Part 1: How the alleged death of "Jesus Christ" led to Israeli/Palestinian bloodshed.
How a Religious Doctrine created Siege Mentality and now Threatens the World.
(Seven-hundred and ninety-five (795) years of non-stop oppression of the Jews, in Europe, by the Church of Rome, aka, the Catholic Church, aka the Catholic Religion, aka Catholicism, created a siege mentality within the Jewish people, a mentality that now manifests itself, in Gaza, as what the entire world has defined as a reprehensible, and some say genocidal and severely over-reactive, collective form of punishment that could lead to World War III.
(If you, the reader, are not familiar with that history, and would be tempted to say that I am “over-stating” the impact, on the psyches of the Jews, of the Church of Rome’s historical persecution of them, then just keep reading. If you are too young to know about that history, you have a wealth of information, these days, at your finger tips, on The Internet, including videos, as well as what’s contained in this article. And, of course, you can access countless books in libraries. [Continue reading below]
(Also, if you believe that a religious doctrine could not possibly be part of the very root cause of the war between Hamas and Israel, then watch and listen to Larry Johnson’s, a former analyst for the CIA, explanation on how the eschatological beliefs of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are intimately woven into the fabric of the war between Hamas and Israel. For the first 18 minutes of the video, the discussion between Stephen Gardner and Larry Johnson was focused on geo-politics, the actual war itself, missile systems, the prospect for a wider conflict, the role of propaganda, the prospect of a World War III, etc. Then, not surprisingly to me, in this 1-min., 48-sec. clip, Larry Johnson said:
(The entire discussion is at YouTube, and it is entitled EX-CIA: Putin Mocks Israel As Russia Decimates Ukraine. I tell you, the reader, that the particular religious influence that I will be talking about in this four-part series is as real as the eschatological religious aspects that Larry Johnson outlined during his discussion with Stephen Gardner. In fact, the alleged death of “Jesus Christ” on the cross is a deep part of Christian eschatology.
Personally, I find it both fascinating and immensely disturbing that the Church of Rome charged all Jews, for perpetuity, with the worse, and seemingly most impossible crime to commit: Deicide, the murder of God or the murder of a god. Add to that the perplexing contradiction inherent in the fact that, in murdering Jesus, “the Jews” had accomplished precisely what Catholic doctrine taught: that the sins of human beings had been vicariously atoned for through the death of the god, Jesus Christ.
One would think that the Roman Pontiffs would have required every Catholic home to contain a Menorah (or something) in honor of the Jews, rather than condemn them, for perpetuity, for something that they helped to achieve by, supposedly, murdering “Jesus Christ.” But the Pontiffs, as you will discover in this article, did not see it that way, and, instead, issued Papal Bull after Papal Bull condemning Jews and relegating them to second class, or no class status in what was once a Catholic Europe, dominated by the power of the Papacy.
(The current, vastly over-reactive and indiscriminate collective punishment meted out to the Palestinian people by the State of Israel, as a reaction to Hamas’s October 7th, 2023 attack, is directly the result of a centuries-long “religious” (“And The Jews killed Christ!!!”) persecution, by the Church of Rome, that was made even worse when an insane, but very calculating megalomaniac named Adolph Hitler decided to apply his “Final Solution”: the genocide of the Jews, via the gassing, in gas chambers, of 1.1 million Jews, using the chemical, Zyklon B; via mass executions by machine-gun fire in their backs, as they then fell forward into large, ready-made collective graves; and via their grizzly burning in ovens.
(And now, today, what are we witnessing? We are witnessing a reaction, by the State of Israel, that almost exactly mirrors that which had happened to the Jews by the Nazis: indiscriminate killing of Palestinians, rather than a military focus on Hamas. I don’t CARE how what I’m writing sounds like. One of the problems of our world is the easy willingness to not take responsibility for our own actions and beliefs. It is the Catholic/Christian doctrine of atonement which created an actual mantra that I and every single student had to recite, every single morning, for eight years, at Corpus Christi Grammar School, located at 49th & South Park, now called King Drive, led by the nuns, before class officially started:
(Yes. That’s no exaggeration, and you will read more about that in this article. I attended Catholic elementary school in the 1950s. We ain’t talking about the MIDDLE AGES. So, the hatred of Jews, by the Church of Rome, was alive and well in the 1950s, and it was taught to Catholic youth in Catholic schools.
(Recently, just before I loaded this article to Substack, I sent portions of it to a Jewish friend. When she read the section where I explained how we had to recite, “And the Jews killed Christ” every day in Catholic elementary school, before the nun taught us our school lessons, she said to me,
“That may help explain why, when I was 10, a girl I didn't recognize yelled ‘Christ- killer’ at me. I had no idea at that point what she was talking about.”
(My wife is Caucasian. I am African-American. When my wife’s mother found out that she was marrying a Black man, she was relieved. Why? Because she had always worried that Karen might marry a Jew. So, if you think, for a nano-second, that my theme is “exaggerated,” you simply are unaware of the centuries-long impact of the doctrine of atonement that led to a hatred for the Jews, ALL of whom, the Catholics had us believing, were eternally responsible for killing the alleged “Son of God,” Jesus Christ.
(I will show, in this article and, hopefully, a second article (Part 2), that the individual known as “Jesus Christ,” survived the crucifixion physically, traveled to Kashmir, India, married a woman named Marjan, had children by her, lived a normal life, died at the ripe old age of 120 years, and is buried in the Kan Yar section of the capital city of Srinagar, Kashmir, India. Over the spot where he is buried, a shrine called the Rozabal was built. That shrine is there to this day, and you will see a picture of it in this article.
(Yeah, that’s right: The Jews, at least for 795 years, had suffered non-stop intense persecution for an event that never happened: the alleged murder of “The Son of God.” It never happened. It’s certainly the most historical irony of ironies that a crime that never happened was blamed on not only the Jews of the time of “Jesus Christ,” but blamed on all Jews, for perpetuity, by the Church of Rome. I’m religious. I believe very much in God. But, I am the first to acknowledge the fact that some of the religious mythologies of Christianity, Islam (my religion), Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism), Judaism, etc., are dangerous.
(And, in a modern world, such mythologies must NOT be allowed to interfere with the daily lives of human beings. The Founding Fathers of the United States knew this very well, and that’s the reason they established that there would be no religious involvement whatsoever in the affairs of government. And to those readers who think that my words sound harsh, read footnote No. 30, which includes a quote from one of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, a Deist, about his view of Christian doctrine.
(I tried, very hard, to not write this article. But, with the knife currently being held to all of our necks, because of the prospect of the war in Gaza leading to World War III, I decided that, if nothing else, I would at least be able to tell myself that I’ve done my duty; “washed my hands,” so to speak, so that I can go back, after this, to doing one of favorite things: watching 1940s and 1950s film noir movies—my way of escaping the madness in this world. (I recommend Full Moon Matinee. GREAT SOURCE!!)
(Despite what happened historically to the Jews, because of their centuries-long brutal oppression by the Church of Rome, and their immense suffering during The Holocaust, there is no excuse whatsoever for the indiscriminate collective punishment meted out to the Palestinians by the State of Israel. I call on the State of Israel to face reality and solve the problems you are now facing more rationally. It’s not for me to propose “The Two State Solution” or a “One State Solution” or anything else. But, by continuing down your current path, you are cutting your own throat. You are definitely becoming your own worst enemy.
(I call on the current GLOBALIST POPE to take his eyes off of THE GLOBE, and focus on the war in Israel, a war that your religious doctrine and many of its previous Popes, through their many anti-Jewish Papal Bulls (which I list in this article) are directly responsible for. Absolve yourself of your sins by calling on the State of Israel to cease its practice of collective punishment. I also call on you to encourage the State of Israel (and the state of Israel) to follow a more rational course. Dominus Vobiscum.)
Before presenting the table of contents of this long Substack article, I have very important statements to make. There are a few very important things that the reader must know before reading this article:
This article includes personal information about my life experiences, as I’ve included in other Substack articles I’ve written. I do this because I believe the reader should know something about an author’s background. I have made that personal information as engaging, and sometimes amusing, as I could, hopefully to keep your attention.
Also, there are factors in my life that caused me to not “walk between the lines because the lines are our friends.” No. Often, the lines are there to keep you locked within paradigms created by others who may, and usually do, have selfish and sometimes hidden agendas. The lines can keep you blind and unquestioning. I am qualified to talk about this subject not because I stayed between the lines, or relied solely on “credentialed authorities,” but because I did the opposite. Welcome to independence. The lines ain’t your friends.I have lived in, or near a vibrant, fast-moving, international city, Chicago, all of my life. That fact alone has exposed me to a wealth of people, belief systems, and ideas from all over, and under, the world: From the rarefied halls of academia, “down” [sometimes UP] to the funky-McNasty streets, where people on the blade1 exhibit such off-the-chart and out of the box forms of line-less knowledge, wisdom, and logic that you’ll find yourself embarrassed, fascinated, and humbled—but deeply appreciative.
I am an “equal opportunity” critic. Regular readers will attest to the fact that this current article has increased, by the number 1, the number of religious or spiritual beliefs that I have criticized, for a sum total, as of this article, of four:
Catholicism, on doctrinal issues relating to how the doctrine of atonement created hatred and persecution of Jews for, technically, 795 years: from 1205 A.D., with an anti-Jewish Papal Bull, issued by Pope Innocent III entitled, Etsi non displiceat, to, technically, the year 2000 A.D. with Pope John Paul II’s extremely belated apology “for centuries of anti-Jewish activities by the Roman Catholic Church.” See April 25th, 2000 article in the Washington Post
Falun Dafa, aka, Falun Gong (See my Substack article), for its doctrine, taught by its founder, Li Hongzhi, that mixed-race people have no Heaven to go to, but that “pure race” people do; that different “divine beings” created the different races; that “It’s prohibited for the earth’s races to mix.” (And, yeah, that’s a direct quote from Falun Dafa’s founder and leader, Li Hongzhi, and a spiritual and cosmological belief of Falun Dafa, aka Falun Gong)
Hinduism, for its creation of the Indian caste system, which has kept the Dalit people, called “Untouchables,” at the bottom of Indian society for three thousand (3,000) years, to this very day.
Islam, my religion, whose followers, despite the message of Islam being for each individual to study and understand, created a host of ulama ( priests)—mullahs, maulvis, muftis, maulanas, sheikhs—with “fatwa2” authority that often leads to dangerous decisions by fanatics.
One aspect of this article that helps support the theme reflected in its title is a focus on the documented history of the persecution of the Jews, in Europe, by the Church of Rome (the Catholic religion, also called the Catholic Church, also called Catholicism), for 795 years.
I am not “pro-Israel.” I am not “pro-Palestine.”
I am not “anti-Israel.” I am not “anti-Palestine.”
I am pro-truth; pro-freedom; pro-anti-oppression
The article ignores the controversy regarding the identity of the Jews:
The Khazar issue
The race issue about Black folks being the “original” Jews.
This article ignores religious claims such as:
“God is punishing the Jews.”
“God is blessing the Jews.”
“The Jews are the Chosen People of God.”
I do not accept the book known as the Bible as the unadulterated, free-of-error, free-of-interpolations “Word of God.” As such, when I have come across information, from non-Biblical sources, that contradict what the Bible says about a certain topic and proves itself to be true or much nearer to truth than the Biblical information about that topic, I accept the non-Biblical information as authentic and the Biblical information as not authentic.
Where I quote Biblical verses, it is for one or the other of these two reasons:
Information in those verses correspond with information that exists in non-Biblical sources, such as maps, books of history, etc.
Simply to quote what the Bible says, not to indicate alleged inherent truths within the verses, nor to indicate that I believe what the verses say.
Nothing in this article should be skipped. Of course, you’re free to do whatever you wish. Although I strongly advise that you not skip the stuff about my personal life, with respect of how my environment helped, as I see it, qualify me to speak on this subject, you can, of course, read the article as you wish to.
I feel that this article is well researched, and you will be exposed to information that I am 100% certain that most people have never known about.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Front Matter
Quote from ancient Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus
Quote from the Bible
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: “And the Jews killed Christ.”
Chapter 2: Did 795 years of persecution really affect the Jews?
Chapter 3: Papal decrees concerning the Jews
Chapter 4: From Pilate to Golgatha
Chapter 5: Jews in Kashmir from 2000 BCE to today
“I was sent by Titus Caesar with Ceralius and a thousand riders to a certain town by the name of Thecoa to find out whether a camp could be set up at this place. On my return I saw many prisoners who had been crucified, and recognized three of them as my former companions. I was inwardly very sad about this and went with tears in my eyes to Titus and told him about them. He at once gave the order that they should be taken down and given the best treatment so they could get better. However two of them died while being attended to by the doctor; THE THIRD RECOVERED.”3
“And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, an honourable counseller, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus. AND PILATE MARVELED THAT HE WERE ALREADY DEAD.”4
Upon reflection, I can easily state that the inspiration for writing this article is rooted in an experience that I had in the year 1959, in the third grade at Corpus Christi Grammar School in Chicago. Sister Mary Bernice was teaching catechism in religion class. That day, she’d taught that, “Any person that does not accept The Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior will burn in hell forever.”
