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.

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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

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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.

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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 that the 656 diameter of Tathâgatam has turned, i.e. has drawn the 2059 circle of Saddharmapundarîkasûtram.

What, then, about the two words caityam and bodhimandas (nominative case)? It will be observed that the numerical value of caityam is 20+1+10+300+10+1+40 = 382. Likewise, the number of bodhi-mandas is 86+296 = 382. The number 382 must, therefore, be significant in the present context, i.e. in connection with the drawing - the 2059 circle of SDP -  before our eyes. If we draw Tathâgatas, which is 816, as a circle, the inscribed pentagon measures 763.62..or 764, which is the sum of the numerical values of caityam and bodhimandas (i.e. 382 + 382 = 764). The 816 circle with the inscribed 764 pentagon thus tells us that the caityam which is the bodhimandas, is contained in Tathâgatas. Or, to the same effect: Tathâgatas contains the caityam and (or: which is) the bodhimandas.

But how do we go from the initial 328 radius in 2059 SDP circle to the 382 of caityam and bodhimandas? First, 328 is the 2 x 164 solar cross in the 514.95 = 515 circle. Four such circles amount to 514.96 = 2059.84, which, taken as 2059 was, as demonstrated, the number of SDP. The 515 circle contains the inscribed 464 square. When we subtract one half of 164, i.e. 82, from 464, we arrive at 382, the value of caityam as well as bodhimandas. We can now easily how the author, who must have known the Greek language as well as the Greek mode of psêphos, went about: He started out with 328 - dharmacakram. From that he derived the figure 382. This figure he divided by five, giving him the image of the 382 pentagon inscribed in the 408. 20.., or 408 circle. Two such circles gave him 816 for Tathâgatas.

The words of the SDP, in this passage, to sum up, thus operate - as the text itself often states when it refers to "hidden or symbolic  language (samdhâ-bhâsya)"  - on two levels. There is a hidden message. There are, as always in Mahâyâna, two truths.  On the superficial level of words one can translate from one language into another language. On a deeper level, one must know the numerical value of each Sanskrit word according to the Greek mode of calculation (psêphos).

All this was, as I hope to have shown by numerous examples, also know to the authors of the New Testament. Let me therefore, briefly repeat what I have pointed out elsewhere:

Revelation 13:18 refers to the number 666, saying that "it is, in fact, the number of a man" -  a-rith-mos gar an-thrô-pou es-tin. These nine syllables of the Greek represent the nine original syllables of the Sanskrit of the title: sad-dhar-ma-pun-da-rî-ka-sût-ram
The total number of syllables, as said, is, in both cases, nine. Moreover, the number of letters is, in both cases, 23. Each phrase consists of four different words. The San. counts nine vowels, but the Greek has ten.

Revelation13:18 does not explicitly identify the man whose number is said to be 666. This omission has, unfortunately, given rise to endless speculations. In our view,philological  problems must, if possible,  be solved in the light of their sources. The Greek for "man" is anthrôpos (nominative form). His number is said to be 666.  But 666 is the number of San. pundarîka: 80+400+50+4+1+100+10+20+1 = 666. The "man" in Revelation 13:18, is, therefore, the Lotus, the pundarîka. Something is missing! The man has not been fully identified from the NT point of view. The Greek anthrôpos, man,  is 1310. When we subtract 666 for pundarîka, we are left with 644. We would expect, from the context, that 644 somehow refers to the hero of the NT, i.e. to Jesus or Christ (888 or 1480).
According to the OT quotation in Matthew 1: 23, Jesus will be called Emmanouêl - but, strangely,  the NT never mentions him by that name. We must thus look for our Emmanouêl on some deeper level, i.e. on the numerical level. Now Emmanouêl is 5+40+40+1+50+70+400+8+30 = 644. The 1310  "man" that Revelation 13:18 refers to, is, therefore, pundarîka as Emmanouêl, for 666 + 644 = 1310.

To put it simply: The Christian saviour (known as Jesus etc.)  is identified with the Buddhist  saviour (known as Sâkyamuni(s) etc.). The great hero of the SDP is, of course, Sâkyamunis, whose number is 932. The Lotus is his symbol. Since Emmanouêl was identified with this Lotus, we would expect that Jesus also was identified  with the Lotus, for Emmanouêl is one of the names of Jesus.

When we look closer at various passages of the NT, we shall find that our suspicions be  fully confirmed: During the Last Supper, Jesus refers to his body, Greek sôma, and to his blood, to haima mou. The sôma is 1041, and 1041 is also San. sûtram. And "the blood of mine", to haima mou, is 932, and 932 is Sâkyamunis. The tês diathêkês, of the covenant, that follows (Matthew 26:28) contains a clear pun on San. Tathâgatasya, of the Tathâgata, i.e. of Sâkyamuni(s), both pentasyllabic. Jesus thus identifies himself with Sâkyamuni(s), the main Tathâgata of the SDP. Jesus is an embodiment of the SDP.

There is more to the very same effect: When we draw a circle that measures 888 for Jesus (Iêsous), the inscribed Lotus (the Star of David, the hexagram) measures 1470, but 1470 is the number of the Greek word for the  Lotus, viz. ho lôtos = 70+30+800+300+70+200 = 1470. So we see Jesus as the Lotus, the Star of David.
Did the authors of the SDP already have this drawing in mind - the drawing of the Lotus inscribed in a circle? The answer is: yes, they did: The psêphos of SDP was, as will be recalled, 2059 (or 2059.84) If one draws a Lotus (as the Buddhists often did) measuring 2059, the circle in which this hexagram  is inscribed measures ca. 1244. To be quite precise: the inscribed hexagram measures 6 x 343.306666666...suggesting the number of man: 666. If we add 816, the number of Tathâgatas (above), we arrive at 2060 or 2059, which is the number of Saddharmapundarîkasûtram. This Buddhist drawing, therefore, also identifies Tathâgatas on the basis of a drawing of a hexagram showing us the stylized image of a Lotus.
 
Jesus, was, therefore, in several ways born from a Buddhist lotus.
 
A final point: In the SDP, the Lord Sâkyamuni(s) encourages his disciples to spread the message in writing etc. His disciples are called Bodhisattvas, Mahâsattvas etc., and kula-putras, i.e. "family-sons" (often translated freely as "sons of good family").
The passage from the SDFP quoted above read: 

"Therefore, young men of good family, you should after the complete extinction of the Tathâgata, with reverence, keep, read, promulgate, cherish, worship it."
 
In other words: Once Sâkyamuni(s) as passed away, it is up to the kula-putras to spread the SDP in various ways. The kula-putras is thus one of the many synonyms of a Buddhist missionary. The psêphos of San. kula-putras is 451+1081 = 1532. I have already pointed out, again and again, that Jesus is such a Buddhist missionary in disguise.

The truth of this observation can now be established from yet another point of view.
The number of Jesus is 888, and the number of Emmanouêl is 644. Thus Jesus Emmanouêl is 888 + 644 = 1532. But 1532 is also the number of kula-putras, a missionary of the Lotus. It was stated clearly, that the kula-putras was expected to become active AFTER the extinction of Sâkyamunis.

Jesus Emmanouêl, therefore, was such a kula-putras, who propagated the message of the SDP - in disguise as the son of God, the son of David etc. etc. He was, indeed, born in or  from a lotus, for all Bodhisattvas are, as students of Buddhist art are aware,  born in a lotus.

Jesus was also known as Messias, and Messias is 40+5+200+200+10+1+200 = 656.
But, as we have seen, 656 is the diameter of the 2059 circle of the Saddharmaundarîkasûtram. Thus, Messias, alias Jesus Emmanouêl,  was also born from the Lotus. In various places, the NT would like to have us believe that Jesus is identical with the Messias mentioned in the OT.

We can now prove that this belief is, in a strange and unexpected way, quite true, for since the SDP circle is 2059, and since Jesus is 888, and since Messias is 656,and since 515 was also established above, it follows that:
 
Jesus is Messias - in Greek: Iêsous esti Messias = 888+515+656 = 2059.
 
Dr. Christian Lindtner
a.D. May 31, 2010.

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Pinsen handler om geometri

Som det var at vente, var div. kirkeblade fyldt med forvirring omkring pinsen og dens betydning. En kirkeminister forbandt pinsen med solskin - hvad der ikke står noget om i grundteksten (Apostlenes Gerninger 2) - men indrømmede dog, at den var svær at forstå. Andre talte om, at pinsemorgen var fyldt med Helligånd - hvad det så skal betyde - er årets øvrige dage da ikke fyldt med Helligånd? En afdanket biskop mente, at når det er pinse, så er det på sin plads med "løssluppen glæde", osv. osv. - vild forvirring. Alle synes at have "drukket sig fulde i sød vin".

Nutidens almindelige forvirring har sin rod i den tilsyneladende forvirring, der karakteriserer skildringen i Apostlenes Gerninger 2. En såkaldt hellig ånd udgydes fra himlen - på godt dansk: det er blæsevejr. Peter holder en prædiken med citater fra GT, alt for at bevise, at Gud har gjort Jesus til både Herre og til Kristus.

Den åbenbare mangel på logik og sammenhæng kan betegnes med troldmandens eufemisme: "løssluppen glæde" - altså sludder og vrøvl. Vi anbefaler, at den seriøse læser samler tankerne og erstatter den løsslupne glæde med en kølig og omhyggelig granskning af den græske originaltekst (Nestle el. andre). Uden filologien er man fortabt.

Som man da ser, falder teksten, Peters prædiken, i to hovedafsnit: 2:14b - 24, og 2:25-36. Tæller man nu antallet af stavelser, vil man finde, at hvert afsnit består af præcis 444 stavelser, altså ialt 888 stavelser.

Hovedpersonen i teksten er utvivlsomt Jesus, på græsk stavet I-ê-s-o-u-s. Hvert ord har på græsk en talværdi (psêphos), et ordtal, som findes ved at lægge talværdien af hvert bogstav sammen, hvorved man får 10+8+200+70+400+200, altså 888. Med andre ord: "Peter" har filet på sin tale med så stor omhu, at talværdien af navnet på hovedpersonen i hans prædiken modsvares nøjagtigt af antallet af stavelser i den græske tekst. Ser man dernæst på kapitel 2 som helhed, da vil man finde, at 2:1-14a og 2:37-47 ligeledes består af præcis 888 stavelser.

Hele kapitel 2 består således af 1776, eller to gange 888 stavelser. Dette er selvklart ingen tilfældighed. Flere lignende eksempler på, at en given tekstenhed består af et antal stavelser (eller ord), der nøjagtigt modsvarer talværdien af navnet på hovedpersonen i samme tekstenhed, er påpeget af bl.a. den hollandske teolog, vor gamle ven J. Smit Sibinga (således navnlig i afhandlingen: Literair handwerk in Handelingen, Leiden 1970, hvorfra dette eksempel er taget).

Peters prædiken består ikke blot af flere citater fra Det Gamle Testamente - hvilket er velkendt - men også af citater fx fra buddhistiske og andre hellenistiske kilder - hvilket gerne overses.  Der er altså tale om et miskmask, et sammenkog, en mosaik, hvis ydre form holdes sammen med geometrisk strenghed og objektivitet, der ikke levner plads til nogen form for løssluppenhed.

Der kan umuligt være tale om en prædiken, som blev holdt på den i teksten angivne måde. Der er tale om et omhyggeligt udført regnebrætsarbejde -
Drivkraften bag tekstens valg af ord og talværdier er den vind, der betegnes som hellig.
Grundtanken er altså ret beset såre enkel. Mennesker kan tale - dog ikke uden at ånde. Der må ånd, vind, luft til. At tale er at ånde. Luften er Gud. Ingen kan ånde uden luft, uden Gud.

Helligånden er derfor den kraft, der viser sig i en tekst eller tale, hvor antallet af ord og stavelser er omhyggeligt kalkuleret, således at antallet modsvares af talværdien af navnet på tekstenhedens hovedperson - i dette tilfælde Herren, Kristus, også kaldet Jesus - 888.

Herefter er det let at forstå, hvad det vil sige at man døbes i Jesu navn. Det betyder, at man døbes i 888 - og det sker to gange i andet kapitel af Apostlenes Gerninger. Den Jesus, der snakkes så meget om, er altså ikke en historisk person, men en figur, et tal.
Med dåben indføres man i geometri.

Men hvad med Herren og Kristus?

Tegner man nu en cirkel med omkreds 888, da vil det indskrevne kvadrat måle 800, hvilket er talværdien af græsk kurios - altså Herre. Tegner man dernæst en "fisk" i samme sirkel - dvs. en 888 cirkel, der gennemskærer cirklens centrum, da måler denne "fisk" 592.

Lægger man 888 og 592 sammen, da får man 1480, hvilket er talværdien for Kristus - græsk Kh-r-i-s-t-o-s (600+100+10+200+300+70+200 = 1480). Altså igen: Jesus er på ingen måde en historisk skikkelse, men tværtimod en geometrisk figur, bestemt af tallet 888.

Pinsen handler altså først og fremmest om, at levere et geometrisk bevis for den åndelige - dvs. naturlige - sammenhæng mellem tallene 888, 800 og 1480. Hertil kræves lidt "hellig vind" - noget, vore præster i den grad synes at savne, skønt teksten objektivt set egentlig er ganske klar.

Pinsens glædelige budskab er en hyldest til geometriens skønhed: Dets symbol er en cirkel med et indskrevet kvadrat og en "fisk". Man husker Platon: Gud dyrker altid geometri.

