Ever since the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche announced that “God is dead,” it has been fashionable to question the historical authenticity of Jesus. During the last century, numerous books addressed the issue. One of these, Caesar’s Messiah (2011), by Joseph Atwill, is representative and argues that the Flavian dynasty invented Christianity to create a population of docile subjects willing to “turn the other cheek” and passively accept Roman rule. The Flavians (Vespasian, Titus and Domitian) dominated the political landscape of Rome between 69-96 CE, a time period that overlaps with the composition of the four gospels. I read Atwill’s book but will say no more about it. I have too much respect for my readers to waste their time eviscerating Atwill. That would be a pointless exercise. Readers deserve better.
Even as skepticism about Jesus was gaining ground in the nineteenth century, new evidence emerged in support of the historical Jesus. In the 1880s, a Russian explorer, Nicolas Notovitch made an extensive journey through central Asia, and on his return to Europe went public with sensational claims that rocked the Christian world. Notovitch said he had visited a Buddhist monastery in northern Kashmir where he was shown ancient manuscripts about Jesus who was known as “Issa”. Incidentally, this just happens to be the name for Jesus in the Koran. Assuming Notovitch was telling the truth, this new evidence strongly supported the historical underpinnings of Christianity. But was he on the level?
Notovitch was born in Crimea in 1858, the son of Jewish parents. However, in his younger years he converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church after an extensive study of religion. On returning from Asia, he attempted to interest Vatican officials in a preliminary draft for a book he had written about his trip that included a translation of the alleged Buddhist manuscripts. However, in Rome, a cardinal whom Notovitch describes as “very close to the Holy Father” was less than enthusiastic, and replied: “What good would it do to print this? Nobody will attach to it any great importance and you will create a number of enemies.” The cardinal offered to reimburse him for his time and trouble; but Notovitch refused. In Paris, he also discussed a book project with Cardinal Rotelli who also tried to dissuade him.
Although I was not surprised to learn about this resistance from the Roman Church, I was disappointed nonetheless. One might have hoped for a more open-minded attitude given that the four gospels have absolutely nothing to say about the so called “lost years,” the roughly 17-year period in the life of Jesus between the ages of thirteen and thirty when his public ministry began in Palestine. Over many centuries, the lost years have remained a historical void and a question mark. Surely the issue qualifies as a mystery, and one deserving of a serious investigation.
As it happened, Notovitch was a very persistent individual and his book, The Life of Saint Issa eventually saw print, first in French, then in English under a different title, The Unknown Life of Christ. It was an immediate success. In 1894, the book went through eight editions in France. Three different English translations also appeared in the US, plus another in Britain the following year. Translations in German, Swedish, Italian and Spanish also followed. Over the course of his life, Notovitch published eleven books but is solely remembered for this one about the lost years.
To say the book was controversial would be an understatement. Although some reviewers welcomed it while questioning the reliability of Buddhist sources about Christ, others were openly hostile. Writing in the North American Review in May 1894, Edward Everett Hale, a prominent Unitarian minister, not only doubted the existence of the alleged Buddhist source documents but even the existence of the Hemis monastery. Hale accused Notovitch of confabulating the whole thing. (The Unknown Life of Christ, North American Review, Vol 158, 1894, pp. 595-601)
Nor was he alone. That same year, renowned German Orientalist and Oxford professor Max Muller posted an acerbic review in the widely read English monthly magazine,
The Nineteenth Century. Muller’s reputation as a scholar was considerable as he had published the first translation of the Rig Veda. In his review Muller accused Notovitch of fraud. Muller said he doubted the author had actually visited Hemis. But even if he had, the lamas there probably had duped him. Muller also cited Moravian missionaries and English officers who had visited Leh, the capital of Ladakh, where they made inquiries but found no evidence of Notovitch’s presence. (Max Muller,
The Alleged Sojourn of Christ in India,
The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 36, October 1894, pp. 515-522.
