", to fly like a bird in the sky, to pass unhindered through walls, to walk on water as if on solid ground etc. - to mention just a few of many similar miracles.

According to Greek mythology, Hercules could also walk on water. Like Jesus, Hercules is a son of the God, i.e. of Zeus.

The Jews of the OT said the same of their Lord, the God, kurios ho theos, whose proper name we are not allowed to mention.

Thus, in the Greek words of Job 9:8, God may be seen "walking around on the sea as on firm ground". Here, the Greek (but not the Hebrew, which is quite different!) runs: peripatôn hôs ep´ edaphous epi thalassês.

This is almost a literal translation of the Pâli: udake pi (abhijjamâno) gacchati sayyathâ pi pathaviyam (cit. Derrett, The Bible and the Buddhists, p. 70).

Matthew , in his usual way, combined the OT passage with this and other Buddhist passages when he composed his version of Jesus walking on water (Mt 14:22-33 par).
Mt 14:25 replaces the genitive of Job by writing: peripatôn epi tên thalassan. But Luke 6:48 retains the genitive of Job 9:8: peripatôn epi tês thalassês.

The German scholar Norbert Klatt has argued (1982 and 1990) - quite convincingly - that Matthew´s text must have been based on the Buddhist text, not vice versa (as Derrett had argued against Klatt 1982).

Comparing the Christian and Buddhist (mythical) reports, Klatt´s literary analysis revealed that they were congruent in the following points (Klatt, 1990, p. 29):

1. A person (the Lord, C.L.) is alone in a place of solitude

2. This person (the Lord, C.L.) is performing spiritual exercises (prayer/meditation)

3. Some time later this person walks about, on or in the water (peripatein, cankami, cankramati)

4. The waters are depicted as rough or powerfully rapid

5. The story changes its focus of attention and turns to another set of persons (disciples or Kassapa)

6. On the water is/comes a boat with several persons aboard

7. Those aboard the boat are astounded at the sight of the person walking on the water

8. They do not know who the person walking on the water is (and therefore ask him)

9. The person walking on the water identifies himself with the words "It is I"

10. Those in the boat wish to take the person walking on the water aboard

11. The person walking on the water enters the boat.

The concordance is obvious, and Klatt finds that the only way to explain it is to assume that the story of the walking on the water found its way "from one culture into another". (p. 30). The "borrowing is from the Buddhist source into the Christian gospels" (ibid.) Derrett, ten years later (BB, p. 70), wrote that already Martin Dibelius, the German theologian, in 1933, " rightly divined foreign influence". His own view is that the Buddhist and the Christian stories may here have "gained reciprocally." They are somehow historically related.

The main Sanskrit source is, to be sure, to be found in the Catusparisatsûtra (part of the MSV), chapter 24. This source escaped Klatt. The Buddha performs no less that 18 miracles, the purpose of which is to convert a famous teacher, Kâsyapa(s) and his 500 disciples. Miracle 18 gives the story of a great flood that arose in the river Nairanjanâ.
The Lord is now surrounded by water. He walks to and fro on a firm sandy spot (in the middle of the river). An ascetic, Kassapa/Kâsyapas, finding the Lord to be gracious, fears that he may be carried away by the flood. So he takes a boat made of tree and goes in search of the Lord.. He sees the Lord surrounded by water of more than the height of a full-grown man, walking around on a sandy spot. He asks: "Are you alive, great ascetic?" - "I am alive, Kâsyapa!". "Come aboard, great ascetic! Will you come into the boat made of one tree, great ascetic?" - "I come aboard, Kâsyapa." -
And the Lord accomplished such a performance of magic power that he, (his) mind concentrated, rose up to the boat made of one tree, as water arises. Then Urubilvâ-Kâsyapa thought: "It is marvellous, the extent to which the great ascetic possesses great supernatural power and authority. But I too am an Arhat."

The purpose in Matthew is the same as in the CPS: If you have faith in the teacher, as a son of God, you will be saved. The number 5000, mentioned in Matthew 14:21 links up with 500 in the original. The 5000 are also found in another Buddhist source, the SDP (see my essay from June 2010, reprinted in Michael Lockwood, Buddhism´sRelation to Christianity, Chennai 2010, p. 283).

Kâsyapas with his 500 disciples turn up again in Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:5-6, as Kêphas and more than 500 brothers. (The "more than" epanô, from yet another Buddhist source, MPS.)
A "structural concordance" may well be sufficient to establish a historical relationship, but to be on firm ground the broader context must also be taken into consideration, if possible.

What is decisive here, is that the Greek text of Matthew contains some Sanskritisms that can, of course, only be accounted for by assuming that the Sanskrit text enjoys the relative (chronological) priority.

These Sanskritisms in Matthew provide a "Buddhist fingerprint", as it were:

1. In the Greek of Matthew, two sentences are introduced by an euthus or eutheôs (Mt 14: 27 & 31). According to our Greek dictionaries euthus/eutheôs means "at once, immediately" - which does not make good sense here. In the Buddhist original atha introduces a new sentence, and means: then, and then. Hence the Greek has the sense of the Sanskrit. Here we have Sanskrit fingerprints.

2. The Greek kat´ idean in 14: 23 renders the Sanskrit ekânte, "aside", often said of the Lord.

3. In 14:28 & 29, the epi tên thalassan/epi thalassês of Job has been replaced by epi ta hudata, on the waters. This is highly revealing, for it reflects the San. udake, "on water". This noun was not derived from the quotation from Job! The San. and the Pâli had pi (from api) which in the Greek becomes epi.

4. Kâsyapas who had not yet been converted by the Buddha - the great ascetic - is transformed into Peter, who had little faith. Now we understand why Peter is also called Kêphas (John 1:42; 1 Cor 15:5 etc.). Behind Kêphas = Petros we have the Buddhist Kâsyapa(s). The consonants are similar.

5. The compound oligopistos in 14:31 is most revealing. It only occurs a few times in Matthew, and once in Luke. Otherwise, it is not attested in Greek before the NT.
It is derived from the San. alpotsukas, used in exactly the same context, when the Lord rebukes someone (esp. Mâra, the "Devil"). San. alpas becomes Greek oligos, synonyms, and San. utsukas becomes pistos.-The corresponding abstract noun, oligopistia, Matthew 17:20 only, pentasyllabic, is a precise rendering of the San. compound hînâdhimuktitâ, "little faith" (common in Mahâyâna scriptures; see the San. dictionaries for ref. to the Buddhist sources : MSV etc.).

The episode originally took place near Urubilvâ near the river Nairanjanâ, where the Bodhisattva (not yet a sa-buddha) attained perfect enlightenment as Buddha. Being one, he multiplied himself; being multiplied, he became one, the CPS says.

The authors of the gospels did exactly the same: one became many, many became one.
This literary device of turning one into many and many into one is absolutely fundamental for the "Buddhist" authors of the gospel. Ther can be several originals behind one "person", and one "person" can appear as several "persons". One must never ask for one source only. Otherwise one will sink into the water!

Matthew 14:22-36 forms a numerical unit. It consists of 222 words, i.e. one quarter of the most basic of all numbers, 888 - the number of Jesus. Matthew always has to serve several masters at the same time: The Buddhist sources, the Jewish sources (OT), sound and sense , and the Pythagorean requirements of textual geometry (called gematria by the Jews).

 

[18-03-2012] To Fulfil All Righteousness (Matthew 3:15)

 

The noun dikaiosunê, righteousness, has been used by Matthew seven times, and has, in recent years, given rise to numerous discussions and interpretations by theologians. There is, as always, an OT and Jewish backgound, but there is also a Buddhist one, which seems to have escaped notice.

The Buddhist source is not just important for a better understanding of Matthew 3:15, but also because it allows us to identify yet another of Matthew´s sources - the Prajnâ-pâramitâ (PP), still available in several Sanskrit recensions. The most important versions of the PP have been translated into English by the late Edward Conze.

The idea in Matthew is puzzling, if not hilarious: Take a quick dive in a river, and all righteousness will have been fulfilled!Jesus says to John that baptism is more or less the same as " quickly fulfilling all righteousness".

How so? - we do not know from Matthew alone! Obviously, he does not want us to know. It remains his own secret. The PP known as Suvikrântavikrâmi-pariprcchâ (ed. by Ryusho Hikata, Kyoto 1958, p. 4, line 5) provides us with the direct source:

The situation is this: A Bodhisattva by the name of Suvikrântavikrâmî asks the Lord (Bhagavân) about "perfection of wisdom", prajnâ-pâramitâ. How does a Bodhisattva quickly attain the fulfilment of the dharma(s) of all-knowledge? That is the question.

The ideal of the PP is to attain knowledge of all dharmas (concepts, things, principles, laws etc.) . That knowledge, we learn from the Lord, is to see that all things (dharma) are empty. This is, in brief, the message of all the recensions of the PP.

The knowledge that sees all dharmas as being empty is the same as enlightenment, or sambodhi. A Bodhisattva who has attained sambodhi is a sambuddhas - "fully baptized".
The baptistheis in Mt 3:16 therefore translates the Sanskrit sambuddhas.

Matthew´s ten syllables: plêrôsai pasan dikaiosunên is adirect translation of the Sanskrit (loc. cit.):sarvajnatâ-dharma-paripûrim. San. paripûrim becomesGreek plêrôsai. San. sarva- jna-tâ-dharma- means "the concept (dharma) of the state (-tâ) of knowing (-jna-) all (sarva-), in short, omniscience.

In the PP, therefore, it is a question about the highest kind of knowledge, not about "righteousness" in any moral or practrical sense of the word.
We are dealing with Buddhist "gnosticism".