As I shared in another Substack article entitled, An Autobiography of Independent Thinking (an unhealthy habit, if you want to keep friends):
“I was very disturbed about that. So, I raised my hand to ask a question: ‘Forgive me Sister, but…’ Back then, in Catholic school, you always began any question with, ‘Forgive me Sister,’ just in case you asked something that Sister Mary might tell you was ‘blasphemous.’ So, you sought forgiveness first, and then you asked your question.
“‘Forgive me, Sister, but what about the people who live on islands, who’ve never heard of Jesus Christ?’ With no hesitation, she replied, ‘They will burn FOREVER!’ Instantly, I burst out crying. Did she walk over to me, have me stand up, and give me a big hug to ease my mental anguish? Absolutely not. This was pre-Vatican II Catholicism, the real deal. Instead, she simply turned her back, and continued writing on the blackboard.”
I did not think of the word injustice then. But, in time, despite what would become twelve years of Catholic religious indoctrination, from first grade in elementary school, through high school to graduation, the idea that “God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” became a horrid idea to me.
What kind of just God would order his only son to be spat upon, cursed at, tortured, marched through the streets dragging a heavy crucifix, and then slaughtered so that I, just by believing in such a thing, would be saved from the fires of hell and have “everlasting life,” in Heaven, with God? Why would I want to be in Heaven with such a God, who punished someone else on account of my sins?
This became wholly unacceptable to me, because the doctrine was rooted, fundamentally, in injustice. And that injustice, the doctrine of the blood sacrifice of “Jesus Christ,” the supposed “son of God,” for the sins of the world, quite literally was responsible for massive injustices committed throughout the centuries. I’ll get into that in this article.
My experience in writing this article has a number of sources. I just mentioned the first one, Sister Mary Bernice’s teaching that even those that had never heard of Jesus Christ would burn in hell for not accepting him. Unbeknownst to Sister Mary Bernice, and unbeknownst to myself, that teaching had planted, within my heart and soul, an initial rejection of that doctrine, based on its injustice.
Another source was The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), where a group of men began to change a religion, my religion at that time, the doctrines of which, I had been taught, could never change, since everything coming from The Vatican was either by way of Divine Revelation or Divine Inspiration. Yet, the men at Vatican II were changing doctrine. This angered me profoundly, and launched a three year “career,” at Hales Franciscan High School, involving my active attempt to disprove the doctrines of Christianity, especially in Religion Class, which was taught by Fr. Angus Vos.
Next, in 1969, came my adoption of atheism, followed, seven years later in 1976, by my adoption of Islam as taught by The Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, now called The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. It is within The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community that I first heard the theory of a post-crucifixion life of the figure known to the world as Jesus Christ. The theory is not just a theory to the Ahmadiyya community. It is, in fact, a cardinal belief of “Ahmadiyyat,” as The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community also refers to itself.
The veneer of the supposedly God-sanctioned authority of the Papacy and The Church of Rome (another name of the Roman Catholic Church and religion) over the entire world, as well as the doctrine that the Church of Rome’s teachings were “immutable,” exposed, for me, that the Church of Rome, just like any other institution, could not be trusted to have authority on this earth. Some of the teachings that were being made at Vatican II were based on expediency, in an attempt to make Catholicism more palatable to a rapidly morally declining world.
I once wrote a novel called, The Scheme, which a New York City literary agency agreed to represent before publishers, and gave me a date when a formal contract would be signed. Then, mysteriously [or maybe not so mysteriously] one week later the owner of that agency called me and said, “We’ve changed our minds. Sorry,” and hung up. I have no idea, to this day, why they rejected my book.5
Anyway, there is a scene in the book where Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are standing at Golgatha, watching their Master, Jesus, die on the cross. But both Joseph and Nicodemus notice something: When the Centurion, Longinus, pricked Jesus’s body, as is recorded in the Bible, with his sword, to see if Jesus was dead, blood and water, as some translations say, “gushed forward.” Shocked, Nicodemus whispered energetically to Joseph, and an intense, hushed conversation began:
NICODEMUS: “He’s alive!! We can save him!! You must use your distinguished status to prevail upon Pilate to allow us to take him down, so that we may administer to his wounds and save him!!”
JOSEPH: “I will not!!”
NICODEMUS: “But you MUST!! He is our MASTER!!
JOSEPH: “Master or not, he very well knew our…”
NICODEMUS: “Yes, but you cannot allow him to die because of that!!”
JOSEPH: “Do you now believe that anyone, including our Master, can break the rules of our Order!! Must I REALLY recite to you the Seventh Rule of our order!! You know it well!! But he, our Master, is hanging from this crucifix because he ignored that rule.
NICODEMUS: “But…”
Frustrated with Nicodemus, Joseph closes his eyes and recites the Seventh Rule of the Order of the Essene Brotherhood.
JOSEPH: ‘The world of men cannot be changed, by the meek, through the Spirit of the Sacred Law. Men follow neither the Spirit, nor the Letter, of the Sacred Law. Men follow, rather, the spirit of THE AGE, and the letter of the law of EXPEDIENCE.”
But what did he do, Nicodemus??!! Yeshua LEFT our order, becoming the naïve idealist that the Seventh Rule warns us not to become!!”
Eventually, as my novel said, Nicodemus convinces Joseph to beg to Pilate to allow Jesus to be taken down from the cross. Anyway, the role of expedience in the decision, by a group of men at Vatican II, to change my religion, infuriated me; depressed me; and then turned me against Catholicism and its doctrine of atonement.
By my senior year at Hales, I was damn-near a Biblical scholar, thoroughly frustrating Fr. Angus, in Religion Class, by revealing massive contradictions in the Bible, as well as massive absurdities, such as a man being older than his father [the story of Ahaziah and Jehoram]. After graduating from Hales in 1968, it would be one year later, in 1969, that I would adopt atheism.
Another source—a more fundamental source—for my experience in writing this article comes from something I had no power over: Where I was born and raised, Chicago. My big brother had been fond of saying, “You can live in Chicago all of your life, never leave, and meet everybody in the world.” Living in Chicago meant automatic exposure to everything from the underworld of La Cosa Nostra (which I was literally exposed to by a Cuban man who I’d “adopted” as my “Padrino”) to the rarefied halls of academia at the University of Chicago, to Hollywood stars, a number of whom I personally met, as I mentioned in other Substack articles, and to all kinds of belief systems.
When I was a kid, I used to wish that I had been born and raised on a farm, with Farmer Brown and his wife. Farmer Brown was the first tiny book, probably no more than 25 pages, that I’d read at Corpus Christi. Farmer Brown and his wife always smiled. Farmer Brown smiled when repairing a fence; milking cows; fixing the tractor. Mrs. Farmer Brown smiled while cooking; while sweeping; while ironing; while gathering eggs. Their two children smiled. The chickens smiled. The rooster smiled. The pigs smiled. The cows smiled. The dog smiled. The cat smiled. And somehow, even the trees smiled (and had eyes).
But then I got grown. My parents, as did most, if not all parents back in the day, protected their children against the rough aspects of life in a huge urban area and major international city like Chicago. I was very surprised when my wife once told me that her mom had said to her the same thing my dad had said to me when I got grown: “When you were a kid, my job was to work. Your job was to play.”
When it was time to fend for myself, I got smacked right in my jibs [my face] with “real life,” and in a number of ways. Not everybody in Chicago smiled, at least not like Farmer Brown, although, at that time, pre-1960s, Chicago was a safe place to live. The struggle to survive was just that. In time, I got used to the struggle, and even, strangely, began to enjoy it, maybe one reason for that being my observation of my immensely curious and risk-taking big brother.
I never had the nerve to dabble as he did. But, in time, I began to explore and to challenge myself. When my mom discovered that, in 1969, I and some…ahem…friends had engaged officers of the CPD (Chicago Police Department) in a fire fight (gun battle)6, she angrily blamed my big brother. 😊
“I know that YOU had something to do with this!” she angrily proclaimed, and continued balling him out, unable to conceive that I, who had always been very inward, would have engaged in something so insanely dangerous. As she continued balling him out, he looked at me, jaws tight. I smiled, but only inside.
Even though we both were grown men, my mom was not someone to piss off. When one of her ex-husbands, from Alaska, visited Chicago to try to reunite with her, she ended up pulling a pistol on him and shoving it in his stomach. I didn’t like the guy, and he knew it. But, strangely, he came to my crib, bitching to me about how “Your mother pulled a GUN on me!!!” I had no idea what he’d expected me to say. I just laughed and responded, “So, she didn’t shoot you??!! AMAZING!!! Maybe you do have a chance to get back with her.” For some strange reason, he didn’t appreciate my form of humor, though I was barely joking.
Then there was the time my mom called me. “I had to knock your DAUGHTER down the stairs today!! She had the nerve to get up in MY face!!” I knew that flight of stairs—long roll, neck-breakingly dangerous. She was talking about my grown daughter, who’d won a basketball scholarship, and was as strong as an ox, and fearless.
I guess I’d been remis, in my duty as her dad, in forgetting to tell her to never ever EVER do, or say, anything to piss off Mamma Cheese. Strange, though, the relationship, sometimes, between women. Women hate women. But it wasn’t long afterwards that they were on their way to Evergreen Plaza Shopping Center to browse and shop again.
At my mom’s funeral, my daughter, all teary eyed, said, “Grandma was my girl!!” I think she was afraid that if she hadn’t said that, my mom would have sat up in her casket and knocked the hell out of her. And no one would have left the funeral parlor, for fear of getting there ass kicked by my dead mom. Nice smile in the picture, isn’t it? Well, my mom would bend over backwards for people, like an old man who lived alone, not related to her, that she would take her time to visit and take care of.
She was multi-dimensional (Just be careful not to join her in the wrong dimension). As I revealed in my free book, Uncle Tom’s Uncle, Second Edition, she actually prepared me for a skill that would not come into existence until a decade after I’d graduated from Hales.
While in my Junior year in high school, I would visit her every weekend and sit with her while she prepared me. Ten years later, when that skill was first released to the public, I quickly mastered it, and it kept me employed throughout my work career until I retired. Amazing woman!! A testament to pre-1960s Black parents: You brought no excuses to them.
Produce or get your ass kicked. Had you said, “It’s the WHITE MAN’S fault,” you would have been slapped back to your room, where you’d pick up your book and continue studying; or get back on that piano to practice again. Black parents back then had mystical powers, they had us kids believing, which were reflected in statements like,
“I will knock your ass into NEXT WEEK!!!”
“WHAT???!!! I heard what you were thinking, boy!!!”
“Girl, I will slap you back to GOD!!!”
I didn’t hear any of that from my parents. But I certainly did hear it from other Black parents. And it was one reason that I stayed a “good boy.” I simply could not conceive of what it meant to be knocked into next week. And I was not going to do anything to piss off my UNDEFEATED BOXER DAD. I would stay in school and try to make a success out of my life.
So, as my mom continued balling Marcus out, he sat there and took it, while she blamed him for “corrupting my little baby!!!!!” It’s nice, ain’t it, to be the baby?
I began to engage in safer forms of exploration. And there was much to explore in such a large city. The ‘60s and ‘70s, in general, in Chicago, offered something like a wild amusement park, so to speak, featuring blues bars, your choice of museums of all kinds, the Hippies in Uptown (see my article entitled, Reparations — 1960s style — and the Limits of Blackness: https://ronchism.substack.com/p/reparations-1960s-style-and-the-limits ), Piper’s Alley, where live bands played, on the north side.
There was the Black Panther Party, headquartered on the West side, the Nation of Islam, headquartered in Hyde Park, on the south side, the Divine Institute of Metaphysical Knowledge. “The Institute” had a whopping staff of ONE. It was surprising that people would gather at The Institute, a storefront, on Friday nights, aka “Club Night,” aka “Nigguh Night,” to listen, for two hours, to The Institute’s President deliver a long lecture on “divine metaphysics.”
He lectured in such cryptic metaphors that no one knew what the hell he was talking about. But when he finished lecturing, and as the large audience was leaving The Institute, you’d hear people saying, “Man, I don’t know what the hell he was talking about. But it was DEEP!!” By the way: He was not averse to cash donations to “The Institute.” It’s always been said that what makes a con game work is the mark’s belief that he’s going to be getting something for nothing. But, I guess that, if the something you’re getting is nothing, and you’re happy and willing to pay for it, then it’s a win-win situation. Isn’t it?
There was the Topographical Research Center (“The Top”, as we called it), the South Side Community Art Center, The Spartacus League, a Marxist revolutionary movement formed in Germany, during World War I, in August of 1914. There was the weekly “On the Beach” musical performances by Phil Cohran and his band and dancers, at a pavilion located right in the park adjacent to Lake Michigan, as well as his Afro-Arts Theatre on 39th Street. He was a genius musician who expertly played many instruments, and became the actual soul of the Black consciousness movement in Chicago, as well as the inspiration for the popular group, Earth, Wind and Fire.
Phil Cohran was sort of the god of Black consciousness in Chicago in the late 1960s and part of the 1970s. But, when it came to a choice between Black consciousness or greenbacks, Earth, Wind and Fire, one of the most talented musical groups of all times, kept the clothes but went to the BANK. C’mon, baby, LET’S PARTY!!!!!! Black consciousness or not, Earth, Wind, and Fire MORE than deserved every penny they earned. Great group!!!