Det er nu ikke længere et ubegribeligt paradoks, at én og samme hellige ånd manifesterer sig på mange forskellige modersmål på pinsedagen. Hvad der her er sagt og skrevet på dansk, har aldeles samme betydning på alle andre sprog, når man blot tænker på geometrien bag de mange forskellige ord. Overser man geometrien, da bliver forvirringen, som det ses, total.

Geometrien indtager en central plads i videnskaberne. For de meget få, der dyrker videnskaberne oprigtigt for erkendelsens egen skyld, bringer pinsen nu et glædens budskab. Glæden over testamentets geometriske budskab bliver ikke mindre, når man tænker på den logiske konsekvens: Pinsens glædelige budskab betyder, at præsteskaberne, der normalt har levet af at lyve og skabe forvirring, omsider bliver definitivt overflødiggjort. Præsterne har ikke blot forsyndet sig mod deres menigheder, men tilmed mod den egentlige mening i den hellige skrift, de i så rigt mål har lukreret af at forkynde.

Til at undervise os probat i geometri, har vi allermindst brug for skingrende sibyller og salvelsesfulde shamaner - endsige kjoleklædte biskopper. Deres tid burde snart være omme.

Dr. phil. Christian Lindtner
Den 25. maj 2010

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The Rising of the Saints from the Tombs -

Buddhist  Lotus source of Matthew 27:51-53

When Jesus gave up his spirit, many odd phenomena occurred. One of these, obviously intended as a sort of evidence for the absurd Christian doctrine of physical resurrection, is mentioned by Matthew 27: 51-53: "...and the earth was shaken, and the rocks were rent, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his  resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared to many."

The identity of the bodies of these saints who came out of their graves and went into the holy city, has always been somewhat of an embarrassment to even the most naive among modern theologians. One learned Danish theologian - Mogens Müller - suggests that the
reference is to the prophets and righteous men of the OT. Another theologian, Donald A.  Hagner, admits "that the rising of the saints from the tombs in this passage is a piece of theology set forth as history."

One cannot but smile at the opposition or conflict  between theology and history that Hagner here  inadvertently expresses. For what he says is simply that Matthew is not speaking the truth. However, the rising of the saints from the tombs is not merely a case
of theology, or myth, but a manifest case of plagiary. We have already seen that "the best and the earliest" evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus, and for Christians in general, has been copied by "Paul" from Buddhist sources- the "more than 500 brethren"
etc. (1 Cor. 15)

And when it comes to the saints rising from the tombs, we again have a Buddhist source, namely the celebrated  Lotus Sûtra - the Saddharmapundarîkasûtram, still available in Sanskrit as well as Chinese, Tibetan etc. Chapter xiv (in the Sanskrit edition, and English translation of H. Kern; chapter xv in te Chinese version of Kumârajîva; translated by W.E.Soothill) is entitled: "Issuing of the Bodhisattvas from the Gaps of the Earth".

Here are the main points:

The multitude of Bodhisattvas say to the Lord that they would like to read, write, worship and devote themselves to the Lotus. But the Lord replies that this is not necessary, for he already has an enormous number of Bodhisattvas able to do that.

"No sooner had the Lord uttered these words than the Saha-world burst open on every side, and from within the clefts arose many hundred thousand myriads of kotis of Bodhisattvas with gold-coloured bodies...who had been staying in the element of ether underneath this great earth close to this Saha-world. These then on hearing the word of
the Lord came up from below the earth...They cannot be numbered, counted, calculated, compared, known by occult science, the Bodhisattvas Mahâsattvas who emerged from the gaps of the earth to appear in the Saha-world. And after they had successively emerged they went up to the Stûpa of precious substances which stood in the sky, where the Lord Prabhûtaratna, the extinct Tathâgata, was seated along with the Lord Sâkyamuni on the throne. Thereafter they saluted the feet of both Tathâgatas, etc., as well as the images of Tathâgatas produced by the Lord Sâkyamuni from his own body..."

From the Chinese version of Kumârajîva:

" When the Buddha has thus spoken, the earth...trembles and quakes and from its midst there issue together innumerable thousands, myriads, kotis of Bodhisattva-Mahâsattvas...These Bodhisattvas, hearing the voice of Sâkyamuni Buddha preaching, spring forth from below... When these Bodhisattvas have emerged from the earth, each goes up to the wonderful Stûpa of the Precious Even (jewels) in the sky, where are the
Tathâgata Abundant-Treasures and Sâkyamuni Buddha."

Conclusion: The saints that issue from the earth are not exactly the prophets etc. of the OT, but the Bodhisattvas of the Lotus. The cry of Jesus up there on the cross, was the cry of the Lord up there in the Stûpa in the sky.

The holy city, to which they went, was the Stûpa up there in the sky. By comparing the original text of the Lotus, the reader will find many more parallels, all of them to the effect, that "Matthew" (who has his name from a famous Buddhist monk) and his consorts copied the Lotus when they fabricated the legend of Jesus, combining, of course, with
bits and pieces taken from the OT etc.

In Chapter x of the Lotus, on the Buddhist preacher, the Lord endorses that after his Nirvâna, the Lotus be communicated "in secret or by stealth" (rahasi caurenâpi; San. ed. Kern, p., 227). This is, as we have now seen, indeed what happened, when "Matthew" plagiarized the legend of the Lotus about the Bodhisattvas that issued from the earth upon the Lord´s  cry from the Stûpa in the sky. In the old wooden church of Granhult in Småland (Sweden), there is a naive  painting showing the physical resurrection of the Bodhisattvas.

Christian readers will, in the interest of historical truth, be happy to know that all the alleged witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus, are , in fact Buddhist witnesses. Should they not be happy about that, there is some consolation to be had from yet another fact, namely that all the Buddhist witnesses are, themselves, also not fact but myth, or  fabrications of vivid Buddhist imagination.

Dr. Christian Lindtner
a.D. 2010, May 19.

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THE SHROUD OF TATHÂGATAS

Good for Pope Benedict XVI - the phony successor  of  the Buddhist (Sâri-) PuTRaS, alias PeTRoS -  that he did not (on  May 2, 2010) outright endorse the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, a manifest fake, as known by now. Instead, the Holy Father said something about the Shroud being a  "a photographic documentation of the darkest mystery of faith" - i.e., in plain words,  a simple hoax.
 
The legend, of course, goes back to the Gospels, Matthew  27:57-61 par.
 
Our Roman impostor  would be delighted to know  - perhaps -  that parts of the Christian  legend can be traced to a Buddhist source, viz. Mahâparinirvânasûtra (ed. Waldschmidt) 46-49, from which I will here draw attention to a few  points only:
 
1.The body of Bhagavân (Tathâgata) can only be removed once the gods  have given their permission.
Hence "the rich man from Arimathea", whose name was Joseph, first has to have the permission of Pilate.
This rich man - Greek  anthrôpos plousios - can be identified as  the brâhmanas Dhûmrasa-gotras, MPS 51:1-3. San. brâhmanas becomes Greek anthrôpos,.
 Mark and Luke prefer the translation bouleutês., which gives the sense of brâhmanas quite well.  -
The Greek apo represents the San. -gotra ("from the family of"), and Gr. Arimathaias  retains all the consonants of San. Dhumrasa-
 
2. The body of Bhagavân is wrapped in vihataih karpâsair (instrumental plur., passim), i.e. cotton bandages  that are "not beaten".
Hence the body of Jesus is wrappen in sindoni (instrumental case of sindôn), meaning "Indian linen.
Matthew  adds that the Indian linen is "clean" -  obviously intended to correspond to the San. adjective avihatair
John 19:40 has the variant - also instrumental plural, as in Sanskrit: othoniois, from othonion (a loan word from Semitic), meaning linen bandages..
The motive of John is obvious: he fears the Indian association of sindôn, the Indian linen.
 
3. The body of Bhagavân is cremated, but the body of Jesus is not cremated - for how, if so , could it appear  intact a few  days later?
The body of Bhagavân is placed in a coffin with a lid.
The body of Jesus is placed in a grave with a stone serving as "lid".
Hence, the Buddhist source cannot be followed when it comes to cremation. Creamtion would render physical resurrection rather complicated.
 
The reader who takes the trouble to compare the Greek and the Sanskrit, word by word (while keeping the general context in mind) , will find more instances of the same sort, all of it to the effect that the Gospel has been copied from Buddhist " gospel", the sûtram (as if from su-uktam, well said).
 
I need not here repeat what has often been said, namely  that Matthew and his Buddhist friends often use the MPS as one of their major Buddhist sources for the incredible myths of the NT. The MPS is a part of the MSV, where we also have one of  the sources of the Crucifixion etc. etc.

There is a careful  comparative study of the MPS published by Ernst Waldschmidt as "Die Überlieferung vom Lebensende des Buddha,I-II", Berlin 1944-1948.- Waldschmidt, however, never refers to the New Testament.
 
Did Benedict XVI ever study the work of  Ernst Waldschimdt?  It is known that he supported the publication of a German translation of the Lotus-sûtra, another important source of the Gospels. If so, he must have wondered, for Benedict is a learned man.
It would make sense to speak of "the darkest mystery of faith" when we compare MPS with NT.
 
Christian Lindtner
a.D. 2010, May 8.

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WHO WROTE THE NEW TESTAMENT GOSPELS?

There are still theologians who claim that all that we read in the New Testament is "the word of God". Other theologians, more critical and sceptical , admit that perhaps not all that we read can be ascribed to God himself. Some things - especially silly things -  may be due to the evangelists. But who were the evangelists? Or more precisely: Who is responsible for the Greek text of the Gospel according to Matthew,  the Gospel according to Mark, etc.?

I here assume that the reader is familiar with modern discussions such as Burton L. Mack, Who wrote the New Testament?, San Francisco 1995; or Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament, Oxford 1987 (and later). None of these erudite theologians have come to any conclusion about the identity of Matthew or Mark - to whom I shall here confine my attention.

The reason they have failed to identify Matthew and Mark is extremely simple - they have been looking in the wrong place. If you want to pick apples or flowers, you do not go out in a boat and pick them on the ocean. Likewise, if you want to identify Matthew and Mark, you want to look for them in the Mûlasarvâstvâdavinaya (MSV) - one of the main sources for the NT Gospels in general.

The MSV (p. 5) starts out thus: The Sâkyas of Kapilavastu are staying in the assembly hall of  Kapilavastu. They would like to hear more about their own  origins, and invite the Lord to do so. The Lord, however, does not want to  praise himself, and asks his disciple, the Great Maudgalyâyanas to tell the story of their origins.  This Maudgalyâyanas is sitting in the assembly. He enters a state of trance, then raises up from that state, and follows the exhortation of the Lord. He then tells the story much like the one that we have now found in the Gospel of Matthew (p. 6).

What he narrates is a sûtram - as if from su-, meaning "good", and uktam", meaning "said, spken, statement". So, a sûtram can mean a good statement, a good message - a gospel. The Greek eu-aggelion is a synonym, it means: good eu-, and aggelion, message"
Theologians often claim that the euaggelion genre is unique, that there is nothing really  comparable in Greek or Hebrew. Sure, but there is something like it in Sanskrit and Pâli. The Greek simply  imitates the Sanskrit. As said, Maudgalyâyanas then narrates, and what he narrates can easily be traced in the NT Gospels.

I have already pointed out in my book Geheimnisse um Jesus Christus, how Matthew 9:9 is a direct translation of the Sanskrit found in MSV, p. 6. Matthew  9:9 runs: "Jesus left that place, and as he walked along he saw a tax collector, named Matthew, sitting in his office. He said to him, "Follow me, " and Matthew got up and followed him".

This is precisely what goes on in the Buddhist source: The venerable Maudgalyâyanas is sitting in the assembly.  The Lord, Bhagavân speaks to him and asks him to narrate the story of the origin of the Sâkyas. Maudgalyâyanas  gets up  from trance (samâdhi) , and follows the exhortation.

The "man named Matthew" is therefore no other than "the venrable Great Maudgalyâyanas". The story narrated by this Matthew  is, essentially, the story narrated by this Maudgalyâyanas. When the colophons of the Greek manuscripts  describe the text as the "Gospel according to Matthew", what they mean to say is that this text is based on a collection of sûtras - good saings - found in the MSV. The term ev-aggelion, therefore has the same sense as "scripture" graphê, the synonym used by Paul in 1 Cor. 15: 3 & 4.
 
We do not have to read many pages of the original Gospel according to Matthew - i.e. the MSV - before we meet a man, a very young man, who later became transformed into the evangelist Mark - or Markos (the Greek form). According to an old well-known Christian legend, poor Mark had a crooked finger - he was colobodaktulos, i.e. his finger, or fingers, were short, or maimed. In their usual irresponsible fashion, theologians have speculated what that is supposed to mean. Did he cut off  or shorten his fingers to avoid military service? Or does it perhaps  mean that his fingers were too short to finish the Gospel transmitted under his name?

The explanation is found on p. 57 of MSV. According to the legend, when the Buddha was still but a young prince, Sanskrit kumâras, he was extremely strong. Thus, there was a golden bowl, and it was so heavy that not even horses could pull it. But KuMâRaS only needed to bend  his finger , or fingers, forming them into a hook. With his fingers serving as a hook he was then able to snatch the heavy golden bowl and pull it away. The Sanskrit term for "with his fingers as a hook" is kutilângulikayâ, and it  is extremely rare, perhaps only found here. It is formed according to the rules of Sanskrit grammar, and there are in the Buddhist scriptures several other terms formed in the very same way (instrumental case). The compound is a "real" Sanskrit compound.