In the PP (ibid.) it is a question of the Bodhisattva living (caran) "in the prajnâ- parâmitâ", the locative form of which is the heptasyllabic:
prajnâ-pâramitâyâm. The seven syllables of Matthew 3:15 contains an obvious pun on the Sanskrit compound:
prepon estin hêmin.

Thus Jesus identifies PP with omniscience. He can do so as a sambuddhas.

A few lines later, PP is defined as being sarvadharmânâm grâhikâ, She (as a goddess) grasps all dharmas.

This identification allows us to make yet another identifcation: Matthew´s 3:15 ( 8 + 5 = 13 syllables): apokritheis de ho ´Iêsous eipen pros auton is an echo of PP (ibid. p. 4, line 7-8 = 14 syllables): evam ukte Bhagavân ...bodhisat(t)vam avocat.

I have already pointed out in my book Geheimnisse (p. 357 for ref.) that the Greek: khreian (ekhô) hypo (sou) baptisthênai in Matthew 3: 14 is a direct rendering of the Sanskrit: upasampâdayitavya(h).

A teacher may then accept the novice and say to him : go forth! - pravrâjetu.
This imperative, pravrâjetu, accounts nicely for the otherwise quite obscure aphes arti in Matthew 3:15.

As known, it is only Matthew who places an arti after a verb. The reason, we now see, is that he imitates the Sanskrit.

On the whole, we here have a picture of a student coming to a teacher for initiation and enlightenment. This is Buddhist, and this is what some early Christians understood by baptism.

I hope these observations have established a historical link between the NT and the Buddhist PP. Matthew 13: 54 asks from where, pothen, Jesus has this wisdom, sophia. He does not reveal the source of this unusual sophia. A good question, indeed: The Greek hê sophia hautê probably rendersthe Sanskrit prajnâ-pâramitâ.

Matthew goes on to ask: Is the name of his mother not Mary? This fits very nicely with what we learn from the PP- sûtras: Typically, PP is depicted (also in Buddhist art) as the Mother of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and She is identified with Mâyâ, "Illusion". Thus Mâyâ, or PP, is the Mother of Jesus, the Sambuddhas.

Note, finally, that Matthew 13:53-58 forms a textual unit that consists of exactly 108 words - the " holy Buddhist number" (cf. my observations reprinted in Lockwood, op. cit., pp. 148 - 156; see also Lalitavistara, Chapter 4, on the 108 " Doors of Dharma"). It is thereby suggested that sophia has to do with counting (words, syllables etc.), as in Revelation 13:18 (arithmos gar anthrôpou estin = Saddharma-pundarîka-sûtram).

This is also the right place to recall that in all the PP (Sanskrit) texts, the number of syllables has been carefully counted, as reflected in the various titles of PP. Perfection of wisdom has, for sure, something to do with counting words and syllables. It is feature that the NT shares with many Buddhist scriptures. It is a fact that should never be ignored.

Matthew 13:55 provides a wonderful example of this "wisdom of numbers". Jesus is identified by a question - is he the son of the carpenter? estin ho tou tektonos huios, which is 565 + 70 + 770 + 1015 + 680 = 3100 = ho huios ho tou anthrôpou = The Son of Man. You have to count in order to identify "the son of the carpenter". That Matthew should use the PP is, in itself, not surprising. One of his other main Mahâyâna sources is the SDP, and the SDP also refers, briefly, to the PP. It may here be recalled that Edward Conze, comparing John´s Revelation with the PP in 1959, called attention to "close verbal coincidences" (see Michael Lockwood, Buddhism's Relation to Christianity", p. 260).

For the Lord taking a bath in the river, and for baptism in the original sense of initiation (upasampadâ) there are other Buddhist sources (mainly CPS) , not to be found in the PP (but presupposed). Typically, Matthew combined various Buddhist sources.

Before I forget: The Oratio montana (Mt 5-7) is a sermon on dikaiosunê (Mt 5: 6 & 10 etc.), a Dharma-desanâ ( San. desanâ becomes Gr. didakhê in Mt 7:28). The hoiptôkhoi tô pneumati in 5:3 has always been difficult. In the PP (Hikata, p. 5, line 4), we have the compound daridra-cittas, a person of poor mind, poor-minded. The Greek ptôkhos pneumati would be a perfect rendering ot that San. compound.

In line 5, we have the San. compound hînâdhimuktikas, which would account well for the Greek oligo-pistos, Matthew 6:30 etc., a person of little faith. Normally, oligopistos translates alpotsukas, for sure.

  [15-03-2012]"She will give birth to a son" (Matthew 1:22)

 

The first seven syllables of Matthew 1: 22 are a direct translation from the Sanskrit of SBV I, p. 40. The Greek runs: teksetai de huion, which is as close to the original Sanskrit that one can possibly come: putram janayisyati.

More precisely, "Matthew" here combines the famous OT passage (Esaias 7:14) quoted in 1:23: "idou hê parthenos en gastri heksei kai teksetai huion...", with the Buddhist one just quoted. In 1:22 he adds a de in order to match the seven syllables of the Sanskrit. To be sure, when I here write "Matthew", I mean the unknown author or authors, who copied the SBV (a part of the MSV) in which "Matthew" is mentioned as a disciple of the Buddha, as I have pointed out elsewhere long ago (cf. Michael Lockwood, Buddhism´s Relation to Christianity, Chennai 2010, p. 232).

This method of combining two or more otherwise quite different passages with one or more words (or numbers) in common, is very typical of "Matthew" and the other evangelists. You have two or more  different texts with a few words in common; on that basis you create a third. It is easy - and fun -  to do, but difficult to trace since the sources are not mentioned.

The situation in the SBV is this:

The mother of the Bodhisattva is called Mahâmâyâ, which becomes hê Mariam, also four syllables. She "sees" four dreams. In the first dream, a white "elephant" (i.e. a white cloud) enters her womb, San. kuksim. The San. kuksi - becomes the Greek synonym gastri (locative), in the womb. She informs the king of her dreams. The king calls upon some priests skilled in the interpretation of dreams.

They say: deva, yathâ sâstre drstam - putram janayisyati..." Sir, as is seen in a book - she will give birth to a son...". In "Matthew" these priests are transformed into an angel of the Lord (aggelos kuriou), an OT motive. Just as the priests refer to the authority of a book, thus the angel in "Matthew" also refers to the authority of a book (viz. OT, in the LXX version). This angel says to Joseph: Son of David... the San. deva, Sir, God,  becomes Daueid. A few lines later (p. 41), we have the San. deva-putras, the source for the huios Daueid in Mt 1: 20.

In the SBV the priests predict that the child will either become a (worldly) king or leave his home in order to become a Tathâgata, a  famous saviour of mankind. The Bodhisattva was carried down from heaven (where there are many other god-sons, deva-putra) like a cloud driven by the power of the wind (mâruta) into the womb.The wind becomes the holy pneuma of "Matthew" 1:18 and 1:20. There is nothing mysterious about a cloud being driven by the wind.

By leaving out the cloud, "Matthew" creates a great mystery. Easy for him, difficult for us. The Bodhisattva was born as the king of the Sâkyas. Jesus was born as the king of the Jews. Both descended from heaven for exactly the same purpose - to teach us about righteousness and immortality.

A little later, we hear about the various names of the Bodhisattva - Greek to paidion, the boy (SBV I, p. 17-18). Sâkya-munis is one of them; Devâti-devas, God above Gods, is another. Even the gods fall down at the feet of the prince (kumâra), and "let therefore the name of the prince be Devâtideva (p. 48), for he is a god above (all other) gods. The OT source of "Matthew" spoke of his name as  Emmanouêl, which means, when translated, "With us is the God"- meth´ hêmôn ho theos. The name Em-manuo-êl is unique in the OT and NT. The source is Buddhist in both cases. The - manou - contains a pun on the Buddhist - munis, in Sâkya-munis. (Yet another pun on Sâkya-munis is found in the suka-minos of Luke 17:6.) The motive of the king, Herod, who, hearing this, becomes agitated, and all Jerusalem with him, is also inspired by the SBV, where we hear about the anxiety of the king (p. 67). The king was afraid that his son would leave the palace. He did. Jesus left for a foreign country, Egypt. Eventually, both of them returned.

In the original, the king is called Suddhodanas. One of the teachers of the Bodhisattva is Ârâdas (p. 97). Thus king Herod, Hêrôdês, is a combination of the king and the teacher.

What about the mother of Sâkyamuni(s) - was she a parthenos, a virgin? This question is also taken up in the SBV (p. 34): When she was still an unmarried young girl, a dârikâ, she was given the name Mahâ-mâyâ, explained as "Great-beauty". Already when she was still an unmarried virgin, it was said that she would one day "give birth to a son" -  putram janayisyati. The San. dârikâ means "a young girl", but from the context we can infer for sure that she was also a virgin. An unmarried girl who was not a virgin would have been an absolute scandal in the Buddhist/Indian context, as in the Jewish, of course. But once the Bodhisattva has entered her womb, she is no longer spoken of as a dârikâ, only as the mother or as Mahâmâyâ. She is never a mother and a dârikâ at the same time. It is quite clear from the SBV that the dârikâ had intercourse with the king before she gave birth to the Bodhisattva. But after she had given birth she no longer longed for any man, SBV, p. 43. She was then "like a virgin", if you wish.

So, to sum up so far: The idea in the SBV and in Esaias is the same. There is a young girl of whom it is predicted that she one day will become the mother of an extraordinary son. There is no suggestion whatsoever that she remains a virgin. The Buddhist and the OT sources know nothing of parthenogenesis. The Greek parthenos, the San. dârikâ, and the Hebrew haalmah are synonyms. They refer to a young woman, a virgin, who later on becomes a mother in exactly the same way that all other girls may become mothers. She is never a virgin and a mother at the same time.