Responding in his own defense, Notovitch vigorously denied he had forged the alleged Buddhist manuscripts, claiming,“My imagination is not so fertile.” He encouraged others to visit Ladakh to verify the discovery for themselves, while recommending the kind of “eastern diplomacy” he had learned to employ on his travels, in other words, an indirect approach to build trust and allay local concerns about western motives. He explained why direct inquires were likely to fail: residents of northern Kashmir and Tibet had learned long ago for good reason to be wary of westerners. For centuries, Europeans had been looting the region’s treasures. Any westerner who showed up asking about a Buddhist manuscript was certain to evoke suspicion, and would likely be put off. Notovitch also volunteered the names of individuals who could verify his presence in Ladakh, including a European doctor who had treated him in Leh. Finally, he suggested that instead of attacking him, critics should focus on the Buddhist manuscripts and determine whether he had faithfully transcribed them. (For sources see Elizabeth Claire Prophet, The Lost Years of Jesus, 1984, Summit University Press, chapter one)
The controversy boiled over in 1896, when James Archibald Douglas, a former professor of English and history at Government College in Agra, India, posted an article in the same periodical that had published Muller’s review. It seems that Douglas had followed Notovitch’s advice. He made the long journey to the Hemis monastery where he met with the chief lama and presented him with ten questions. Douglas brought along an interpreter who also served as his witness. According to Douglas, the lama said he had been abbot of the monastery for fifteen years and categorically denied that any Russian had visited Hemis in the recent past. However, when shown a photo of Notovitch, the lama apparently recognized him and acknowledged that he might have mistaken Notovitch for an “English Sahib.” On this basis Douglas conceded that Notovitch might indeed have visited the monastery and might even have met the abbot. After making careful inquires, Douglas ascertained that the alleged doctor at Leh Hospital had indeed treated a Russian by the name of Notovitch. In this manner portions of Notovitch’s account were substantiated.
Nonetheless, Douglas claimed in his review that he obtained an affidavit signed on June 3, 1895 by the chief lama emphatically denying the existence of the alleged manuscripts about Issa. In response to question number five, the lama said he had been a lama for forty-two years and was well acquainted with all of the Buddhist books and manuscripts, and had never heard of one that mentions the name “Issa.” Douglas’s review included the text of the affidavit and a brief endorsement by his interpreter and witness, Shahmwell Joldan, former postmaster of Ladakh. Douglas also attached a postscript by Max Muller who crowed that the affidavit was “not only a refutation [of Notovitch] but an annihilation.” (J. Douglas Archibald,
The Chief Lama of Hemis on the Alleged “Unknown Life of Christ”,
The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 39, April 1896, pp. 667-678.
The review by Douglas seriously damaged Notovitch’s reputation. Book sales suffered; and that is where matters stood for many years. However, the controversy was far from over. The next chapter would involve Swami Abhedananda, one of the principal disciples of the Indian saint Ramakrishna, probably the most important spiritual figure of the 19th century (on earth). His life is thoroughly documented and the facts are astonishing. Abhedananda once described his teacher as follows:
One of his disciples came to him and said: “Sir, people think you are gone mad, or you are in the habit of drinking.” He answered: “What people say is true. I am in the habit of drinking the wine of love. [But] I do not drink any earthly drink….In the madhouse of the world, who is not mad? Some are mad for wives, some for husbands, and others for name or fame or position; show me one in this world who is not mad for anything at all. I am not mad for anything in this world but for God who is eternal and everlasting.” (
Complete Works of Abhedananda, Vol. I, 1967, p. 497.
But back to Abhedananda. Born in Calcutta in 1866, the son of a professor of English, Abhedananda was multi-lingual from a young age and a precocious scholar of literature from both East and West. In 1884, at the age of eighteen, he became a disciple of Ramakrishna. Subsequently, he spent years wandering the length and breadth of northern India, barefoot, with no money, visiting holy sites, seeking out the company of God-realized saints, enduring privations and practicing renunciation. During this period the Swami once made his home in a cave in the Himalayas near the source of the Ganges; and there passed three months. Plainly, he was no ordinary fellow.
Wikipedia describes Abhedananda as “a forceful orator, prolific writer, yogi and intellectual with devotional fervor.”