Likewise, the Greco-Latin term kolobo-daktulos. It, too, is extremely rare, found perhaps only here (and in later passages depending on this passage; for a discussion see e.g. Holger Mosbech, Nytestamentlig Isagogik, Copenhagen 1946, p. 178). The Latin form is colobo-dactylus. The Christian usage clearly depends directly on the Buddhist usage. The Greco-Latin form was fabricated by a person knowing Sanskrit. From KuMâRaS we get MaRKoS. Thus Mark  - at least here - was originally no other than Kumâras - the Buddha while still a young prince. This person cannot possibly be held responsible for having written the Greek gospel. We also hear that Mark was the interpreter of Peter. The origin of this legend is from the same passage in the MSV, still p. 57. It is said that the golden bowl was pulled by kumâras with his crooked finger(s). The Sanskrit for the bowl is here pâtrî. This becomes Latin Petri (p-t-r). And when the Latin says that he was interpres , that again is a pun on the Sanskrit pâtrî.

To conclude: Mark was the Buddha as a young prince, and Matthew was one of the disciples of the Buddha - the one who rose and followed the exhortation to tell this and many other legends. The general conclusion is, as always : The Christian gospels are pirate copies of the Buddhist gospels.

I started out by asking the question: Who is responsible for the Greek texts presented to us as the Gospels according to Matthew and Mark? We can be sure that the Greek texts were not written by Maudgalyâyanas or by Kumâras.(The same goes for the Sanskrit - it was not written by Maudgalyâyanas, but about Maudgalyâyanas and about Kumâras.)   And since the names of Matthew and Mark are directly derived from the Sanskrit, we can also conclude that these two gospels were not composed or written by these people.

There is also, as often, an element of hidden humour in all this: Sanskrit kutila means "crooked", but also "fishy" Thus the translation kolobo-daktulos suggest that there is something "crooked" or "fishy" about the figure of Mark. There can be no doubt that the "evagelists" enjoyed themselkves when they fabricated the "holy scripture"! They enjoyed themselves when they deceived their readers. One is reminded of Julian´s remark that the Christians were motivated by kakourgia - villainy.
 
According to an early Christian tradition, a certain Pantaenus went to India, where he found a copy of the Gospel according to Matthew (see the discussion in Metzger, op. cit., p. 129 f.). It is reported  to have been in Hebrew letters. It was said to have been brought there and left there - in India - by a certain Bar-tholomew. What are we to make of that?
The first piece of information is, as we have seen, quite true: The Gospel of Matthew has its home in India. But what about the second part - the legend of Bartholomew having brought it there?

The answer is simple - provided you know the Buddhist sources. Just like the disciples of Jesus often have more than one name, thus the disciples of Buddha also have more than one name. Maudgalyâyanas also has other names, and one of these is indeed one that can be translated as "son", bar, of thalama.

The early Christian tradition about Pantaenus going to India, where he found the Gospel of Matthew  said to have been brought there by Bartholomew, now becomes clear.
Matthew and Bartholomew are the same person - the Buddhist Maudgalyâyanas.
So what Pantaenus found was the Gosdpel of Maudgalyâyanas - i.e. the MSV, or parts of it. That should not come as a surprise by now.

When the Buddhist gospels were eventually translated into other Oriental languages, it was the MSV version that was regarded as "canonical". This was the Gospel according to Maudgalyâyanas. And this was what Pantaenus found in India.

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SIMEON AND ANNA, ZACHARIAS AND JOHN - Main Buddhist sources of Luke 1-3

It is a great  pity that theologians still can publish commentaries on Luke without any reference at all  to the Buddhist sources of the initial chapters of that gospel.

Buddhist sources for the Presentation of Jesus in the temple, Luke 2:22-40,  have been available and known for a very long time. They were discussed e.g. by Richard Garbe in 1914, and three of my learned friends have again drawn attention to them in more recent books: Kersten, Thundy, Derrett.

There would hardly be any need to draw attention to  this issue again  had it not been that the MSV contains important new materials that  have escaped the notice  of all previous scholars.

It will be recalled, that according to Luke, a man called Simeon (Sumeôn) , in the temple in Jerusalem, took up the child, to paidion, in his arms , and predicted that he - after his own passing away - would be a saviour and a light to his people etc.

 Also mentioned here is a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanouêl.

The boy "increased in wisdom". The Buddhist sources are found in MSV, I, pp. 46-57:

Asita, a rishi ("seer") and his sister-son (bhâgineya) Nâlada live on a mountain. Here they see the light of the Muni, for when a Bodhisattva is born, the world becomes illuminated by such a light.

(This also explains the star seen by the wise men from the East, Matthew 2: a bodhisattva has been born.)

Later on they go to Kapilavastu, where Asita takes the Bodhisattva in his hands (not arms), and predicts that the light of the world will become a saviour etc., provided he leaves his home at an age of thirty in order to become a monk.

This is important - see below!

We read that the Bodhisattva is endowed with wisdom prajnâ (p. 52).

The father of the Bodhisattva is one of the four kings of the Sâkyas - he is a Sâkya-râjas (nominative), Sâkya-king.

With this in mind it is easy to see how the Buddhist source was "judaized", i.e. combined with extracts from the Old Testament:

Asita and Nâlada are disguised as Jews: Simeon (Sumeôn)  and Anna, daughter of Phanouêl.

When Simeon took the child - to pai-di-on -  in his arms, it was originally Asita who took the bo-dhi-sat-tva in his hands.

Both of them then express themselves in verses, not in prose.

The rendering of Sanskrit bodhi-sattva(s) is nice: The bodhi becomes paidi, and the Greek to with the final on  means "being", which is also the meaning of the Sanskrit sattva.

(This "translation"  shows the prajnâ of the translators, see below for the meaning of prajnâ!)

The Sanskrit original, of course, knows nothing at all about a Jewish saviour and light of the world etc.

According to the Buddhist source (p. 54), the Bodhisattva would leave his home at an age of 29 years: ekânnatrimsatko vayasâ grhân nirgamisyati.

That is very significant, for in Luke 3:23 we read that Jesus himself was beginning  at about thirty. The word for "was/is beginning", arkhomenos,  has caused problems. Some translators have left it out, or translated by "was", or by "he began teaching". But the Greek has nothing about teaching - or anything of that sort.

It has already been observed by theologians that this indication of his age being about thirty is incompatible with the indications given in Luke 1:5 and 2:2, q.v. - The paradox of time  is solved once we see that the paradox  is a result of combining entirely different sources. Also, it is clear that what Jesus "was beginning" is not to teach, but to leave his home - to become a monk. The Greek, then, means" starting out (from his home)".  But Luke was not at all  interested in Jesus becoming a Buddhist monk. So he just left his reader asking himself, what Jesus was starting out for.

Luke 2:52 ends by writing that the boy increased in wisdom , proekopte sophia.

That is also a very odd statement.

In Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6: 2 the pertinent question is cunningly raised: Where did he get this sophia from?

The answer, we now know, is that he got his sophia from the prajnâ of the Bodhisattva.

This wisdom is a very special kind of wisdom, it is a prajnâ that expresses itself in the analysis of words and syllables, we learn MSV, I. p. 52 (artha-pada-vyanjanam prajnayâ  pratividhyati: by wisdom he understands meaning-word-syllable).

Now, what about John - the so-called Baptist, acc. to Luke 1 ?

Once again the MSV provides us with the answer:

When the Bodhisattva became a Buddha, the nasty rumour spread that he had died. His father, the Sâkya-râja, of course became very sad. But the rumour turned out to be false, and there was naturally a great relief and  joy , Sanskrit ânanda(s).

At this very moment, a son was born to another Sâkya-râja. What will be his name, people asked? Of course, his name would be Ânanda - Joy!

In Luke, Zacharias has a son. People suggest that he, too, be called Zacharias. But Zacharias and his wife, Elisabeth, insist that he be called Iôannês, "John."

In other words: He could have been called Zacharias, but is calle Iôannês.

The Buddhist source is obvious:

Ânandas (nominative) becomes  Iôannês. The name Zacharias still  would make sense, for Ânandas could -  like his cousin, the Buddha (Sâkya-munis) - have become a Sâkya-râja(s) himself.

One must know that Ânanda means joy, to appreciate the pun on "joy"  in Luke 1:14.  (Greek khara translates San. ânandas, joy.)

But Ânanda did not become a king. He was chosen to  become the personal servant of the Buddha - his upasthâyaka(s).

This technical term, upa-sthâyakas in Greek becomes apo-stolos

Much has, of course, been written about the use and meaning of the Greek apostolos. But it has not been noticed before that this noun in some cases is a direct, and very good, translation of the Sanskrit upa-sthâyakas.

What do we learn from all this?

A few buzz words, the general context, and our knowledge of the MSV as a source of the NT permit us to conclude that Luke has combined Buddhist and OT sources for writing the intial chapters of his gospel.

The purpose of the two initial chapters is quite obvious: Two of the greatest men in history have been born: Jesus and  John the Baptist , who would prepare the way for Jesus.

Luke changed the original names. The Buddhist prince and his servant obtained a new identity: King Jesus and John the Baptist. The Buddhist seers also changed their identity, and so did the original location: Asita and Nâlada in the palace of  Kapilavastu became Simêon and Anna in the temple in Jerusalem.

Luke cannot be used as source of what actually took place, but these chapters erve as an excallent specimen of what the phrase "judaized Buddhism" actually means.

Christian Lindtner
February 27, a. D. 2010

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Capernaum was Kapilavastu - Kingdom of Gods

Capernaum (Kapernaoum, Kapharnaoum) and the synagoge in that town plays exactly the same role in the legend of Jesus as Kapilavastu and the assembly hall in that town plays in the legend of the Buddha, i.e. Sâkyamuni, the Tathâgata.

Capernaum is never mentioned in the Old Testament, and scholars do not agree about its exact location on the map. It is said to have been Jesus´ own city, idia polis, Matthew 9:1, and it is also described as having  been located "upon the sea-side", tên parathalassian, Matthew 4:13.

The derivation of Kaper- or Kaphar- -naoum is uncertain. It seems to mean the town or place of Kaper, or Kaphar. But who was he?

In the MSV, p.5  - as always our main source along with the Lotus  -  we read that the Lord Buddha was staying in the Nyâgrodârâme in Kapilavastu. The inhabitants of Kapilavastu - the Sâkyas -  are staying in the assembly hall (samsthâgâre) of Kapilavastu. From there they go to the Buddha in the Nyâgrodhârâme (locative case). He teaches them about their past etc.

At some point he goes to Kapilavastu, his home town (his father was king of Kapilavastu). People  lack faith, but he converts them by way of miracles.

In the MSV, p. 88, we read that Kapilavastu, the place, or town, vastu (= naoum) of the sage Kapila (= Kaper or Kaphar) was located on the bank of the Ganges river, on the slope of the Himalayas (anu-himavat-pârsve).

Thus the location on the banks of the Ganges on the slope of the Himalayas becomes that of Caernaum upon or along  the sea-side.

(It may be added that  Sanskrit compounds indicating locations with a preposition as first member are always carefully translated into Greek.)

No wonder scholars have problems locating Capernaum. They have - as so often - been looking at the wrong map!

The Buddha teaching in the assembly hall becomes Jesus teaching in the synagoge. The Greek "in the synagoge",  (en) sunagôgê, is a perfect rendering of Sanskrit samsthâgâre, in the assembly hall.

When it is said that Jesus moved from Nazara (Matthew 4:13) to Kapharnaoum, this was the Buddha who came from Nyâgrodha to Kapilavastu.. Here, Nazara (unusual spelling!) reflects the Sanskrit Nyagrodha.

From  Matthew 13:53-58 we learn that Jesus came to his own country  (more exactly: his paternal country, area) etc., and that he did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief (a-pistia).

This reflects the celebrated episode in the MSV, p.188,  where Buddha (Sâkyamuni) came back to Kapilavstu -  his father´s town - where he at first was met with disbelief (Sanskrit a-prasâda). But then he converted them by some miracles (that are also in the NT - the miracles of water and fire)..

Matthew 13:58 is normally translated as a statement such as : " And he did not there work many miracles because of their unbelief."

Now that the Buddhist source has been identified, we can be sure that the phrase can also be translated as a rhetorical question: " And did ho not work many miracles there because of their unbelief?"

He surely did!

The centurion in Capernaum mentioned in Matthew 8:5-13 is easily identified as the father of Sâkyamuni in Kapilavastu.

In the same pericope, we are informed that some of us shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.

This is clearly based on MSV, p. 196, where the Lord teaches in the asembly hall of the gods - the kingdom of heaven. The gods are present: Brahmâ, Sakra and Kuberas and others.

So the Indian god Brahmâ becomes Abrahma, the Indian god Sakra becomes Isaac (Isaak) , and the Indian god Kuberas becomes Jacob, Greek Iakôbos.

The kingdom of god -  Sanskrit devas = Greek theos - was to be found in Kapilavastu.

The Greek term kingdom is perfect - it weas the kingdom of Kapilavstu - the father of the Buddha. His father is addressed "deva" - God! Hence Kapilavastu is the kingdom of that God!

The anonymous Buddhist missionaries behind these NT passages, we may safely conclude,  followed the "Jesuitic" rule prescribed for propaganda in the Lotus: Work secretly, by way of theft (rahasi caurenâpi).

One cannot say that they were not successful!

Christian Lindtner
February 15, a. D. 2010

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TWO DROPS OF WATER WITH BLOOD - Buddhist source of Mark 15:21 etc. 

Here are three NT passages that, at first sight, have nothing at all in common:

According, first, to Mark 15:21 only, the otherwise unknown Simon of Cyrene, who was forced to carry the cross of Jesus, was the father of two sons, Alexander and Rufus.