But when we come back to "Matthew", the situation is quite different. It has changed. There can be no doubt that "Matthew" introduces the concept of parthenogenesis.
Thus we have to look for yet another source. It was not "Matthew" who invented the paradox of a woman who was at the same time a virgin and a mother. Any Greek schoolboy would immediately be able to answer the question: Who is famous for being at the same time a virgin and a mother?

The answer is, of course: Athena. Did you never hear of the Parthenon?
I have previously  made the point that the Greek text of the NT often works on two levels at the same time. What appears as a paradox on the surface, is perfectly logical on the deeper or geomatrical level.

This rule also works here.

On the surface it is a paradox that a virgin is the mother of the Messiah. But not so once you look at the statement in terms of geometry:

First you draw a circle with the circumference 515, which is the number of Greek parthenos (80+1+100+9+5+50+70+200 = 515). The inscribed square is 464, which is the number of the mother, hê mêtêr. The double solar cross inscribed in the 515 circle ( = the square containing the 515 circle) is 656, the number of Messias.

So this nice drawing - which also looks like the sun -  tells you that a virgin (515)  is the mother (464)  of the Messias (656). Since 656 is also the number of Mary, the mother ( Mariam hê mêtêr = 192 + 8 + 456 = 656), the same drawing also tells you, that the Mother Mary is a virgin who is also at the same time the mother - of the Messias (if yet another square is drawn). Since Nazaret is also 464, you can go on and on. The diameter in the 515 circle is 164, which is the famous Athênê Nikê (76+88 = 164), known to all from coins and from the Acropolis.

So, for the Greek readers of "Matthew" it must have been obvious, that the mother of Jesus was Athena. In the SBV the Bodhisattva is said to be a "boy-sun", bâla-sûrya.
It is, also in "Matthew", the Sun that is being born in the form of a man, Jesus.
Athena is his mother.

The idea that Athena was the mother of the Sun god is not at all original with "Matthew". For instance, Cicero, in his De natura deorum 3, 55, refers to an old myth according to which Minerva (=Athena) gave birth to Apollo, the Sun god. This myth was also known to some of the Christian authors. It can be traced back to Aristotle (see e.g. the references in Arthur Stanley Pease (ed.), M. Tvlli Ciceronis De natura deorum, Cambridge, Mass. p. 1105).

If Athena is the mother of Jesus - who, then, is his father? The answer is simple, when you look at how Jesus elsewhere identifies his heavenly father. It is Zeus. When the Greeks spoke of the God, ho theos, they meant Zeus. Jesus, the son of God, is thus the son of Zeus and his beloved daughter (Homer), Athena. The God is identified with the pneuma in John. Zeus was also identified with pneuma by the Stoic philosophers. So, again, Zeus is the father of Jesus. More about Zeus, the true father of Jesus later. To Leda he came as a white swan. To Mâyâ, Zeus came as a white cloud etc. etc.

All this has provided us with a glimpse into the workshop of "Matthew": His intention is to create a myth about a Jewish king. He already is familiar with the MSV which contains the myth of the king of Sâkyas. He was also familiar with the OT, and he was very much familiar with Greek mythology and geometry. He uses and "translates" his Buddhists sources as if they had already been present in the OT. He does exactly the same with his Greek sources. The readers he first had in mind must therefore primarily have been Jews. The gospel of "Matthew" is an extreme but also typical case of Hellenistic syncretism.

 

[18-11-2011] Dr. Detering´s False Witnesses

Pope Benedikt XVI has stated, what is, of course, the official view of all bishops, priests, theologians and orthodox Christians all around the world, namely, "Jesus is not a myth, he is a man of flesh and blood, he stands as a reality in history".

But can we really rely on the Pope in this regard? Is his opinion based merely on faith, or on sound scholarship? Can we be sure that this Pope  is honest?  Even the most critical Protestant theologians cling to a historical Jesus, e.g. Bultmann: "To doubt that Jesus really existed is unfounded, and not even worth a word of refutation."

But there are others who think otherwise, and will have nothing of such papal arrogance. In Germany there was, for instance, Arthur Drews, and now there is, above all, Dr. Hermann Detering.

In his new book, Falsche Zeugen. Ausserchristliche Jesuszeugnisse auf dem Prüfstand, Dr. Detering reviews the external non-Christian testimonies for Jesus, i.e. the well-known passages from Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Suetonius, as well as the less known Mara bar Serapion and Thallus.

Dr. Detering´s method is historical and philological, reminding us of the great Eduard Norden. All views  expressed by German and foreign theologians, all pros and cons are taken into consideration. Detering´s  judgment is always informed,  fair and mature. The passage on Chrestus in Suetonius has nothing to do with Jesus known as Christus. The remaining passages in Josephus etc. are shown, very convincingly and with many fine philological observations  to be later Christian interpolations.

The motive for making these interpolations is also obvious. Once they had decided to turn their mythical hero into a historical person, they had to fabricate evidence in support. And so they did. When have Christians, starting with Paul,  have any problem with pia fraus if good for the church?

It is, therefore, wrong of theologians to claim that we here have external evidence for the historicity of Jesus called Christ.

Dr. Detering does not deal with the internal evidence of the NT. To him, however, Christianity still retains  a symbolic value, even if Jesus is just a myth, for: " The incarnation of the Logos is a grandiose religious idea." If looked upon as a historical fact that took place in the years 1 - 30, it becomes an intellectual monster.

For a historian who is familiar with Hellenistic religions and has no apologetic axe to grind, it ought to be fairly obvious that there is no solid internal evidence in the NT to support any claim of a historical Jesus.

There were numerous  sons of god  in those days, and Jesus is just one of them. Nor should there be any doubt about the true identity of his heavenly father, ho patêr ho ouranios, i.e. Zeus.

When the Greeks spoke of the God, ho theos, they meant Zeus.  Zeus had many sons, typically  called kings (anax, basileus), and Jesus is his Jewish son, and king of Israel. Mary was, alas,  not the only virgin with whom Zeus had a son, as all theologians ought to keep in mind.

But theologians will want to ignore all these simple and obvious facts. They will want to ignore the excellent detective work of Dr. Detering, just as they ignored or defamed the  work of Arthur Drews, and just as they have decided to ignore the fact that "the Greek of the New Testament (is) a patchwork of various passages from Buddhist scriptures, originally written in Sanskrit and Pâli" (Michael Lockwood, Buddhism´s Relation to Christianity, Chennai 2010, p. 250).

If we share Dr. Detering´s faith in the incarnation of the Logos as a grandiose religious idea, this must also imply a greater openness in regard to other Hellenistic religions, for we are here dealing with ideas that have Orphic and Pythagorean roots. That, however, is another topic, about which one would like to hear more from Dr. Detering.

One of the very few things I missed in Dr. Detering´s book was a discussion of Hadrian´s letter to Servianus, where the Roman emperor (117-138)  writes:...illic qui Serapim colunt, Christiani sunt et deuoti  sunt Serapi, qui se Christi episcopos dicunt..etc. The contents of this letter does not suggest a later interpolatio christiana. Nor  can it be taken as evidence of a historical Christ, rather on the contrary.
On p. 37 read legomenou for legemonou.

 

[11-11-2011] A Lindtnerian Revolution is needed...

Buddhism’s Relation to Christianity. A Miscellaneous Anthology with Occasional Comment

This is the title of the first extensive and highly qualified critique of the CLT. The author is Professor emeritus Michael Lockwood, who has taught philosophy for 32 years at Madras Christian College. Dr Lockwood is an accomplished scholar who has published translations from the Sanskrit and brought out a book about Indian art etc.
He is also a scholar of Greek and Hebrew, and thus in a good and rare position to take part in the important debate suggested by the title of the book that has just appeared in Chennai, India (Tambaram Research Associates). The book - 288 pages, beautifully produced - contain the following sections:

1. A survey of two hundred years of scholarly work on the remarkable parallelism between the messages and lives of the Buddha and Jesus.

2. Buddhist sculptures that parallel episodes in the Christian scriptures.

3. The inscriptions of King Ashoka, revealing the spreading abroad of the Buddhist doctrine of Dharma, as far as Egypt and other countries around the Mediterranean. Many parallels between Buddhist and Christian doctrines are pointed out.

4. The widespread legend of Christian sainthood during medieval times; how the Buddha was somehow turned into a Christian saint.

5. Only Buddhism and Christianity have made extensive use of parables - and the Buddhists came first!

6. Various parallels in the sayings of the Buddha and Jesus.

7. Various pioneering developments achieved by Buddhism, as a missionary religion, prior to similar developments in Christianity.

8. The debate about the historicity of Jesus. Various arguments for and against are considered.

9. A closer look at two examples of "extreme revisionism", holding that Jesus was not a historical person, and that the evangelists who wrote The New Testament, were crypto-Buddhists: "The pioneer of this extreme revisionism is the Danish Sanskrit scholar, Christian Lindtner. The strong reactions to his radical views have illustrated the basis of the Indian warning not to inquire too deeply into the origin of God-men and rivers."

The learned author reproduces almost all the entries on www.jesusisbuddha.com, and offers his extremely competent and mature critique with a full command of the Indian and Christian sources in question.

He writes, inter alia (. 143): "The Danish academic, Christian Lindtner, is one of the foremost scholars arguing that the so-called 1 st century CE person of Jesus is really a disguised projection of the historic Buddha by the New Testament evangelists who are themselves, crypto-Buddhists, basing much of their writings on Indian Buddhist Sanskrit and Pâli sources. Lindtner’s theories and writings, quite predictably, have been considered outrageous and hurtful by Christian circles. Some of his critics have also accused him of being a Holocaust denier and of having various other moral flaws. These accusations have no relevance whatsoever to academic issues - his critics, in this, commit the ad hominem fallacy in reasoning, the most widespread of fallacies! There have been, thus, very few qualified attempts to refute Lindtner’s views, as there are very few persons with the linguistic qualifications to support such refutations: a command of the various languages of the Buddhist scriptures and writings, as well as a command of the languages of the Jewish and Christian scriptures and writings."

