Perhaps the Gospels tell the truth that Jesus claimed divinity, but he didn't mean it to be understood literally, but in a mystical way.

This would mean that Jesus could not be a liar or a lunatic, yet his claim would still be true (only in another sense).

According to this theory, we should interpret his claim to divinity not in a Western, Jewish or Christian sense, but in an Eastern, Hindu or Buddhist sense.

Yes, Jesus was God, and knew it, and claimed it - but, according to this philosophy, we are all God.

In other words, Jesus was an enlightened mystic, a "guru", who realized his own inner divinity.

Why couldn't Jesus be a guru, yogi, roshi, spiritual master or enlightened master?

(A) Very simply because he was a Jew:

No guru was ever a Jew and no Jew was ever a guru.

The differences, or more accurately the "contradictions", between the religious Judaism of Jesus and the teaching of all the gurus, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists or New Agers, are so many, so great and so obvious that you have to be blind or a scholar to miss them.

You absolutely cannot ignore Jesus' Jewishness.

(B) If Jesus was in fact a guru or mystic who transcended and contradicted his Jewishness, then he utterly failed to get any one of the gurus' teachings across to anybody, ever, for almost two thousand years!

And if so, he was the worst teacher in history if he misled his followers on every one of the following essential points (1-8) where Judaism and Eastern mysticism conflict.

The Jews were extremely proud of these distinctive beliefs and held to them tenaciously against worldwide disagreement, against the whole pagan, polytheistic, pantheistic, mythical and mystical religious world of antiquity for nearly two millennia.

If Jesus was not a rabbi but an "enlightened master," then he was not really an enlightened master. For he totally deluded everyone always about everything!

(C) He had no way of learning Eastern religions.

He never traveled from his native land. The stories of his doing so are myths that were started centuries later. No documents of any kind even suggest this for the first few centuries A.D.

Though the Gospels do not directly address Jesus' childhood, there are convincing indirect evidences that He remained in Palestine. Here is the biblical evidence:

* Luke 2:52 summarizes Jesus' life from age 12: "And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man."

(Jesus, of course, was both God and human. As God, He was omniscient (all-knowing) and all-wise; He could never "grow in wisdom" from the divine perspective. In His humanity, however, He probably gained wisdom as did other Jewish boys, by studying the Old Testament Scriptures (Psalm 1:2) and listening to the wisdom of the elders.)

* Jesus was known in His community as a carpenter (Mark 6:3) and a carpenter's son (Matthew 13:55).

It was customary among the Jews for fathers to teach their sons a trade. Joseph would have taught Jesus the trade of carpentry as Jesus matured in the Palestine area.

That carpentry played a role in His life is clear because some of His parables and teachings drew upon that experience. For example, He told of building a house on rock as opposed to sand (Matthew 7:24-27).

* Luke 4:16 is a key text to refute the idea that Jesus went to India.

At the beginning of His three-year ministry, Jesus "came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read."

Jesus was brought up in Nazareth, not India, and His custom was to visit the synagogue, not Hindu temples.

* After Jesus finished reading on this occasion, "all were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips; and they were saying, 'Is this not Joseph's son?'" (Luke 4:22).

Those in the synagogue recognized Jesus as a local resident.

(D) If he had studied under Gurus, he would have been obligated to honor his guru.

He never mentioned one. In fact, he claimed His Father in heaven (Jn 5:23; 30; 36; etc.) sent him, a term unknown to Gurus.

(E) Gurus claim to be men who, through Yoga and ascetic practices, have attained the mystical "realization" that "Atman [individual soul] is is identical with Brahmen [universal soul]" and have thereby become one with the universal soul.

Jesus never taught this.

(F) The guru's are all vegetarians.

Jesus ate the Passover lamb, fed the multitudes with fish, etc.

(G) No guru claimed to be the Son of God, the only savior of sinners.

Jesus did (Jn. 14:6).

(H) Jesus never cited the Hindu Vedas but always the Jewish Old Testament which proclaimed the monotheistic God of Judaism (Mark 12:29).

(I) He would have not learned Oriental mysticism in Israel; the Jews were not open, tolerant or pluralistic.

Jewish mysticism (e.g., that of the Essenes) was far more Western than Eastern.

Also, here are eight flat-out contradictions between Jesus' Judaism and the universal teaching of all gurus:

The teachings in which Jesus brought to the Jews were in agreement with all of their scriptures (which he frequently quoted as authoritative) without the slightest taint of Hinduism or Buddhism.

(1) Judaism is an exoteric (public) religion of collective observance of a public law (Torah) and belief in a public book (the Scriptures).

But the gurus and mystics of all cultures teach an esoteric (private), individual, inner experience that cannot be communicated in words.

When Jesus was on trial under oath, questioned by the high priest he said:

John 18:20-21 "I have spoken openly to the world," Jesus replied. "I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret. Why question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said."

That is not what a guru says; that is what a rabbi says.

(2) The Eastern mystics or gurus believe in a pantheistic, immanent God.

For them, "enlightenment" consists in the realization that we and everything else are ultimately, God.

Judaism's distinctive doctrine of God is that God is distinct from the world/universe/nature. There is an infinite gap between creator and creature.

To confuse or identify a creature with the Creator is idolatry, a terrible sin. The belief in the transcendence of God clearly distinguishes Judaism from the mystical religions, and Jesus from the gurus.