According, second, to Luke 22:44, which is left out in several modern editions of the NT (but attested by many early fathers of the Church) , Jesus, in his great anguish, prayed even more fervently; his sweat was like drops of blood, falling to the ground.

According, third, to John 19:34, when Jesus was hanging on the cross, one soldier  plunged his spear into his side, and at once blood and water poured out.

As said, apparently these three accounts have nothing in common.

So why combine them here?

If one  is  familiar with the legend of the crucifixion of Gatama  in the MSV (p. 24-25), it is not difficult to recognize  that we are here dealing with three different versions of one and the same Buddhist source.

A simple observation with highly impoirtant consequences:

Gautama is hanging on the pole. He has been impaled for murdering a prostitute, Bhadrâ,  even though - as it turns out later - he was innocent. The real murderer escaped in the crowd.

As he is hanging there in great anguish, his teacher, upâdhyâya,  a certain Krsna-dvaipâyanas, turns up. They talk  together for a while. Gautama is about to pass away, but he has left no offspring. What can be done?

Then it starts to rain. The water is mixed with the blood from the innocent man (Gautama alias Jesus).  Two drops of water mixed with blood fall to the ground. Two eggs develop from the blood (which is in accordance with traditional Indian embryology.). The egg-shells break. The Sanskrit noun for egg-shells is kapalâni - which also means skulls. (Hence Golgotha is called the place of the Skulls).

Gautama passes away when the sun is more =  most fervent (bhâsuratarâ) - hence the fervent in Luke 22:44. Krsna-dvaipâyana becomes the father, i.e. the foster father of the two sons that developed from the two eggs.

The Sanskrit for the two drops of water (semen) and blood is: dvau sukra-bindû sa-rudhire (p. 25, line 6), i.e.: two water-drops with-blood.

In Mark the two drops of water with blood become Alexandrou kai Rouphou - (the father) of Alexander and Rufus - two boys otherwise not known from early Christian sources. San. sa-rudhire becomes kai Rouphou; the sa- means kai, and; and rudhira means red, like Rufus. Alexandrou (genitive) is from sukra-bindû, with  the genitive in the Greek is as close to the dual Sanskrit  ending - û as one can come.

It thus does make sense when Mark says that Simon of Cyrene was the father of Alexander and Rufus, for Krsnadvapâyana was indeed the foster father of the two boys that developed from the two drops of water (semen) with blood.

Sanskrit -dvaipâyana means "from an island". Krsna-dvaipâyana is thus the "Black-islander".

This man, then, in Martk, becomes Kurênaios ap´ agrou - Krsna from the field.

In Luke 22:44 - which has always embarrassed interpreters - the sweat of Jesus, like drops of blood falling to the ground, is an accurate translation of the Sanskrit: sukra-bindû sa-rudhire. The San. verb is the same as the Greek. Moreover, the adjective, in comparative form is the rare  ektenesteron, Luke 22:44. It is an exact rendering of the San. comparative bhâsuratarâ - even more intense, more fervent. It fits better with the rays of the sun than with the mode of prayer. The MSV makes best sense.

Finally, in John 19:34, blood and water pour out from the side of the man on the cross. This is due to the spear - an echo of the pole on which Gautama was impaled in the original Buddhist source.

It is thus, to conclude, clear that one and the same Sanskrit compound was translated and employed in three different manners by three different evangelists.

The evangelists knew the same story and they were, all of them,  very much interested in the Sanskrit compound: dvau sukra-bindû sa-rudhire - the two drops of semen (or water) that, mixed with blood,  fell to the ground.

The Sanskrit original is not entirely free from obscene connotations. But this is typical of classical Sanskrit literature.

In Mark, Luke and John there are no obscene connotations. This does not necessarily mean that they were motivated by prudishness.

In their version of the Buddhist legend there was no room for the hero to have children.

The unknown authors were very competent in Greek as well as Sanskrit. The three evangelists worked together, comparing their "translations".

It will be easy for the reader to identify the innocent man on the "cross",  the man who got away etc. The events took place near Potalas - becoming Pilatos (Peilatos) etc. etc.

Without a good knowledge of Sanskkrit - how can one understand NT Greek?

NB: This essay could not be published in any theological journal - where there is no room for original Sanskrit sources.

Christian Lindtner
February 11, a.D. 2010

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WHY WAS JESUS SO RUDE TO PETER? - Buddhist source of Matthew 16:23 & Mark 8:33

When Jesus foretold his death and resurrection, Peter took him aside and rebuked him, saying: "God forbid, Lord, this must never happen to you!"

With these words Peter showed that he cared for his Lord, and thus we are surprised to learn how Jesus reacts: " Go behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle (scandal) to me, for you do not think of the (things?) of god, but of the (things?) of men."

Peter must have been puzzled, if not shocked, and so are we.

Why is Jesus so rude? Why is Jesus so obscure?

Why does Peter have to go behind (Greek opisô) Jesus, and what does that have to do with his not thinking of  the (things) of god but of men?

The answers are to be found in the Buddhist source, in this case MPS 35:2.

On that occasion - we read - the venerable Upamâna (in Pâli called Upavâna) was standing with a fan in front of the Lord. Then the Lord said to him:" Monk! do not stand in front of me!"

One of the other monks present, Ânanda, is surprised, for he has never in his long life  heard the Lord express himself so rudely  to anyone.

Why is the Lord so rude to the monk?

The Lord explains: When a Buddha is about to pass away - as Jesus foretold his death in Matthew and Mark - the gods (devatâ)  gather from afar in order to witness the spectacular  event. When Upamâna is standing in front of him with his fan, he becomes an obstacle that prevents the gods from seeing what is going on. Hence the Lord commands the monk not to stand in front of him, but to go behind him. Then only  the gods can observe the event.

I have already given many examples of the MPS as a major source of the NT Gospels, and when it comes to the rude words of Jesus to his disciple, the source is once again the MPS.

In this case we have a Sanskrit version as well as a Pâli version, with minor variants. Both are to be found in the edition of Waldschmidt ( Berlin 1951 , p. 356).

The Greek (any modern edition) is:  hypage opisô mou, satana, and it translates a combination of the Pâli and the Sanskrit:

The Sanskrit is : bhikso, mâ me purastât tistha - Monk, no  (of) me in front stand!

The Pâli: apehi, bhikkhu, mâ me purato atthâsi - Go away, monk, not me in front stand!

We may here  observe:

The Buddhist monk, in the vocative, becomes Satan, also in the vocative.

The Greek imperative hypage is a perfect rendering of Pâli apehi, also imperative.

The "not in front of me" in the original becomes "behind" in the Greek,which is opisô. The choice of opisô mou  is perfect, for not only does it render the original meaning correctly, but it also contains a pun on the name of the monk in question, viz. Upamânas (nominative form): the consonants p-s-m. Only the n is not represented in the Greek.

When it comes to the gods, the Greek says ta... theou, those (what?) of (the)  god. It is obscure. But the original mentions devatâ, meaning divine being, divinity, or simply god.

The form of the abstract noun  deva-tâ is from deva + tâ. And so we understand the curious Greek ta... theou, those of god. The Greek ta reflects the Sanskrit -tâ.

Peter was said to be a skandalon, and the original meaning of that noun in Greek is an stumbling-stone, an obstacle-stone (on the road).

The choice of this word, again, demonstrates the skill of the translators. In the orignal it was understood that the monk was an obstacle because he prevented the gods from seeing the spectacle  when he stood there in front with his fan.

This is quite clear.

On the other hand, it is unclear in the gospels why he is an obstacle. To understand the point of Peter being an obstacle we need the information about the gods as spectators. But this information is left out by Matthew and Mark.

Moreover, there is, in skandalon,  a hidden pun on the name of Peter - a pun on  petros, a stone, or petra, a rock.

Finally, the original of the "those of the men" - ta tôn anthrôpôn - is not to be found in MPS 35.

Conclusion: To get the complete picture we need the Buddhist source.

Again and again we come to this conclusion: Matthew and his colleagues deliberately leave out parts of the original story, so that the gospel version becomes obscure and puzzling. The purpose can only be to make the reader wonder and invoke his curiosity.

The use of puns, obscure and puzzling pohrases, parables  etc. is explicitly recommended in the Lotus Sûtra - another major source of the NT- for the purpose of attracting people to be converted.

Unfortunately, theologians, as a rule, mistake a deliberately obscure and absurd version of the Buddhist original as an expression of the profundness  of the mind of Jesus.

This was also this intention of Matthew and Mark.

Christian Lindtner
January 31, a.D. 2010

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JESUS - VERY CRUEL AND VERY COMPASSIONATE - Buddhist source of Matthew  9:36 & Mark 6:34

Jesus was -  we are expected  to believe - not only very cruel to innocent animals ( the pigs, Matthew 8:32), but also to human beings, "enemies" ,  who would not subject themselves to  his royal authority , Luke 19:27: " Verumtamen inimicos meos illos, qui noluerunt me regnare super se, adducite huc: et interficite ante me!

Kill ´em!

Sounds to me  like a command given by Lenin to his Bolshevik thugs!

But there is also a human touch, for, paradoxically, it is also said of Jesus: " As he saw the crowds, his heart was filled with pity for them".

Thus the  Greek of Matthew 9:36, above,  runs: idôn de tous okhlous, esplagkhnisthê peri autôn.

The Greek of Mark 6:34 runs:  kai exelthôn eiden Iêsous polun okhlon, kai esplagkhnisthê ep´ autous...

The paradox of Jesus being cruel as well as compassionate is solved once it is seen that we are here dealing with two different versions of the same Sanskrit phrase, found in MSV (ed. R. Gnoli, p. 130, line 5):

drstvâ            ca   punar asya   sattvesu               mahâkarunâ         ´vakrântâ:

"having seen -and-again- for him-to human beings- great compassion descended".

The idea simply is: The Lord sees how ignorant human beings are, and therefore feels compassion for them.The purpose of teaching is to remove suffering.

Matthew first took the six syllables of drstvâ ca sattvesu, and rendered them in six syllables: idôn de tous okhlous.

Then he took the  eight syllables mahâkarunâ ´vakrântâ, and rendered them in eight syllables: esplagkhnisthê peri autôn.

Mark took the six syllables drstvâ ca ´vakrântâ, and rendered them in six syllables: kai exelthôn eiden.

Then he took the seven syllables: punar asya sattvesu, and rendered them in seven syllables: Iêsous polun okhlon kai.

Finally, he  took the eight syllables: mahâkarunâ ´vakrântâ, and , repeating the kai, rendered them in eight syllables: kai esphlagkhnisthê ep´ autous.

As a rule, Buddhist texts mention compassion in the context of teaching: The Lord observes that human beings suffer due to ignorance. Hence, moved by compassion, he starts to teach them the Dharma that removes ignorance and  thereby leads to liberation from suffering.

This fits the gospel context perfectly: Jesus is here presented as  a teacher and he sends out his disciples to teach others - about Righteousness,  dikaiosunê, i.e. Dharma.

But Jesus wants to remove suffering, not by knowledge, but by faith. That idea is also Buddhist - it is lifted from Mahâyâna, mainly the Saddharmapundarîkasûtram - the Lotus.

Jesus, we may conclude, borrowed his great compassion from the Buddha, but  that did not prevent him from being cruel to innocent  animals and to human beings.

After all, as the alleged son of Jahweh, he came of a very cruel stock. The paradox, in short,  comes from the combination of OT and Buddhist sources.

Christian Lindtner
January 26, a. D. 2010

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THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS - Buddhist sources of Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12; Luke 4:1-13

Jesus was led to the desert by the wind - did he fly? - where he was tempted by the Devil - a strange character - who first asked him to turn stones to bread - an odd exercise - and then took  him to the holy city, setting him on the top of the temple - out there in the desert? - Finally, the Devil  took Jesus to a very high mountain, showing him all the kingdoms of the world - what a view from out there in the middle of nowhere! Here, he made him an offer: " All this I will give you - IF you will kneel down and worship me!"
- - But, no, Jesus rejects the offer, the Devil leaves, and angels come and help Jesus.
 
One must, of course  be very naive in order  to take these fables for true history, yet theologians still do so, asking for the exact location of the desert, the high mountain, the pinnacle of the temple etc. As usual, Matthew and his colleagues combine OT and Buddhist sources into a new whole. The OT sources have already been identified long ago, and I will not repeat them here.
 
The Buddhist sources are mostly found in the MSV, I, pp. 94-96:
 
Before the Bodhisattva goes to the hermitage - Sanskrit â-sra-mam, hermitage,  (p. 96) becomes Greek e-rê-mon, desert - he entered the (holy)  city of Râja-grham, where the king, Bimbisâra(s), is standing up there on the top of the palace.
The Sanskrit compound upari-prâsâda-tala-gatas is rendered very nicely  by Greek epi to pterugion tou hierou (Matthew 4:5; Luke 4:9): The upari becomes epi; the top of the palace becomes the top of the temple. The verb gatas, gone to,  represents Greek histêsin, placed.

The king approaches  the Bodhisattva and offers him   beautiful women etc., in these words: dadâmi te varân bhogân, "I will give you very good things", IF you will tell me your name and background. The Bodhisattva tells the king about his family etc., but is not at all interested in the kind offer.

The Devil offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world - a manifest absurdity, for who in the world has the power to do so? But the Indian king of Râjagrham in Magadha (Magadha turns up in Matthew 15:39), Bimbisâra(s) (v.l: Bimbasâra(s)), offers Bodhisattva a share in his kingdom - which makes sense.