Furthermore, Lindtner has established that passages of the Greek New Testament were translated from Sanskrit and Pâli (p. 250): "Early Gnostic scholars were, in fact, the very creators of what were to become the canonical Gospels of the New Testament -allegorical narratives about Jesus the Messiah composed using a strange ingenious process of creatively translating into the Greek of the New Testament a patchwork of various passages from Buddhist scriptures, originally written in Sanskrit and Pâli. The use of this method of "transcription" from Sanskrit and Pâli into Greek has been firmly established by Christian Lindtner."

So, to conclude,  what now is needed, is "a Lindtnerian Revolution" (p. 241): "What is needed is a paradigmatic shift - a Lindtnerian Revolution - in  outlook, which, of course, will entail a change in outlook far more unsettling to traditional Christianity than even Darwin's Theory of Evolution has been!"

These are brave words! Professor Lockwood can be happy that he is now emeritus!
When Lindtner wrote words to the same effect in 1998 the immediate reaction from "academics" was the demand to have his books burned and himself prevented, by any means, from doing further research into the Buddhist sources of Christianity.

 

 

Rosaries and Catacombs - and the Pope's Tiara

 

One of the most obvious cases of Buddhist influence on early Christian cult is provided by the Rosary - Latin: rosarium. Typically, the Buddhist rosary consists of 108  beads. Burmese monks are known to have used rosaries consisting of 72 beads, i.e. 2/3 of 108. Sikhs also use strings with 108 beads for prayer, and so did the ancient followers of Vishnu., who, perhaps, influenced the Buddhists. Among some Muslims the number is normally 99. The original Catholic Rosary also consisted of 108 beads (ten decades for Ave Maria, and eight units  for Pater Noster)

But why is the rosary called a rosary - a rosarium? Where do the roses come in?
The correct  explanation, it seems, was first given by the German Indologist, A.F. Weber (1825-1901). To understand the Latin term one must first identify the original Sanskrit:

The Sanskrit is japa-mâlâ, i.e. a string or garland, mâlâ, for prayer, japa-. This compound noun is well-attested in Sanskrit. If a small change is made, we arrive at japâ-mâlâ (with the long a = â), which is an entirely different story. Sanskrit japâ- means a "rose", which has nothing at all to do with japa, which, as said, means "prayer" or , more precisely, "mumbling". It is therefore obvious that the Latin rosarium is a translation of the Sanskrit japâ-mâlâ - not of the "correct" japa-mâlâ. This does not mean that those who coined the Latin rosarium  simply misunderstood the Sanskrit japa-mâlâ. Perhaps they simply found the Sanskrit japâ-mâlâ more "poetical", more charming.

In any case, the original meaning of the rosarium is only clear when the Sanskrit japa-/japâ-mâlâ be kept in mind. It is easy to see that the translation would not work in the opposite direction: from Latin rosarium there is a straight way back to japâ-mâlâ, but not to japa-mâlâ. Weber, it seems, took japâ to be a misunderstanding of japa. But, as said, that is probably not the case. We are rather, as so often in the field of comparative gospel studies, dealing with deliberate distortions, or "funny translations".  I have already, passim,  pointed out numerous such cases of "deliberate misunderstandings".

Coming back to the number of beads, it is known that the figure  108 is important for the Buddhists in many ways. For instance, the fundamental Sanskrit version of the Middle Path (madhyamâ pratipad) consists of exactly 4 x 27, or 108 words etc. etc. The number 108 is, moreover, often found in the number of words or syllables of a given textual unit in the Greek New Testament. The number 108 thus links up early Christianity with Indian Buddhism in more than one way. It is a Buddhist "fingerprint".

More examples of early Christian cult being influenced by Buddhism will be found in the learned book of Richard Garbe: Indien und das Christentum. Eine Untersuchung der religionsgeschichtlichen Zusammenhänge, Tübingen 1914 (reprinted, with a new Foreword, by Lühe-Verlag, Süderbrarup 2004), pp. 117- 127. Let me add to Garbe´s observations  by pointing to the noun "catacomb", the meaning of which is as clear as the etymology is unclear. The Latin cata-cumba is sometimes explained as  formed by dissimilation from Latin cata tumbas, which , again, is supposed to be from the Greek kata, "down", and tumbas, acc.plur. of Late  Latin tumba, "grave. tomb". I suggest that we rather  have to look for Sanskrit caitya-kumbhas. The San. caitya- means a "tomb", and kumbhas is common Buddhist usage for  a pot or urn (e.g. in the MPS).

The Catacombs, the underground cemeteries in or around Rome used by the early Christians, thus derived their name from Sanskrit caitya-kumbhâs (nom. plural), "tomb-urns". This hypothesis does, of course, not exclude that the Sanskrit, later on, was assimilated to a Greek-Latin compound - kata-tumbas, or catacumba(s). At that point, as natural, the Sanskrit original had been forgotten. The Latin-Greek compound sounds, to my ear, like yet another "funny translation".
 
A funny translation, for sure, is involved when we finally  look at the tiara, the Pope´s triple crown. Tddress. I imagine that Garbe was right  (op. cit., p. 117) when he pointed out that the he Greek is tiara, and the Oriental origin is generally assumed - the ancient Persian heaetymology has to be found in Sanskrit (and Pâli) cîvaram, the Buddhist mendicant´s dress. But let us not cause offense to  the Holy Father by following this historical trace further! Or is there really any good cause for offense on papal part? After all, the first Pope, PeTRoS,  was no other that PuTRaS, the first disciple, known to all Buddhists as Sâri-¨putras. He, too, wore his cîvaram - but, true, not on the top of his head!
 
Dr. Chr. Lindtner
September 27, a.D. 2010.

 

 

The Mysterious Comforter (paraklêtos) of John

 

Once the MPS (part of the Mûlasarvâstivâdavinaya, MSV)  and the Lotus (SDP) have been identified as the two main  Buddhist sources of the four NT gospels, it is not difficult to identify the original  behind the "mysterious" Comforter", or para-klêtos, mentioned by John 14:16; 15:26; 16:7; and 1 John 2:1.

From these NT passages we learn that Jesus promises his disciples that his father, God, will give them another paraklêtos; that he, Jesus, will send to them from the Father, God, and that the paraklêtos will come only after the departure of Jesus.

In 1 John 2:1 this mysterious paraklêtos is identified with Jesus Christ, being with the Father. The other gospels do not mention the paraklêtos. This is all we have. The Latin is either paraclitus, which is not helpful, or advocatus, misleading, as will be seen. The Buddhist source is obvious - it is MPS 41.2 (ed. Waldschmidt, Berlin 1951, p. 386). The Lord Buddha comforts the monks by saying that once he has passed away there will be another teacher, or refuge (nihsaranam).

This teacher or refuge is the Prâti-moksas, that the Lord has pointed out to the monks twice a month. The Prâtimoksas is the name of the set of rules or precepts Buddhist monks have to follow. Buddhist scholars, for various reasons (style, language etc.) , agree that the Prâtimoksas belongs to the early strata of Buddhist literature. The etymology of the noun Prâti-moksas (Pâli pâtimokkha) is unclear. The usual Tibetan translation is so sor thar pa, suggesting "individual release".

The meaning of the term is, however, clear from the context: Normally, the Lord is the teacher who gives the rules etc. for monks (and, later, nuns) to abide by. Once the person, the Lord as a teacher is no longer there, the set of rules will serve as replacement, as substitute.

John 14:15 confirms that the para-klêtos has to do with "rules", entolas (acc. plur.). Now, the NT gospels are not addressed to Buddhist monks, but to common  people, Jews etc., in general - lucky people, poor in spirit, who will win the kongdom of god, or heaven (i.e. the Christian  nirvânam). Thus it would be quite wrong to expect a Greek version of the entire  Prâtimoksas. The term para-klêtos thus necessarily becomes vague, or general, compared to the strict set of regulations and precepts  that are so characteristic of the Buddhist Prâtimoksas in its numerous recensions.

In the Sermon on the Mount there are several echoes of the Prâtimoksas, to which I shall come back elsewhere. English translations include "Helper", "Comforter", etc., but thanks to the Buddhist original we see that "Replacement", "Substitute" comes closer to the meaning intended in both sources. This, again, may be helpful for understanding the original meaning of the term Prâti-moksas. San. prati not only has a distributive sense ("individual", as the Tibetan so sor  has it), but can also mean "instead of". Along with a noun for a "nose", for instance, it comes to mean "an artificial nose" - a new nose (artificial) instead of the old (natural) one. San. moksas surely means "liberation, release". In a compound with prati becoming prâti, it acquires the sense of a release instead of the normal one - the one provided by the Lord as a teacher of precepts.

The Prâtimoksas thus comes to carry the sense of a body of precepts serving as a teacher of liberation when the real teacher has passed into final nirvânam. San. Prâti-moksas, just as Greek para-klêtos, thus means "the personification of the precepts as a teacher replacing the real one once he has passed away". In other words¨- The Preceptor (to retain the masculine noun) serving as a substitute, or Replacement, for the original one.

Actually, the basic idea is quite simple, and fundamental to the Lotus: The sûtram contains the words of the Lord. Once the Lord has passed away, we are left with his words in the sûtram. The sûtram thus embodies the Lord. The cult of the Lord is replaced by thge cult of the sûtram. The cult of the sûtram finds its culmination in the recitation of the title of the sûtram. This why there are so many puns of the title of the Lotus - as I have already pointed out in my book Geheimnisse um Jesus Christus.