No sooner did Abhedananda arrive in London in 1896 than he learned, much to his dismay, that his fraternal superior, Swami Vivekananda, had arranged for him to deliver a lecture to an English audience about Vedanta, the Indian philosophy based on the Vedas. Abhedananda was aghast because he had no experience as a public speaker. In all of his life he had never addressed an audience, not even in India. Yet, according to various accounts, that evening Abhedananda pulled it off and delivered a brilliant lecture to a capacity crowd. Clearly it had been a test. Vivekananda was delighted and, soon after, departed England for India confident he was leaving Ramakrishna’s spiritual mission to the West in capable hands. Abhedananda was soon in demand as a speaker before assemblies and universities, first in Europe, then in the US. In the process he came to know many distinguished individuals, including none other than the redoubtable Max Muller. The two apparently met in London, became friends, and corresponded until Muller’s death.
Both men were scholars and shared a common interest in Ramakrishna. Muller probably relished the opportunity to learn more about the ecstatic saint firsthand from his new acquaintance. Their conversations surely contributed to the preparation of Muller’s own book on the subject, Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings, published in 1898, two years before his death, and still in print today. In 1900, Abhedananda paid tribute to his friend at a funereal ceremony in New York in honor of Muller sponsored by the philosophy and philology departments at Columbia University.
Unfortunately, to my knowledge there is no record of their conversations which surely ranged over many topics, including the controversy surrounding Notovitch’s book about the lost years. Although I cannot prove it, I suspect the talks with Muller fired Abhedananda’s interest, which evolved into a personal determination to get to the bottom of the matter. It’s a safe bet Muller would have been shocked by the controversy’s eventual outcome and resolution in Notovitch’s favor; which I will get to shortly. Unfortunately, Muller did not live to see it.
I have already mentioned Ramakrishna’s other hand-picked disciple, Vivekananda, who preceded his spiritual brother Abhedananda to the West by several years. Here, I will say a few more words about him. Vivekananda was the first Indian yogi and saint to visit the United States and Britain. He gained notoriety in Chicago in 1893 at the World Congress of Religions where he delivered a stirring address that was the hit of the conference. Thereafter, he was constantly in demand as a speaker. (Christopher Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples, 1959, Simon and Schuster, p. 321)
Subsequently, Vivekananda traveled around the eastern and central US teaching yoga, founding meditation centers, writing, and generally introducing Americans to eastern spiritual practices. In 1896, he was back in London to welcome the arrival of Abhedananda whom he soon prepped to take over on his behalf. Vivekananda then returned to India. He passed away in 1902.
Abhedananda spent the next quarter of a century in the West: first, ten months in London and Europe, then in the US where he took charge of the New York Vedanta Society. He taught classes, gave lectures and administered a growing number of yoga centers. He also visited Canada and Mexico. By one account, Abhedananda felt more at home in America than any of his swami brothers. Most of the last year of this period was spent on the West coast, his time about equally divided between newly established meditation centers in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Incidentally, I checked and both of them still exist today. In 1921, Abhedananda sailed for Calcutta by way of several stops in Southeast Asia.
His arrival home after so many years in the West was celebrated news across India. Crowds of well wishers greeted him at the dock. But Abhedananda also faced a press of administrative duties at the Ramakrishna mission and was compelled to postpone the long anticipated trip to Ladakh until the following year. It was not until July 1922, at the age of fifty-six, that Abhedananda finally set out on the arduous journey across the Himalayas to northern Kashmir. He went firstly by train, then bus, then on foot over the 11,500 foot-high Zoji-la pass that separates the lush vale of Kashmir from the high elevation desert moonscape of Ladakh. The swami kept a detailed diary of the trip and his time at the Hemis monastery where he met the chief lama and the resident monks and was shown the very same manuscripts about Issa examined by Notovitch. Ably assisted by the monks, Abhedananda studied them and requested English translations. This was done.
