Intro
In 1983, Holger Kersten published, “Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life Before and After the Crucifixion”.
Jesus Lived in India promotes the claim of Nicolas Notovich (1894) regarding the unknown years of Jesus between the ages of 12 and 30 in India. The consensus view amongst modern scholars is that Notovitch’s account of the travels of Jesus to India was a hoax. Kersten also promotes Ahmadiyya founder Ghulam Ahmad‘s claims regarding the years aged 33 to age 120 in India, and the burial of Jesus at the Roza Bal shrine in Srinagar. Kersten also draws on earlier material by Louis Jacolliot, Andreas Fabeer-Kaiser, and German popular novelist Siegfried Obermeier (also 1983). The book was translated into Chinese in 1987.
Like others before him Kersten follows Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in his sources. For example, a passage in the Bhavishya Purana which refers to Jesus as “Isa-Masih” (Jesus the Messiah). The passage describes the Hindu king Shalivahana travelling to mountains where he meets a man who calls himself Isa, son of a Virgin. Isa says he has ministered to the Mlecchas, explaining that he has reformed the lives of the mlecchas by recommending principles of mental purity, japa by chanting holy names, and meditation. Kersten interprets this as a record of Jesus in Kashmir. In reality the passage is an 18th-century dialogue also featuring Muhammed, and not an early source as Ahmad claimed. Most scholars consider this part of the Purana to be a 19th-century interpolation.
The book achieved great popularity in Germany and overseas, though competed with the better-known Siegfried Obermeier’s book in Germany. The Indologist Günter Grönbold included a highly critical debunking of Obermeier and Kersten’s interpretations of Buddhist sources among various expositions of Jesus in India theories in Jesus in Indien. Das Ende einer Legende (Jesus in India, the end of a Legend, 1985). Wilhelm Schneemelcher in introducing the subject of New Testament Apocrypha (1991) uses Kersten by way of illustration of the development of legendary Gospel traditions and notes how Kersten “attempted to work up Notovitch and Ahmadiyya legends with many other alleged witnesses into a complete picture.” McGetchin notes that once his story had been re-examined by historians, Notovitch confessed to having fabricated the evidence.
However, in 1922 Swami Abhedananda visited the Hemis monastery and corroborated much of Notovitch’s story. Given access to the manuscripts on Jesus Christ, Abhedananda later published an abbreviated version of Notovich’s translated account. After Abhedananda’s death in 1939, one of his disciples inquired about the documents at the monastery, but was told they disappeared.
Nevertheless, Kersten wrote his book: Jesus lebte in Indien – Sein geheimes Leben vor und nach der Kreuzigung. Ullstein-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-5483-5490-4, (1. Auflage: Droemer Knaur, München 1983, ISBN 3-426-03712-2). See also Swami Parmeshwaranand, “Christ in the Bhavisya Purana”, Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Purānas, Sarup, 2001, pp.278ff; Wendy Doniger, Purāna Perennis: Reciprocity and Transformation in Hindu and Jaina Texts, SUNY Press, 1993, p.105.
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