I need not add that just as one can conceive Christianity without the mysterious para-klêtos, thus one  cannot conceive (early) Buddhism without Prâti-moksas. In other words: NT must here have been influenced by Buddhism - not the other way around. So the identifiaction of the paraklêtos is also important for the problem of relative chronology.

Dr. Christian Lindtner
September 17, a.D. 2010.

 

 

The Middle Path of Matthew 5:3-10

 

It must be due to simple ignorance that scholars have overlooked the obvious fact that the eight Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-10 are based on the eight virtues (or dharmas)  that lead to Nirvâna. The Sermon on the Middle Path (MP) leading to Nirvâna was the first major sermon given to the five disciples of Tathâgata, just as the Sermon on the eight "beatitudes" leading to the kingdom of Heaven,  ouranos.  Heaven, was the main topic of the first sermon addressed by Jesus to his disciples surrounded by five groups of people. The setting is thus exactly the same: The Lord was  speaking about eight virtues, factors or circumstances leading to the same goal. Once again, Jesus therefore is a Tathâgata in disguise, and, as usual, the authors of the gospels did their job by way of deception. Whether one likes it or not, the NT gospels are plagiary, or pirate copies. (This genre was not uncommon in those days, cf. e.g. Eduard Stemplinger, Das Plagiat in der griechischen Literatur, Leipzig 1912/1990.)
 
Let us first have a brief look at Matthew 5:3-10 from a more formal point of view. It consists of two numerically equal units: 3-6 consist of 18+18 = 36 words. Here, verses 3-4 consist of 12+6 words, and verses 5-6 of  8+10 words, i.e. 2 x 18 words. In the second part, verses 7-8 consist of 6 + 10 words, whereas verses 9-10 consist of  8 + 12 words, giving us again the sum of 2 x 18 = 36. It is quite obvious that here,  as always, Matthew carefully counted the words. Matthew also counted the syllables: The first part consists of exactly 90 syllables, or 5 x18 syllables. The second part, verses 7-10, consists of 98 syllables, or 5 x 18, with an extra 8 syllables, perhaps intended to correspond to the number of beatitudes. The ratio of syllables and words is 188:72, which is 2.61111...(this ratio  is highly revealing, see below!)

His  Buddhist source  (SBV, ed. Gnoli, p. 134) also counted the number of words and syllables in the same fashion: The Buddhist text on the MP  in its Sanskrit version shows the same geometrical structure or pattern. It consists of a total of 108 words, neatly arranged in four units each consisting of  exactly 27 words. The author of the Sanskrit MP likewise counted the number of syllables (and even letters!) , which of course goes to confirm the gematria  (textual geometry) of the words. One level thus supports another. The mutuality excludes sheer coincidence. With his 2 x 36 = 72 words, Matthew thus represents two thirds of the original 108 words of the Sanskrit MP text. The figure 108 is, as known a "holy number" for Christians as well as Buddhists. It occurs in various contexts, and is ultimately based on the pentagon or pentagram, characterized by the angles that measure 108 degrees. The pentagon or pentagram represents the divine proportion, as known. Coming back to the ratio 188:72 in Matthew, we now see that the divine proportion is involved , for 72 x 1.618.. gives us 116.496, and 116.496 x 1.618 gives us 188.490... The round number 188 was the number of syllables in Matthew 5:3-10. Matthew thus conceived 5:3-10 as a unit with the divine proportion (1.618..) as his rod of measure. In the Sanskrit version of the MP, the Tathâgata addresses the five monks, or rather, to be precise,  the monks belonging to a group of five. The Sanskrit word is pancakân - an obvious pun on Greek pentagon. In the Sanskrit MP the divine proportion is also repeatedly reflected in the ratio of words and syllables.
 
Let us then have a brief look at the contents of the Beatitudes in relation to their Buddhist source: Paying attention to textual symmetry, Matthew starts (v.3) and ends (v. 10) with the  statement that the disciples are "happy" - makarioi - BECAUSE they have or posses the Kingdom of Heaven - hê basileia tôn ouranôn. There is thus a causal relationship, not very clearly articulated, between being makarios and having the basileia tôn ouranôn. The reason is introduced twice with hoti autôn, six times by hoti autoi. It is clear that the Kingdom of Heaven somehow replaces the Buddhist idea of Nirvâna.

In other words, when "Matthew" translated the Sanskrit word Nirvânam, he chose, first, basileia tôn ouranôn. We here have to look closer at the noun ouranôn, in the genitive plural. Interestingly, the Buddhists themselves faced problems with understanding the term Nirvâna(m), and this we must keep in mind. Sometimes it was taken as pointing  to a peaceful state of mind, without any passions or worldy concepts.  Sometimes it was taken as indicating  a place that could not be grasped or pointed out etc. (See e.g. my book  Master of Wisdom, pp. 320-322.) There was nothing to prevent the Buddhist monks from splitting Nirvânam up: nir-vânam, as if meaning meaning NO vânam. Such "funny etymologies" , nirukti, are quite common in Buddhist Sanskrit texts, and were imitated by the NT Gospels. This is how the Greek ouranos was chosen -  ou-ranos, meaning NO ranôn (Greek -ranôn thus = San. -vânam). Many similar examples will be found in the Prajnâpâramitâ. (Compare also San. gani-kâ, coutesan becoming a certain woman, gunê tis.)
 
Among the Buddhists the term Nirvânam always carries a connotation of peace.
To reproduce this idea, Matthew 5:9 chose the Greek noun eirêno-poios. This is the only place in the NT where it occurs. He must have had a special reason for introducing it. One modern translation says: " Happy are those who work for peace among men" - but such an understanding misses the point completely. The Sanskrit behind eirênopoioi (masc. plural) must be the term nirodha-gâminî, which is an adjective to pratipad, path, more or less a synonym of mârga(s), way,  path. Here, nirodha- is a synonym of nirvâna-. It means "leading to Nirvâna/nirodha. So, the idea is that the makarioi are happy in the sense that they bring about peace (of mind) for themselves. This means that they ascend to heaven. Once they are in heaven, they are known as deva-putras, sons of god, or god-sons. And only then does one understand why Matthew 5:9 introduces the term huioi theou - sons of god. The Greek huios theou is an exact rendering of Sanskrit deva-putras, son (putras) of deva, which means god (devas = Lat. deus = Greek theos). The idea that the disciples of Jesus may become "sons of god" makes little sense in the context of the NT, or even in the context of Christianity in general. It does, however, make perfect sense in the original Buddhist context, where there are numerous sons of god (as among the Greeks).  When Tathâgata passed into final Nirvâna, his "precious body"  somehow went up to the world of Brahmâ - and that world was inhabited by numerous deva-putras. Four of them were even present at his birth (Gnoli, p. 42). Matthew  (5:6 and 10) also mentions the term dikaiosunê, which can only be a translation of the Sanskrit dharma(s). From the bilingual Indo-Greek coins we know that the  San. adjective  dharmikas (var. spellings)  is rendered by dikaios etc. In Matthew 7:28, the sermon as a whole is described as a didakhê, which, again can only be Sanskrit desanâ. Likewise, the MP belongs to a group of teachings described as a dharma-desanâ. The dharma-desanâ of Tathâgata is thus know to all Christians in the disguise of the didakhê dikaiosunês of Jesus - the false Tathâgata.
 
To conclude for now: I am, of course, not claiming that the Sanskrit MP is the only source of the Eight Beatitudes of Matthew. There are, as known, also Jewish sources. There are beatitudes in the OT, and there are beatitudes from Qumran (4Q525). They can easily be looked up. In the Qumran fragments it is Wisdom, sophia, that is praised for bringing about beatitude. That, of course, is a typical Buddhist idea -  prajnâ or jnâna bringing about Nirvânam. To some extent the terms are synonyms. (This suggests that Qumran also has the same Buddhist MP source!) One of the most embarrassing problems facing modern theologians is the fact that they cannot locate the mountain on which Jesus is supposed to have given his famous sermon. This has even led some to speak of a "theological mountain" - which must mean a purely imaginary mountain. How can a man - even Jesus - stand on a mountain that is not on the map! Of course, Matthew would not want to mention the name of the mountain! The true mountain, source criticism now informs us, is to be located in  ancient Benares (Vârânasî - Rishivadana).
 
Yet another observation. If we take Matthew 5:11 into account, we arrive at nine beatitudes. The disciples will be persecuted, like prophets before them, says Jesus.
There is also a Buddhist background for this, and it is reflected here in Matthew:
Among those who listen to Tathâgata, some are positive, others negative. Those who rejects the Aryans (= Buddhists) will, after their passing away, turn up in hell among the inhabitans of hell.(Very nicely, San. nârakas becomes Greek nekros.)  Those having a correct view of the Aryans, will turn up among the gods (deva) in the world of Heaven - svarga-loka (Gnoli, p. 118, 158 etc.). The technical phrase âryânâm apavâdakâh, eight syllables, is rendered by Matthew 5:11 as kai eipôsin pan ponêron, also eight syllables.

For the Buddhist source of such warnings of the Lord, one also  has to turn to the Lotus. If one collects the various passages on persecution in the NT, it will be seen that nearly all of them can be traced back to the Saddharmapundarîkasûtram - the Lotus or SDP. Jesus, in other words, was speaking to Buddhist missionaries actively propagating the Dharma-desanâ among the Jews. But also, as just pointed out (Gnoli, p. 118, p. 158), to  those who as âryânâm anapavâdakâh svargaloke devesûpapadyante. So, as usual, Matthew combines several Buddhist and Jewish sources.

