[ book tip by Hannah Geismar ] Maybe you picked up The Da Vinci Code, just to know what the big fuss was about. And maybe you read it and realized that the whole thing was pretty intriguing, and you couldn't help but think: 'What if! What if there's just a grain of truth in all this?' But now you don't know what to do with all that curiosity. Well, here's your answer: read Jesus lived in India.

According to Holger Kersten, Jesus spend his youth in India studying Buddhism, before returning home at the age of 29. He survived the crucifixion and spent several years on the road afterwards, before dying in Kashmir as an old man.

Kersten has done an incredible amount of research that makes for a very convincing argument, on several levels. He points out obvious parallels between Buddhism and the teachings of Jesus,
and goes on to stress the importance of differentiating between the actual teachings and what the apostles made out of them afterwards. For instance, the doctrine of salvation in traditional Christianity was mainly the work of Paul and was never taught by Jesus, and there's a huge difference between the historical Jesus and the mythical Christ created by Paul.

Kersten also lists a number of curious 'facts', among them:

- the Gospels report that Jesus was nailed on the cross around noon and died around 3pm. For a crucified person, that's a suspiciously rapid death, especially when considering that certain writings prove that crucifixion could be survived, if people were taken down from the cross in time. And by comparing the descriptions in John's Gospel of the burials of Lazarus and Jesus, it becomes clear that the burial of Jesus was not a normal burial, maybe not a burial at all

- According to the Koran, Jesus did not die on the cross, but survived the attempted execution and then lived in a 'happy valley'. It even says: 'They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but he was made to appear (as one crucified) to them.' (Koran 4,156-157)

- Hindu writings from between the third and the seventh centuries AD, contains a supplement that describes how Jesus came to India. And in the History of Kashmir, written in 1413, it is described how Jesus came to Kashmir and 'spent his life in this valley', before being laid to rest at Mohalla Anzimarah.

As Kersten puts it: 'Just because a story has been told for 2000 years doesn't mean it's true. He will obviously never be able to prove his theory - but no one will ever be able to prove him wrong either, and that's what makes this book so troubling to read.

Available in German as Jesus lebte in Indien, Ullstein TB 1996
An French as Jesus a vecu en Inde, Garanciere 1997

[ book info ] Kersten, Holger: Jesus Lived In India. Penguin Books, 1991 .