Later, his diary was serialized in a yoga journal, and a book about his trip was edited by his assistant (who had accompanied him) and published in 1929 in Bengali. Unfortunately, Abhedananda’s important testimony about Notovitch and the lost years has been neglected in the West, possibly because an English translation under a new title, Journey into Kashmir and Tibet, did not become available until 1987.
It is noteworthy that the monks at the Hemis monastery told Abhedananda, as they previously had informed Notovitch, that the in-house manuscripts about Issa were copies of originals kept at Lhasa, center of Tibetan Buddhism. The original manuscripts had been composed in Pali, an Indian dialect, and only later translated into Tibetan. This is not surprising because, as we know, the birthplace of Buddhism was in northern India at Gaya, what is now Bihar province.
So, it is quite possible that the libraries of India hold additional evidence about the historical Jesus and the lost years. Sri Daya Mata, the late President of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship, once related how in 1959 she interviewed Sri Bharati Krishna Tirtha, the Shankaracharya of Puri, India, who told her he had seen ancient records about Jesus in the Jagannath Temple archives at Puri, in Orissa province. (Sri Daya Mata, Remembering Paramahansa Yogananda, Self Realization Fellowship, 1992, p. 16.)
It is even possible that some of this evidence already reached the West, but was suppressed. Notovitch claimed that the Vatican library is in possession of at least sixty-three manuscripts from Egypt, China, India and Arabia, in different languages, all referencing the lost years. Assuming these materials exist, the likely reason they have never been made public is the Vatican policy of admitting only right-thinking scholars to its cloistered archives.
I can personally attest to having seen tens of thousands of books and scrolls in the library at Amritapuri, the ashram of Amma (the “hugging saint”) in Kerala, India in 2010. Doubtless, there are hundreds of other libraries in India of comparable size or larger. These Indian libraries became even more important after the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 that resulted in the wholesale destruction of Buddhist monasteries and libraries across the country. Manuscripts that were not squirreled away at that time were almost certainly lost. A remnant of Tibetan culture survives today in Ladakh because the rugged region lies within the borders of India.
The West has barely begun to investigate the vast corpus of eastern scriptures. After all, it has only been 219 years since Henry Thomas Colebrooke published the first Sanskrit grammar in English, and the first English translation of the Amarakosa Veda in 1805. Over the sweep of history this is but the blink of an eye. Human civilization is vastly older than most of us have dared to imagine. In my last book, Deep History and the Ages of Man (2022) I showed that the proper timeline for human civilization is at least 120,000 years. This is based on the incredible stratigraphy of the bone caves of Britain; which is a holographic record of our planet. First investigated in the 1820s, five stratigraphic layers have been identified in the caves, each with its own unique assemblage of fossils. Samples from each layer have been isotopically dated, and the layers correlate climatically with four known previous north pole positions (for a total of five, including the current pole in the Arctic). Aerospace engineer Mark Carlotto found the former pole positions by studying the archeological alignments of ancient sites. (Mark Carlotto, Before Atlantis, 1922) I hate to disabuse my readers about science but the position of the north and south poles is not a permanent feature of our planet. When the crust of the earth shifts, the poles also move by as much as 2,000 miles or more. It is only because present day science is in such disarray that the validity of Charles Hapgood’s theory of crustal displacement, first articulated in the 1950s, has not yet been widely recognized. But that is another story. (Charles Hapgood, Earth’s Shifting Crust, 1958, Pantheon).
So, how do we resolve the seeming contradiction between Douglas’s 1896 review debunking Notovitch and Abhedananda’s corroboration of him? In my opinion the case is a good example of FUBAR, i.e., F*cked up beyond all redemption or, to be polite, western hubris. Since the turn of the twentieth century, westerners have taken it for granted that Douglas’s affidavit settled the matter. That is how the New York Times reported it on April 19, 1896. Case closed. Later, western critics also discounted Abhedananda’s account because the swami did not return from Hemis with hard evidence in hand, i.e., neither a genuine Buddhist manuscript nor a photo. While I agree that hard evidence in the form of photos would have been the best possible outcome because it would have conclusively settled the matter, the fact is, the very same objection can be raised about Douglas’s affidavit. Although Douglas published the text of it in his review, insofar as I am aware, no one has ever reported actually seeing the affidavit, nor a photo of it. So, how do we know the affidavit even existed? This raises a number of disturbing questions. Was Douglas the actual hoaxer, not Notovitch?