Then there was a smorgasbord of off-the-beaten-path religious and spiritual movements: Nichiren Shoshu Shoka Gokai, The International Society of Krishna Consciousness, also called Hare Krishna, JPUSA (Jesus People USA), the Korean-based Unification Church of the United States, and others.
Again, my point is that, the very atmosphere of Chicago, a super vibrant international city, lent itself out as a magnet for the attraction of, and exposure to, anything imaginable. You can be in Chicago, all of your life, never leave, and meet everybody in the world. And it was within that atmosphere that I would bump into The Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam and its theories concerning a post-crucifixion life of “Jesus Christ.” So, in addition to my early influence, by the Church of Rome, at Corpus Christi, with respect to the injustice I sensed in the doctrine of atonement, Chicago itself was another very important influence that put me on the path of a possible different reality regarding the life of “Jesus Christ.”
Another influence was the perception that I had adopted, through the Black consciousness movement, that our people, Black people, had been immensely brainwashed by a crippling version of Christianity that featured “Jesus Christ” as a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, pale-skinned white man—the Son of God.
The first group, of course, in African-American history, whose very purpose was to attempt to dislodge Black folks, psychologically, spiritually and physically, from “dependence on the White man” was the Nation of Islam, founded by Elijah Muhammad. Though the Black consciousness movement never admitted it, it is pure fact that it was the NOI that was the first group that drew what they taught was a connection between the chattel slavery of our people, Jim Crow, segregation, discrimination, racism, and other forms of mal-treatment, on the one hand, and “the White man’s false religion and his blue-eyed god” on the other hand.
Belief in such a god, Elijah, and then, later, the Black consciousness movement also taught, created a form of “mental slavery” and low self-esteem of Black folks. In short, God was White, and you are just a nigger. Christianity, to Elijah Muhammad and, later, to the Black consciousness movement, was responsible for the depressed condition of Black folks in the U.S. In the eyes of the Nation of Islam, as well as the Black consciousness movement, Black people were suffering because they were “waiting for Jesus to come back to save them,” making them too psychologically crippled to prosper independently in the U.S.
What added fuel to the fire was the fact that Popes of the Church of Rome had written at least two Papal Bulls authorizing the “perpetual slavery” of Saracens (Muslims) and “pagans” (non-Christians, but the term more generally applied to Black Africans). Dum Diversas was one of those Papal Bulls, and was issued by Pope Nicholas V. Romanus Pontifex was another Papal Bull issued by Pope Nicholas. That Papal Bull “legally” granted Portugal the right to enslave any and all people they encountered south of Cape Bojador, on the coast of Western Sahara.
But, as I have shown repeatedly in other Substack articles, it was not really true that belief in “the White man’s blue-eyed god” prevented Black folks from succeeding. Adherence to the Christian Protestant work ethic guided Black folks to become, by the 1950s, some of the most productive people in the U.S., with institutions, all over America, including hospitals, doctors offices, insurance companies, banks, etc., being formed by Black Christians, something I saw with my own eyes, in Chicago, where I grew up, where we had everything we needed, including two hospitals, without ever having to leave our neighborhoods. I’ve referred my readers to two oral testimonies in other Substack articles, and I deem it important to include them here:
Nevertheless, as a young man, I began to be influenced by the perception put forward by the NOI and, as well, by the Black consciousness movement, a perception that claimed that the belief in “the White man’s god” was a belief that was at the very heart of the problems of Black people, a people who were “waiting for Jesus” to come back. There were such people, and I met them, unfortunately. Nevertheless, most Black Christians were not waiting around for Jesus to return to take them to “Heaven.” And that’s testified to by the two above videos, and by what I witnessed with my own eyes with respect to the absolutely tremendous power and self-sufficiency exhibited by Black folks in the creation of independent institutions of all types.
In high school, strictly through reading the Bible, having known nothing about any other religion, I discovered that, if the story recounting what was called the Passion of Jesus Christ was true, then he had definitely survived the crucifixion physically, and was not a spirit or spirit-God. “Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”7 But I had no idea what had happened to him after his having survived the crucifixion.
But when I discovered the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, in Chicago, in 1976, the entire post-crucifixion, detailed story, from Golgotha to Rozabal (see picture, below, of the Rozabal Shrine), was laid at my feet, shorn of the mind-bending claim that “Jesus Christ,” in his physical body, had “risen” up to Heaven, where he then sat down next to God “the Father,” waiting for God’s signal to send him back to earth to establish either the Kingdom of God for the Christians, or the Dar-ul-Islam for the Muslims, as orthodox Sunni Islam also awaits the return of “Jesus Christ,” whom Qur’an calls “Isa.” Which religion would he plant, on this earth, as the religion of humanity? How would he decide? Flip a coin?
Eventually, I enjoyed the honor of meeting, through both email and snail mail, the former Director of Archives, Archaeology, Research and Museums for the State of Kashmir, Professor Fida Hassnain (1924 – 2016), once listed in Who’s Who in Archaeology, who had written the books:
Dr. Hassnain passed away in 2016.
Inspired, in part, by Dr. Hassnain, I wrote a massive website entitled, The Tomb of Jesus Christ Website, the first and only of its type, which compiled much of the research on the historical, post-crucifixion life of “Jesus Christ” so that that research could be accessed at one central location. I loaded the website to The Internet on Friday, December 10th, 1999, at 3:30 p.m., around the time that “Jesus Christ” was alleged to have died, but who, in fact, according to the theory, had survived the crucifixion, something that often happened in ancient times, as the quote from the ancient historian, Flavius Josephus, which I reproduced above in the Front Matter, reveals.
The site became immensely popular, globally, and readers asked me to create a book version of the site, or write something as close as possible in paperback form, and I did. I wrote the book, Saving the Savior: Did Christ Survive the Crucifixion?, under my Muslim name. That book is still selling at Amazon.com, though I sold my then book company, Jammu Press, to Tree of Life Publications. Dr. Hassnain, may he rest in peace, wrote the Forward to my book.
Eventually, I went on to other things and gave The Tomb of Jesus Christ Website to a Canadian Ahmadi Muslim friend named Awais Khan. Mysteriously, for reasons that none of us who’ve tried to contact him know, he eventually removed the “TOJ” site, as it had come to be known, from The Internet and has told no one why. Obvious forms of speculation, claiming that he got “paid off,” are forms of speculation that I reject, although I have no idea why he took it down. (Awais, What’s up?)
Another Ahmadi Muslim, Arif Khan, had attempted to reproduce the site, I think from a mirror site that he, or someone, had created and this is what remains of that. I do not know how much of the original content of the TOJ site remains at Arif Khan’s site, nor am I aware as to whether or not the site has been updated.
This subject is so massive that, even though I’d become a sort of “expert amateur” in it, it’s difficult, as well as impractical, to tell you, in this Introduction, all the massive number of pieces of circumstantial evidence that draw one to no other conclusion other than that the individual known as “Jesus Christ” did, indeed, survive the crucifixion, was healed of his wounds, traveled to Kashmir, married a woman named Marjan, had children by her, lived a normal life and died at the ripe old age of 120.
When I first learned about this, my mind, heart, and soul were finally released from the unbending injustice first recited to me when Sister Mary Bernice informed me of the eternal fate of even those that had never heard of “Jesus Christ” (Whose birth name would more probably have been Yeshua or Yehoshua): “They will burn FOREVER!!!” The survival of “Jesus Christ” from death by crucifixion stood, and stands, for me as confirmation that no Gracious God would have his supposed “son,” or anyone else, die for the crimes of others. That is not justice.
One legitimate question that is always asked by skeptics is, “How could anyone have travelled that far, all the way to India, way back in ancient times?” The following 48-second cut from the BBC Four documentary, Did Jesus Die, explains how easy it was to travel “that far” in ancient times:
Yes, after two thousand years of the existence of the doctrine of atonement through the vicarious blood sacrifice of the “Son of God,” it might be hard even for an atheist to believe the story of a post-crucifixion life of Jesus. But, if any doctrine can’t be questioned, especially if there appears to be substantial bits of information refuting the alleged truth of that doctrine, then we’re all in trouble.
It’s probably important to remember that, in a court of law, an accumulation of many different pieces of circumstantial evidence can be more powerful than a smoking gun:
A body is found, in the streets, riddled with bullets. No “smoking gun” evidence can be found.
They search the body and find that his name was John Richards.
A neighbor said she saw a man, dressed in a greyish-blue pinstripe suit, wearing sunglasses, running away from the scene.
Police find out that the deceased lived with his brother, Joe
They visit his brother, but his brother’s not at home.
They talk to his neighbors, who say that he’d mentioned he was planning a vacation to “somewhere in Europe.”
Police, during investigation, find out that he hung out at Byron’s Bar. They visit there.
In talking to the bartender, it’s discovered that John and Joe had engaged in a brutal fist fight with each other, until the bouncers at the bar succeeded in throwing them out, and separating them so that they would not be a nuisance to incoming customers
Someone in the bar heard the police questioning Byron, and offered, “Hey, John was here the other day. He got drunk and said he was gonna shoot his brother to death.”
The police go to John’s home and discover that, yes, he had been planning a trip. They see the name of a travel agency written on a notepad.
They go to the agency and discover that he purchased tickets to Spain.
They return to John’s home and search for a gun. There’s no gun there. But the name, Randy’s Gun Shop is also written on that note pad. They visit Randy’s Gun Shop, speak to the clerk, and discover that John had purchased a gun one day before his brother, Joe, was killed. The gun matches the bullets found on Joe’s dead body.
They further search the place and find a greyish-blue pinstripe suit and a pair of sunglasses, the items that that neighbor said she had seen that man that was running wearing.
When the authorities obtain extradition papers, it won’t be long before John ends up in the slammer or in the chair. What’s fascinating in the case of “Jesus Christ” is that there is no proof whatsoever that can be found that he “rose to heaven” and is “sitting” next to his Father, God. None. That cannot be proved. I believe that Heaven exists. But please don’t ask me to prove it. I can’t. Nor can anyone else. It’s a matter of faith. I defy anybody, including Pappa Bergoglio, aka Pope Francis, to supply proof that “Jesus Christ” is “up,” in heaven, sitting next to God the Father.
But, in the case of the theory that “Jesus Christ” survived the crucifixion, there is an abundance of circumstantial evidence, starting with the Bible itself:
In the Front Matter above, I reproduced a verse of the Bible that ended with,
“And Pilate marveled that he were already dead.”
For what reason would Pilate have expressed surprise that Jesus was “already” dead? The answer is obvious. And then there’s this post-crucifixion interaction that Jesus had with his disciples, according to the Bible:
“And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, ‘Peace be unto you.’ But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? And why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.’ And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, ‘Have ye here any meat?’ And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them.”8
Some of the items, either singly or as a whole, that represent strong circumstantial evidence regarding the survival of Jesus from death on the cross will be mentioned in this, Part 1, as well as Part 2 of this four-part series. At the end of all four parts, I will supply the reader with a lot of sources, for further study, that can be accessed, both in book form and in video documentary form, and that cover this subject very well. Because, reproducing, in this series, all of the massive bits of circumstantial evidence that exist and that point to a post-crucifixion, relatively normal life and normal death, in Kashmir, for “Jesus Christ,” is much too much, in terms of volume, for writing as an article at Substack.
It’s 1960. I’m dead asleep. I’ll be awakened by that cool, musical intro to The Howard Miller Radio Show. I’ll just pretend that I’m still asleep. That’s part of the routine, see. Dad always turns on the Howard Miller Show, his signal to me that it’s time to get up, wash up, get dressed, and walk to Corpus Christi Grammar School.
“RonAYYYYYY! Time to get up, boy.” My father was an undefeated boxer, an expert carpenter, a man’s man; an Alpha man. But, with me [not with my brother!], he’s soft. I’ll get to “sleep” for another….ohh….five minutes. My dad is also a veteran of the United States Navy. It can be fun having a dad who was in the Navy. Well….Except for three times:
KP, i.e., Kitchen Patrol. As I said, my dad is soft with me. But, his Navy inspired, “cleanliness” KP inspections, are RIDICULOUS. After breakfast, but especially after dinner, it’s KP time for my brother and I, meaning we have to wash dishes and generally clean up.. Often, my big brother finds one “legitimate” excuse or another to avoid KP. So I’ll get caught with KP duty.
I’ll finish washing the dishes, putting them up, washing the kitchen counters, the sink, sweeping (For what, I never knew!). I’ll then carefully look over everything I’ve done. I’ll go to the living room, and go, “Dad, I’m done!” I’ll feel immensely proud of myself. But not for long.
He’ll walk with me to the kitchen and start his inspection. Approvingly, as he walks around inspecting the ENTIRE KITCHEN, he’ll go, “Um hum…oooKAY…Good, good.” Then, here it comes. He’ll point to….WHAT??!!! There’s nothing there!! “What’s this, boy,” he’ll calmly ask. “Uhhh. It’s…It’s…the sink,” I’ll respond. “Boy, you don’t see that spot there?”
