and was in the deserts until the day of his shewing unto Israel") a "gap in the life of Jesus," in spite of the fact that this passage refers to the Baptist, and proposes to fill it by putting Jesus to school with the Brahmins and Buddhists from His thirteenth to His twenty-ninth year. As evidence for this he refers to statements about Buddhist worship of a certain Issa which he professes to have found in the monasteries of Little Thibet. The whole thing is, as was shown by the experts, a bare-faced swindle and an impudent invention.
To the fictitious Lives of Jesus belong also in the main the theosophical "Lives," which equally play fast and loose with the history, though here with a view to proving that Jesus had absorbed the Egyptian and Indian theosophy, and had been indoctrinated with "occult science." The theosophists, however, have the advantage of escaping the dilemma between reanimation after a trance and resurrection, since they are convinced that it was possible for Jesus to reassume His body after He had really died. But in the touching up and embellishment of the Gospel narratives they out-do even the romancers.
Ernest Bosc,[1] writing as a theosophist, makes it the chief aim of his work to describe the oriental origin of Christianity, and ventures to assert that Jesus was not a Semite, but an Aryan. The Fourth Gospel is, of course, the basis of his representation. He does not hesitate, however, to appeal also to the anonymous "Revelations" published in 1849, which are a mere plagiarism from Venturini.
A work which is written with some ability and with much out-of-the-way learning is "Did Jesus live 100 B.C.?" [2] The author compares the Christian tradition with the Jewish, and finds in the latter a reminiscence of a Jesus who lived in the time of Alexander Jannaeus (104-76 B.C.). This person was transferred by the earliest Evangelist to the later period, the attempt being facilitated by the fact that during the procuratorship of Pilate a false prophet had attracted some attsntion. The author, however, only professes to offer it as a hypothesis, and apologises in advance for the offence which it is likely to cause.
A scientific discussion of the "Toledoth Jeshu," with citations from the Talmudic tradition concerning Jesus, is offered by S. Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach judischen Quellen. 1902. 309 pp. According to him the Toledoth Jeshu was committed to writing in the fifth century, and he is of opinion that the Jewish legend is only a modified version of the Christian tradition.
- ↑ La Vie esoterique de Jesu-Christ et les origines orientales du christianisme. Paris, 1902. 445 pp. That Jesus was of Aryan race is argued by A. Muller, who assumes a Gaulish immigration into Galilee. Jesus ein Arier. Leipzig, 1904. 74 pp.
- ↑ Did Jesus live 100 B.C.? London and Benares. Theosophical Publishing Society, 1903. 440 pp.
