WERE JESUS’ TEACHINGS THE PRODUCT OF INDIAN OR EGYPTIAN GURUS?

Many skeptics attempt to degrade Jesus’ teachings, claiming that He had derived them during His alleged sojourn in India or Egypt. However, I don’t think that he was able to assimilate much of the Egyptian religion during His sojourn there as a 2-3 year old, especially under the care of His parents. As far as His subsequent trip to India to sit under the Gurus, this is without any substantiating evidence. Nevertheless, skeptics claim that Jesus’ teachings of His death and resurrection were borrowed from pagan religions.

In contrast, perhaps the most famous Bible critic of our days, Bart Ehrman, the agnostic and head of the Dept. of Religion at North Carolina University, also regards such allegations as baseless:

• The idea of Jesus’ resurrection did not derive from pagan notions of a god simply being reanimated. It derived from Jewish notions of resurrection as an eschatological event in which God would reassert his control over the world.

• There is no unambiguous evidence that any pagans prior to Christianity believed in dying and rising gods, let alone that it was a widespread view held by lots of pagans in lots of times and places. (Christian Research Journal, Vol.39/Number 05, 22)

Instead, we consistently find that Jesus declared that His teachings were predicated on the Hebrew Scriptures:

·       “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.” (John 12:49-50 ESV)

He never gave the slightest indication that anything He had taught was contrary to the revelation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Instead, He castigated those who failed to abide in these Scriptures (Matthew 5:17-19; 22:29).

For Jesus, the Word of His Father was not just a matter of what His Father had directly revealed to Him but also included the Scriptures:

·       But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4; quoting from Deut. 8)

Jesus even had argued that His death and resurrection were found in the Hebrew Scriptures:

·       And he said to them [on the Emmaus road], “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:25-27)

·       Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.” (Luke 24:44-46)

This leaves little room for the influence of the pagans. However, allegations of pagan or even political influences refuse to go away. Therefore, the Church needs to address them.

I had been devastated by claims that the Torah was not written by Moses but by a series of editors, cutting and pasting from various documents to justify their own political claims. As a result, I almost ceased reading the Scriptures. However, one very scholarly but dry book – Survey of Old Testament Introductions – restored them to me by conclusively refuting this theory.

We cannot ultimately believe in what has been “shown” to be unbelievable, and the secular world knows this. Bart Ehrman also revels in the fact that many Christians continue to claim to have faith, but their lives show little indication of this.