Book

Original Christianity: The Christ of India

Abbot George Burke, of the Spiritual Life community, compiles here the traditional case that Christianity's deepest roots run through the Essenes to India. The opening essay reconstructs the Essenes as the third sect of first-century Judaism, outsiders to Pharisee and Sadducee alike, practicing non-violence and vegetarianism, rejecting animal sacrifice, and tracing their own lineage to Moses as an initiate of the Egyptian Mysteries, themselves derived, in this telling, from Sanatana Dharma. Passages from the Zohar on the wisdom of the East and from the Jewish historians are set beside the community's customs to make the connection concrete. The second and longer essay takes up the Christ of India: the years of Jesus's life the gospels pass over, the traditions of his travels in the East, and the testimonies Swami Sivananda and others gave that Christianity is, in his phrase, modified Hinduism suited to its first hearers. Master and disciple closes the collection with the lineage principle. Brief, earnest and freely given, it is a compilation of the ancient-christianity-in-India current rather than an academic study, offered for readers who want the tradition's own account.

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