- If a Hindu announced to his guru, "I just discovered that I am God," the response would be: "Congratulations. You finally found out!"

- If a Jew had said that 2000 years ago, the response would have been stoning [Jn 8:31-59] or crucifixion [Jn 19:1-7]

And we know which one happened to Jesus.

(3) For Jews, God is a being.

The supreme revelation of God was to Moses in the burning bush when he told Moses his own true eternal name: "I AM." For Jews "I" is the name of "Ultimate Reality" - God.

For the gurus, "I" is the name of ultimate illusion. Individuality, personality, selfhood is the supreme illusion which must be seen through and dispelled if we are to attain the supreme truth of enlightenment.

(4) For the mystics, time and history are also ultimately unreal, illusory, projections of unenlightened consciousness.

Enlightenment consists of freeing one's self from time. Salvation is found in timelessness.

Buddha forbade his disciples to perform miracles because that would have fostered the illusion that the temporal, material world was real and important.

But for the Jews, time and matter (which are relative to each other) are real because God created them.

For the mystic, salvation consists in going back beyond the birth of the ego to the simplicity of the womb.

This is often done through breathing exercises, as in Yoga and Taoism, where your breathing becomes like that of a baby, then almost that of an unborn baby, with inhaling and exhaling no longer distinguishable, so that ego and world are no longer distinguishable.

The end sought is the realization of our primordial identity with all things.

But for the Jews, salvation consists in God doing his thing ("the Day of the Lord") in the future, in time, in history, in the messianic age.

Mystics away from time or back; Jews look at time and forward!

(5) Mystics believe God is unknowable, except wordlessly in mystical experience.

Jews believe God made himself known publicly in deeds and words, divinely inspired writings.

(Remember, the question is not which of these two opinions is right, but whether they are the same or opposite. If they are opposite, Jesus the Jew could not have been a guru.)

(6) For the Jews, God is the active initiator.

They say religion is not our search for God but God's search for us.

Our search for God fails: the Tower of Babel; Job 1-37; the false, popular prophets; human expectations for the Messiah. God's search for us succeeds: the call of Abraham, Job 38-42, the true prophets, Jesus.

For the Eastern mystics, God is passive.

They say we find him, not he us. (Then we realize that we, God and everything are identical).

The pantheist's God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you.

(7) The Jewish God is a moralist.

He himself is moral, righteous, holy; and his command to us is: "Be holy, for I am holy." He gives commandments.

He has a will. He discriminates. He hates evil and loves good.

The pantheistic God of the gurus has no will, no law, no preferences.

He is totally nondiscriminating. For the gurus, morality is at best a preliminary for enlightenment, a means to free the mind from passion (and love); at worst it is a dualistic illusion.

Their God is "beyond good and evil."

(8) The Eastern religions have no hell.

There may be temporary purgatories - for example, reincarnations in this life and bardos in the next (The Tibetan Book of the Dead) - but everyone automatically gets to heaven (enlightenment or the final destination) eventually.

The God of the gurus does not punish sin, because there is no sin, no separation from God, for God is all.

Biblical and orthodox Judaism, like Christianity, teaches an eternal, ultimate justice and judgment.

Not everyone is automatically guaranteed salvation.

Pantheists cannot believe in hell because for them there is nothing but God, there can be being apart from God. There is no hell because we are not free to choose it.

Orthodox Jews and Christians believe in the possibility of hell (eternal separation from God) because we are not parts of God, and we are free to reject him.

Jesus clearly, strongly and evidently believed in hell, and talked a lot about it!

As you can see, to classify Jesus as a guru is as accurate as classifying Marx as a capitalist.

Jesus was a Jew; this simple fact refutes the guru hypothesis.

He never told anyone to convert from Judaism.

He said he came to fulfill the law and the prophets, not destroy them.

He did not found a new religion; he fulfilled the old one.

Finally, if the historical Jesus was fundamentally different from the Jesus of the Gospels - if the historical Jesus never claimed divinity, or if he meant it in the Eastern, pantheistic way - then we are back in the "two layer" theory of the Gospels (see the Jesus as "myth" hypothesis) which is also easily refuted.

There is no evidence what-so-ever of an "earlier" layer different from the Gospels that we have.

There is also no motive for the arising of the new layer (the creation of traditional Christianity out of an Eastern mysticism) if it was not from Jesus himself.

Would you like to choose another alternative?

I. Jesus claimed divinity
11A. He meant it literally
11111. It is True------------------------------------------He is Lord
11112. It is False
111111a. He knew it was false-------------------------He was a Liar
111111b. He didn't know it was false------------------He was a Lunatic
11B. He meant it non-literally, mystically-------------He was a Guru

II. Jesus never claimed divinity--------------------------He is a Myth

III. Jesus died
11A. Jesus rose-------------------------------------------He is Lord
11B. Jesus didn't rise
11111. The apostles were deceived--------------------He was an Hallucination
11112. The gospel writers were myth-makers-------He is a Myth
11113. The apostles were deceivers-------------------He is a Conspiracy

IV. Jesus didn't die----------------------------------------It was a case of Swoon

Here is a list of the gazillions of OT prophecies that Jesus fulfilled.

Do you still need more evidence?

Here is a quick note on "miracles".

Are you still not sure?

Review the evidences page.

Review the claims of divinity page.

A broad overview of the world's major religions.

My favorite sites .

Here's my version of the crucifixion .

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