The reasons given by Jesus for rejecting the kind - and absurd - offer remain obscure.
In the case of the Bodhisattva, the reason for his rejecting the perfectly rational offer, is clear: He, the Bodhisattva,  is interested in becoming an enlightened Buddha, not a worldly king. That decision was made long ago, before he met the king. The Devil who "tempted" Jesus, we conclude,  was,  in this case, the king of Magadha - the four syllables of Bim-bi-sâ-ras thus becoming Di-a-bo-los.
 
The Greek offer of the Devil is (Matthew 4:9):
tauta soi panta dôsô  - these to you all I will give.
 
These four words translate the four Sanskrit words (MSV, I, p. 95) :
dadâmi te varân bhogân.
 
The San. dadâmi becomes Gr. dôsô, I will give. The San. te becomes Gr. soi, to you.
The San. accusative is varân bhogân, best enjoyments, good things, become Gr. accusative: tauta panta, these all. The Gr. has seven syllables, the San. eight, as required by San. prosody.
 
The notion  that Jesus was carried by the wind - suggesting that he was able to  fly - is abhorrent to most  theologians, who, therefore, normally translatre the Greek by "Jesus was led by the Spirit", or the like, thus obscuring the original hupo tou pneumatos - by the wind. But in Buddhist scriptures, Buddhas can fly, no problem  - and so could our imaginary friend , Jesus.
 
Christian Lindtner
January 18, a. D. 2010

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BE IT FAR FROM THEE, LORD! - Buddhist source of Matthew 16:22

The NT gospels, are, by and large, literary mosaics, fabricated by lifting  words and phrases from Buddhist gospels, combining them with words and phrases from the OT.
We are, therefore, not dealing with history, but with fiction.

One of the main Buddhist sources is the Lotus Sûtra - the Saddharmapundarîka (SDP).
According to Matthew 16:22, Peter took the Lord aside and said to him:  hileôs soi, kurie; ou  mê estai touto: "Gracious for you,Lord,  may this not be!" This is taken from the Sanskrit of the SDP (p. 53). The Lord asked Sâri-Putras a question, and Sâri-Putra  answered - Sâri-putra âha: na hy etad Bhagavan; na hy etad Sugata: "Not surely this, Lord; not surely this, Good-gone!" The Greek hileôs means gracious, which suggests  that a "let God be", or "God is",  may be understood. The Vulgata, however, says:
Absit a te , Domine; non erit tibi hoc! "Be it far from thee, Lord; for this shall not be unto thee." The Vulgata, for the first word,  thus comes closer to the original (na hy, not surely) of the SDP.
 
Observations: The Buddhist disciple, PuTRaS becomes PeTRoS.- Perfect!
The Sanskrit Bhagavan,  Lord (vocative) becomes kurie, Lord (vocative).- Perfect!
There are two negations in the Sanskrit (na, na); likewiese in the Greek version (ou mê).-Perfect! The San. consists of  7 (6) plus 7 (6) syllables. (hy etad may be read as 3 or 2 syllables.) The Greek consists of 7 plus 6 syllables. - Perfect! Sanskrit etad becomes Greek touto, "this". - Perfect! In the San. the verb is understood (as normally). The verb understood is, for sure, asti/bhavati, "is", becoming estai in the Greek. What is - apparently -  missing in the Greek  is the Su-gata of the original.Sugata is, of course, one of the many names of Bhagavân (nominative form). Su-gata,  here in the vocative, may be understood as: (You) are well gone! But gata, in itself, has many meanings: "understood, disposed" etc. Su-gata may thus be taken as "well-disposed" - which is the interpretation behind the Greek: hileôs.

Conclusion: Sugatam! This patchwork was, as always, done with great care and attention  to all details in the original Sanskrit. This conclusion  is in accordance withe established fact that all syllables have been carefully by Matthew in the gospel (wrongly) ascribed to him.
 
Christian Lindtner
January 14, a.D. 2010

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AND or OF? Buddhist source of Mark 2:16

When it comes to Comparative Gospel Studies (CGS), there is a rule that says - or ought to say -  that the Devil is to be found  in the philological detail, and that that Devil may in fact turn out to be a tiny god of revelation.
How so?

One of the characteristic features of the Sanskrit language (and Pâli as well) is the extensive employment of  compounds. Thus, for instance,  two nouns may be combined thus: brâhmana-grhapati, or sramana-brâhmana, or  bodhisattva-srâvaka, etc. These compounds are so-called dvandva-s, which means that an "and" is understood. That the "and" should be understood, and added when we translate, is clear not only from the Buddhist  context but also from subsequent translations into other "Buddhist languages" such as Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian, etc. In other words, brâhmana-grhapati should be translated as "priests AND householder(s)", sramana-brâhmana as "ascetics AND priests", bodhisattva-srâvaka as "bodhisattvas AND srâvakas" , etc.

We can, as said, be sure that the AND should be added from the context, but at the same time it is clear that in theory one could also translate, without violating the Sanskrit syntax, as "the householders OF the priests", "the priests OF the sramanas", or "the srâvakas OF  the bodhisattvas". All this is known to Sanskrit scholars.
 
When the authors of the NT gospels translated from the Sanskrit, they also imitated these Buddhist compounds. For that reason, we are constantly confronted with " the Pharisees and Sadducees" (Matthew 16:1), with  "the chief priests and the Pharisees" (Matthew 27:62) etc. All such NT dvandva-s have a Buddhist source.  (For a fairly complete  list, with the Sanskrit equivalents,  my Geheimnisse, pp. 161-166,  or Hemligheten  om Kristus, pp. 156-160).
 
Now, in all these cases there can be no doubt that the "and" represents the original Sanskrit quite correctly.
 
One curious and utterly  revealing  exception to the rule  is provided by Mark 2:16, who speaks of "the grammarians OF the Phariseees". This odd expression has led some translators to violate the Greek text  Thus , for instance, the "Today´s English Version" of the American Bible Society translates: "Some  teachers of the Law, who were Pharisees..." The reader is thus left with the wrong impression that the text speaks of one group of people, not of two different groups. If one is familiar with the Buddhist original it is easy to see what happened. The original Sanskrit compound was a dvandva, i.e. an AND - not an OF -  had to be understood. We can see that Mark, without violating the Sanskrit syntax , translated the Sanskrit compound wrongly, i.e. deliberately wrongly. The Sanskrit, in other words, had a compound A-B. That compound could either be understood as A and B, or as B of A. Each of the two renderings would be in accordance with Sanskrit syntax, but only one of them would be in accordance with the sense originally intended.

To conclude: As a rule, all the NT compounds of the type "A and B",  with reference  to various groups of persons,  are correct renderings of the Sanskrit "A and B compounds".
Mark 2:16 is an exception to that rule. But this exception points back to the same Buddhist source. Mark cannot - as shown by the many "correct" renderings in that Gospel - have been unaware that the OF was a "wrong" rendering. But it was, as said,  correct from the point of view of Sanskrit syntax. Deliberately "wrong" versions of the original Sanskrit are not uncommon in the Greek of the NT.

Another example of the same sort - with focus on the firts part of the compound in the genitive case -  is provided by two different renderings of one and the same Sanskrit original. Sometimes the Greek speaks of the Kingdom of God, some times it speaks of the Kingdom of the Heavens. Here we are no longer dealing with dvandva-s, but with another sort of compound combining two different nouns. The first part of the compound defines the second part more closely. 

The Sanskrit original is, as a rule, deva-parisad - the "kingdom" of deva-. The first part of the compound tells us what kind of parisad ("congregation", "assembly") we are dealing with.  Sanskrit deva (nominative devas) corresponds to Greek theos, to Latin deus.
Here, deva- is the firsat part the Sanskrit compound. The Sanskrit says "the deva-kingdom". One cannot see whether the deva- should be understood as being in the singular or in the plural.From the point of view of Sanskrit syntax, both options are allowed. If we therefore take deva- in the genitive singular (devasya = theou), we get "of god". If we, alternatively, take it in the plural (devânâm = ouranôn), we get "of the gods, of the heavens".

Thus the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the Heavens are but two different - but equally correct - versions  of one and the same Sanskrit original. NT scholars have, as known,   been puzzled by the two synonymous phrases. But this is only because they have failed to study Sanskrit.  And a theologian of the NT  with no knowledge of Sanskrit - how can the Kingdom of the heavens be said to belong to him?
 
Further examples and references in my Geheimnisse um Jesus Christus, Suederbrarup (Leuhe-Verlag) 2005.
 
Christian Lindtner
January 10,a.D. 2010

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MORE THAN 500 WITNESSES - ALL FALSE - Buddhist sources of 1 Corinthians 15: 1- 11

Absolutely fundamental to any sort of Christianity is the belief in the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of the dead. If the dead are not raised and if Christ has not been raised, then the  Christian faith is a delusion and Christians are lost in their sins.
Such is the view of Paul. Such is the faith of Christians. But as historians we must ask: What is the evidence or proof of the resurrection of Christ and of the dead?

The common opinion of Christian theologians and believers is that "the oldest and most reliable" evidence or proof of the resurrection of Christ is provided by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. There may be a few other witnesses, mainly women, but they cannot be considered very reliable. But how can we be sure that Paul is reliable, and that 1 Cor. 15:1-11 provides  the oldest and best evidence?

The mere fact that a given witness makes a claim does not make him reliable. One must ask for his sources. He may be wrong, he may be a liar.  Now  Paul does in fact refer to certain sources, for he says that he has his information from certain scriptures. Unfortunately,  these scriptures cannot be identified. All theologians agree that there are no scriptures in Greek or Hebrew that can be identified as the sources of Paul´s claims concerning resurrection.  At this point, therefore, we cannot decide the value or validity  of the testimony provided by Paul. Is he, as a witness,  reliable or is he not reliable? If we want to be honest, we cannot decide. The case must be left sub judice.

Now, fortunately, help is on its way - not to Paul, but to historians. In this case, as in so many other cases. the source of Paul can be traced back to the MPS, which is available in Sanskrit and in Pâli. Anyone familiar with the MPS can easily see that Paul has combined two chapter from that text, namely chapters 9 and 48 (in the edition of Waldschmidt, Berlin 1951, pp. 162-171 &  420-425).

Here are the main points:

MPS 9: In the village of Nâdikâ a large number of brothers and sisters have passed away. What will become of them? It is explicitly said that "more than 500 brothers have passed away". This sentence is  available in the Sanskrit (9:15)  and in the Pâli (Waldschmidt, p. 166). The Pâli has been translated into English, e.g. by Trevor  Ling: "More than five hundred devout men of Nadika who have died" (The Buddha´s Philosophy of Man,  London 1981, p. 159) This accounts for the " more than five hundred brothers...of whom some have died", in 1 Cor. 15:6, a statement that has always caused the greatest embarrassment to theologians. The more than 500 brothers are never mentioned in any other ancient Christian sources - with one exception, a Coptic source that says that the more than 500 were Indian priests (see R. Garbe, Indien und das Christentum, Süderbrarup 2004, p. 292). There is, as we have just seen, some truth in this. There was an Indian source for the 500.

The Buddhist ext then explains that some of those who have passed away will never return again, whereas others will return "once", Sanskrit sakrd. This accounts for the Greek ephapax, "at once" in 1 Cor 15:6. Greek ephapax simply translates the Sanskrit synonym sakrd - once, at once. Immediately before  he mentions the "more than five hundred brothers, Paul mentions Kêphas and "all twelve" (some translators add "apostles", but the Greek does not mention apostles at all). The twelve were not "apostles" at all - they were Buddhists:  Again, Paul follows the MPS,  which, as said, has been transmitted to us in several versions. One of these, now  only in Chinese, explicitly speaks of exactly 12 brothers who have been reborn among the gods (this is the Dîrghâgama, translated by Waldschmidt, Ûberlieferung...Göttingen 1944, p. 71).
Other versions give different numbers here (one Chinese version gives the number 10), and it is quite remarkable that the Latin Vulgata speaks of eleven, not twelve, 1 Cor. 15:6.

Paul also mentions Kêphas and Iakôbos, and here one must pay attention to the spelling: There are three consonants in both cases: k-b(ph)-s. Both names translate the Sanskri name of Kâsyapa(s) - k-p-s. Chapter 48 of the same MPS  provides us with the second source of Paul. Here we meet Kâsyapas who, along with five hundred monks,  finally arrive and become witnesses to the cremation of the physical body of the Lord. His "jewel body" goes up to the world of Brahmm, i.e. in flames. The Sanskrit verb for "went up", agaman, MPS 49:23, corresponds to the Greek for "raised".

To summarize: Paul refers to scriptures that are not available in Greek or Hebrew. But they are available in Sanskrit and Pâli. These scriptures are, therefore, Buddhist scriptures.

It is quite true, as Paul says, that  more than five hundred brothers, along with Kâsyapas, were witnesses to the "resurrection", i.e. cremation of the Lord. The Lord was a ksatriyas, a nobleman, and Sanskrit ksatriyas becomes Greek ho Khristos, in the usual way. Hence, Paul is careful  not to speak of Jesus, but of Khristos. When Paul combines two different chapters, and two different episodes in the Buddhist original, he does so not entirely  at random but according to certain rules. According to rabbinical hermeneutics, it is allowed to combine two otherwise different scriptural passages provided they have a significant number in common. This rule, in Hebrew,  is called Neged, "corresponding significant number". An example is provided by OT, when Numbers 13:25 mentions 40 days, and Numbers 14:34 mentions 40 years. The two otherwise unrelated passages have a correspondig significant number, viz.  40. In exactly the same way , Paul combines two passages in the same Buddhist text, the MPS, where one chapter mentions more than 500 brothers, and another mentions 500 monks.

