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

[SarahM32]

60. Again, that's not relevant and avoids the issue. And ...

Why do you persist in your irrelevant tactics to avoid admitting that Jefferson was not an Apologist, and that Deists do not perform Apologetics?

Why do you instead skirt the issue and talk about the Apologetics of other religions?

The issue I have is that you falsely claimed that “Jefferson was an Apologist.” Then when I called you on that you changed your tune and claimed that Jefferson “was a Deist issuing an apologia in respect of the Bible.”

I have shown you why you are wrong on both counts. But what do you do? You avoid the issue and go off on tangents talking about other forms of Apologetics and apologia. And now you even resort to calling me a liar. That's very telling about the weakness of your argument.

As for the Issa story, you prefer to believe critics and skeptics who claim that Notovitch perpetrated a hoax, and ignore Swami Abhedananda, Nicholas Roerich, Mrs. Caspari and Swami Prajnananda.

The problem is that your attempts to discredit the story of Issa are rather misleading and even deceptive.

For example, you claim all Professor Deardorff is doing is “quoting Abhedananda and accepting that persons word as gospel truth.” The truth, however, is that Deardorff provided commentary and analysis of Abhedananda’s book, and at http://www.proaxis.com/~deardorj/ecumensm.htm Deardorff added much more and provided 65 sources in footnotes to support his article.

For example, Deardorff wrote:

“

There have been various instances in which visitors to Himis monastery unexpectedly learned that a set of the Issa verses was located there ... One such visitor was Elizabeth Caspari, who in 1939 made the journey through that region in the company of a Mrs. Clarence Gasque. They were told by a monk in charge of the Himis library that "These books say your Jesus was here!" Madame Caspari later became noted for having established the first Montessori school in the U.S.”

“Another visitor was the late Edward F. Noack ... who with his wife visited Himis monastery in the late 1970s. A monk there told him that "There are manuscripts in our library that describe the journey of Jesus to the East.” A third visitor to the area who obtained information on this subject was Robert Ravicz, once professor of anthropology at California State University at Northridge. While at Himis in 1975 he learned of the "lost years" Jesus-in-India tradition from an eminent Ladakhi physician

.”

Deardorff also makes the following comment:

“It is reasonable to expect that any future attempts by investigators to acquire or read the manuscripts in question at Himis or Marbour monastery will fail if the relevant lama suspects that the investigator or his sponsor in any way holds a non-ecumenical or militantly Christian attitude. As explained by V. R. Gandhi, the causes of this suspicious attitude on the part of custodians of the sacred literature of the East trace back several centuries to the Muslim invaders of India once having destroyed thousands of the Indians' sacred documents, and to early Christian missionaries having acquired and belittled some of their documents. This distrustful attitude persists today, at least at Himis monastery, according to Tibetologists David L. Snellgrove and Tadeusz Skorupski..”

As for Swami Abhedananda’s initial skepticism about Notovitch’s story about Issa, according to Ramakrishna Vedanta Math at http://www.ramakrishnavedantamath.org/swamij.html
“One of the skeptics who personally investigated Notovich's claim was Swami Abhedananda ...”

Robert M. Price, a member of the Jesus Seminar or Westar Institute — at http://www.westarinstitute.org/Periodicals/4R_Articles/tibet.html — has also found that Abhedananda was skeptical of Notovitch’s story and went to check it out. And Price wrote the following even though his opinion is that Notovitch’s story was not true (which is not surprising considering that Price is a Baptist Christian who teaches at a Christian Theological Seminary):

“Swami Abhedananda (a disciple of the great Vedanta sage and mystic Ramakrishna) had read Notovitch's book and determined to find the truth of the matter. He was an admirer of Jesus but skeptical of Notovitch's account. So in 1922 he, too, traveled to Hemis. In the late 1970s in an interview with Dick and Janet Bock, his disciple Swami Prajnananda declared that his master "found the scrolls and he translated all the writings, all the life incidents of the Christ. He narrated those incidents in his book 'Kashmiri O Tibetti.'" (Bock, p. 21). "Years afterwards he inquired but they said the scrolls were no longer there. I also requested to see the scrolls, but there is nothing. There are no scrolls. They have been removed, by whom we do not know." (Bock, p. 22).”

Despite that, Price’s biased conclusion is that Notovitch was “intimidated by Max Müller's attack, backed down and changed his story,” and that the denials of the Hemis abbot about the story of Issa are proof that Notovitch was lying. However, in order to come to that conclusion, Price (like you) has to resort to essentially dismissing the testimonies and assertions of Swami Abhedananda, Nicholas Roerich, Mrs. Caspari and Swami Prajnananda as lies.

As for Nicholas Roerich, of course he was an artist, but he was a philosopher as well, and a Theosophist (as if that were relevant). But, because I have not mentioned that before, you falsely claim I “lack comprehension.”

As for your last paragraph, you apparently forget or ignore that I wrote: “The name "Issa" is derived from the Sanskrit "Isa" which means the Lord, and the Arabic name Isa is used in the Qur’an or Koran to refer to Jesus.” (The spelling is sometimes Issa and sometimes Isa, depending on who’s writing it.) And as for the denial of the monastery that there is a document about Issa, it’s not surprising. As Deardorff says, there are many reasons for that, in addition to the fact that they don’t want the hassle, or the controversy. They just want people to go away and leave them alone.

Actually, I don’t think it’s a big deal. But I do see the importance of the story of Issa in the education of Christians because it reveals why Jesus was so inclusive and so obviously influenced by Hindu and Buddhist philosophy.

As it is stated in Saint Issa: Jesus as a Young Man:

“The evidence provided by Notovitch, Abhedananda and Roerich speaks for itself. People can agree or disagree with it, as they tend to do to support their own religious or spiritual or atheistic belief system. However, the story of Issa is reasonable and would explain why the basic, core teachings of Jesus/Issa are very similar to the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha, as is explained in books like Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings, by Marcus Borg et al, and Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers, by Thich Nhat Hanh, and in other books on the subject. Furthermore, it would explain why many of the parables of Jesus are similar to those in the Hindu Vedas, and why Jesus spoke as a Hindu Avatar, speaking as, but for, the Ancient One and the Holy One who is within, above and around us all, saying "Before Abraham was, I am."

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