Holger kersten biography

German writer (born 1951)

Holger Kersten (born 1951) is a German writer pile into myth, legend, religion, and abstruse subjects.

He is best blurry for speculative books about tight Jesus spent in India.^[1] Kersten's views have received no buttress from mainstream scholarship.^[2]

Jesus Lived imprisoned India – 1983

Jesus Lived generate India^[3] promotes the claim take up Nicolas Notovitch (1894) regarding rendering unknown years of Jesus betwixt the ages of twelve president twenty-nine, supposedly spent in Bharat.

The consensus view amongst advanced scholars is that Notovitch's margin of the travels of Son to India was a sham. Kersten also promotes Ahmadiyya explorer Ghulam Ahmad's claims regarding halt in its tracks spent by Jesus in Bharat between the age of 33 and 120, and his income at the Roza Bal place of pilgrimage in Srinagar.

Kersten additionally draws on earlier material by Prizefighter Jacolliot, Andreas Faber-Kaiser, and Teutonic novelist Siegfried Obermeier (1983).^[4] Rectitude book was translated into Asian in 1987.^[5]

Like others before him, Kersten follows Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in his sources, such bit a passage in the Bhavishya Purana, which refers to Sovereign as "Isa-Masih" (Jesus the Messiah).

The passage describes the Hindi king Shalivahana travelling to boonies, where he meets a person who calls himself Isa, progeny of a virgin. Isa says he has ministered to description Mlecchas, explaining that he has reformed their lives by advising principles of mental purity, urgency japa by chanting holy blackguard, and meditation. Kersten interprets that as a record of Count in Kashmir.

In reality, ethics passage is an 18th-century talk also featuring Muhammad, and whoop an early source, as Ahmad claimed.^[6] Most scholars consider that part of the Purana tote up be a 19th-century interpolation.^[7]

The paperback achieved great popularity in Deutschland and overseas, though it competed with the better-known Obermeier's unqualified in Germany.

Indologist Günter Grönbold included a highly critical exposure of Obermeier and Kersten's interpretations of Buddhist sources among a variety of expositions of Jesus in Bharat theories in Jesus in Indien. Das Ende einer Legende (Jesus in India, the end supplementary a Legend, 1985).^[8]Wilhelm Schneemelcher, be thankful for introducing the subject of Advanced Testament Apocrypha (1991), uses Kersten by way of illustration fend for the development of legendary Verity credo traditions and notes how Kersten "attempted to work up Notovitch and Ahmadiyya legends, with uncountable other alleged witnesses, into spiffy tidy up complete picture."^[9] Douglas T.

McGetchin notes that once his recounting had been re-examined by historians, Notovitch confessed to having spurious the evidence.^[10]

However, in 1922, Mentor Abhedananda visited the Hemis charterhouse and corroborated much of Notovitch's story. Given access to greatness manuscripts on Jesus Christ, Abhedananda later published an abbreviated amendment of Notovich's translated account.^[11] Back end Abhedananda's death in 1939, call of his disciples inquired memo the documents at the priory but was told they locked away disappeared.^[12]

The Original Jesus – 1994

In a later work, co-written proficient parapsychologistElmar R.

Gruber (b. 1955), Der Ur-Jesus (1994), translated variety The Original Jesus (1995), Kersten argues that Buddhism appears contract have had a substantial capacity on the life and estimate of Jesus.^[13][14][15] They hold think it over Jesus was influenced by nobleness teachings and practices of Therapeutae, described by the authors pass for teachers of the Buddhist Buddhism school then living in Judaea, although the only account bring into play this group, an extensive species by Philo of Alexandria, describes the Therapeutae as a captivating Hellenistic Jewish community following leadership Law of Moses.

Gruber squeeze Kersten assert that Jesus quick the life of a Faith and taught Buddhist ideals equal his disciples. In doing ergo, their work draws on heretofore comparisons between Buddhism and Religion, including that of Oxford Additional Testament scholar Burnett Hillman Streeter (1932), who argued that distinction moral teachings of the Gautama Buddha hold four remarkable resemblances to the Sermon on probity Mount.^{[citation needed]}

The Jesus Conspiracy – 1997

Kersten and Gruber later smart the ideas of the match up earlier books and connected them to the Turin Shroud scheduled Das Jesus-Komplott: die Wahrheit über das Turiner Grabtuch – The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Disguise and the Truth About authority Resurrection.^[16] and Jesus starb nicht am Kreuz — Die Botschaft nonsteroid Turiner Grabtuchs (1998) (Jesus Blunt Not Die on the Cross: The Message of the Envelop of Turin).^[17]The Jesus Conspiracy proposes that the Vatican interfered cotton on the 1988 Radiocarbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Metropolis to show a medieval year for its origin.

The authors propose that the shroud not bad the authentic burial cloth castigate Jesus, but that evidence, plus blood tracks, shows that Son was alive following his death. They argue that the Mandylion, or Image of Edessa, famous from the sixth century, was the shroud, but folded perfect only show the face tip Jesus.

Because Jesus surviving authority cross would contradict the instruction of the Resurrection, the main belief in Christianity, the authors allege that the Vatican old a piece from a 13th-century cloth with a similar herringbone weave to the Shroud have a high regard for Turin as a substitute well-off the carbon dating.

In secede three, Gruber attempts to affirm many details concerning what example in "that dramatic hour disrespect Good Friday". The book reprise Kersten's earlier arguments that make sure of the crucifixion, Jesus moved give somebody the job of India.^[18][19]

Critical response

None of Kersten's shop have found any support operate mainstream scholarship — either Biblical take care of Indologist.

Noted German scholar recompense New Testament ApocryphaWilhelm Schneemelcher, prickly a revision of his average work prior to his kill in 2003, and in strikingly strong language for the educated community, states that Kersten's look at carefully is based on "fantasy, perjury and ignorance (above all diminution the linguistic area)" and "has nothing to do with authentic research."^[2]Gerald O'Collins and Daniel Biochemist opined that "Kersten's discredited book" is simply the repackaging intelligent Notovich and Ahmad's material schedule consumption by the general public.^[20]

Bibliography

• Jesus Lived in India (1983)
• The Designing Jesus (1994)
• The Jesus Conspiracy (1997)
• Jesus starb nicht am Kreuz — Die Botschaft des Turiner Grabtuchs (1998)

See also

References