I’ll bend down, my nose damn-near touching the sink. And there it is: a virtually microscopic spot. How he’s able to SEE such a spot, while standing up, is a mystery!! As he starts marching back to the living room, he’ll go, “Gotta do better than that, boy.”Rising in the morning (Who wants to go to school?)
Going to bed at night (“Hit the sack, boy.”) Why can adults stay up late to watch TV?! 😡
I’ve gotten up, washed, dressed, eaten and it’s time to walk to Corpus Christi. I dare not arrive late. And not because my dad will scold me, and not because the nun will smack me on my hand with a ruler for infinity for arriving late. Arriving late to Corpus Christi means walking upstairs and reaching that second floor landing where, on the wall, is a life-sized crucifix with a life-sized, very real looking figure of Jesus nailed to the cross, his head at an angle, his face twisted in anguish, and his eyes focused on me.
The nuns said that that huge crucifix was donated by The Vatican itself, shipped to Corpus Christi from Rome, Italy. If I arrive to school late, when I reach that second floor landing, I’ll drop my head and run past the crucifix, and continue upstairs to walk to my classroom. Arriving late means I’ll be by myself when I reach that cross. It frightens me. When I arrive on time, then the stairs are filled with other kids running up, and I’m not afraid.
When I’m late and even just glance at Jesus’s eyes—eyes that focus on me—I think, “I didn’t do it!! I didn’t kill you!!” But that’s not true. I did do it! I did kill him! It was my fault. It was because of me that he was crucified; because of my sins. But I wish he wouldn’t look at me. It’s like he’s asking for help. But I wasn’t even there when they…I mean, I…killed him.
I’ve arrived in class on time, and I’m taking my seat. Sister Mary Bernice is scanning the classroom. She’s just asked, “Is everyone here?” It’s a routine “question” that, actually, she says to herself. “Fine. All rise.” Everyone’s standing now. “It is time for the Pledge of Allegiance,” she just routinely announced. In unison, we all, including Sister Mary Bernice, recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
“Okay, children, it’s now time for the recitation of The Lord’s Prayer.”
Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name; Thy Kingdom come; Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.
“We will now recite the Hail Mary. And remember: After we recite the Hail Mary, we will then end our morning prayers by reciting, for our Lord Jesus Christ, our very special and faithful Catholic declaration loudly.”
Hail Mary, full of Grace, The Lord is with thee! Blessed art though amongst women, and Blessed is the fruit of they womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
“Okay, children. Say it loud!!”
Benson is the owner of Benson’s Grocery Store, on the northwest corner of 51st & Indiana. It’s about half a block from our apartment at 5138 S. Indiana.
I’ve just arrived back home from school. It’s February, the coldest month of the year. Dad’s not working. He’s a construction carpenter. Construction workers are busy during Spring, Summer, and Fall. There is some work when Winter first starts, but eventually the work dries up until the Spring starts again. Until then, construction workers attempt to find odd jobs to help carry them through the Winter.
“Go up to Benson’s,” dad orders, “and get two half gallons of milk, two loaves of bread, and a pack of Chesterfields. And tell him to put it on the card.” Chesterfield’s is a brand of cigarettes. “The card” is an index card upon which Benson will write the total cost of the items dad wants. I’ll obtain the items, take them to his checkout counter. Benson will add up the cost of the items, write the total on the card, and bag them for me to take home. Dad will pay for the items later, whenever the weather breaks again or if he finds someone who needs some “inside work” done, like repairing someone’s broken piece of furniture, or plastering and painting.
I really don’t know what it means to be a Jew. I just know that dad says that Benson is a Jew, “and cool.” Sometimes, dad invites Benson for dinner, and Benson always accepts the invitation. He’s one of those people who always keeps a soft, fixed smile. We’re not the only one’s in the neighborhood who have a card at Benson’s.
Even though Christmas has come and gone, dad, to my great delight, always let’s the Christmas tree stay up until the end of February. Every Christmas season, about one week before Christmas Day, my brother and I walk with dad up to the Big Yard, where Mr. Isaac, the same man who’s there every single Christmas season, sells Christmas trees. Mr. Isaac has cards too, but dad only had one Christmas season when he asked Mr. Isaac to put it on the card.
Dad said that Mr. Isaac is a Jew. One time, Harold, one of dad’s carpenter buddies, was visiting dad. It was time to buy a Christmas tree, and Harold walked with us to the Big Yard to get a tree. Inside work had been good that Winter, and dad had the money to purchase a tree. I remember dad and Harold, for some reason, joking and laughing about “That old Jew just cracks me up, selling Christmas trees!” Dad laughed too, but said, “Well, ain’t nothing wrong with that. He gotta make a living just like everybody else.”
It’s 1977. I’m walking down Van Buren Street, nicknamed Jewelry Row, because of the Jewelry shops down that street. I see a Black man who’s about my age standing in front of a Jewelry store. He’s conservatively dressed, with a suit and tie and a medium sized mustache. It’s always good to see someone who looks like he’s about something. I strike up a conversation.
“You work here?” He replies, “Yep. I’m the Manager.” I go, “Really?! Wow, that’s great! You don’t see any Black folks as Managers of jewelry stores. How’d you get into it?” He answered, “My dad taught me everything about the Jewelry business.” At that point, he happened to turn his head to look inside the store. “Hey, here comes my dad now,” he said.
I turned my head to look. Well, well, well!! When his dad came outside, I instantly stuck my hand out for a handshake, and said, “I bet you don’t remember me!” He donned a little inquisitive smile, and said, “Uhh. No. Should I?” I replied, “Ever heard of a man named Nathaniel Chism?” He pulled his head back a little bit, stared for a few seconds, and said, “Ronnie?!” I go, “Yep!”
It was Benson. He had sold his grocery store, purchased the jewelry store, married a Black woman, and taught his Black son the Jewelry business. The Jews, the Catholics had taught me, had killed Jesus. But, Jews sure came in handy in the hood!!!
The above screenshot is of the first two paragraphs of a Washington Post article entitled, Blame Pilot, Not The Jews. To read the entire article, click that screenshot and the entire article will open up.
Well, did 795 years of persecution really affect the Jews? Of course it did. And when the Pope of the Church of Rome, i.e., the Catholic Church/Religion, Pope John Paul II, rose from his sick bed, flew to Israel, asked for forgiveness from the world’s Jews, and apologized “for centuries of anti Jewish activities,” that’s more than enough to prove that, of course Jews were affected, brutally, during those hundreds of years.
And I believe we’re seeing the result of those centuries of oppression right now in the war between Hamas and Israel. You’d be dead wrong to believe that this article is some defense of Israel’s decades long attempt to ignore the “Two State Solution,” which calls for the creation of a State for the Palestinian people, where Jews and Palestinians (hopefully!!) would live peacefully and independently “next door” to each other—maybe even cooperatively.
I would part with Mr. Reid’s “Blame Pilate, Not Jews” title for that article. Neither the Jews nor Pilate are to be blamed for killing someone, on the crucifix, who did not die as a result of crucifixion, but who, rather, survived that ordeal, and then went on to live a normal life and die a normal death at the ripe old age of 120 years in the beautiful valleys and mountains of Kashmir, India. Nobody killed Jesus.
But, not only should neither Pilate, nor “the Jews,” be blamed for having allegedly committed a murder that never took place. I will show what amounts to very clear circumstantial evidence that Pilate helped engineer Jesus’s survival from death on the cross. Some of this had to do with both Roman law and Jewish law at the time. We’ll talk about that later.
As an aside, one thing that always baffled me is why Christians, for over 700 years, held hatred for a people, the Jews, who had done what they, the Christians, claim was God’s desire from jump street: effect the death of Jesus for the sins of the world. One would think, logically speaking, that every Christian would have love in his or her heart for those people,”the Jews,” who were part of God’s Plan, as taught by Christianity, of the redemption of human beings through the atonement-death of “Jesus Christ.”
One would think that, in honor of the Jews’ alleged murder of “Jesus Christ,” every Christian household would have a Menorah, or something, hanging prominently on a wall of their crib. Why hate the Jews, when their alleged actions helped effect atonement for the sins of the world? But, for eight years of the younger days of my life, I had to recite, every single day at school, “And the Jews killed Christ!!!”
Another testament to the historical truth that Christian persecution of the Jews had a very real impact on the psyches of Jews is the apology to Jews offered by the Church of England for laws that led to the expulsion of Jews for hundred of years.
To read an article about the apology, entitled, After 800 years, Church of England apologizes to Jews for laws that led to expulsion, click the above screenshot.
And finally, after some 700 years of direct persecution, by the Christians, against Jews, came the supremely evil, so-called Final Solution of Hitler’s Third Reich.
And then the Jewish people, through leaders such as Herzl, adopted the motto,
I was once in the martial arts community in Chicago. Every year, martial artists around the world waited anxiously for the results of an annual, underground, illegal fight to the death event that would happen in a different, undisclosed location, in the world.
Each year, those willing to take a chance9, would join 29 others in that undisclosed location, and fight, in pairs, just as in a boxing match, until, over a period of days, only one individual remained alive and was declared the winner (Pretty obvious who the winner was, when everybody else is DEAD.] The first pair gets into the ring and fights until one is killed and the other remains alive. Then a new opponent fights the winner until one of them wins. And that’s how it goes on until 29 men are DEAD and one remains alive after the number of days it takes to declare one winner.
Well, in an absolutely astonishing, historical first, there was a guy who, three years in a row, won the fight to the death contest. That means that he killed, in the ring, in “fair” kumitay (sparring), over a period of three years, 87 men. The guy who accomplished that feat was Jewish, from Israel. Is that a testament to Jewish reaction to almost 795 years of persecution? Maybe not. But maybe so.
Today, Israel, a tiny country with an estimated population of 9.3 million people, about the same population as metropolitan Chicago, 9.5 million,
“is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons. Estimates of Israel's stockpile range between 80 and 400 nuclear warheads, and the country is believed to possess the ability to deliver them in several methods, including by aircraft, as submarine-launched cruise missiles, and via the Jericho series of intermediate to intercontinental range ballistic missiles.” (From Wikipedia)
And Israel carries a doomsday military policy called The Sampson Option, “a deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons as a ‘last resort’ against a country whose military has invaded and/or destroyed much of Israel.” I could never be convinced that the doctrine of the death, resurrection, and deification of a human being, “Jesus Christ,” and the blaming of that death on “the Jews”, didn’t factor as a driving force behind Israel’s eventual accumulation of disproportionate power. The Zionist movement was not jiving when it said, “Never again!”
The invention of a doctrine that says that the Jews killed GOD’S SON tightened the jaws of a significantly enough portion of those human beings, called Christians, and caused them to persecute a group of people for some 700 years. And now look!!
At this very moment, the entire world has STOPPED. Phone calls, diplomatic visits, emails are being made by leaders all over the planet in a deadly serious effort to prevent a tiny 9.3 million people from going STONE BERSERK and wiping out the entire Middle East. Or, since countries in the Middle East, like Turkey, now have tremendous power also, Israel could be destroyed. “Better yet,” the entire WORLD could be destroyed, which is apparently a wet dream of the American neocon ruling class. To borrow a term from my Jewish brothers and sisters, Oy vey!!
Were this not so serious, it would almost be funny, as if being a real life version of that classic, comical satire movie, The Mouse that Roared, except that this mouse, Israel, has way more than just one “Q bomb,” and also may have WHO KNOWS how many people willing to get in the ring, so to speak, and fight to the death. And all because of the alleged murder, by “the Jews,” of a human being named “Jesus Christ,” and the spin off reaction, by Christianity, carried throughout the centuries, of persecution of an entire people, the Jews.
Now, let’s take a look at Papal decrees concerning the Jews. To be fair to Christianity, from the time that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, in 380 AD, outright, Church sanctioned persecution of the Jews did not exist. In fact, Papal decrees called Sicut Judaeis (Latin: "As the Jews") were Papal Bulls stating that the Jews, as a people, must be protected.
The first such Papal Bull was created by Pope Calixtus II. Even though Jews were considered, by Catholics, to have been permanently condemned by God, they were considered important for their understanding of the Old Testament, and were also considered to be an important part of Christian civilization. Unfortunately, though, Calixtus’s Papal Bull was inspired by the fact that, during the First Crusade, 5,000 Jews were slaughtered in Europe.
Unfortunately again, there were further attacks on Jews, after which a series of Popes reaffirmed, through Papal Bulls, the Church’s stance on protection of Jews: Alexander III, Celestine III (1191–1198), Innocent III (1199), Honorius III (1216), Gregory IX (1235), Innocent IV (1246), Alexander IV (1255), Urban IV (1262), Gregory X (1272, 1274), Nicholas III, Martin IV (1281), Honorius IV (1285–1287), Nicholas IV (1288–1292), Clement VI (1348), Urban V (1365), Boniface IX (1389), Martin V (1422), and Nicholas V (1447).
Unfortunately for the Jews, the weight of the doctrine of the murder of “Jesus Christ” by the Jews was far too powerful than the Papal Bulls that were designed to respect and protect them. Also, as zionism-israel.com points out regarding Papal “protection” of the Jews:
“Where protection was offered, it was often done in a condescending manner, asserting the Christian duty to have mercy on the Jews even though they were collectively guilty of killing Jesus (or in modern times, "forgiving" the Jews for killing Jesus) or was simply rescinding previous decrees. Catholic persecution of Jews - and protection - began in the Middle Ages, but the persecution continued and was intensified well after the Middle Ages, notably in the Inquisition and in the formation and regulation of ghettos, which began in the 1500s, well after the end of the Middle Ages.”