Let me finally come back to 108 - the holy number of the Buddhists. As pointed out, Matthew 5:3-10 consists of 72 words, or two thirds of 108, the number of words in the Sanskrit MP (Gnoli, p. 134). But our story does not end here.  Matthew 5: 11  consists of 16 words, and 5:12, the final verse, consists of 19 words, adding up to 35 words for these two final verses. Adding 72 and 35 we arrive at a total of 107  words - whereas we would expect a total of 108 words. It is thus not quite impossible  that the textus receptus of Matthew (Nestle-Aland etc.)  has to be emended accordingly. However, I think that the number 107 (rather than the expected 108) was intended by Matthew. By letting this textual unit consist of 107 words he managed to place three words right in the middle, viz. makarioi hoi eirênopoioi (verse 5:9a) - happy are those who bring about eirênê- where eirênê therefore translates the nirvânam of his Buddhist source. There is special focus on the word eirênê, since it is the first word in the second half of the textual unit of 107 words. Matthew is saying: Look at the word eirênê!  So we have two different words for the goal of the Buddhist path - first heaven, then peace. This technique of drawing special attention to a fundamental idea of a given textual unit was also used by Luke.

Thus, H.J. de Jonge made the important observation that in Luke 2:41-51a, a pericope of exactly 170 words, the word  "in the middle", mesô (in v. 46) is the 85th word, and the phrase "in the middle of the teachers", en mesô tôn didaskalôn, therefore forms the mathematical centre of the pericope. (See, M.J.J. Menken, Numerical literary techniques in John, Leiden 1985, p. 18 for ref.). Buddhist texts on dharma, as said, make a distinction between two ideals - that of nirvânam, and that of a pleasant rebirth in heaven, svargas.

This distinction is reflected in Matthew when he uses the two terms eirênê and ouranos. Both are obtained by the practice of dharma - Greek dikaiosunê.
 
For long, I was unsure about the Sanskrit original behind the Greek makarios. One could think of kalyânas, sukhin, tustas etc. There are many synonyms. But we must stick to the context in question. Matthew mentions makarioi eight (+ one) times. He places it right in the middle along with the Buddhist eirênopoioi, as pointed out above.

In the Buddhist MP text only one word appears eight times - namely samyag/samyak, the "correct" view, speech etc. Obviously, the eight Buddhist samyak-s become the eight Christian makarioi. The original consonants are retained: S-M-K. The eight happy ones of Jesus were thus originally the eight correct modes of behaviour of Tathâgata. By following this eight-fold path one arrives at Nirvâna or svarga - eirênê or ouranos. (For more on the "Christian Nirvâna", cf. Erich Dinkler, EIRENE: Der urchristliche Friedensgedanke, Heidelberg 1973. Buddhist influence is not limited to the NT.) This was the topic of the first sermon of Tathâgata aka Jesus. The sermon took place on a mountain near Benares - the "theological mountain" of Christian  theologians. It was the first dharma-desanâ of the mythical Jesus. What he had to say was something he had somehow discovered or experienced at the river - Matthew 3:15. Exactly as the Bodhisat(t)va discoved his Dharma at the river.

Jesus never really makes it clear, WHERE, on the map, this odd kingdom of heaven (or of god) is to be located. But I have already pointed out elsewhere, that the kingdom of heaven must have been Kapilavastu, where Tathâgata spoke to Brahmâ, Sakra(s), Kubera(s) and the other sons of god. They appear in the disguise of Abraham, Isaak and Iakôbos in Matthew 8:11 (Gnoli, p. 196). And in the NT Kapila-vastu appears as Kaphar-naoum, Matthew 8:5 etc. We now also understand why the NT speaks not only only of Heaven, but also of the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of God, to the same effect. Tathâgata was the son of the king of Kapilavastu. This king was addressed as "deva", "king". The Kingdom of God is therefore the kingdom of the king of Kapilavastu, the father of Sâkyamuni(s), or Tathâgata(s), the ksatriyas (= ho khristos). At the same time, Kapilavastu is surely  a mythical kingdom, located on the slopes of the Himalaya mountains. It is up there in the sky, almost in heaven. So, what Jesus is saying is that his disciples will be happy when the end up in the mythical kingdom of Kapilavastu along with the other devaputra-s. In this way he is using skilful means, upâya-kausalyam, even "tricks", to convert common people to the Dharma. For the same reason, of course, he charges his disciples that they should tell no man that he was the Christ , Matthew 16:20. But as historians we conclude: The  first part of the Sermon on the Mount is, therefore the NT version of the Middle Path. Buddhist Nirvâna is found in the very middle.
 
Dr. Christian Lindtner
September 2, a.D. 2010

 

 

The Anointing at Bethany - Matthew 26:6-13 par

 

When the authors of the NT gospels composed their work, they did so by combining bits and pieces meticulously compiled  from different sources in different languages: Greek, Hebrew, Latin and - above all - Sanskrit. In so doing they followed certain rules - the so-called middoth cherished by learned rabbis - even to this day. Here and there they had to  add a few words of their own, e.g. conjunctions such as  kai, "and". But even indications of time and place were copied directly from Buddhist sources. They always carefully counted the number of words and syllables, reflecting their deep interest in gematria. The Buddhists shared this interest in gematria, and the background is, of course, Greek. Already in the OT we see that the Septuaginta is based on Greek textual geômetria - from which we have gematria.

Nearly all the motives found in the NT gospels can be found in other ancient sources - healings, walking on water, flying in the air, resurrection from the dead etc. etc. Scholars have already long ago traced most of these to Buddhist, Egyptian, Greek and other  sources etc. In spite of its age, Carl Clemen, Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments, Giessen 1924 (repr. 1973) still provides a qualified  discussion of most of the parallels.

Our task as philologists  is clear: We want to look over the shoulders of "Matthew" and his colleagues as they were sitting there in their workshop at the table compiling and pasting together bits and pieces from various sources, as said, in various languages.

The Hebrew sources have been collected by Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck in their indispensable Kommentar zum Neuen Testament; and for the classical sources we have the Old and the New Wettstein - as far as it goes. Wettstein, when he published his Novum Testamentum Graecum, Amsterdam 1751/52, collected about 30000 parallels from Greek and Latin authors. Der neue Wettstein, which is being published by Udo Schnelle and Manfred Labahn in Halle continues this important work. The first volume, being a commentary on Mark, presents about 1300 texts from Hellenistic authors. The rules according to which the NT gospels were fabricated may be found in Hermann L: Strack´s book: Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, New York 1959. What is stilled needed to complete the picture of the NT sources is a set of reference volumes collecting the Buddhist sources of the NT.

It goes without saying that it follows from source criticism that Jesus, the hero of our story, is a literary figure, like Donald Duck, not at all  a historical person, like Augustus.
 
The episode of the Anointing at Bethany is reported by all four evangelists, with significant variants: Matthew 25:6-13; Mark 14:3-9; Luke 7:36-50, and John 12:1-8.
The Lord is staying in a house in Bethany (not mentioned by Luke). A certain woman, a sinner (hamartôlos) comes to him with  an alabaster jar filled with an expensive perfume (muron barutimon), which she then pours on his head etc. The motive of a woman bringing precious perfume to the Lord so that its fragrance spreads all over town, has been taken from another Buddhist text, closely related, in fact, to the MPS, the Avadânasatakam  (see H.W. Schomerus, Ist die Bibel von Indien abhängig?, München 1932, p. 172). Here the woman with the sandal salve falls down at the feet of the Lord, and prays that she will be reborn as a man. The motive of the fragrance that spreads all over town has left its scent in John 12:3:" The sweet smell of the perfume filled the whole house."

But the main Buddhist source is, as so often, the Mahâparinirvânasûtram 12:4 par. (ed. Waldschmidt, Berlin 1951, p. 188). Here it is the famous courtesan (ganikâ) Âmrapâli who comes and serves a meal to the Lord and his disciples, the monks. The food, with which she serves them, is described as sucinâ pra-nîtena (instrumental case). She serves it "with her own hand".

Matthew speaks of a muron that is barutimon - a perfume (oil) that is very precious. Mark speaks of a muron (made) of nard that is pure (and) very expensive. Luke only mentions the perfume, muron. John has a muron of nard that is pistikê and polutimos. The nard, also mentioned by Pliny et al., is the name of an Indian plant used for perfume (Nardus spica Valeriana; Sanskrit naladam). The San. pra-nîtena (four syllables) is rendered by baru-timon (Matthew) , by polu-telês (Mark), and by poly-timos (John) - three variant renderings, equally valid,  of one and the same original San. adjective.

It should be noted that the San. combines the two adjectives without a word for "and". The Greek of Mark and John imitatates the asyndeton. The rare pistikos, only given by Mark and John, is a perfect rendering of San. sucinâ (instrumental case of suci-). In normal Greek pistikos means "reliable, trustworthy". The context suggests "pure" - which is confirmed by the San. original, which, in fact, simply means "pure".

This all goes to show that Mark and John used the same source as Matthew, but also that they used it independently. In particular, they all struggled with the San. adjective pra-nîtas (mask. nom.). They offered three different versions, Luke left it out.

There are, moreover, several puns on the name of the celebrated courtesan from Vaisâlî(later becoming Vézelay of Mary Magdalene  in France!) , Âmra-pâli-ganikâ:
1. The murou in all four evangelists, has a pun on âmra.

2.  The gunê hê-tis, a certain woman, in Luke contains a pun on gani-kâ (where -kâ is taken as if a pronoun, still  acc. to middoth). - Luke´s en tê polei hamartôlos, in the town,  is clearly an echo of -pâli and âmra-pâli(s) - with t for p in - tôlos.

3. The apôleia in Matthew and Mark is yet another pun on her name.

When John mentions Lazaros, this name is a pun on Licchavis, with whom Âmrapâli is explicitly associated. John is also the only evangelist here to identify the woman as Mariam - i.e. as Âmram (accusative form), the "Mango girl".
 