We know Douglas corresponded with Max Muller, but there is no evidence the two men ever met. So, Muller’s part in the controversy cannot be construed as a ringing endorsement of Douglas. The late Elizabeth Claire Prophet reports in her book,
The Lost Years of Jesus, that although she strenuously investigated Douglas-the-man she was unable to learn anything more about him. She concluded that everything we know about
James Archibald Douglas can be summarized in one slim paragraph. Thankfully, Wikipedia offers a few additional scraps: Douglas was born in Sheffield, England and graduated from Oxford. The writer Tobias Churton adds another relevant tidbit. It seems Douglas was tutor and friend to Aleister Crowley, the reprobate occultist who founded a new religion, Thelema (Greek for “the will”), actually just a new form of the oldest religion of them all, i.e. Satanism. Crowley repudiated Christianity as a young man and became a practitioner of the dark arts. This apparently included sex orgies, blood sacrifices, and the use of spells, ceremonies and incantations to summon demonic entities. Crowley’s activities in Italy were sufficiently scandalous that Benito Mussolini had him deported in 1923. When I checked, I was struck by the curious resemblance of Crowley’s symbol for Thelema with that of freemasonry. I suspect this is more than a coincidence. Did Crowley openly practice what the masons keep well concealed behind thirty-three degrees of separation? We know the masons introduced their thirty-three levels of initiation in honor of the rebellious one-third of the angelic host cast down by God along with Lucifer.
Aleister Crowley’s own mother referred to him as “the beast.” Did the man who tutored and befriended him share his hatred for Christianity? If so, the alleged affidavit was probably a sham, a deliberate attempt to obstruct the search for the truth about the lost years, done out of sheer malice. At very least, Douglas’s association with Crowley is a huge red flag that hardly inspires confidence.
This is why I fleshed out Abhedananda in some detail: to establish his unimpeachable character. Surely the abbot and monks at Hemis were well aware at the time of his arrival at the monastery that Abhedananda was a disciple of Ramakrishna whose reputation preceded him. This easily explains the swami’s warm welcome. Abhedananda was a kindred spirit, after all, a monk himself and one familiar with both Sanskrit and Pali. My intuitive guess (and it is only a guess) is that when Douglas showed up at Hemis, the chief lama probably listened to him for about five minutes, enough to decipher the man, then showed him the door. Perhaps to save face, Douglas conceived the fraudulent affidavit and paid his interpreter to go along. This would explain all of the known facts and is how I read them. Others can draw their own conclusions.
Did Jesus survive the crucifixion?
In 1994, the late Indian scholar Fida M. Hassnain published a most interesting book about the historical Jesus based on a lifetime of research. Hassnain, a Muslim Sufi, graduated from the University of Punjab and early in his career served as a barrister. After the partition of India, he became a lecturer and eventually gained the chair of history and research at Sri Pratap College in Srinagar, Kashmir. In 1954, he was named director of the Kashmir state archives, a post he held until his retirement. (Fida M. Hassnain, A Search for the Historical Jesus, 1994, Gateway Books)
Hassnain was especially interested in the lost years, and over the course of many years examining Sanskrit, Tibetan, Arabic, Persian and Urdu sources was able to document the historic presence of Jesus in what is now Iran and Kashmir. The fact that westerners are unfamiliar with the ancient texts he discovered in no way diminishes their importance. His splendid book is highly recommended.
According to Hassnain, in Persia Jesus was known as Yuzu Asaf. The first name “Yuzu” is Persian (and Urdu) for Jesus. (The Aramaic equivalent: “Jesu”) “Asaf” means gatherer. Hence: Jesus the gatherer (or shepherd?). In time, Hassnain came to believe that the Koran is basically correct about the crucifixion. Jesus not only survived the gruesome ordeal on the cross but fully recovered and subsequently relocated to Kashmir, where he continued to preach and lived to a ripe old age. I should add: and where he is still revered to this day.