I would say that the first official date for the beginning of the 795 year long persecution of the Jews was 1205 AD, with the Papal Bull issued by Pope Innocent [innocent???] III, entitled, Etsi non displiceat. Here is a table of Papal bulls and other documents relating to Jews in one way or another: Note that, starting at 1205 AD, under the “Subject” column, that official Papal declarations about Jews, despite intermittent attempts at fairness by some Popes, became harsher and harsher.
Personally, I was surprised to discover that it was the Papacy, not Hitler’s Third Reich, that first required the Jews to wear yellow identification badges so that they could be distinguished from Christians. In fact, Muslims in Catholic Medieval Europe were also required to wear forms of identification that would identify them as Muslims.
One reason for this was that the “Holy See” wanted to prevent nature itself from operating [Can’t be having those Jews and Muslims laying up with Christian women!!] As Rod Keithley said in his book, Racism: What It Is, What to Do About It, “It is almost an axiom in anthropology that when two cultures meet they do not always bleed, but they do always breed.” In an attempt to preempt any such breeding, the Forth Lateran Council, headed by Pope Innocent III, decreed (any emphasis is mine):
“In some provinces a difference in dress distinguishes the Jews or Saracens [Muslims] from the Christians, but in certain others such a confusion has grown up that they cannot be distinguished by any difference. Thus it happens at times that through error Christians have relations with the women of Jews or Saracens, and Jews and Saracens with Christian women. Therefore, that they may not, under pretext of error of this sort, excuse themselves in the future for the excesses of such prohibited intercourse, we decree that such Jews and Saracens of both sexes in every Christian province and at all times shall be marked off in the eyes of the public from other peoples through the character of their dress. Particularly, since it may be read in the writings of Moses [Numbers 15:37–41], that this very law has been enjoined upon them.”10
Reproducing the information about the theory of the survival of Jesus from the cross and his subsequent life and travels to Kashmir is very difficult to reproduce in a concise manner, in part due to the sheer amount of information available. This fact alone forces me to present this in as “brief” an outline form as I can, and then rely on the reader, if he or she is interested, to take things further by studying the references that I will supply at the end of this article. Of course, some readers might find my definition of “brief” a bit contrary to the dictionary definition.
My apologies for not being able to place the “whole shebang” here. If I tried that, I would be living in a box in Lower Wacker Drive, in Chicago, homeless because of having been kicked out by my wife, who would prefer that we spend our time watching 1940s and 1950s film noir movies. Oy vey! This is tough, but, don’t worry. We’ll get through this!!
Well, here goes.
I. THE ROLE OF PILATE
Who is responsible for THE CRUCIFIXION: Was it Pilate? Or “the Jews?” Neither. It was the priests amongst the Jews, NOT the Jews at large. Priests are always POISON.
According to the Bible,
“When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death: And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor.”11
According to the Bible, it was the religious authorities that were responsible for Jesus eventually being crucified, though he did not die. Let me be clear: It was not “the Jews.” It was religious authorities of Jesus’ time. Think about, just as a much later example, Pope Alexander VI, aka, Rodrigo Borgia, who had people burned at the stake, the insane, murderous, horny a**hole that he was!
The TV series entitled The Borgias was not too far off the mark in its depiction of Rodrigo Borgia, aka Pope Alexander VI, and his rather sick Borgia relatives. The Borgias TV series is a very, very powerful series revealing true events under the leadership of the Church of Rome by Rodrigo Borgia. WHEW!!! Very entertaining (I’m almost sorry to say). Season one is 9 episodes. Season two is 10 episodes. And Season three is 10 episodes.
Another example of the putrid class called “priests,” is the fatwa (“Islamic” religious decree) that was issued against Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which caused Rushdie’s wife to feel forced to leave him, since a woman living with a man who has been “declared,” by some Muslim cleric, a “disbeliever” will be charged with fornication, even though she’s MARRIED to him, thus earning her 100 lashes with a whip, although, these days, in some countries, no such energy would be expended. They’d just kill her.
Or like the Muslim Mullahs of Pakistan, who issue fatwas of kufr (decrees of disbelief) against other Muslims, such as Ahmadi Muslims. They are fatwas that open the door for other bigoted and insane people to murder. Or the Muslim priests that order that a homosexual should be thrown off a roof to his death, despite the fact that Prophet Muhammad allowed the homosexuals to perform the five daily prayers of Islam in congregation.
Yeah, those were the kind of Jews, the sick ones of the priesthood, not the Jews at large at that time. Nor were the Jews, throughout history, after Jesus, responsible for the death of Jesus, as “holy” Popes had claimed. I’ve never understood what’s holy about holding two fingers up in the air, wearing a funny hat, and talking softly. It’s ridiculous!! Sorry [No I ain’t].
Obviously, as I showed above, the common people in Europe—Jews, Christians, Saracens (Muslims)—were trying to have babies left and right, Jew with Jew, Jew with Christian, Jew with Muslim, Muslim with Muslim, Muslim with Christian, Muslim with Jew. And this inter-copulational activity did not occur “through error,” as claimed by Pope “Innocent” III. Has anyone ever been attracted to a woman “through error?” But it was that chief priest, the “Holy” Pope “Innocent”, who issued his “fatwas” against love; against nature; and, thus, against God Himself.
And the same was the case, as clearly shown above, with regard to Jesus. It was the chief priests, who instigated the people against Jesus because Jesus was brilliantly kicking their holy asses by introducing them to Buddhist teachings [a topic for a future article] that teach against revenge, the revenge they wanted against the Romans, in their hopes that the Messiah would come and fill their pockets with gold. Guess who’s influencing Netanyahu today, in Israel. The priests. Why do you think he’s using eschatological language?
When Jesus told them to “turn the other cheek,” they said, “You must be out of your damned mind!!” Yeah, the Jewish priests, not the general populace of Jews, longed for that kick-ass Messiah that would come and put them, the priests, on top. This same dream, as pointed out by Hazrat Ahmad [See the book, Jesus in India], has been held by the Mullahs of Islam—same crap, warmed all over.
There was never to be a priesthood in Islam. But Muslims said, “BuuuuuullSH*T!!” and created priests!! We might have more of them than anybody!! Mullahs, maulvis, sheikhs, maulanas, muftis, ayatollahs, and on and on and on. Priests have long been the most dangerous class of people ON EARTH.
A WORD FOR US COMMON PEOPLE: We have literacy now!! As such, we don’t need Rabbis, Priests, Gurus, Sheikhs, or Masters!! Seriously!! We needed those folks, at one time in history, because they were the literate people. We sat at their feet while they read us the Scriptures. TELL THEM TO GO GET A DAMNED JOB!!! We don’t need them anymore! We can read. They’re too dangerous.
The fanatic priestly class, in Israel, has strong and growing influence on the Knesset, an influence that threatens to destroy both Israel and the entire planet. Jesus probably had always wanted to go into The Temple and kick their asses, but held back. He finally found an excellent excuse, though, when the money changers were in The Temple, and Jesus decided to kick some priestly ass. Sorry [No I ain’t!] for this rant. I can’t stand the priests!. As you can see, if you’ve been keeping your eyes opened, they will be the destruction of our world.Why did Pilate get involved?
The Roman Empire had a policy of not interfering with the religious laws of the people they governed. Caesar didn’t give a damn about religion. He just wanted those taxes paid. Pilate was a politician [They never change!!], more concerned about keeping his job than religion.
So, Pilate, officially, was not going to interfere with the religious beliefs of the people, though he would try in a manner that he [wrongly] thought would work. At the instigation of the Jewish priests [not the Jewish people], Pilate had no choice but to get involved. The Jewish priests [not the Jewish people] were demanding the death of Jesus, because Jesus had exposed the putrid nature of their souls; their spiritual ignorance; and their arrogance. So Pilate, in the interest of keeping his JOB, keeping in the good graces of Caesar, and abiding by Roman law, which said to not interfere in the religious practices of the subjects, agreed to hear their case against Jesus.Pilate tried to save Jesus from the priests.
Pilate knew that the priests were envious of Jesus’s knowledge and stature. He knew that they were angered by Jesus’s exposure of their hypocrisy and ignorance, and that that’s why they’d delivered Jesus to Pilate, demanding that he be executed:
“For he [Pilate] knew that for envy they had delivered him.”12
Pilate knew what the deal was, and so he would try to save Jesus’s life. And since this was a festival which had a tradition that Pilate could choose to release a prisoner of their demanding, he hoped [this will become clear from the Biblical texts I’ll cover] that the priest-infected crowd would choose Barabbas, because Pilate knew that Jesus was not guilty of anything meaningful:
“Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus?”13
At some point, Pilate’s wife [And who knows how this was recorded, but let’s go with it] told him that she’d had a nightmare that caused her to see that Jesus was innocent, and she advised that Pilate have nothing to do with the matter.
“When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.”14
The priests, again, intervene and arouse the blood-thirsty crowd (Priests are good at that):
“But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus.”15
Though Pilate has no choice, now, but to release Barabbas, Pilate tries again:
“Why, what evil hath he done?”16
Pilate’s stalling didn’t work. The priest-infected crowd shouted,
“Let him be crucified!”17
Pilate’s efforts to save Jesus failed. He knew that if he released Jesus, despite the demands of the priest-infected crowd, there would be riots, and Caesar would hear about it. And there’s no doubt in my mind that, if the rioting went too far, Caesar might replace Pilate. Again: Pilate was a politician. So, Pilate released Jesus to the people, but first, in symbolic form, he indicated his disassociation with the decision of the people [decision of the priests] by washing his hands, even openly stating that Jesus was innocent of any wrong-doing (Emphasis in following verse is mine).
“When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.”18Did Pilate purposely set the time of the crucifixion so that Jesus would survive?
“And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.”19
The above verse of the Bible was a very strict Jewish law that forbade that a crucified individual remain hanging on the cross at the approach of the Sabbath. As the verse shows, a crucified individual was considered “accursed.” And to have the individual still hanging on the cross at the approach of the Sabbath was believed to be some form of desecration of the land. So, his body, whether he was alive or dead, must be taken down before the Shabbat.
In the beginning of this article, in the section entitled “Front Matter,” we see that Josephus (37 AD to 100 AD), who saw his friends hanging on the cross, was successful in convincing Caesar to allow him to remove them from the cross. One of his friends survived.
In ancient times, crucifixion was not meant to be an instant death. It normally took days—at least three—for a crucified victim to die as a result of that crucifixion. Jesus was on the cross, some scholars claim, from about 9:00 AM to 3:00 or 3:30 PM, a total of only six hours.
Dr. Hassnain, in his book, A Search for the Historical Jesus, believes that Jesus was placed on the cross at 12:00 noon, which would mean that he was on the cross for three hours. The Shabbat (Sabbath) would begin at sunset. Regarding death by crucifixion in ancient times, from an Abstract of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Library of Medicine, entitled, The History and Pathology of Crucifixion, we read (bolded emphasis is mine):
Abstract“In antiquity crucifixion was considered one of the most brutal and shameful modes of death. Probably originating with the Assyrians and Babylonians, it was used systematically by the Persians in the 6th century BC. Alexander the Great brought it from there to the eastern Mediterranean countries in the 4th century BC, and the Phoenicians introduced it to Rome in the 3rd century BC. It was virtually never used in pre-Hellenic Greece. The Romans perfected crucifixion for 500 years until it was abolished by Constantine I in the 4th century AD. Crucifixion in Roman times was applied mostly to slaves, disgraced soldiers, Christians and foreigners--only very rarely to Roman citizens. Death, usually after 6 hours--4 days, was due to multifactorial pathology: after-effects of compulsory scourging and maiming, haemorrhage and dehydration causing hypovolaemic shock and pain, but the most important factor was progressive asphyxia caused by impairment of respiratory movement. Resultant anoxaemia exaggerated hypovolaemic shock. Death was probably commonly precipitated by cardiac arrest, caused by vasovagal reflexes, initiated inter alia by severe anoxaemia, severe pain, body blows and breaking of the large bones. The attending Roman guards could only leave the site after the victim had died, and were known to precipitate death by means of deliberate fracturing of the tibia and/or fibula, spear stab wounds into the heart, sharp blows to the front of the chest, or a smoking fire built at the foot of the cross to asphyxiate the victim.”
The reader will notice that the Abstract said that “progressive asphyxia,” i.e., suffocation was “the most important factor” in causing death by crucifixion. Now, read the following verse from the Bible. In ancient times, one way to assure that the victim would die of suffocation was to break his legs. The Centurions at the scene of Jesus’s crucifixion broke the legs of the other two crucifixion victims at Golgatha, but did not break the bones of Jesus, i.e., did not break the tibia or the fibula, as the above Abstract said was the practice in order to “precipitate death,” supposedly because he was “already dead.” In the following excerpt from the Bible, bolded emphasis is mine:
“The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs.”20
Let’s do a little more investigation. Here is an excerpt from a 1971 edition of Newsweek Magazine. Bolded emphasis is mine.