All this means, of course, that the "proof" or "evidence" provided in support of the faith in the historical resurrection of Christ, and the dead in general, is purely fictitious. Paul refers to scriptures, i.e. Buddhist scriptures, that describe some events that took place - or did not take place -  far away in Magadha a long time ago. (Magadha, it will be recalled, was mentioned by Matthew 15:39 only.) He, Paul,  then combined events from that Buddhist text into a new unit. He then transferred this piece of literary fiction to another place, to another time, to another person.  How can, for example, events said to have taken place in India centuries ago, prove the historicity of events said to have taken place in, say,  New York quite recently! Paul cannot have been unaware of what he was doing. Paul cannot have been unaware that he was a falsifier of history. Paul cannot have been unaware that he was himself a false witness.Once we recognize this to be so, we also understand why Paul compares himself to a "miscarriage", an ektrôma, as it were, in 1 Cor. 15:8. Paul justifies himself by stating that he is what he is - that is: a false witness - thanks to the grace of God.

What is that supposed to mean? What does "grace of God" mean in this context?
It can only mean that deliberate deceit is a good thing provided it can bring about some desirable result. There is no evidence at all to suggest that Jesus existed or had been raised from the dead, but if people could feel happy  when fooled into believing so - fine and good. The same fundamental attitude is reflected well in Romans 3:7, which in plain words simply says that untruth is fully acceptable provided it serves the greater glory of God. Such a  Jesuitic  attitude is also typical Buddhist. In the Lotus Sûtra, Buddhist muissionaries are advised to employ  tricks, lies etc. for the greater glory of the Buddhas.

If people like to be deceived -let them be deceived! And in our modern world we speak of propaganda, or, to use an euphemism, mass communication. Thus, Paul, when it come to the evidence for resurrection of Christ and of the dead, proves to be a prominent false witness. That he himself, however, may have believed in the resurrection of the dead, need not be doubted.

This belief is typical Buddhist. Due to their bad karma, people may go down to the dead in the hells. After some time, they may come back to this world. The "dead" in the hells are not really dead. They can come back to normal life and suffering.
They have thus been raised from the world of the dead.

The Buddhist background of Paul is thus clear. When he presents himself as a Christian, however, and fails to acknowledge his Buddhist sources explicitly, he then can be descibed as, well, an ektrôma (to use his own term).
 
Christian Lindtner
Dec. 29th, a.D. 2009

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JESUS - THE FAMOUS SANSKRIT SCHOLAR

If one claims that Jesus was a historical person able to  talk and to write, and that he  also was  the author of the celebrated parable of the ten virgins - known to us only from Matthew 25:1-13 - then one is also compelled to admit that Jesus was indeed a Sanskrit scholar - the most famous of all Sanskrit scholars , surely. How so?

As I have shown in my book and in several essays, the MSV, which includes the MPS, is one of the main sources of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. There is hardly a chapter in the MPS that has not left traces in the NT gospels.

The direct source of Matthew 25:1-13 is to be found in MPS, Chapter 4. This chapter is available not only in Sanskrit, but also in Pâli, as well as in several old Chinese versions from now lost Sanskrit originals.  (There are also Tibetan and Mongolian versions, to be sure.) When one compares these various versions, there are interesting variants, but the basic story is the same:

Tathâgata (Buddha) delivers a sermon  on pramâdas and apramâdas. Sanskrit PRaMâDaS means negligence, carelessness. Sanskrit aPRaMâDaS means the opposite, i.e. carefulness, heedful attention, vigilance. There are five disadvantages associated with PRaMâDaS, e.g. after passing away an immoral person  goes to Hell. Likewise, there are five advantages associated with aPRaMâDaS, e.g. after passing away, a good person  goes to Heaven (svarga). Stupid people engage in PRaMâDaS, whereas wise people are very concerned about  aPRaMâDaS. The sermon is delivered to brahmans and householders from the town  of Pâtali.
 
The purpose of the parable of the ten virgins, Matthew 25:1-13, is clearly to make the point that one must be ready and prepared for the coming of the Lord, in other words, for heaven (mentioned in the first verse). Vigilance is in the focus. This was also the purpose of the Buddhist sermon on vigilance. The Sanskrit word for the world of  heaven is svarga-loka (verse MPS 4:17). There are five wise virgins, and there are five foolish virgins. All ten virgins have lamps, but five of the ten forget about the oil. They are like a man, we may say,  wanting to go for a ride in  his car, but forgetting  all about oil and gas.
 
Comparing the Buddhist and the Christian textual units, we cannot fail to see that they are related. But how, quite precisely? How did the "translations" take place?
In the usual fashion: In the Greek version the focus is on the ten virgins and on the ten lamps. The Greek for virgin is PaRTheNoS, and the Greek for lamps, in the accusative plural is LaMPaDaS. The Sanskrit original had five kinds of aPRaMâDaS, and five kinds of PRaMâDaS, as mentioned above. It is thus clear that the Greek P-R-T(h)-N-S and L-M-P-D-S are but two fifferent versions of the five Sanskrit consonants found in aPRaMâDaS as well as PRaMâDaS, i.e. P-R-M-D-S.

I need not remind the reader that in the ancient Jewish scripts the vowels were left out, and that in Sanskrit r and l often interchange (e.g. lâjâ, king, for râjâ etc.). The consonants d and t are both dentals, and m and n are nasals. What an odd way of translating! - the moderrn reader may exclaim. But if the modern reader finds it hard to believe that anyone would translate in this way, this just betrays his ignorance of ancient rabbinical hermeneutics. For it goes without saying that those who translated these Buddhist texts were also familiar with the Old Testament and thus also with rabbinical hermeneutics (without a knowledge of which OT and NT are completely unintelligible).
If two words have the same set of consonants they also have the same numerical value, for each consonant has a numerical value of its own. For example 3+4+5 is the same as 5+4+3. Thus a "bag" and a "bug" are in a sense the same - for the number based on the consonants are the same. (One can easily imagine the fun :  bar and beer, bear and rib etc. etc.)

To repeat: The five kinds of disadvantage associated with carelessness becomes five stupid virgins with five lamps without oil. The five kinds of advantage associated with vigilance become the five wise virgins with five lamps with oil. It is a common Buddhist dogma that carefulness,  vigiliance , is  conducive to rebirth in hreaven. (This is not typical Christian, where the emphasis is on grace.) The Buddhist source explicitly says that carelessness is the cause of an immoral person going to hell efter his passing away. This reference to hell is left out in Matthew. When one compares many other words in Matthew 25:1-13 with the Sanskrit (and Pâli), one will be able to identify many other Greek words in the Sanskrit - the cry, the wise, the foolish etc.

The conclusion is that the Buddhist text gives the "full picture". Much is left out in the Christian copy - with the result that reader is puzzled.  To leave the reader puzzled - and the commentators busy - is a deliberate trick on the part of Matthew , Mark, Luke and John. People are and have always been  attracted by mysterious sayings, puzzles and riddles. This is also a common Buddhist trick - to atract people by entertaining and fooling them. It is, at the same time, a typical rabbinical trick (see e.g. Hermann L. Strack, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, New York 1959, pp. 93-98).
 
But there is more

The Dutch theologian Smit Sibinga - who weas completely unaware of the Sanskrit source (as he kindly informed me in a personal communication) - has made a numerical analysis of Matthew 25:1-13, and pointed out that "Matthew" carefully counted the number of syllables and arranged the verses in a such a way that there is a clear center with "circles" of the same number of syllables around that center.
This fine observation proves, in itself, that "Matthew" counted syllables. That he counted syllables also means that he paid attention to each syllable - i.e. to the spelling of each word. The man who is responsible for Matthew 25:1-13 knew Sanskrit as well as Greek.
 
The general view of scholars is, by now, that the Greek text of Matthew was not translated from some "Aramaic original" - giving the words of Jesus in "his own tongue".
The Greek text of Matthew - at least for this parable - must have been translated directly from some Sanskrit original coming very close to the MPS (ed. Ernst Waldschmidt, Berlin 1951). The consonants would have been lost had the transtion not been direct.
(There is also an old Pâli version of MPS. It has often been translated into modern languages. An English version by Trevor Ling is available in Everyman´s Library as "The Buddha´s Philosophy of Man", London 1981. The Pâli text of the 2 x 5 etc.  is found in the Mahâvagga of the Vinayapitaka. For all the references, see Ernst Waldschmidt, Die Überlieferung vom Lebensende des Buddha, Göttingen 1944, p.52.).

To conclude:  If it is claimed that Jesus is the author of the parable of the ten virgins, it also follows that this Jesus knew Sanskrit - and Greek, of course -  and that he counted syllables and words, i.e. that he was a mathematician of some sort.

To avoid this dangerous conclusion, one may argue that "Matthew" has not represented Jesus correctly. This may, again, either mean that Jesus never expressed this parable at all - which makes Matthew totally unreliable. Or it may mean that Jesus was indeed, responsible for this parable - but in another form. But even so, not only is this pure speculation, but it is impossible to conceive of the ten virgins, the ten lamps, the imprtance of vigilance for rebirth in heaven etc. isolated from the Buddhist context, which is coherent and logical. So: either Jesus is responsible for a good and "faithful"  version of the Sanskrit - as in Matthew 25:1-13. Or else he is responssible for a bad and totally confused  version.

In any case, Jesus must have a been a Sanskrit scholar, and since Jesus still is such a famous man , we can say: Jesus was a famous Sanskrit scholar. About the relative chronology there can, to be sure, be no doubt. The Pâli version of the parable is found in the Vinaya, which belongs to the earliest strata of Buddhist literature. Moreover, the dogma of vigilance leading to heaven only makes sense in the context of a theory of karma, retribution - which is not exactly typical for Christianity! Who would claim that the Buddhist doctrine of karma and rebirth is derived from Jesus called Khristos?
The only way to avaoid this conclusion is to accept that Jesus is not a historical person at all. And that is a conclusion we often come to.  And it is a safe one, too. But the Sanskrit scholar behind the parable remains.
 
Christian Lindtner
Dec. 21th, a.D. 2009

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CUNDAS - THE BUDDHIST JUDAS - AND AN OLD SONG

The main Buddhist sources for the legend of the Passover and the Traitor,  are , as usual, to be found in the MSV. Thus, in MPS 26 (last part of MSV) we read about how the Lord and the monks had their  last (Sanskrit pascimam) meal in the home of a certain Cundas, the son of a smith, San skrit karmâras. The Christian version, a copy,  is mainly found in Matthew 26:17-25; Mark 14:12-21; Luke 22:7-13, and John 26:20-25.

We are on the first day of the feast of Unleavened Bread - a curious expression, rendering in, fact, San. pûrvâhne, or pubbanhasamayam (Pâli), MPS 26:14, i.e. early in the morning. The Greek asumôn reflects the San. samayam. The San. word for "last" is pas-ci-mam, which becomes Greek to pas-kha, the passover.In both sources there is the last meal taken with all the monks/disciples, but only in NT is the last meal combined with the last words. I shall come back to this.

In Matthew, the disciples are instructed to prepare the last meal in the house of " a certain man", Greek:  ton deina - not very helpful! The Greek ton deina, as will be obvious in a moment, is a pun on Cun-dam - tha accusative form of Cundas. Mark and Luke are a bit  more helpful, for they describe the unknown host as bearing a pitcher of water. Poor disciples, for what if there were several unknown men in that town bearing pitchers of water?  The person in question is the Buddhist Cundas, said to be the son, putras, of a smith, karmâras, MPS 26:14. The Buddha and the monks had their last meal together at Cundas´ place.

The son of a karmâras becomes man carrying a pitcher, keramion, of water. San. karmâras (accusative: karmâram)  becomes Greek keramion. As they are sitting there together, one evil monk steals a golden bowl ( other versions say it was of copper) and hides it in his sleeve. Only Cundas and the Lord notice this case of theft, whereby the evil monk obviously  betrays the Buddhist "path".

In the Christian version, the man who puts his hand in the bowl is defined as the traitor, and his name is Joudas. John adds that he, Joudas, is the son of  Simôn Iskariotês. The sense of that name is obscure, but here probably intended as a translation of the San. karmâra-putras. In Matthew 26:26 and the parallels, Jesus says: "Take (this, and) eat (it), for this is my body" The Sanskrit original is to be found  a little later in the same Buddhist source, viz. MPS 42:10. Here, Tathâgata is surrounded by the monks, and he says to them: "Behold , monks,  my body." " See, monks, my body!" These are explicitly described as his last words to the monks, MPS 42:11.

The point of his words, I assume from the context,   is to make the monks aware of his physical decreptitude that will soon end in his passing away. Not only does the Greek retain the two imperative forms of the verb, addressed to the same group of disciples/monks, but the tou-to gar es-ti - "for this is" -  also renders the five syllables  ta-thâ-ga-tas-ya quite nicely. The disciples of Jesus are, in other words,  invited to take and eat the body of Tathâgata - i.e. to become Buddhists. This becomes more esy to understand, when one recalls that the Tathâgata is an embodiment of the Buddhist Dharma. The bread, Greek artos, that Jesus  took, reflects the Sanskrit dharmas.

Since the bread is the dharma, it follows that the bread-body is originally the dharma-kâya, familiary to all Buddhists. And this is what numerous Christians have been doing and still are doing  - on many a Sunday. The purpose and sense of taking part in the Eucharist then, is to have a share in the body of the Tathâgata, the dharma-body. What elseis the Lord´s Supper?
 