As I considered the available evidence, I was surprised to find that it does appear to accord with the Koran’s version of events. Capital punishment by crucifixion was a slow and agonizing mode of death that normally lasted for days. The Roman intent was to inflict the maximum amount of pain and suffering for as long as possible. Yet, according to the gospels the crucifixion of Jesus occurred on a single day, Good Friday, and from start to finish lasted no more than three to six hours. Jewish law forbade crucifixions on the sabbath, and for this reason the sentences being carried out on Golgotha had to be terminated before sunset. They could not continue overnight and into Saturday. This is why the Roman soldiers broke the legs of the two thieves being crucified next to Jesus. Breaking the legs hastened their death because their legs were no longer able to support the weight of their bodies. The sagging bodies seriously constrained their ability to breathe, resulting in suffocation. This was not done in the case of Jesus, however. Instead, according to John 19: 32-34, a soldier pierced his side with a lance, drawing forth blood and water. If the soldier thought Jesus had already expired, he might have refrained from a more penetrating and fatal thrust of the lance. For these reasons, the hypothesis that Jesus survived the crucifixion is at least possible.
In the old part of Srinagar, Kashmir is a tomb that locals believe to be the final resting place of Yuzu Asaf. It is known as Rozabal, which means “the prophet’s tomb.”Abhedananda actually visited the shrine in 1922 while passing through Srinagar on his pilgrimage to Ladakh. The structure is striking in design and appearance, though run down and in need of renovation. All of the windows are covered with intricately carved wooden lattices, each distinguished by a wooden cross. Inside is a large wooden sepulchre chamber also covered with a wooden lattice. Within the sepulchre is a strange sarcophagus-like object and another carved cross.
Due to Hassnain’s official position he was granted free access and so was able to investigate. After many visits, he determined that the brick structure, though not ancient, had been built atop a much older foundation of chiseled stonework, most of which is now below ground. Inside the sepulchre near the gravestone Hassnain found a stone slab covered with wax. Evidently, many worshippers had used the stone as a platform for devotional candles. When the professor removed the wax he was amazed to discover the impression of two feet carved in the slab, each with an obvious wound mark. The location of the wounds suggests that the left foot had been placed over the right and that a single nail had been used to pierce both feet. In short, the prophet had been crucified, a mode of death historically unknown in central Asia.
A German researcher, Holger Kersten, also investigated the site and was also allowed into the sepulchre, probably because of his association with Hassnain. When I compared the photos in Kersten’s book with those in Hassnain’s book, I realized that what appears at first glance to be a sarcophagus is merely a kind of wooden canopy or covering. In his book, Kersten reports that the actual grave of the prophet lies in an older crypt below the floor and is oriented east-west, consistent with Jewish custom. By contrast, the tomb structure and sepulchre are oriented north-south in accord with Islamic tradition. Given that Hindus cremate their dead, it is evident that Yuzu Asaf was neither Muslim, Buddhist, nor Hindu. (Holger Kersten, Jesus Lived in India, 1986, Element Books)
Records produced by the tomb’s custodian, an elderly man, indicate that a series of guardians cared for the site over the centuries, apparently without interruption. Hassnain also discovered another ancient document indicating that the first structure to protect the tomb was built as early as 116 CE. Although the site calls for continuing research, unfortunately, Rozabal has been closed to westerners since the September 11, 2001 attacks. It is yet another example of the manifold chilling effects of the fake war on terror imposed on the world by US Zionist imperialists.
Mark H Gaffney’s first book was a pioneering study of Israel’s nuclear weapons program,
Dimona: The Third Temple (1989). He also researched two books about the September 11, 2001 attacks:
The 9/11 Mystery Plane and the Vanishing of America (2008), and
Black 9/11 (2nd ed. 2016); and a book about early Christianity released in 2004. See below. His latest is
Deep History and the Ages of Man (2nd ed. 2022). Mark can be reached for comment at
markhgaffney@earthlink.net
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