“In most cases, the experts think, death on the cross came within a span of several hours to a day or more, either from loss of blood or from suffocation as the victim’s rib cage collapsed over his diaphragm.”21Here’s another viewpoint. Let’s look at an experiment that was carried out by an American medical examiner and pathologist on college students. Please note that I first researched this information in the year 2001 at Century One Foundation’s online article entitled, Crucifixion in Antiquity: The Evidence. And I included the following quote from that article in my book, Saving the Savior: Did Christ Survive the Crucifixion.
But there is now a message at the Century One Foundation’s site, as you will see if you go there, that reads, “This article has been taken down until it can be corrected.” I have no information as to when it was taken down, nor do I have information regarding what corrections needed to be made, nor why those corrections needed to be made. I’m just mentioning this for integrity sake. Draw your own conclusions
Now, Mr. Zias’s entire article was placed at Academia.edu in the year 1998. To read that article, click here. In the excerpt below, bolded emphasis is mine.
“A series of experiments carried out by an American medical examiner and pathologist on college students [F.T. Zugibe, 1984: ‘Death by Crucifixion’, Canadian Society of Forensic Science 17(1):1-13.6.] who volunteered to be tied to crosses, showed that if the students were suspended from crosses with their arms outstretched in the traditional manner depicted in Christian art, they experienced no problems breathing. Thus the often-quoted theory that death on the cross is the result of asphyxiation is no longer tenable if the arms are outstretched.
“According to the physiological response of the students, which was closely monitored by Zugibe, death in this manner is the result of the victim going into hypovolemic shock. Death in this manner can be in a manner of hours, or days depending on the manner in which the victim is affixed to the cross.
“If the victim is crucified with a small seat, a sedile, affixed to the upright for minimum support in the region of the buttocks, death can be prolonged for hours and days. In fact, Josephus reports that three friends of his were being crucified in Thecoa by the Romans who, upon intervention by Josephus to Titus were removed from the crosses and with medical care one survived.”22You will note that in Mr. Zia’s original, uncorrected article, he disagrees with the NLM’s Abstract on the history and pathology of crucifixion, which states that asphyxiation was the most important factor in causing the death of a crucifixion victim. But he agrees with the Abstract that hypovolemic shock plays a role in leading to the death of crucifixion victims. He also agrees with the Abstract that death by crucifixion can occur within from hours to days.
So, considering even only the following facts, we can conclude that it was definitely possible that Jesus, or any crucifixion victim, could have survived that ordeal:
1.) As is mentioned in the Front Matter of this articled, when the body of Jesus was requested by Joseph of Arimathea, Pilate expressed surprise that Jesus was “already dead.” Why the surprise? Obviously it was because it was not normal for a crucifixion victim to die within the span of time that Jesus was on the cross.
2.) The Centurions did not break the bones in the legs, the tibia and the fibula, supposedly because they observed that Jesus was “already dead.
3.) We know of at least one eye witness, Josephus, who saw a crucifixion victim survive that ordeal.
4.) Modern scientific analyses concluded that it could take from six hours to days for a crucifixion victim to die of that ordeal.
But, assuming that Jesus did survive the crucifixion, are there any other examples in history that show that crucifixion victims survived crucifixions, and even remained on the cross for days before dying? Yes. And some of the examples are far, far closer to our times than two-thousand years ago. Any bolded highlighting is mine:
“From the Chrestomathia Arabica of Kosegarten published in 1828 Bishop Wiseman borrows an interesting narrative originally written in Arabic and remark ably apposite to the present purpose of the execution of a Mameluke who was crucified under the walls of Damascus for the murder of his master and although quite a youth was possessed of great strength and prowess. His hands, arms, and feet having been nailed to the cross, he remained alive from midday on Friday to the same hour on Sunday when he died.”23
“The following testimonies on the same subject are derived from more modern times. The capital punishments inflicted in Soudan, observes Captain Clapperton, writing in 1824, are beheading, impaling, and crucifixion, the first being reserved for Mahometans [Muslims] and the other two practiced on Pagans. I was told, as a matter of curiosity, that wretches on the cross generally linger three days before death puts an end to their sufferings.”24Believe me, I could give more examples of crucified people being taken down from the cross still alive. But, reading the accounts is just too grisly for my taste. The reader can perform his or her own research. But, there’s still a question. Though crucifixion victims, as you just read, did survive death by crucifixion, could they be attended to and healed enough to continue life, or would they die shortly after being taken down from the cross? Here’s an example from ancient Greece.
“In describing a singular incident which occurred during the naval warfare between the Greeks and the Persians the former author states as follows. ‘Here also it was that the fleet of Xerxes came to anchor, namely in the gulf of Magnesia. Fifteen of these being at a considerable distance from their companions discovered the vessels of the Greeks at Artemisium and mistaking them for friends sailed into the midst of them.
“The leader of these ships was Sandoces, son of Thamasias, the governor of Cyma in Æolia. This man Darius had formerly condemned to the punishment of the cross. He had been one of the royal judges and convicted of corruption in his office. He was already on the cross when the king, reflecting that his services to the royal family exceeded his offences…commanded him to be taken down. Thus he escaped the punishment to which Darius had condemned him. His escape now from the Greeks was altogether impossible. They saw him sailing toward them, and perceiving his error attacked and took him and his vessel.”25
Darius had not only survived crucifixion, he healed enough to actually sail his ship. Here’s another example. Bolding is my emphasis:
“His removal from place to place was not likely to be attended with much fatigue, since all the places lay within a narrow compass and heat of climate could not have been very oppressive in Jerusalem at the vernal equinox to a native of the country, more especially when it is considered that during the last three hours of his life, from the sixth to the ninth hour, the sun was obscured, and that in the much hotter climate of Central Africa crucified persons usually live three days on the cross.”26
But what about the stabbing of Jesus, with a spear, by the Centurion? The NLM’s Abstract said that the Centurions could not leave a crucifixion site until they were sure that the crucifixion victim was dead. The Abstract said that one way this was done was to administer a “spear stab wound into the heart.” Did a Centurion at the crucifixion site stab Jesus in the heart? And if so, which Centurion? The Bible says that it was Longinus, the chief Centurion, who stabbed Jesus. But did Longinus stab Jesus in the heart?
“But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.”27
The Bible says that Longinus stabbed Jesus in his side. It said nothing about Longinus stabbing Jesus in his heart. I’m wondering, also, if “blood and water” would emerge from a person whose heart had stopped and was no longer pumping blood.
Unless some secret documents exist somewhere, it cannot be proven, in absolute terms, that Pilate engineered Jesus’s survival, setting the time of the crucifixion, thus assuring that Jesus would be on the cross for only a few hours; ordering Longinus to not break the legs of Jesus; allowing Jesus to be taken by Jesus’s companions after he was taken down from the cross. But the various pieces of circumstantial evidence, as related by the Bible, tells me that Pilate had intervened, all along the way, for the purpose of saving Jesus’s life.
II. BURIAL PRACTICES OF THE JEWS—WHAT WAS NICODEMUS DOING?
“And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.”28
On April 27th, 2000, through email, I asked the following question of Rabbi Fishel Todd, of the Shema Israel Torah Network International Burial Society.
“Have Jewish burial customs changed much in 2000 years? The Bible claims that Jesus was covered with some kind of ointment [I think the Bible says 100 pounds weight of some kind of substance—seems to be quite a lot of weight]. Does the Biblical account actually fall in line with Jewish burial traditions? Because I thought I heard that it was forbidden to touch the body. Could you be so kind as to explain? Thank you.”
Here is Rabbi Todd’s answer:
“Jewish Burial Law, along with the rest of traditional Jewish law, has not changed in 2000 years [but more] precisely, 3500 years. You’re right: the body is not to be touched except by giving it a ritual bath called a Tahara, standing for purity and then the body is put in the ground in the quickest most simple fashion available with only traditional burial Shrouds.”29
Twenty years later, on May 3rd, 2020, I wrote to Rabbi Todd again, asking the same question, and his answer was the same. Here’s his answer in this screenshot:
For what reason did Nicodemus bring a 100-pound mixture of Aloe and Myrrh into an open and airy tomb where a dead body was lying? I extracted a section of a Whassup wid dat video that AN OLD FRIEND OF MINE NAMED WILLIE BOBO produced. Willie likes to read. Let’s see what Willie found out about the use of Aloe and Myrrh in ancient times.
Pilate declared Jesus’s innocence. Pilate tried to convince the priest-infected crowd to spare Jesus’s life and take Barabbas instead. Pilate’s wife had a frightening dream that highlighted Jesus’s innocence, and told Pilate to stay out of it. Jesus was on the cross for less than a day, the approach of the Shabbat, due to Jewish religious law, shortening the time he could remain on the cross. Pilate would have been the one to arrange the time of the crucifixion.
The Centurion did not break the bones of Jesus, a step, as we saw earlier, required to assure death by asphyxiation. When Joseph appealed to Pilate to allow him to take Jesus down from the cross, Pilate expressed surprise that Jesus was already dead.
Earlier, we saw a number of actual historical cases of crucifixion victims who remained crucified for from two to four days before finally dying. Because of those testimonies, it’s easy to believe that someone who had been on the cross for less than a day could survive. And anyone that had survived that ordeal would certainly have his wounds administered to by someone.
Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and probably other members of either Jesus’s disciples or members of the Essene brotherhood, which some histories claim Jesus was a member of, administered to Jesus’s wounds using Aloe and Myrrh, globally-known healing agents.
III. THE CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS BY AN EYE-WITNESS
In 1907, a book entitled The Crucifixion by an Eyewitness was published by the Indo-American Book Co. of Chicago. It was an English translation of a Latin manuscript found in Alexandria, Egypt in the 19th century. The manuscript was in the form of a letter written in Latin by an elder of the Essene Brotherhood in Jerusalem to his Essene brethren in Alexandria, Egypt, in reply to their letter inquiring the truth about Jesus about whom they had heard rumors. The letter was written seven years after the crucifixion by a person who claims to have been an eyewitness to the event of crucifixion. He describes it in detail.
Regarding the origins of the Latin manuscript, the translator wrote the following in the Preface of the book.
"A member of the Abyssinian Mercantile Company discovered in Alexandria an ancient house, formerly occupied by Grecian friars, in whose library—to oblivion abandoned—was found an old parchment. A French literate, accidentally present, at once commenced deciphering it; but a missionary, in the ardor of fanatical orthodoxy, tried by all means to destroy the antique document. But the efforts of the Jesuit missionary do not seem to have been successful, as a copy of the Latin original was written, of which a copy, through the Freemasons, found its way into Germany.30
“It has been proved from the archeological discoveries made on the spot, that the house where the parchment was found was owned and occupied by the Order of ‘Essenes.’ Further, that the document found was the only remains of literature from the once well-filled library of this scientific and religious Order of Brotherhood.
“The French literate, who first conceived the importance and historical worth of the manuscript, tried hard to enrich the French Academy with the original, but, owing to the intrigues of the Jesuit mission in Egypt (bent on destroying a document so detrimental to their doctrine), he was not successful; although it was preserved principally through the interference of influential Abyssinian merchants and Pythagorical Societies, from whom the copy above spoke of, came into the possession of the modern institution of Freemasons, and a society in Germany now possesses, without doubt, the only copy in existence", (pp. 17-18)
I am going to reproduce only a relevant portion of the letter. If the reader wants to read the entire letter, the document can be accessed very easily by Googling the title, The Crucifixion by an Eyewitness . You will find all kinds of sources that contain the entire document. Here are the relevant portions of that document, which has the eye-witness to Jesus’s crucifixion explaining what happened. Bolded emphasis is mine:
"The Centurion, observing my anxiety, looked at me, and in the manner of a friend I said to him: "You have seen that this man that is crucified is an uncommon man. Do not maltreat him, for a rich man among the people is now with Pilate, to offer him money for the corpse, that he may give it a decent burial.
“My dear Brethren, I must inform you that Pilate often did sell the bodies of the crucified to their friends, that they might bury them.
And the Centurion was friendly to me, inasmuch as he had conceived from the events that Jesus was an innocent man. And therefore, when the two thieves were beaten by the soldiers with heavy clubs and their bones broken the Centurion went past the cross of Jesus, saying to the soldiers: ‘Do not break his bones, for he is dead.
“To be sure of it, one of the soldiers stuck his spear into the body in such manner that it passed over the hip and into the side. The body showed no convulsions, and this was taken by the Centurion as a sure sign that he actually was dead; and he hurriedly went away to make his report.
“But from the insignificant wound flowed blood and water, at which John wondered, and my own hope revived. For even John knew, from knowledge of our Brotherhood, that from a wound in a dead body flows nothing but a few drops of thickened blood; but now there flowed both water and blood.
"Joseph and Nicodemus returned in great haste. Joseph through his dignity had moved Pilate, and Pilate, having received information as to the death of the crucified, gave the body to Joseph, and without taking any pay therefor.
“For Pilate had a great reverence for Joseph, and secretly repented of the execution. When Nicodemus saw the wound, flowing with water and blood, his eyes were animated with new hope, and he spoke encouragingly, foreseeing what was to happen.