After these incidents, Matthew 26:30 reports that they sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives. What hymn, exactly, did they sing? Matthew does not say. (Personal views of modern theologians are irrelevant.) The hymn they sang, or rather the hymn that the Lord sang, can be identified as Sutta-Nipâta, verses 83-90. These verses  describe four kinds of monks, ending with the one who betrays the Path of Buddhism,i.e.  by being a thief.

These verses are not just incorporated in the MPS, but , as said,  are also available in the old text Sutta-Nipâta, in Pâli and other versions. I am not aware of any Buddhist scholar prepared to question  that Sutta-Nipâta belongs to the earliest strata of Buddhist literature. They are, in other words, pre-Christian.These verses are, therefore, the hymn to which Matthew alludes, 26:30.

Now someone may argue: Yes, it cannot be denied that Matthew and the other evangelists have words, phrases, motives  etc. in common with MSV/MPS. But could it not be that the Buddhists copied from the NT? Answer: In that case the Buddhists would also have copied verses found in the old pre-Christian Sutta-Nipâta from some Christian source. But there is no such Christian source.

But could the Sutta-Nipâta not have belonged to some old, now lost Christian source, from which the Buddhists then copied? Answer: Perhaps, hypothetically, but in that case that early Christian source would have had to be in some Indian language (Pâli? Sanskrit?), and the contents would have been Buddhist, for it speaks of four kinds of Buddhist monks. That early Christian hymn would, in other words, have to  be Buddhist!

Conclusion: Tathâgata had his last meal with the monks at Cundas´ place. His last words, later, in another place,  to the monks were: Behold my body! See my body!
The Christians made a new legend out of this. Cundas becames J(o)udas, and J(o)udas became the name of the traitor, who was in fact the evil monk who stole a precious bowl. The thief was not identical with Cundas, but present at his house and observed by Cundas.

The Lord´s Supper first took place in the house of Cundas, which is said to have been in a village (grâmaka)  called Pâpâ, or - if we prefer the Pâli form - Pâvâ, MPS 26:2.The second part, with the body of Tathâgata in the focus,  took place later, in Kusinagarî, MPS 42:11.
The evangelists combined the last meal and the last words into a new unit.
All this, therefore is fiction, not history.

Christian Lindtner
December 14th., a. D. 2009

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Mary, Martha and Âmra - Buddhist sources of Luke 10:38-42

All the many women called Maria (or Mariam)  in the NT can be traced back to either  Mâyâ, the mother of Sâkyamuni, or to Âmra-pâlî, the famous courtesan, ganikâ. The main Buddhist source is, as usual, MSV, including MPS.

Any reader familiar with the MPS will be able to trace the Lord´s visit to Martha and Mary - reported by Luke 10:38-42 only -  back to MPS 10 -12. In 10, Âmrapâlî, the famous courtesan of the village Vaisâlî, comes to pay her respect to Tathâgata who is surrounded by  the usual  group of monks. She, too, is surrounded by a group  of - attractive  prostitutes. The monks are unable to control their minds, and therefore ask the Lord to teach them how to "pray", so that they can avoid falling into temptation.

This accounts for the fact that Jesus, in Luke 11:4, teaches his "monks"  how to pray so as to avoid falling into temptation. Even today, pious Christians thus pray, unknowingly,  that they be not tempted by the beautiful Indian courtesan and her prostitutes.-
 
Let us now take a closer look at Luke 10:38-42! As always, there is gematria, or textual geometry, involved: Verse 38 consists of 23 words, or 46 syllables, the ratio being thus nicely  1:2. Verse 39 consists of 18 words.Verses 40-42 add up to 57 words. The unit as a whole thus consists of 98 words, or 100 words,  if tê-de in v.  38, and hê-tis in v. 42 be counted as two words. It will be seen that Martha utters 18 words, corresponding to the number of words in v. 39. Jesus utters 23 words, corresponding to the number of words in v. 38. Finally, the narrator is responsible for 57 words, corresponding to the number of words in verses 40-42. Verse 38 consists , as said, of 46 syllables. These 46 syllables, forming a unit,  correspond to exactly 46 syllables, likewise forming a unit in the original Sanskrit, which is MPS 10:3 = 11:1 = 15:4 ( ed. Waldschmidt, Berlin 1953, p. 172; my Geheimnisse um Jesus Christus, p. 111).

By comparing the Greek with the Sanskrit , we can make these interesting observations:

1. Luke speaks of "a certain village". The name of that village, we now know, is Vaisâlî. - Vaisâlî is, of course, not mentioned in the NT or elsewhere in early Christian documents.
Nevertheless, Vaisâlî is known to Christians as a holy place in France,namely Vézelay,  still associated with the legend of Mary Magdalene, see http://www.vezelay.cef.fr

2. The woman called Mariam sits down at the feet of Jesus, and listens to his word, logos. This is exactly what Âmrapâlî (or - pâlir) does. She sits down at the feet of Bhagavân, and listens as he talks, as usual, about Dharma.

3. When Jesus says that Maria chose "the good part", Greek:  tên agathên (merida), the authors made a typical pun on Tathâgatam (accusative form). She was the first to choose to invite  Tathâgata for a meal and listen to him. When Luke then says that it cannot be taken from her, this refers to the incident in MPS 11:23-24, where the Licchavis of Vaisâlî invite  Bhagavân to enjoy a meal with them. He declines their offer, for he has already accepted the invitation of Âmrapâlî, and that cannot be taken from her. At the same time it refers to cetrtain dharmas that "cannot be taken away".

4. But who is this Martha? In verse 38, Luke describes her as "a certain woman", gunê de tis, which is a free translation of Sanskrit gani-kâ, courtesan. The San. - kâ has been treated (as common in Rabbinical hermeneutics) as if it were an independent pronoun, which  is not so  in the original Sanskrit. Still, the "translation" is not bad: a certain prostitute becomes a certain woman.
 
MPS 12:1 is introduced by: atha Âmra-pâlîs..." Then Âmra....". The two words are contracted to athâmra...This gives us the consonants th-m-r, and from those three consonants the name of  a new woman is born, the sister of Âmra, aka  Maria - namely MaRTha.
 
In verse 39, Martha is said to have a sister CALLED Mariam. That is true - it is only something she is called. To conclude: Maria (or Mariam) and Martha are both derived from Âmra, the famous  Indian ganikâ. Before she finally sits down at his feet and listens to his sermon on Dharma, Âmra is busy preparing and serving food. This is still Martha at work. MPS, in other words, presents Âmra in two different roles. This, in the NT, becomes two different women, but still in the same roles, in the same place, under the same circumstances etc. The  food being served by her to the Lord  is described as sucinâ pranîtena, fine (and) exquisite, MPS 12:4 (and often elsewhere). This stock phrase - seven syllables in the instumental case - is also know to the Buddhists who wrote the Gospels:

If we turn to the Anointing at Bethany, Matthew 26:7, a woman brings an alabaster jar filled with "expensive perfume", Greek:  murou barutimou. In Mark 14:3, it is descibed as pistikês polutelous, "genuine" (and) "expensive". In John 12:3 it is  said to be pistikês polutimou, where polutimou = polutelous. We are thus quite obviously dealing with three different translations of one and the same Sanskriot phrase - an asyndeton - sucinâ pranîtena. The "and" (San. ca, Greek kai) is left out. This proves the common Buddhist source.

According to John 12: 1, the episode took  place at Bethany where Lazaros lived, and it is Maria who takes the perfume described above. So the Buddhist food has become Christian perfume. Lazaros is said to be the brother of Maria and Martha, just as Maria was said to be the sister of Martha.

All this took place, as said, in Vaisâlî, the home of the Licchavis.
There can, therefore, hardly be any doubt that Lazaros has derived his identity from Laicchavis.

There are several other observations to be made - puns on Âmra etc.-  but I think these examples show very well, how Luke, Matthew, Mark and John used their Buddhists sources. They fabricated new persons and events by  recycling words and phrases from the Buddhist sûtras in Sanskrit. They also counted words and syllables, as did the Buddhists before them.
 
Theologians often claim that the genre of the NT gospels is "unique".
This is true - but only if the Buddhist sûtra genre is left out of consideration.
Luke 10:38 provides a  small and excellent example of how NT may  imitate the sûtra genre.

It is not just Jesus who proves to be a Buddha in disguise - the same goes for all those women called Mary. They are Mâyâ and Âmra in disguise. The idea that the Buddha disguises himself in different ways is an old one with the Buddhists - see MPS 23:4.

There is a common Buddhist saying that all things are just names.
That must also be kept in mind when we deal with names of persons and places in the NT.

Christian Lindtner
December 7th, a.D. 2009

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THE CROOKS ON THE CROSSES -  Buddhist sources of Luke 23:39-43

As the three men are hanging there, crucified, they find time for a brief chat. A chat about the future - what will it bring?  One of the criminals  asks Jesus to remember him when Jesus comes in his kingdom, and Jesus - who can hardly be expected to know the man at all -  replies: "I tell you this: today you will be in Paradise with me" - in the Greek: amên legô soi, sêmeron met´ emou esê en tô paradeisô - Lat.: Amen dico tibi, hodie mecum  eris in paradiso. It is only Luke 23:39-43, who reports the curious  incident, and we have no idea what his source may have been.Who told him?
Or perhaps we do. We shall see.

There is some disagreement as to the proper translation of  the ten  Greek words. Some would place the comma after sêmeron, giving us thus  the translation:"Today I tell you this: you will be in Paradise with me." According to this understanding - that of   a Witness of Jehovah  - the criminal will be with Jesus at some future date, not already  today. There is a Buddhist source for this episode, and since it has been overlooked by scholars, it will not be superfluous to call attention to that source - not just  because it enables us to decide where the comma in the Greek has to be placed. The source for the promise of Jesus to one of the malefactors is - as so often - the Mahâparinirvânasûtram (MPS), a part of the MSV. The Lord, Bhagavân, is spending his last hours between two sâla-trees (yamaka-sâla, MPS 32:6,7,9), surrounded by two disciples, first  Ânanda and, a little later, Subhadra,  an old ascetic (MPS 40: 1-62). Subhadra is the last person to be converted and ordained. Once he has been ordained, he expresses the wish that he may pass away before the Lord, for he cannot bear the thought of surviving the Lord. The Lord grants him this wish.

But there is a problem!

Normally, in Buddhism, good deeds lead to rebirth in heaven, whereas evil actions lead to rebirth in the hells. Normally, it takes quite some time to accumulate good or bad karma.
But here we are introduced to some exceptions to that golden  rule of karma. Without being aware of these exceptions to the rule, we cannot understand the background of the words of Jesus quoted by Luke 23:43: "Today you will be in Paradise with me". There are two cases, we readin MPS 40,  in which a pious Buddhist goes directly to paradise (svarga). If he dies during pilgrimage to one of the four holy places (pradesas): where the Lord  was born, where He was enlightened, where He delivered  his first sermon, or where He finally  passed into Nirvâna. Moreover, a pious Buddhist will go directly to heaven (svarga), if he dies in the very  presence of the Buddha.

It is for this reason that Subhadra goes directly - on the same day -  to paradise or heaven. He is a pious Buddhist who dies in the presence of the Buddha who is about to "die", or pass away  into Nirvâna here between the two trees and the  two monks.
It is for exactly the same reason that the pious malefactor (kakourgos, Luke 23:39) on the cross, according to the promise of Jesus, can expect to go with Jesus to paradise on the same day.(That Jesus does not keep the promise is another story - see below!)
When one compares the Sanskrit words with the corresponding Greek words, one cannot fail to observe how closely Luke follows the original Buddhist source: The San. has âman-trayate, he says (the subject of the verb being the Lord, Bhagavân), which  becomse amên legô soi, amen I say to you.(Only Jesus uses this phrase!) The San. PRaDeSaS, (holy) spot, becomes PaRaDeiSoS (nominative form), a synonym of the San. svargas (nom.), heaven.

In the San. of the MPS there are two trees and two persons, with the Lord in the middle . In Luke this image is transformed into the image of two persons ON two trees, or crosses (stakes). The Lord is still surrounded by two "trees" with "criminals" hangimnhg on them.
In Luke, one crook rebukes the other. Likewise, in the Buddhist original, Ânanda rebukes Subhadra for disturbing the Lord who, undserstandably,  is old and tired.
The two "crooks" next to Jesus , needless to add, were the two Buddhist monks , Ânanda and Subhadra.

In both sources, the primary and the secondary, the topic of discussion is the same: The possibility of going directly to heaven with the Lord. A pious believer can do so, if he dies in the presence of the Lord. Even the verb "remember me" used by the false Subhara is in the San., where it is said that the four places of pilgrimage are to be rembered (anusmaranîyâ, MPS  41:5) by a  pious Buddhist. When we for a moment confine ourselves to Buddhist sources,we can observe that even here it is not unusual  to take up an old theme and introduce certain variants. Thus, as I have pointed out elsewhere, in the MSV we have the episode of Gautama being impaled on a place of sculls. Here there are two eggs or sculls, one on each side of the stake. While hanging on the stake this Gautama is engaged in a conversation with his former teacher. They, too, talk about the future. This episode has also left some wonderful  traces in Luke. I shall come back to these later.

The San. noun for stake is shûlam, which becomes Greek xulon, as in Acts 5:30. Here, the Greek epi xulou is often translated as "to a cross", but , as the San. shows, it should be "on a stake". Luke often uses MPS - a part of the MSV - as his source. So did his learned colleagues, Matthew, Mark and John - not to speak of Paul. In some cases Luke has an episode not found in Matthew or Mark. This shows that Luke  used MPS/MSV independently. In a few cases the same goes for Mark. The longest direct loan that I am aware of consists of 46 syllables. This is Luke 10:38.(See my Geheimnisse um Jesus Christus, p. 111 for the San. source.) To conclude the episode of the two - or three - crooks on the crosses, it may be observed that Luke goes on to tell his incredible tale of how, at twelve o´clock, the sun stopped shining and darkness covered the whole country until three o´clock... The source is, again, Buddhist, viz MPS.

