Did Jesus go to India and Tibet?
Mystical books on the mystery and magic of the East fueled the imagination
of a few generations of New Age devotees. Many voiced their shared belief:
Jesus must have traveled into India and Tibet. How else could his teachings
sound so modern, metaphysical and hip? So, let’s travel back once more and take
a few snapshots of the spiritual ‘Happenings’ that were ‘socking it to’ the
first century. (To use a few slang phrases from the not too distant past.)
Let’s
back track a bit. In 1000 B.C. King Solomon built a nation and searched for
treasure from wherever he could send troops and ships. Solomon’s ships sailed
the coast of Africa, India and even further east to where no Jew had gone
before. Since the Hindu religion is one of the oldest recorded, then first
contact was probably made way back then. Jews became familiar with Hindu
philosophy and it is interesting to note they have some similarities.
In
approximately 400 B.C. Buddha questions his princely upbringing and Hindu
religion, wanders around, finally sits under a tree and becomes enlightened.
His followers begin a new religion. Over the next few hundred years, Buddhism
aggressively spreads its message mostly east to China, but also at least as far
west as Parthia (Turkey and Syria), just a short hop north from the Galilee.
Now, Buddhism infiltrates the consciousness of the Jewish nation.
In
early 300 B.C. Alexander the Great brilliantly storms around the Mediterranean
leaving his heavy handed influence everywhere. He ends with a final thrust into
India where his exhausted men strike and force him to return to Macedonia and
Greece. Now, this next piece of info deserves a photo op. Before he leaves he
has married an Indian princess, taken to wearing local clothing and brings a
Hindu guru/sage back home with him. In fact, the sage walks willingly and
painlessly into his funeral pyre while Alexander and the troops watch in awe
and disbelief. The influence of India has seeped into the fabric of Greece and
spreads through the Greek language used around the known world.
Let’s also take a snapshot of the Silk Road that for hundreds of years snaked
back and forth to China and ran through India into the Mediterranean area - think
first century Los Angeles rush hour. Now just a little west this thoroughfare
passes directly through the Galilee to Jerusalem and beyond bringing Oriental
medicine and metaphysics with it.
Gurus
and Indian fakirs on beds of nails, Buddhist priests and Chinese merchants –
all passed through the thriving and very Hellenized metropolis of Sepphoris,
the Jewel of the Galilee. And remember, this was only walking distance from
Nazareth. Joseph and all his sons
probably practiced their artisanship for the rich and snooty in the burgeoning
“Jewel”.
So, the question remains: Did Jesus travel to India and Tibet? May be
he did, but probably he didn’t. He was busy growing up in a Jewish culture,
learning his religion and being a good oldest son with family responsibilities
until he was at least eighteen. He certainly had enough fascinating Jewish
political and religious characters all around to watch and learn from.
. . .So, he may not have gone to the Far East, but by the first century
the East had come to him with all its mystery, magic and seductive philosophies
on enlightenment, making its practices and ideas hard to ignore.
1. How do you believe Jesus spent those
‘lost’ years between the age of twelve when he debated with the rabbis and his
late twenties when he was baptized by his cousin John?
2. In what way has your understanding of the
spread of cultures throughout the middle east by the first century changed your
view of Jesus’ upbringing, if at all?
3. How do you believe Jesus was affected by
the cultural diversity that surrounded him?
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