“He drew Joseph aside to where I stood, some distance from John, and spoke in a low, hurried tone: ‘Dear friends, be of good cheer, and let us to work. Jesus is not dead. He seems so only because his strength is gone.
"While Joseph was with Pilate I hurried over to our colony and fetched the herbs that are useful in such cases.”
Now the document presents us with a problem. The next sentence is written as if he is talking, in person, and at the time Jesus was crucified, to the recipient of his letter, which makes no sense because the letter was supposedly written to his friend seven years after the event of Jesus’s crucifixion. He says, “But I admonish you” as if it’s seven years earlier at the colony. Just a mistake? Or is the letter itself a fake? In all honesty, I do not know. But, I believe the story in the letter, as it corroborates other aspects of the Biblical account, such as Jesus being seen, three days after the crucifixion, walking around in his physical body (see next section), conversing, eating food, etc.
So, if the letter is not fake, then it becomes clear that the following is what he was telling his friend, the recipient of the letter: That he went to the colony, obtained the herbs necessary to administer to Jesus’s wounds, told the people in the colony that Jesus was alive and that he was going to attempt to heal his wounds, and then said to members of the colony, not someone he was writing to seven years later,
“But I admonish you that you tell not John that we hope to reanimate the body of Jesus, lest he could not conceal his great joy. And dangerous indeed would it be if the people should come to know it, for our enemies would then put us all to death with him.”
Then that portion of the text makes perfect sense. The letter continues:
"After they hurried to the cross, and, according to the prescriptions of the medical art, they slowly untied his bonds, drew the spikes out from his hands, and with great care laid him on the ground.
"Thereupon, Nicodemus spread strong spices and healing salves on long pieces of "byssus" which he had brought, and whose use was known only in our Order.
"These he wound about Jesus' body, pretending that he did so to keep the body from decaying until after the feast, when he would then embalm it.
"These spices and salves had great healing powers, and were used by our Essene Brethren who knew the rules of medical science for the restoration to consciousness of those in a state of death-like fainting.31 And even as Joseph and Nicodemus were bending over his face and their tears fell upon him, they blew into him their own breath32, and warmed his temples.
"Still Joseph was doubtful of his recovery to life, but Nicodemus encouraged him to increase their efforts. Nicodemus spread balsam in both the nail pierced hands, but he believed that it was not best to close up the wound in Jesus' side, because he considered the flow of blood and water therefrom helpful to respiration and beneficial in the renewing of life.
"The body was then laid in the sepulcher made in the rocks, which belonged to Joseph. They then smoked the grotto with aloe and other strengthening herbs, and while the body lay upon the bed of moss, still stiff and inanimate, they placed a large stone in front of the entrance, that the vapors might better fill the grotto.
“But Caiaphas, although it was the Sabbath day, had sent out his secret spies. He was anxious to know who were the secret friends of Jesus. His suspicions had fallen upon Pilate because of his having given Joseph of Arimathea the body without any pay, he being rich, a Rabbi and member of the high council, who never had appeared to take any interest in the case of Jesus previously, but who now had given his own place of burial for the crucified.
"Fear of this caused him great anxiety, and for this reason he hoped to discover some secret means of accusing Joseph and having him thrown into prison. He betrayed this fact himself by sending late in the night a number of his armed servants to an obscure valley close by the grotto in which lay the body of Jesus. Some distance from them was stationed a detachment of the temple guard, to assist the servants of the high-priest, if necessary.
"But the rumor has told you that these guards were Roman soldiers, which was not the case. The high-priest even distrusted Pilate.
"Meanwhile, Nicodemus had hastened with me to our brethren, and the oldest and wisest came to confer as to the best means of restoring Jesus to life. And the brethren agreed immediately to send a guard to the grove. Joseph and Nicodemus hurried to the city, there to fulfil their further mission.
"After midnight and towards morning, the earth again commenced to shake, and the air became very oppressive. The rocks shook and cracked. Red flames burst forth from the crevices, illuminating the red mists of morning.
"This was, indeed, a dreadful night. Beasts, horrified by the earthquake, ran howling and crying in every direction. Through the narrow opening the little lamp in the grotto threw trembling shadows into the horrible night, and the servants of the high-priest were full of fear, listening to the hissing in the air and the roaring and rumbling in the earth.
"One of our brethren went to the grave, in obedience to the order of the Brotherhood, dressed in the white robe of the fourth degree. He went by way of a secret path which ran through the mountain to the grave, and which was known only to the order.
"When the timid servants of the high-priest saw the white-robed Brother on the mountain slowly approaching, and partially obscured by the morning mist, they were seized with a great fear, and they thought that an angel was descending from the mountain.
"When this Brother arrived at the grave which he was to guard, he rested on the stone which he had pulled from the entrance according to his orders; whereupon the soldiers fled and spread the report that an angel had driven them away.
"Thirty hours had now passed since the assumed death of Jesus. And when the Brother, having heard a slight noise within the grotto, went in to observe what had happened, he smelled a strange odor in the air, such as often occurs when the earth is about to vomit forth fire.
"And the youth observed with inexpressible joy that the lips of the body moved, and that it breathed. He at once hastened to Jesus to assist him, and heard slight sounds rising from his breast. The face assumed a living appearance, and the eyes opened and in astonishment gazed at the novice of our Order.
“This occurred just as I was leaving with the brethren of the first degree, from the council, with Joseph, who had come to consult how to bring help.
"Nicodemus, who was an experienced physician, said, on the way, that the peculiar condition of the atmosphere caused by the revolution of the elements was beneficial to Jesus, and that he never had believed that Jesus was really dead. And he further said that the blood and water which flowed from the wound was a sure sign that life was not extinct.
"Conversing thus, we arrived at the grotto, Joseph and Nicodemus going before. We were, in all, twenty-four brethren of the first degree.
"Entering, we perceived the white-robed novice kneeling upon the moss strewn floor of the grotto, supporting the head of the revived Jesus on his breast.
"And as Jesus recognized his Essene friends, his eyes sparkled with joy; his cheeks were tinted with a faint red, and he sat up, asking: ‘Where am I?’
"Then Joseph embraced him, folded him in his arms, told him how it had all come to pass, and how he was saved from actual death by a profound fainting fit, which the soldiers on Calvary thought was death.
"And Jesus wondered, and felt on himself; and, praising God, he wept on the breast of Joseph. Then Nicodemus urged his friends to take some refreshments, and he ate some dates and some bread dipped in honey. And Nicodemus gave wine to drink, after which Jesus was greatly refreshed, so that he raised himself up.”
The following three tables are extremely fascinating, and perhaps represent strong clues as to why Jesus would go to Kashmir: Could Jesus have gone to India because there were already Hebrew people there that had migrated there earlier? He ordered his Disciples to not preach to the gentiles, but to “go, rather, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And, if the theory of Jesus in Kashmir is correct, then he would have been setting the example, for his Disciples, by continuing his ministry in Kashmir and surrounding territories. And remember the short video you saw, earlier, which showed that travel from Canaan (Israel) to Kashmir was easy back then.
The first two charts below, Chart 1 and Chart 2, show:
The names of the tribes, castes, and sub-castes in Kashmir
The Biblical equivalent names
The exact Biblical reference where the names can be found
The third chart below, Chart 3, shows:
Name of Place & its location (in parenthesis)
The Biblical equivalent names
The exact Biblical reference where the names can be found
There could have been only two reasons for Jews to go to Kashmir. Firstly, for some voluntarily reason. Secondly, forcibly, for instance, through some form of coercion. For what reason, though, would Jews have gone to Kashmir/India in ancient times?
Well, first we have to shed our minds of the absolutely false idea that India would have been “too far” away, or that people were “too unsophisticated,” or that there was “no way” to travel that far, or that, “They would have no reason” to travel so far. All such notions are absolutely false.
Below, I reproduce the first two paragraphs of an article entitled, Evolution of India-Israel Relations: From Ancient Times till Present, written by Mr. Rahul Wankhede, an Assistant Professor at the Dept. of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Studies, Defence and Strategic Studies, at Pune University, in Pune India. The article was written for the JK Policy Institute, i.e., the Jammu and Kashmir Policy Institute. To read the entire article, click the link in the first sentence of this paragraph. Any emphasis in the following two paragraphs of the article is mine.
“India and Israel share a deep and multi-dimensional relationship that dates back to around 2000 BC as was proven by the Tel Megiddo excavations that shed light on Indian trade relations with areas around the Mediterranean. Geographical analysis suggests that the authors of the Old Testament knew about India, where the trade of animals such as monkeys and peacocks existed. Judaism was one of the first foreign religions to arrive in India in recorded history and Indian Jews are a religious minority, but unlike many parts of the world, have historically lived in India without a single instance of persecution.
“While some allegedly arrived during the time of the Kingdom of Judah others are seen by some as descendants of Israel’s Ten Lost Tribes. According to Chaim Menachem Rabin, the first recorded contact between the two civilizations was during the reign of King Solomon, in the 10th century BCE [1000 BC – 901 BC]. Since then, Jewish emigrants have settled in various parts of India over many centuries: those in Kochi, trace their origin back to the time of King Solomon and are called Cochini Jews; Paradesi Jews migrated to Kochi during the 15th and 16th centuries following the expulsion of Jews from Spain.
“The trade relations between both cultures can be traced back to 1,000 BCE and even earlier to the times of the Babylonian and Sindhu-Saraswati civilizations. Linguistic similarities between the Semitic and Indo-Aryan languages also point toward a long history of contact. Judea was a transit route in the trade between the Roman Empire and India during the Roman rule in Judea as is known from the fact that expensive garments in the Temple in Jerusalem were imported from India via Alexandria.”
I’d mentioned above that there could be only two reasons for Jews to have gone to India, one voluntary and one by force. From the three paragraphs of the aforementioned articles we see two reasons:
An economic reason. As we saw, trade was hot and heavy between Canaan (Israel) and Kashmir/India.
For what might be called “aesthetic” reasons connected to peace. We read, above,
”Judaism was one of the first foreign religions to arrive in India in recorded history and Indian Jews are a religious minority, but unlike many parts of the world, have historically lived in India without a single instance of persecution”
The first two paragraphs of a long Wikipedia article entitled History of the Jews of India agrees with the JK Policy Institute’s claim that the Jews of India did not suffer persecution. The article also agrees with the JK Policy Institute’s statement that the Jews in India have been there since antiquity:
“The history of the Jews in India dates back to antiquity. Judaism was one of the first foreign religions to arrive in the Indian subcontinent in recorded history. Desi Jews are a small religious minority who have lived in the region since ancient times. The 2,000-year history of Indian Jews was marked by a total absence of antisemitism from the Hindu majority and a visible assimilation in the local languages and cultures.
“The better-established ancient Jewish communities have assimilated many of the local traditions through cultural diffusion. While some Indian Jews have stated that their ancestors arrived during the time of the Biblical Kingdom of Judah, others claim descent from the Ten Lost Tribes of the pre-Judaic Israelites who arrived in India earlier. Still some other Indian Jews contend that they descend from the Israelite Tribe of Manasseh, and they are referred to as the Bnei Menashe.”
It is fascinating that, for many years, the Bnei Manashe Jews, as well as other Indian tribes of Jews, have been allowed, by the Rabbinate of Israel, to make the Aliya, i.e., the return to Israel, a clear recognition, by religious authorities in Israel, that the Jews of India are not “converts” to Judaism, but are, in fact, descended from the ancient Jewish people. As of this date, there are 85,000 Indian Jews in Israel.
The ancient Jewish tribes of India still, to this day, are making the Aliya to Israel. Indeed, it seems a bit ironic that the geographical boundaries designated in the Bible (Numbers 34:1-12) as “The Promised Land” have been a place of immense problems for the Jews, as opposed to the peaceful existence they enjoyed in Kashmir, a place whose peace is accented by Kashmir’s immense beauty, with its lush valleys, mountains, waterways, one of the single most beautiful places on earth, barring none.
One can’t help but wonder whether something got “lost in the translation.” The paradise that the Jews have yearned for clearly appears to have existed not in Canaan, aka, Israel, but, rather, in Kashmir. Certainly, as we saw with the testimonies of both the JK Policy Institute, as well as Wikipedia, the Jews of India had lived there for centuries “without a single instance of persecution.”33 [Footnote for the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu]
You have seen, from the JK Policy Institute article, that Jews were in Kashmir as long ago as 2000 BC (BCE). This means that Jews were living in Kashmir 609 years before Moses was born. According to Rabbinical Judaism, Moses lived from 1391–1271 BCE, dying at the age of 120. This would mean that Moses certainly would have known of the existence of his fellow Jewish brothers and sisters that had been living in Kashmir for 609 years before he was born. The Exodus, Moses’s leading of the Israelites out of Egypt and out of slavery, is said to have begun around 1290 BCE.
Moses lead the Jews out of that persecution. Where did they go? Did some of them, including Moses, go to Kashmir? Well, we saw earlier that Jews had been living in Kashmir since 2000 BCE, 609 years before Moses was born. So, there is no reason to rule out the possibility that one destination for at least some of the Jews could easily have been to a place where they knew that Jews were already living, as the JK Policy Institute article stated, in peace “without a single instance of persecution.