The identification of the Buddhist source of the episode of the crooks on the crosses not only proves - if proof were needed - that what Luke reports has nothing to do with actual history somewhere  in Jerusalem. The episode is mythical, as is the original.
Perhaps more important, the identification shows that Luke had a great sense of humor - typical Buddhist, in fact - that may, however, not be duly appreciated by all Christians, more pious than the alleged founder of their religion. Luke must have had great fun turning the two Buddhist monks into two crooks to be impaled, and later on, in sending Jesus to hell - not to Paradise! -  for a couple of days. For he was resurrected "from the dead" - the Buddhist term for "from hell".

In other words: If the criminal actually did go to Paradise, as Jesus promised - Jesus would not be there with him! Or, alternatively, if we construe the "today" with the verb "I say to you", then it could be that the two would meet at some future date - not today - in Paradise - and that would be  some spot  (pradesas) in India! The episode only makes  gooid sense once one knows the source. But then it also makes wonderful sense - Aristophanes could not do better!
 
Christian Lindtner
December 6th. a. D. 2009

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A CHALLENGE TO ANTI-GEMATRIA HARPIES

In a communcation given to Biblical scholars at Louvain in 1970, the Dutch theologian J. Smit Sibinga, discussing the literary technique of Matthew, observed that the author of the First Gospel, consciously and consistently "arranged his text in such a way, that the size of the individual sections is fixed by a determined number of syllables. The individual parts of a sentence, the sentences themselves, sections of a smaller and larger size, they are, all of them, characterized in a purely quantitative way by their number of syllables" (Menken, p. 21).

And how did the scholars present in Louvain  react to this observation? According to a personal communication from one who was present, (Prof. Birger Gerhardsson, Lund University), "they giggled", and according to my own experience, scholars as well as non-scholars still tend to giggle, when they hear that Matthew - and the same goes for the other authors of the NT, I may add from my own research  - always counted the number of syllables - and words  of a sentence or a part of a sentence.

But only the insipid laugh when confronted with facts that are new to them. Serious scholars try to understand facts, no matter how odd they may appear at  first glance.
In his important doctoral dissertation from 1985, Numerical literary techniques in John, M.J.J. Menken, a student of Smit Sibinga, carried on this sort of NT research (based on the Greek, of course).

One of his most important observations was (p. 272):

"The sum total of syllables or words for a passage is equal to the numerical value of an important name or title occurring in that passage."

Examples of this rule:

1. John 1:19 - 2:11 has a size of 1550 syllables, which number is the numerical value of ho khristos ("the Christ") - the main person in that passage.

2. John 17:1b - 26 contains 486 words, which number is the numerical value of the vocative pater (father!) , which is found six times in the text.

3. John 1:1-18 consists of exactly 496 syllables, which is the numerical value of monogenês, ("only begotten"), an important qualification of Jesus. It occurs in John 1:14 & 18, and 3:16 & 18; and 1 John 4:9).
 
To take just one more example, first pointed out by Smit Sibinga ( cited by Menken, p. 23):
Peter´s speech in Acts 2:14b - 36 is made up of two equal halves: 444 syllables in 2:14b-24, and again 444 syllables in 2:25-36. Their sum, 888, is the numerical value of the name Iêsous (= 10+8+200+70+400+200 = 888; C.L.) - a number which was famous in this quality in the second century, witness Irenaeus´ Adversus haereses 1,15,2.
Moreover, if we look upon Acts 2:1-47, a numerical analysis shows that this chapter as a whole consists of exctly 1776, or 2 x 888 syllables.
 
These are just a few striking examples, and subsequent research by Smit Sibinga and myself  has shown that their number can easily be increased, and that the rule, therefore, is correct: The authors of the NT texts counted numbers of syllables and words.
 
Quite unexpectedly, the rule that the authors of the Gospels counted syllables and words, has, through my own research, received support from another corner of the world: Certain Buddhist canonical Sanskrit  texts - sûtra-s - have, as a numerical analysis reveals - also been composed by authors who counted syllables and words, yes, in some cases even letters.

Since these very sûtra-s can be shown to have influenced the NT in other ways (parables etc.), it is clear that  we here have yet another independent indication  of Buddhist influence in the NT.
 
WHY these authors  did so is another question that future research is obliged to account for. THAT they counted words and syllables is, to repeat, a fact that cannot be denied and that must be respected - even by those who now merely giggle.
 
Fools may laugh at hard cold facts - scholars wonder, and try to explain
 
Christian Lindtner
November 27th, a.D. 2009.

References:
Chr. Lindtner; Geheimnisse um Jesus Christus, Suederbrarup (Leuhe-Verlag) 2005.
M. J.J.Menken; Numerical literary techniques in John, Leiden (E.J.Brill) 1985.
J. Smit Sibinga; Literair handwerk in Handelingen, Leiden (E.J.Brill) 1970.
 
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The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ

In her most recent essay, The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, the American scholar Acharya S /D.M.Murdock argues, forcefully and boldly, in favour of the thesis that Jesus was not at all a historical person, but rather - as so many other sons of God in those days of old - a personification of the Sun.

In support of this point of view - one that she is not the first to advocate, but for which she deserves credit in graciously attending the advocacy - she adduces Christian as well as non-Christian sources, primary as well as secondary. Unremittingly, she reminds her readers of the fact that nearly everything that is said or written about the Jesus called Christ, had already at an earlier date been reported about the Buddha - or the Buddhas (too many to count), about Krishna, about Horus, about Prometheus, and, indeed, about numerous other now less known mythical figures.

That this is actually the case, no scholar familiar with Hellenistic religion and syncretism will be able to deny. Should he venture to deny, as some still do, then his colleagues can only deplore his ignorance of the relevant sources. Should anyone, moreover, wish to claim that Jesus - as opposed to so many other sons of God - is a historical person, then that defender of the old faith has a very heavy burden of proof resting upon his shoulders.

Our theologians, as a rule, simply postulate that there is no reason to doubt that Jesus was or is a historical person. There may be doubt, they admit, about the nature of that person, about the credibility of the evangelists in certain details etc., but about his existence, no, no, there can be no doubt.

Such a stand is apologetic and anything but scientific. An appeal to mere faith is an appeal to sheer ignorance.

Under such circumstances, our professional historians of religion would be expected to raise a storm of protest. They do, as a rule, fail to protest, and their failure is nothing short of a disgrace. Educated historians ought to enlighten and warn the public that there is neither solid external or internal evidence in support of the claim that Jesus was in any way a historical person.

Did Jesus really exist? - the question is not a new one. The great German theologian, Adolf Harnack once (back in 1909, before he became von Harnack) called it "the embarrassing question", i.e. embarrassing for those who raised it (viz. Kalthoff, Jensen, Drews). We must now say that von Harnack got it wrong. The question is now embarrassing - and even more so now than then - for those who fail to account for the lack of external and internal evidence, and for the parallels that are now much more numerous and close than they were in 1909. (Adolf Harnack, "Hat Jesus gelebt?" in: Aus Wissenschaft und Leben, Zweiter Band, Giessen 1911, pp. 167-175.). Above all, new Buddhist sources, in Sanskrit, have provided numerous literal parallels, i.e. direct loans.

The reason for clinging to the myth of Jesus as a historical person is, I assume, double: First of all, it is not easy to rid oneself of old and inveterate misconceptions. Such struggle not only requires freedom of mind but also personal courage - both are rare at a time where a higher Classical education and civilization with emphasis on human character have been banned from our universities and now are but remnants of brighter days.

Then there is the fear of loss of livelihood. If the story of Jesus is merely a solar myth - then our priesthood will have lost all its credibility. Who can make a living by talking about the Sun?

The edifice of Christianity - in any form it may be - rests on a ground of nonsense neatly summarized in the Apostles' Creed - that the mother of Jesus, who went to hell, was a virgin etc. etc.

If the thesis that Jesus is a mere solar myth is correct - and who is there to rebuke its validity on solid scholarly grounds? - then this must have serious consequences not just for conscientious Christian individuals, but also for a society that considers itself to be Christian in this or that respect.

The Danish church - not unlike other Lutheran or reformed churches - considers itself to be fairly "open and broad, " I am told. But is it "open and broad" enough to give room for the view that Jesus never existed, and for infidels taking that stand?

In Denmark (and elsewhere) we recognize and allow other religions, provided they do not violate certain rules or standards of decency and decorum - reflecting a Classical, and not at all a Christian tradition, I may add. The concept of decency or decorum may not be altogether clear to a modern mind, but no matter how we agree about definitions, it would be hard to leave out honesty and truthfulness from that definition. How can we have decency without honesty?

If, thus, honesty and truthfulness be recognized as natural and essential parts of decency and decorum, it follows, surely, that our professional professors of theology, along with our bishops and our priests find themselves facing a difficult dilemma: Either they must, openly and boldly, step forward to defend their honour and refute the thesis that Jesus be merely a solar myth, or they must, should they choose to remain silent, fear the disgraceful charge that their lack of honesty - not to speak of "Lutheran boldness" - makes them violate the standards of decorum and decency.

In other words: If our professional theologians do not respond and come up with strong arguments against the thesis of Jesus as a solar myth, then they will, day by day, transform the church and Christian society that for centuries have provided them with even more than their daily bread into institutions the nature of which is increasingly infested by dishonesty and lack of decency - until the day of the final and total collapse of the ancient myth.

Christian Lindtner, PhD
November 22nd, a.D. 2009.

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New book expanding on the work done by Dr. Christian Lindtner

Buddha's Big Foot, by Robert Korczynski.

This controversial new book investigates history, religion, linguistics, and numerology to conclude that all of the Christian teachings of Jesus were sourced from Buddhism.

Robert Korczynski holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan with Majors in Psychology and Sociology, and Minors in Philosophy and Comparative Religions.  He is an avowed Agnostic.

Expanding on the revolutionary work done by the Danish linguist Christian Lindtner (CL), Buddha's Big Foot is an academic investigation into the influence of  King Ashoka's Buddhist Missionaries within the religions of the ancient world; called the, "Dharma Mahamatras," CL translates their name as, "Officers of the Law."  Over generations, their influence within the Hebrew groups produced the Nazarenes and the Essenes, and they are the apparent creators of Mandaeaism, the believers in John the Baptist.
 

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The conference has been postponed!  

Conference Announcement December 2008

Did Jesus Really Exist?
New Testament Source Criticism

Speakers on the panel include:

Kenneth Humphreys, esq.,UK,
author of Jesus Never Existed.
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com

Prof. Dr. Christian Lindtner, Denmark,
author of Geheimnisse um Jesus Christus etc.
http://www.jesusisbuddha.com

Dr. Robert M. Price, USA,
author of Jesus is Dead, etc.
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/

Dr. Zacharias Thundy, USA,
author of Buddha and Christ etc.
http://www.nd.edu/~zthundy/

Opponent defending the historicity of Jesus,
Danish theologian: Dr. Braveheart.

***

Date: December 15, 2008, 17:00 through 22:30.

Venue: Havarthigaarden, Room C, near Holte S-station,
bus 193 (5 minutes, or 15 minutes by foot).
Very easy to reach from Copenhagen Central Station.

Entrance: 150,00 DKK.

Registration required no later than December 14, 2008.
Contact: jesusinholte@cotmanuniversity.com.

www.cotmanuniversity.com

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New books by Christian Lindtner

Indien und das Christentum. Eine Untersuchung der religionsgeschichtlichen Zusammenhänge

A 2004 reprint of the old 1914 classic by the German indologist Richard Garbe. With a new Foreword by Christian Lindtner in which it is pointed out that the nine syllables of Revelation 13:18 are a direct “translation” of one of the most important sources of the New Testament, namely Sad-dhar-ma-pun-da-rî-ka-sû-tram.

If you wish to read the Foreword, follow this link http://www.jesusisbuddha.com/vorwort.html

Place your order now: luehe-verlag@t-online.de

Books by other authors

Katolska kyrkans djupa hemlighet  Av Bert Löfgren

I 2000 år har teologer och andra forskare talat om den historiske Jesus utan att ha kunnat uppvisa minsta bevis för hans existens.

Den danske historikern och sanskritexperten Christian Lindtner hävdar nu sedan några år tillbaka från egna översättningar av buddistiska originaltexter, att Nya Testamentet är ett plagiat av Buddhas Testamente och att Jesus, hans lärjungar och många andra gestalter i Nya Testamentet är enbart sagofigurer.

Författaren, läkare och ”amatörteolog”, har tillämpat Lindtners tankegångar på några texter ur och med anknytning till Nya Testamentet och kan påvisa flera starka indikationer på släktskap med den buddistiska läran, Mahâyâna: frälsningsbegreppet är detsamma, Uppenbarelseboken bygger på tydliga buddistiska källor och Daniels bok innehåller inte bara tydliga inslag av shamanism (vanliga i buddismen) utan också ett entydigt bevis för buddistiskt ursprung, när den explicit beskriver den buddistiske bodhisattvas, vars likhet med Kristi frälsarroll är slående. Våra teologer har aldrig höjt blicken bortom det forna Persien och har därför aldrig förstått att Indien skulle kunna förklara kristendomens ursprung. De har nu stor anledning att tänka om! 

www.litenupplaga.se/284