posted on Aug, 19 2009 @ 10:55 PM
The Gods of Eden by William Bramley. From chapter 12 The Jesus Ministry.
Most New Testament information about Jesus's life covers
only the three years immediately prior to his crucifixion.
Those were the years of Jesus's public ministry. During that
time, Jesus did not live inside the Essene communities for
the simple reason that he was engaged in a traveling ministry
which would occupy him until his crucifixion. Every Essene
was given, or created for himself, a "calling" or life's goal
to pursue. Jesus pursued his as a teacher on the road.
In both the New Testament and Apocrypha, the life of
Jesus seems to be fairly well covered up until about the
age of 5 or 6. Then, abruptly, there is a complete void of
information about where Jesus went or what he did. We find
in the New Testament one episode of Jesus appearing before
Hebrew scholars at the age of 12, followed by an eighteenyear
silence in which Jesus's activities are unaccounted for.
Suddenly, at about the age of 30, Jesus re-emerged and
launched his short and tumultuous religious career. Where
had Jesus gone, and what had he done, during the unknown
years?
Most Christians believe that Jesus spent his teens and
young adulthood working for his father as a carpenter.
No doubt Jesus did occasionally visit his father and learn
carpentry on those visits. Many historians, however, feel
that there was much more happening in Jesus's life and
they have tried to discover what else Jesus might have done
during those critical years when his thoughts, personality,
and motives were developing. As it turns out, Jesus was
being intensively trained for his future religious role.
It was common for Essene boys to enter an Essene monastery
at about the age of 5 to begin their educations. This
will account for Jesus's sudden disappearance from history
at that age. Some researchers believe that Jesus was brought
up and educated in the Essene community above Haifa by
the Mediterranean Sea. He apparently remained there until
his teens. At the age of 12, he made a trip to Jerusalem
in preparation for his bar mitzvah the following year.
It was during that trip that Jesus had the debate with Hebrew scholars.
Jesus then vanished from history again. Now where did he go?
Several years ago I happened to see an intriguing film
documentary by Richard Bock entitled, The Lost Years.
This film regularly shows up on local American television
stations around Christmas and Easter. It is well worth watching.
The film suggests that Jesus journeyed to Asia where
he spent his teens and early adulthood studying the religions
practiced there. One source from which the filmmaker drew
this remarkable conclusion was the "Legend of Issa," a very
old Buddhist document purportedly discovered in the Himi
Monastery of India by Russian traveler Nicolas Notovitch
in 1887. Notovitch published his translation of the Buddhist
legend in 1890 in his book, The Unknown Life of Jesus.
According to the Buddhist legend uncovered by Notovitch,
a remarkable young man named "Issa" had departed
for Asia at the age of thirteen. Issa studied under several
religious masters of the East, did some preaching of his own,
and returned to Palestine sixteen years later at the age of
29. The significant parallels between the lives of "Issa" and
Jesus have led to the conclusion that Issa was, in fact, Jesus.
If true, such a journey would certainly be omitted from the
Bible because it contradicts the idea that Jesus had achieved
spiritual enlightenment solely by divine inspiration.
If Jesus was an Essene and he travelled to Asia under
Essene sponsorship, and if the Essenes indeed followed
an Aryan tradition, we would expect Jesus to be sent to
study under the Aryan Brahmans of the Indian subcontinent.
According to the Legend of Issa, that is precisely what happened:
In his fourteenth year, young Issa, the Blessed One,
came this side of the Sindh [a province in Western
Pakistan] and settled among the Aryas [Aryans]. . . .'
Upon Jesus's arrival, "the white priests of Brahma welcomed
him joyfully"2 and taught him, among other things,
to read and understand the Vedas, and to teach and expound
sacred Hindu scriptures. This joyful reception quickly turned
sour, however, because Jesus insisted upon associating with the lower castes.
That led to friction between the young headstrong Jesus and his
Brahmin hosts. According to the legend:
But the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas [members of the
military caste] told him that they were forbidden by
the great Para-Brahma [Hindu god] to come near to
those who were created from his belly and his feet
[the mythical origin of the lower castes];
That the Vaisyas [members of the merchant and
agricultural caste] might only hear the recital of the
Vedas, and this only on the festival days, and
That the Sudras [one of the lower castes] were not
only forbidden to attend the readings of the Vedas,
but even to look on them; for they were condemned
to perpetual servitude, as slaves of the Brahmins, the
Kshatriyas and even the Vaisyas.
But Issa, disregarding their words, remained with
the Sudras, preaching against the Brahmins and
Kshatriyas.
He declaimed strongly against man's arrogating to
himself the authority to deprive his fellow-beings of
their human and spiritual rights. "Verily," he said,
"God has made no difference between his children,
who are all alike dear to Him."