Well, in Kashmir, there is a grave that is known as the grave of Moses—the actual grave of Moses, it’s believed, not a symbolic grave. The last keeper of the grave of Moses was a man named Wali Reshi. In Kashmir, there are Kashmiri traditions that say that Moses came to Kashmir, lived and died there. But, is there any Biblical information that might corroborate such a claim?
With regard to Moses, I’m now going to quote from Holger Kersten’s book, Jesus Lived India. But, after that quote, I’m going to let you, the reader, put on your detective hat.
You can perform your own further studies with regard to Moses and the issue of Jews in Kashmir by researching the books and videos that I will supply at the end of this, Part 1, of this four-part series, as well as the end of Part 2 and Part 3. There are five geographic places mentioned in the Bible, all near each other, that pinpoint the location of Moses’s tomb:
Moab
Mount Nebo
Mount Pisga
Beth-peor
Heshbon
Kersten says:
“The river Jhelum in the north of Kashmir is called ‘Behat’ in Persian, and the small town Bandipur at the point where the valley of the Jhelum opens out into the broad plan of Lake Wular was once called Behat-poor, which is now called Bandipur in the region of Tehsil Sopore, 80 kilometres north of Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. Only approximately 18 kilometers northeast of Bandipur lies the small village of Hasba or Hasbal. This is referred to as Hesbon in the Bible (Deuteronomy 4, 46), and is mentioned in connection with Bethpeor and Pisga. On the cliffs of Pisga (now: Pishnag), north of Bandipur and only 1.5 kilometres northeast of the village Aham-Sharif, there is a spring famous for the healing quality of its waters. In the Bible, the valley and the plains of Mowu are called the plains of Moab, ideal pastureland, about five kilometres northwest of Mount Nebo. Mount Nebo is a single mountain in the range of Abarim and always mentioned in context of Beth-peor [Dummelow, Commentary on the Holy Bible, p. 115]. All five names are to be found within lose proximity to one another. Mount Nebo, also called Baal Nebu or Niltoop, offer a splendid view of Bandipur and the entire highlands of Kashmir.”34
Kersten continues:
“And in fact the grave [of Moses] is near the plains of Moab, near the top of Pisga, on the mountain of Nebo, across from Beth-peor, and from this place one has a splendid view of a fresh and blossoming land forever green, in which ‘milk and honey’ flow, a true paradise. In this area, as in other parts of Kashmir, there are numerous places with biblical names, some of them called ‘Muquam-i-Musa,’ i.e., ‘the place of Moses.’ To the north of Pisga, (Deuteronomy 4, 44-49) which is today called Hasbal, and south of Srinagar, at Bijbihara, a place on the banks of the river is still referred to as ‘Moses’ Bath.”35
The Jews had suffered a number exiles, or national displacements. Those exiles are known in Hebrew as galut, exile. The four primary periods of exile are known as “arba galuyot” (the four exiles). In the Jewish belief system, the Prophet Daniel had had a symbolic vision about the arba galuyot:
“I saw in my vision by night...four great beasts…The first was like a lion...and behold, another beast, a second one, similar to a bear…Afterwards I beheld, and there was another, similar to a leopard…After that, as I looked on in the night vision, there was a fourth beast—fearsome, dreadful and very powerful.”36
Chabad.org mentions five exiles, counting the first one to be when Jacob and his children left Canaan (Israel) because of a famine, and migrated to Egypt for food. I’ll call that The Famine Exile. The other exiles were:
The Babylonian Exile
The Media/Persia Exile
The Greecian Exile
The Edom (Rome) Exile
Well, Okay, Colombo, it’s YOUR turn!! I think that I’ve done my part in establishing the ancient presence of Jews in India, including Kashmir. Whether by voluntary travel for business, permanent residency, scenery, or forced exile, the Jewish presence in ancient India/Kashmir cannot be disputed. And the recognition of Indian Jews by the Rabbinate in Israel, would appear to pretty much seal the case.
Having sealed the case for a Jewish presence in India, as long ago as 2000 BCE, we have also answered the question: “Why would Jesus go all the way to Kashmir?” I find it impossible to believe that he would not have known that there were Jews in Kashmir, and that Kashmir was a place of peace and security for Jews. Now let’s see if we can trace some of his steps from Israel to Kashmir.
This ends Part 1 of this four-part series. In Part 2, we will attempt to trace the footsteps of Yeshua (Jesus) to India. Part 2 will begin with the next Chapter, entitled, Chapter 6: From Golgatha to Rozabal. Here is a list of books and documentaries that you can read and view concerning the topic of the survival of “Jesus Christ” from the cross and his post-crucifixion life, including his life in Kashmir. I will repeat this list in Part 2 and Part 3, if the Pope or Bibi ain’t whacked me by then.
Look, there nothing funny, really, about any of this. But, personally, I do not think I would get through this life without injecting some humor, sometimes, even in the worst of circumstances. Believe me, I’ve had to laugh myself through this life because of immense, back-breaking pains and disappointments I’ve had in my persona life.
Anyway, as promised, here is the list. I will list the documentaries first, then books. The documentaries are videos that you can begin watching instantly, although, for the first one, which is at Amazon, I think you might need an Amazon account or to purchase it. But you might be able to view it for free.
DOCUMENTARIES
Jesus in India (Produced by Paul Davids)
Jesus in Kashmir (Documentary produced by the Indian government)
Did Jesus Die (Produced by BBC-Four)
The Hidden Story of Jesus (Produced and directed by David Batty. Presented by Dr. Robert Beckford)
Jesus in India (Paul Wallis)
Jesus in India (A presentation by Edward T. Martin)
BOOKS
Jesus Lived in India - 264 p. (Holger Kersten)
Jesus Died in Kashmir - 184 p.(Andreas Faber-Kaiser)
Jesus in Heaven on Earth - 471 p. (Khwaja Nazir Ahmad)
Jesus in India - 315 p. (Dr. James Deardorff)
Jesus in India - 160 p. (Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
NOTE: This is the first book published on the theory of a post-crucifixion life of Jesus. Although the book is partially tied to the author’s personal claim to be “The Promised Messiah & Mahdi,” this book is must reading. It was first published in the Urdu language, in 1908, under the title, Masih Hindustan Mein, i.e, Messiah in India)
Saving the Savior - 408 p. (Abubakr Salahuddin)
The Tomb of Jesus - 60 p. (Sufi Mutiur Rahman Bengalee)
The Lost Years of Jesus - 432 p. (Elizabeth Clare Prophet)
NOTE: This books examines the theory that Jesus spent those “lost years” of his life that are not accounted for in the Bible in “the Orient.” Some researches, such as Ms. Prophet, believe that Jesus, between the ages of 13 and 29, went to India only before the crucifixion, some believe only after the crucifixion, and some believe both before and after the crucifixion. Ms. Prophet says that Jesus traveled to India, Nepal, Ladakh, and Tibet.
The ho stroll; the strip; the place where prostitutes ply their trade; where pimps, out of eye-sight, “supervise,” and tricks sometimes get tricked (“Where’s my wallet???!!!”)
A supposedly “legal” ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a qualified Faqih (an Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. But what has turned out to be the case is that a form of fatwa madness occurs where, instead of Islamic law being supported, it becomes violated when some Jack-leg Islamic priest arbitrarily “issues” a fatwa to, for instance, murder someone.
Flavius Josephus, Vita, IV, 75. It is the autobiography of Flavius Josephus (37 AD to 100 AD) ), fully entitled, The Life of Josephus (Greek: Ἰωσήπου βίος Iosepou bios), also called the "Life of Flavius Josephus", or simply Vita
Bible: Mathew 15:42-44
Perhaps the scene in the book where a terrorist organization destroys a religious shrine didn’t add to the marketability of the book.
NOTE TO FBI AND OTHER LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES: No such battle occurred. My claim is just Black bluster (ahem), as the old saying goes. So, please find something else to do, other than investigate me. Please spend your time trying to root out the extremely deep corruption within our U.S. government.
Bible: Luke 24:39
Bible: Luke 24:36-43
Maybe Third Wave feminism is correct: Men are INSANE!!
Wikipedia article entitled, Yellow Badge
Bible: Matthew 27:1-2
Bible: Matthew 27:18
Bible: Matthew 27:17
Bible: Matthew 27:19
Bible: Matthew 27:20
Bible: Matthew 27:23
Bible: Matthew 27:23
Bible: Matthew 27:24
Deuteronomy 21:22-23
Bible: John 19:31-33
“The Rite of Crucifixion,” Newsweek Magazine January 18, 1971, page 52
Joe Zias, “Crucifixion in Antiquity The Evidence”, Century One Foundation: http://www.centuryone.org/crucifixion2.html
William Stroud, On the physical cause of the death of Christ (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co.; Glasgow: T.D. Morrison, 1871), p. 60
Ibid, p. 58
Ibid, p. 61
Ibid, p. 124
Bible: John 19:34
Bible: John 19:39-40
Email received from Rabbi Fishel Todd of the Shema Israel Torah Network International Burial Society on April 27, 2000
Concerning the authenticity of the document, I’m no expert. As such, I wouldn’t be honest if I did not mention the 278-year (1738 to 2023) war between The Church of Rome (The Catholic Church) and the Masonic Order. The existence of that war itself could stand as proof that the document, produced by an Italian Masonic order, was fake and designed to convince people of the falsehood of Catholic doctrines.
And were it not for the document entitled, The Alta Vendita (Full name: The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita), published in Italian in 1859, and the fact, from my perspective, that its goal of destroying the Catholic Church has been reached, it would, perhaps, be easy to deny that such a war has been taking place.
In my view, this goal has now been officially reached with the elevation to the Papacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, aka, Pope Francis, who has virtually single-handedly reduced The Church of Rome to the “spiritual” arm of Globalism, rather than restored its pre-Vatican II position as the leader of the Christian world. I would have no need to mention the possibility that the story of an eye-witness to Jesus’ survival of the crucifixion might have been a story invented by the Masonic Order, had the Catholic Church not been destroyed
But, it has been destroyed, as I, as a pre-Vatican II Catholic for 12 years of my life have lived to witness. So, either The Crucifixion by an Eye Witness document is false, an invention of the Masonic order designed to discredit and destroy the Church, or the document is real, actually written by a contemporary Essene brother of Jesus’s, and, of course used by the Masonic order, and others, to deny the fundamental doctrine of the blood atonement of Jesus.
The before, during, and after the crucifixion, as recorded in the Bible itself, it must be said, do appear to strongly support the document’s theme that Jesus survived the crucifixion physically, as this Substack article attempts to demonstrate.
I believe that there is truth in the document. Yet, at the same time, I am aware that the Catholic Church, as well as Christianity’s fundamental doctrines, were held in deep contempt, even by The Founding Fathers of the United States of America. For instance, Thomas Paine, in a book entitled, The Age of Reason, issued a scathing attack on some of Christianity’s major doctrines in the following manner:
“When we see the studied craft of the scripture-makers, in making every part of this romantic book of school-boy’s eloquence bend to the monstrous idea of a Son of God, begotten by a ghost on the body of a virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting them of. Every phase and circumstance are marked by the barbarous hand of superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was impossible they could have.
“The head of every chapter, the top of every page, are blazoned with the names of Christ and the Church, that the unwary reader might suck in the error before he began to read.” (Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Little Blue Book No. 4, Haldeman-Julius Publications, Girard, Kansas, p. 43)
Thomas Paine was a Deist. But was he a member of the Masonic Order? The historians say that he had friends, including other Founding Fathers, who were Masons, but it’s not clear whether he was a Mason or not. Anyway, my point is that one cannot dismiss the possibility that the document, The Crucifixion by an Eye Witness, may have been fabricated by a Masonic, or other, enemy of The Church of Rome. But, either way—whether it’s a Masonic fabrication or a genuine letter from one Essene eyewitness to Jesus’s crucifixion to another Essene, the Bible itself corroborates the information in the letter by showing that Jesus, some days after the crucifixion was walking around, talking, eating, and drinking with his Disciples.
Coma?
Modern history tells us that mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was discovered in 1732, in Alloa, Scotland, by a local surgeon named William Tossach to revive a suffocated coal-pit miner. Obviously, if The Crucifixion by an Eye Witness document is true, then the technique was known 1700 years before William Tossach applied it.
Bibi, I humbly request that you do not send the IDF to Kashmir and claim it, in any way, shape, or form, to be The Promised Land of the Jews, even though maybe it was. I do not know if you are aware of this: The Indian military is a very formidable military. For three years in a row, the Indian Air Force, in an annual friendly contest with the U.S. Airforce, won that contest. Also, the Indian government has nukes, just as Israel does. And never forget that verse, Bibi, in the Bhagavad Gita: “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Also, why not consider getting out of politics, and purchase as house boat in Kashmir, where you can live in peace. (I suggest, though, that you undergo plastic surgery—for your own safety)
Holger Kersten, Jesus Lived in India: His unknown life before and after the Crucifixion, (Longmead: Element Books Ltd., 1986) p. 53
Ibid, p. 54
Bible: Daniel: 1-7
It gives my heart a warm and tingly feeling to think of Jesus as a family Man in Kashmir. If only that story could have been better known and included in what people have studied for the last two thousand years, an example of heavenly life on earth may have been codified in words.