According to Jesus, the woman poured perfume over his body in order to prepare it for burial ahead of time. That is, of course, a ridiculous explanation for her odd behaviour, but it shows nicely what kind of paradoxes one can run into when combining several different sources as the evangelists did here, as elsewhere.

But for the oil in connection with the burial - or rather: cremation - of the Lord, they again used the same Buddhist source - the Mahâparinirvânasûtram. The same source also has the Lord explain to his disciples how they have to prepare for his cremation. Since episodes from the MPS are attested in Buddhist art dating from B.C., there can - if only for this reason - be no doubt about the priority of the sources. As I have already pointed out, the 46 syllables of Luke 10:38 were also based on the same source, Mahâparinirvânasûtram 10:3 = 11:1 and 15:4 - cf. my Geheimnisse um Jesus Christus, p. 111 for some details.

John 12:6 mentions the thief and the rare glôssokomon, far too  freely translated as "money bag". This refers to the evil monk who, during the last meal of the Lord, stole a loha-karotakam, a bowl of copper (or gold, or iron), as mentioned in  MPS 26:16. John´s explanation of the behaviour of the thief is different. He, the traitor, wants to sell the salve so that he can steal the (ridicously) large amount of  money it brings. In the Buddhist original the monk steals the bowl because he is an evil monk. In the Buddhist original the theif becomes a traitor by stealing. In John he alrady is a traitor, who also wants to steal.

It is a great pity that authors still publish books about Mary Magdalene,  passing over the direct Buddhist sources as if they did not exist (cf. e.g. Margaret Starbird, Magdalene´s Lost Legacy. Symbolic Numbers and the sacred Union in Christianity, Rochester, Vermont 2003). Please note that some of the observations here made, were first published in The Adyar Library Bulletin 64 (2000), pp. 151-170. A few repetitions were unavoidable.
 
Dr. Christian Lindtner
August 11, a.D. 2010

 

 

Solving the unsolved question of Matthew 22:41- 46

 

All Buddhists and  Buddhologists are familiar with the curious  fact that the Buddha, according to the scriptures,  left certain questions unsolved, undecided  or unanswered, e.g. - is the world eternal or is it not eternal? etc. The reason for his silence could, in theory,  be that he considered such questions irrelevant to salvation  or tedious, or that he simply did not know the answer. Such questions, dogmas or issues (vastu)  are termed avyâkrita in Sanskrit, or avyâkata in Pâli. (For references please see e.g. V. Trenckner et al. (eds.); A Critical Pâli Dictionary, Vol. I, Copenhagen 1944, p. 484.)

Matthew 22:41-46 provides an important example of a question raised by the Lord, but in this case neither he himself nor his opponents come up with an answer. Moreover, modern scholars have failed to come up with a satisfactory answer to the question posed.
Here, then, we have a nice case of an  ayvâkrta-vastu in the NT. It will, therefore, not be superfluous for me to offer a solution to the old unsolved question raised by Jesus according to Matthew 22:41-46.

The question is: How can Christ be son and lord of David - i.e. at the same time? A slight paraphrase will make the paradox more clear: how can Bob be the father and the son of Bill at the same time? Hard to say!

No wonder, then, that "from that day on no one dared ask him any more questions" (Matthew 22:46). No one was able to answer - apo-krithênai (pun on San. avyâkritâni, nom. plur.- !). But there is an answer, and the answer is quite simple - provided one knows where to look for it.

Jesus, also known as Christ, as Emmanouêl, the Son of David , the Lord etc. knew the answer, but did not tell: The answer is to be found at the level of gematria, or textual geometry: The number of Christ, Khristos is 1480. The number of son, huios, is 680, and the number of Lord, kurios, is 800. So, since 680 + 800 add up to 1480, he is the Christ, for Khristos is also 1480. So Christ is son and lord, for 1480 is 1480.

But there is more: Jesus, or Christ, is said to be son of David, huios Daueid = 1224. He is also said to be lord of David, kurios Daueid = 1104.

Next step: 1224 and 1104 add up to 2328.  As known, Khristos translates Messias, which is 656. The Messias is thus 70 + 656 = 726. He is also to be called Emmanuel, or Emmanouêl (Matthew 1:23), and ho Emmanouêl gives us 70+644 = 714. When we add 726 and 714, we arrive at 1440.

Together with 888 for Jesus (familiar to most early Christians), we get 2328 (888+1440). In other words 2328 = Son of David (and) Lord of David = Jesus, the Emmanuel, the Messias.

Moreover, 2328 is the number of 1480 and 848, which is king, Greek basileus.
Thus the number 2328 provides the geometrical proof that: Christ is the son and the Lord of David, that Jesus or Emmanuel is the Messias, and that Christ is a king - i.e. a king of the Jews, or of Israel, of course.

We may take yet another step: It has been shown that Christ is Lord, or the Lord, ho kurios = 870. Subtracting 870 from 1480, we are left with 610, and there is nothing to prevent us from taking 610 as the teacher, Greek ho didaskalos, 70+540 = 610 (any concordance  for the NT  ref.).

Also, Jesus is the son of Joseph. In other words: Joseph is (the father) of the teacher, Greek  Iôsêph ho  didaskalou = 2328. Hence, an angel also calls Joseph "son of David" (Matthew 1:20). Somehow, father and son are one, united in (the) Christ.

In this passage, Christ certainly proves that he is a teacher - a teacher who teaches at two different levels: Buddhist readers are instantly reminded of the celebrated  stanzas in Nâgârjuna´s Mûlamadhyamakakârikâ 24:8-10:

"The Dharma teaching of the Buddhas actually presupposes two realities: the relative (superficial) reality of the world and the reality in the ultimate (profound) sense. Those who do not understand the distinction between these two truths do not understand the truth in the profound instruction of the Buddha. The ultimate sese cannot be shown without the support of language; without understanding the ultimate sense nirvana remains unapproachable." (Quoted from my book Master of Wisdom. Writings of the Buddhist Master Nâgârjuna, Berkeley, CA, 1986,1997, p. 340.)

The importance of these simple observations - that have, to the best of my knowledge not been made before - cannot be overestimated: If the student of the NT fails to make a sharp distinction between the level of language and the level of numbers, he cannot understand the truth in the profound instruction of the Christ.
The distinction, in Mahâyâna, between two truths serves a specific purpose - the attainment of nirvana.

Is this also the case in the NT? Perhaps we shall find time to see  what Emmanuel has to say about nirvana at some later point.
 
Dr. Christian Lindtner
a.D. July 21, 2010.

 

 

The Man in the Clouds

 

According to a fresh poll, no less than 41% of all Americans believe that Jesus is still  alive ,  and that the Son of Man - who is also considered son of God, and son of Joseph, a carpenter -  will return before the year 2050.

If asked, WHERE, exactly, old man  Jesus abides  right now, the answer would probably be: Up there in the clouds - which is what the NT teaches in so many words and wants us to believe. Google, please, for fanciful images of Jesus in the clouds!

Of course there is no man really to be seen by any human eye, by any  telescope etc. up there in the clouds. It is all poetical fancy, as when Zeus, according to the Greek myth, formed a cloud in the  image of Hera, whereupon Ixion embraced her. Thus Kentauros - the Buddhist Gandharvas -  was born. Gods that appear in clouds is not an unusual motive in the ancient religions. The myth of Jesus in the clouds can be derived from the corresponding Buddhist myth (SBV, p. 41 etc.)

In Sanskrit literature  there is a device  called madhyama-pada-lopa - the loss (lopa) of a word (pada) in the middle (madhyama), i.e. in the middle of a given compound. It is a great pity that Christian theologians, when dealing with the highly obscure notion of the holy spirit - hagion pneuma - are unaware of this fact which is reflected in the Greek rendering of the Sanskrit.

The Buddhist myth tells us that Queen Mâyâ, the mother of the Bodhisattva,  saw a white elephant descending and entering her womb . The white elephant  is a common metaphor for a white cloud in Indian poetry (a fact that Buddhists unfortunately seem to have overlooked).  The cloud was driven by the wind. The blow of the wind sets the cloud in motion. Matthew copied the Buddhist myth leaving out the cloud and the blow ,  thus creating great confusion in the minds of generations to come. As usual, the confusion is intended.

The Christian myth is a copy of the Buddhist myth:  First, we have the young god up in heaven.He is a deva-putra - a son (putra) of God (deva).  Next, God decides to send him down to earth, in the form of a man,  to teach the masses a few lessons about Dharma, or righteousness. The vehicle used for bringing the deva-putra  down from heaven to earth is a cloud - and that cloud is driven by the blow of the wind - how else? The Sanskrit runs: megho...mâruta-vega-preritas, i.e a cloud (megha)  driven (preritas) by the blow, or power  (vega) of the wind (mâruta).

So, Jesus , the deva-putra (alias Daueid-putra), enters the womb of his virgin mother. She is obviously a virgin, for the father of her son is merely a cloud driven by the wind of God. Hence the NT also identifies  God with wind (John).  A wind called "holy", for it is a rather special wind.  The blow of the wind is left out by way of madhyama-pada-lopa, leaving us only with the mysterious cloud. Later on, Matthew 4:1,  her son goes to the desert "in the wind" - i.e. transported by yet another cloud driven by the wind.

If one checks all the passages dealing with wind and clouds in the NT in this light, it is clear that Jesus, exactly like the Buddhist original, uses clouds driven by wind in  precisely  the same way that we use cars etc.  driven by e.g. diesel engines etc. The book of Daniel 7:13 is another source for the same idea that likewise inspired the NT : "I beheld in the night vision, and, lo, one coming with the clouds of heaven as a son of man..." The cloud here looks like a man.