Issa denied the divine inspiration of the Vedas and
the Puranas [a class of sacred writings]. .. .3
The white priests and warriors were so angered that they
sent servants to murder Jesus. Warned of the danger, Jesus
fled the holy city of Djagguernat by night and escaped
into Buddhist country. There he learned the Pali language
and studied sacred Buddhist writings ("Sutras"). After six
years, Jesus "could perfectly expound the sacred [Buddhist]
scrolls."4
The Issa legend has some remarkable implications. It
portrays Jesus as a sincere religious reformer who found
himself turning against the Custodial/Aryan traditions in
which he had been raised. His sympathies went instead to
the maverick Buddhists. The Buddhist influence in Jesus's teachings
are evident in the Bible, as in Jesus's "Sermon
on the Mount" which contains some philosophy strikingly
similar to the Buddhism of his day.
After fifteen or so years in and about Asia, Jesus travelled
back to Palestine via Persia, Greece, and Egypt. According
to one tradition, Jesus was initiated into the higher ranks of
the Brotherhood in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis. After
completing that initiation, Jesus returned to Palestine, now
a man of 29 or 30. Immediately upon his return, Jesus
embarked on his public ministry.
The rift between Jesus and his Aryan hosts in India did
not, at first, seem to adversely affect Jesus's relationship
to the Essene Order. It did not take long, however, for
trouble to erupt. Jesus did not share the ascetism of his
Essene brothers and downplayed the importance of ritualism
for achieving spiritual salvation. Jesus was surrounded by
Essene sponsors who strongly believed in the coming of a
Messiah and they were determined to have their investment,
Jesus, proclaimed that new Messiah. Jesus forbade them to
do so. According to historian Will Durant, Jesus "repudiated
all claim to Davidic descent"5 and for a long time "forbade
the disciples to call him the messiah.. . ."6 Most historians
attribute those actions to the political climate of the time.
Palestine was under Roman occupation and the Romans
took a dim view of the Hebrew prophecies because of their
political overtones. Jesus did not wish to run afoul of the
Romans, or so the thinking goes.
There is, however, a much better reason why Jesus did not
want to be proclaimed the Hebrew Messiah. He knew that the
proclamation was untrue and he was being honest about it.
Jesus wanted to bring to Palestine a genuine spiritual science
of the type the mavericks were still attempting in India.
Jesus therefore became a rebel inside of the very Brotherhood
organization backing him. Jesus's greatest mistake was
believing that he could use the channels of the corrupted
Brotherhood network to spread a maverick religion, even
if he had many close friends and loved ones in the Essene
Order.
Jesus never had time to establish his maverick religious
system because some of his Essene backers and, according to
the Bible, even some Custodial "angels," quickly got
him into trouble by proclaiming him the Messiah. It did
not take the Romans and some Hebrew leaders long to
arrest Jesus and put him on trial. The Hebrews objected to
his unorthodox religious ideas and the Romans his alleged
political pretensions. A mere three years after beginning his
ministry, Jesus was reportedly nailed to a cross. Although
there is evidence that Jesus did not die on the cross but
survived to live out the rest of his life in seclusion, the
crucifixion ended his public ministry and paved the way
for his name to be used to implant the very Judgment Day
philosophies he had opposed.*
Jesus's problems cannot be blamed on his backers alone,
however. Certainly Jesus's own errors contributed to his
downfall. Despite his maverick leanings, Jesus was unable
to entirely undo within himself a lifetime of indoctrination as
an Essene. There is good Biblical and Apocryphal evidence
that Jesus tried to mix Custodial dogma with maverick tenets.
This will cause any honest attempt at spiritual reform
to fail. The Bible also indicates that Jesus taught some of
his lessons through a system of mysteries. Jesus's only hope
had been to break completely with the Essene Order and its
methods, but it is easy to understand why he had not done
so. His life, family, and friends were too much a part of
that organization.
Although Jesus had a large enough following to invite
attention, he did not preach long enough to enter the history
books of his own time. His fame grew after the crucifixion
when his disciples traveled far and wide to establish their
*A set of documents dating from around 400 A.D.—the Nag Hammadi
scrolls—were discovered in Egypt in 1945. The scrolls are hand-inscribed
copies of earlier original manuscripts. Many or all of those originals were
written no later than 150 A.D., i.e. before the standard New Testament
gospels were penned. Some scholars believe many of the Nag Hammadi
scrolls to be as authentic, and less altered, than the accepted Gospels of
the New Testament. According to the Nag Hammadi, Jesus was not nailed
to a cross, but another man, Simon, had been cleverly substituted to suffer
Jesus's fate. Whatever the truth of this might be, what is important to us is
simply that the crucifixion signaled the end of Jesus's public ministry.
new apocalyptic sect. With the continued help of their
Custodial "angels," Christian missionaries made Jesus a
household name and created a powerful new faction that
would further divide human beings into battling groups.
The successful effort to make Jesus the figurehead of a
new Judgment Day religion brought about the most famous
apocalyptic writing in the western world: the Revelation
of St. John. This work, which is also known as the Book
of Revelation or Apocalypse, is the last book of the New
Testament. It leaves Christians with the same type of dire
prophecy that the Hebrews had been left with at the end of
the Old Testament: the coming of a great global catastrophe
followed by a Day of Judgment. The Book of Revelation is
well worth taking a closer look at.