Does the book of Isaiah say anything about Jesus of Nazareth?

[intaglio]

55. You continue in your false description of apologetics

Your position on that is indefensible - and I suspect you are aware of it.

The following is a very concise description of the practice of Apologetics as performed by a Deist:

Jefferson was merely pointed out the "lovely benevolence" of the universally true words of Jesus, and he edited out and rejected and refuted all the "corruptions" and supernatural elements in the doctrines and dogma in the church canon.

Issa
The documents you describe are those supposedly seen by Notovich, a known con man, who did not journey in Tibet. The contradictions in his account and his citation of know falsehoods about Tibet prove that. His journey could not be documented by the Russian authorities (who kept a very close eye on Tibet) or the British for whom Tibet had been a part of "The Great Game" with Russia for 50 years. The Chinese Bureaucracy who controlled Tibet - it long having been a client nation of China - had no record. His supposed peregrinations do not match the known topography of Tibet. If you continue to use him as a source then it proves only your blind, reasonless faith in a known liar.

Given the fame (infamy) that Notovich attracted with his book it is not surprising that others would seek to exploit this gap in the market. Swami Abhedananda was one such and very far from being a skeptic, he was a Swami, a religious man who was attempting expand his base of believers. Let me make the unjustified assumption that he did visit Tibet and that he did see a manuscript that mentioned an "Issa" why did he not include the supposed Ume of the Tibetan dialect with his translation? It is notable that immediately after his discovery Abhedananda made his way to New York where many gullible people were ready to swallow his nonsense and pay him good money.

Now Nickolas Roerich. Firstly he was not a "philosopher and scientist" he was an artist and theosophist, although later seduced by the Vedanta nonsense of Abhedananda. He did, by contrast with Notovich, go to Tibet, and his precise itinerary is described. In 1925 "started from Sikkim through Punjab, Kashmir, Ladakh, the Karakoram Mountains, Khotan, Kashgar, Qara Shar, Urumchi, Irtysh, the Altai Mountains, the Oryot region of Mongolia, the Central Gobi, Kansu, Tsaidam, and Tibet" This vast journey across some of the worst terrain in the world (no Silk Road for Roerich) lead him back to via Siberia to Moscow in 1926. I doubt that he got a chance to study anything in that period. The expedition commences again in 1927 and did reach Tibet - where Roerich and his party were promptly arrested following a firefight with locals, imprisoned for 5 months and expelled in March 1928 when the fiasco ends. When did Roerich get the chance to study anything at any length?

Assuming that Roerich was not another liar for god, he might have seen some manuscript that mentioned and Issa, a notable religious man who studied at the feet of local worthies. But note the name, it is the Islamic version of Jesus' name and as such would not have been used by a holy man of Jewish origin prior to the establishment of Islam in the 7th Century. At the time of Jesus (whenever that was) the dialects used as a "lingua franca" were Mesopotamian based and could easily transliterate Jesus' name. Arabic was a minority language used by a group of desert dwelling tribes and ignored by other civilisations.

There is another problem with Roerich and that is he was no more an independent open minded researcher than you. He was a dyed in the wool Theosophist with an interest in proving Blavatski's and Abhedananda's ideas about the "mysteries of the East" correct. If I am generous I imagine him as an oriental ignoramus mislead by "pseudographical" late manuscripts written for the delight of Mughal emissaries, but mostly I'm not that generous.

And why am I not generous? Let's look at the monastery these wanderers were supposed to have visited. Is there any record or recollection of such visitors? No. Remember how isolated Tibet was, foreign visitors would have made a huge impact and Tibetan Buddhists were fine record keepers, they had to be because their Government and the masters of that Government wanted to know all about such people and punished failure with death and confiscation of goods. (Before you deny that, Tibetan Lamas were nasty, violent theocrats despite what that nice politician the Dalai Lama says). Worse still is the lack of the very manuscript that your 3 heroes are supposed to have studied, indeed there is a denial that any such manuscript ever existed.

Of course that manuscript that had been preserved for 1900 years of violent history might have fallen victim to the vindictive Communists, or Hindus or Muslims or Christians, but that is very doubtful. Equally doubtful is the failure of "Issa" to make any other mark in any record of this literate and religious society; not even a mark as a severely mislead iconoclast.