The god responsible for the movements of the cloud is, of course, as any Greek schoolboy immediately would recognize, no other than Zeus, the king of men and gods, the heavenly father, called , already by Homer, nephelê-geréta, "the cloud-gatherer".
The son of Man, who is also the son of God,the wind,  descends from heaven in the form of a cloud. He is a messenger from Zeus.  The cloud that looks like a man is also a king, according to the Buddhists source, according to Daniel and according to the NT.
The myth of the king descending from heaven in the form of a cloud is, as said, a very common motiv in Hellenistic religious syncretism. The kingdom of the heavens, said to be near, simply refers to Jesus, the cloud that looks like a man that can speak, move  around etc. 

Sometimes were are told that the dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, or that the lamb of god is a symbol of Jesus Christ. That, however, is not really the case. Once we recall that the dove as well as the lamb are white, we are obviously again dealing with white clouds. The white dove = cloud can hardly be distinguised from the wind (pneuma) that carries it, and the white lamb = cloud can, likewise, hardly be distinguished from from God, who is defined as wind, again pneuma. So the dove and the cloud are not at all symbols. Just as we can see a man in a cloud, thus we can see a dove or a lamb. All of the iamges are but clouds, and it takes a cloudy mind to take them for more than that.
 
In Matthew 17:5 we have another nice case of a cloud that creates confusion. He mentions a cloud that is said to be bright, phôteinê. The voice of god is heard from that cloud. The voice, we now know, is the sound of  Homer´s nephelê-geréta. Peter offers to make three tabernacles - for protection from the rain, we may add, in the light of the Buddhist source.

The Buddhist source (CPS § 6; see  my Hînayâna, Copenhagen 1998, p. 26) speaks af a cloud that is a-kâla. Sanskrit a-kâla can mean either bright (not black), or out of season. Matthew deliberately prefers  the "wrong" correct  rendering, in order to confuse his reader.  The original idea is that suddenly (out of season)  a  cloud , full of rain, appears in the sky. Hence "Peter" offers to made a shelter, i.e. to protect Jesus and his visitors from the rain.

Why Peter offers to make huts for protection can only be understood once one is aware of the original Buddhist source. Matthew fails to mention the rain. Luke 9:33, well aware of the Buddhist source, adds that Peter was "not knowing what he said". If one only knows the NT, one does not understand Peter´s motive. Peter did not know the motive of his own action - for he did not know the Buddhist source.
 
The Cloud messenger (Megha-dûta) is the  title of a famous Sanskrit poem by Kâlidâsa. Should the reader wish to enjoy some nice Sanskrit poetry about clouds that may serve as vehicles for fanciful messages, its study is warmly recommended. Buddhists - as well as their Christian imitators - often claim that we should "love all living beings" - perhaps with the exception of the infidels. If so, one wonders why priests still fail to make clear distinctions between myth and reality, between real and imaginary - for surely, to love other human beings  is not to confuse other human beings  - or how?
 
Dr. Christian Lindtner
a.D. June 28, 2010

 

 

The five thousand of Matthew 14:21 par.

 

Our source criticism has already demonstrated that the more than five hundred brothers of 1 Corinthians 15:6 were invented by combining two different Buddhist sources: one that spoke of five hundred Buddhist monks present at the cremation of the body of Tathâgata, and one that spoke of the more than  five hundred laymen that had recently passed away.

But what, then, about the 5000 men, beside women and children, mentioned by Matthew 14:21?  And what about the five loaves and that which remained over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full?

To find the answer, we must identify the source, and the source is to be found in the second chapter of the Lotus - the Saddharmapundarîkasûtram (SDP). I here refer to the translation of H. Kern.

The assembly of the Lord consists, on the one hand, of twelve hundred Arhats headed by Âjnâta-Kaundinya (head of the group of the first five disciples) (Kern, p. 34) and, on the other hand, of five thousand proud monks, nuns, and lay devotees of both sexes (p. 38; repeated on p. 44). The five thousand men and women leave the assembly, and the twelve hundred, headed by the five, are thus  left behind in the assembly. With this image in mind, it is easy to see how Matthew, Mark and Luke handled their Buddhist source, i.e., in this case, the SDP.

In Matthew 14:15 the disciples wanted to send the multitudes away. In the SDP the five thousand proud monks and nuns  actually did leave the assembly. Once they had left the assembly, , that which remained over of the broken pieces, were "twelve baskets full" The twelve hundred Buddhist disciples have thus been transformed into twelve baskets full.

The five Buddhist disciples (Âjnâta-Kaundinya and the other four) are transformed into five loaves. According to Mark 6:43-44, the men  that ate the loaves were five thousand. The Lord sends them away (Mark 6:45).

Luke 6:15 has the curious remark, that they wish to make Jesus a king, but that he withdrew. The backgroud for this is again the same chapter of the Lotus (Kern, p. 58), where the Lord says: "I declare that I am the king of the law (dharmarâja); I am urging others to enlightenment, but I am here without disciples."

The Lotus repeatedly sanctions the employment of symbolic or code language (Kern, p. 59): "They have spoken in many mysteries; hence it is difficult to understand (them). Therefore try to understand the mystery (sandhâ; sandhâya etc.) of the Buddhas, the holy masters of the world;forsake all doubt and uncertainty: you shall become Buddhas; rejoice!" Only insiders, i.e. the closest disciples know the code.

The modern reader of the feeding of the five thousand is, of course, left deeply mystified.
That he is left mystified is according to the book, i.e. in accordance with the message of the SDP. To solve the mystery, one must identify the source.

The two fish that are eaten but still survive has another obvious Buddhist source to which I shall come back later. (Pieces of  flesh of two fish are eaten, but the fish survive, and the next day the two fish provide yet another meal etc. etc.) Mark 6:39-40 is significant for the distributive compounds "sumposia-sumposia" and the "prasiai-prasiai", only to be found here. They are often translated by "into groups"  and "in rows".
It is a great pity that our New Testament grammars have failed to identify them as Sanskritisms: samghât samgham...pûgât pûgam ( from the MPS, passim, cf. my paper "Some Sanskritisms in the New Testament Gospels", in The Adyar Library Bulletin 65 (2001)). It shows that Mark now and then used the Buddhist source independently.

The rule that allows the combination of corresponding significant numbers - e.g. 40 days with 40 years - is, as known, sanctioned by traditional rabbinical hermeneutics (see e.g. Hermann L. Strack, Einleitung in Talmud und Midrash, München 1921, p. 107, with ref.).

Dr. Christian Lindtner
a.D. June 7, 2010.

 

 

Gematria of the Lotus (Saddharmapundarîkasûtram)

 

In order to understand the Greek of the NT, one must be able to read Sanskrit, and, likewise, in order to understand the Sanskrit of several Buddhist texts composed in that language, one must know ancient Greek. The reason for this is simple: Just as the NT often depends on Buddhist sources, thus Buddhist texts often depend on Greek sources. These scholars we bilingual, they knew Greek and Sanskrit.
 
Here is a passage from the Saddharmapundarîkasûtram (SDP), or Lotus (Kern ed. p. 391; Wogihara ed., p. 331; Vaidya ed. p. 231). In the translation of Kern (p. 367), with a few additions:

"Therefore, young men of good family (kula-putras), you should after the complete extinction of the Tathâgata, with reverence keep, read, promulgate, cherish, worship it. And wherever on earth, young men of good family, this Dharmaparyâya shall be made known, read, written, meditated, expounded, studied or collected into a volume, be it in a monastery or at home, in the wilderness or in a town, at the foot of a tree or in a palace, in a building or in a cavern, on that spot one should erect a shrine (caityam) in dedication to the Tathâgata. For such a spot must be regarded a a terrace of enlightenment (bodhi-mandas); such a spot must be regarded as one where all Tathâgatas &c. have arrived at supreme, perfect enlightenment; on that spot have all Tathâgatas moved forward the wheel of the law (dharma-cakram); on that spot one may hold that all Tathâgatas have reached complete extinction."

The idea, in brief, is: The SDP is a dharma-parable. It may be recited, written (or drawn, San. likhyeta), considered,  copied, explained etc. on a given spot of earth, in a given place. A caityam, or sanctuary, shrine, should then be made in honour of the Lord - Tathâgatam (accusative), for this spot is the bodhi-temple (mandas) of ALL the Tathâgatas. They have been enlightened in that spot of earth. Moreover, all the Tathâgatas have turned the Wheel of Dharma, the dharma-cakram, in that place.
 
To understand this curious passage, it will be helpful to visualize the situation as a whole. First, it says that the SDP is a dharma-parable. The San.for parable is paryâyas, and, as I have pointed out elsewhere, San. paryâyas, is translated in the NT by the Greek parabolê. Greek parabolê, means, in geometry, application. In other words: the SDP is being drawn on a spot of earth, in the learned sand, as the Greek scholar would say.

The numerical value (psêphos) of Saddharma-pundarîka-sûtram is, according to the Greek mode of calculation,352 +666+1041 = 2059. The diameter of a 2059 circle is 656, and the radius, of course, 328. The numerical value of dharma-cakram is 146+182 = 328; and the numerical value of Tathâgatam (the accusative case as found in the text above) is 656. (For the Chistians 656 is Messias = 40+5+200+200+10+1+200).

To sum up: The passage invites the kula-putras, son of good family, i.e., the educated reader, to draw a 2059 circle with the 656 diameter of Tathâgatam, and the 328 radius of dharma-cakram. The San. cakram (here the neuter, also attested in earlier San. masculine: cakras) clearly represents Greek kuklos, circle.  Once we know Greek, we easily see that dharma-cakram is 328, that Tathâgatam is 656, that Saddharma-pundarîka-sûtram is 352+666+1041 = 2059. Furthermore, it is said that all Tathâgatas have turned the dharma-cakram on that spot of earth. This means t