Q: You write in a Q&A section that Jesus did no such thing as pay for our sins. If that is the case, why does he say in Mark 10:45 that he came to give his life as a ransom for many? Or even more to the point, in Matthew 26:28 he says “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
One problem is that fact that the “original Greek” texts date from sometime after the beginning of the fourth century and have been made to conform to the theology of the Nicene or Constantinian version of Christianity. Even the Aramaic text was corrupted after this time and the Peshitta text was imposed on the Aramaic-speaking churches. Lamsa’s so-called “original” text is the Peshitta.
In the (Aramaic) Cureton Gospels we have the nearest to the original, but the “translation” published in 1894 is little more than a paraphrase of the King James gospels. One of our monks who was a linguist translated all four into English, but after his death the computer disk on which they were found was damaged by a company we gave it over to for transcription. We do have the gospel of John and Luke and hope to post them on our website in the future. But we cannot be sure there was not some meddling with those texts, though they are much older than the Greek.
From the beginning…
The root of the problem goes right back to just after the departure of Jesus from Israel to return to India. (See The Christ of India on our website.) In the ancient book of Kashmiri history, the Bhavishya Maha Purana, there is the following account of the meeting of a king of Kashmir with Jesus sometime after his return:
“When the king of the Sakas came to the Himalayas, he saw a dignified person of golden complexion wearing a long white robe. Astonished to see this foreigner, he asked, ‘Who are you?’ The dignified person replied in a pleasant manner: ‘Know me as Son of God [Isha Putram], or Born of a Virgin [Kumarigarbhasangbhawam]. Being given to truth and penances, I preached the Dharma to the mlecchas.…”
‘O King, I hail from a land far away, where there is no truth, and evil knows no limits. I appeared in the country of the mlecchas as Isha Masiha [Jesus Messiah/Christ] and I suffered at their hands. For I said unto them, ‘“Remove all mental and bodily impurities. Remember the Name of our Lord God. Meditate upon Him Whose abode is in the center of the sun.”’ There in the land of mleccha darkness, I taught love, truth, and purity of heart. I asked human beings to serve the Lord. But I suffered at the hands of the wicked and the guilty.’
‘In truth, O King, all power rests with the Lord, Who is in the center of the sun. And the elements, and the cosmos, and the sun, and God Himself, are forever. Perfect, pure, and blissful, God is always in my heart. Thus my Name has been established as Isha Masiha.’
After having heard the pious words from the lips of this distinguished person, the king felt peaceful, made obeisance to him, and returned” (Bhavishya Maha Purana 3.2.9-31. The word “mleccha” means a foreigner, a non-Indian.) Here we seen that what Jesus says he taught in Israel was not the religion called Christianity that we have today, but that of India. Especially significant is Jesus’ statement that “I hail from a land far away, where there is no truth, and evil knows no limits.”
This is certainly no endorsement of the Judaism of that day as being a true religion, yet we find from the book of Acts that the apostles and their converts were meeting daily in the Temple of Jerusalem and conformed so fully to the very religion Jesus has repudiated at the age of twelve, that they even make male converts be circumcised!
A refusal to change
Part of the intrusion of the old beliefs and ways into the beliefs of Christianity was the insistence on the former legitimacy of blood sacrifice. See the ninth chapter of the book of Hebrews where we find such an insane statement as: “Without shedding of blood is no remission [of sins]” (Hebrews 9:22). Therefore Jesus had to be declared a perfect blood sacrifice to appease the wrath of a justly angered God. And things unraveled from there.
This is why Jesus said in the Greek text:
“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:22-23).
In the Aquarian Gospel there is even more of a point put on those words:
“And when the judgement hour shall come a host of men will enter pleadings for themselves and think to buy the favor of the judge with words. And they will say, Lo, we have wrought a multitude of works in the Omnific name, have we not prophesied? Have we not cured all manner of disease? Have we not cast the evil spirits out of those obsessed? And then the judge will say, I know you not. You rendered service unto God in words when in your heart you worshipped Beelzebub. The evil one may use the powers of life, and do a multitude of mighty works. Depart from me, you workers of iniquity” (Aquarian Gospel 101:24-28).
Certainly Jesus is a world-savior, but not in the way of gross and ignorant theology of the churches. And he did show the way to eternal life, but Christianity began destroying it from the very first. Which is also why Jesus asked: “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8).
How do we find the authentic teachings of Jesus? In the very same place where he got them: India. The religion he brought from India back to Israel was and is based on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras from which he quoted. If we learn and adopt that religion then we are the disciples of Christ. Not otherwise.