Is Jesus an avatar of Lord Vishnu?

Question

I have heard that Jesus is an avatar of Lord Vishnu (or even a reincarnation of Krishna).

Is this true?

Answer 1

According to Bhavishya Purana, Jesus is reincarnation of one of the greatest Bhaktas of lord Vishnu known as Dhruva Rishi. That's why he was born out of kumari garbha (virgin's womb) under Pole star (Dhruva Tara in Hindi). Bhavishya purana addresses Jesus reincarnation of Dhruva Rishi as Kumarigarbhasambhavaam(born from a virgin Kumari).

Bhavishya purana describing about Jesus Christ.

Here is some of the excerpt from above source:

Dr. Vedavyas, a research scholar with a doctorate in Sanskrit, discusses some important prophecies from the Bhavishya Purana, which he says dates back to 3000 B.C. He states that one prophecy describes the future appearance of Isha putra, the son (putra) of God (Isha)(Jesus Christ), born of an unmarried woman named Kumari (Mary) Garbha Sambhava. He would visit India at the age of thirteen and go to the Himalayan Mountains and do tapas or penance to acquire spiritual maturity under the guidance of rishis and siddha-yogis before going back to Palestine to preach to his people. So, if Jesus was trained by the sages of India, this would explain why he was able to perform various miracles (siddhas). It also explains why there are so many philosophical similarities between early Christianity and Hinduism.

Note: Bhavishya Purana is no longer in yathaswaroop (as it was) nd Bhavishya Purana is a controversial subject and is not considered genuine (as it was written), More on this subject

I don't mean any Offence on (towards) any Religion or anyone's religious believes. I am just expressing what I came to know when I searched for Jesus in Sanatan Dharma Scriptures.

So as a concluding statement, it is up to your buddhi/viveka (intellect) to decide what is correct or incorrect, and seeing the proofs I say JESUS WAS/MIGHT-BE A BHAKTA NOT AVATAR OF Shriman Narayana.

Answer 2

Jesus is not an avatar of Vishnu. Avatar is not same as prophet. An avatar is significantly different from a prophet in that every human can attain the consciousness of an avatar while a prophet is a "chosen" special person whose consciousness cannot be attained by humans.

One cannot consider Jesus to be an avatar because he solves a different problem than Vishnu. He 'redeems' humans from their originally sinful nature which Vishnu doesn't. See my answer here for the details.

Coming to scriptural 'proofs', quoting from this weblog:

Evidence based on the Bhavishya Purana

The following verse appears to predict Jesus Christ. There are also many other verses predicting Jesus.

isha muurtirt-dradi

praptaa nityashuddha

sivamkari ishamasihah iti ca

mama nama pratishthitam

“Having placed the eternally pure and auspicious form of the Supreme Lord in my heart, O protector of the earth planet, I preached these principles through the mlecchas’ own faith and thus my name became ‘isha-masiha’ (Jesus the Messiah).”

This may at first appear to be remarkable. The Wikipedia article shows that the same purana also remarkably predicts Queen Victoria. Other sources show that it even used words in English (‘Sunday’, ‘February’ and ‘Sixty’), a language that would not exist in any recognisable form for over a thousand years from the supposed date of this document. It also predicted the East India Company and Mugal Rule. This would appear to be a remarkably predictive document indeed!

Unfortunatley there are a number of things that make it look much more likely to be tempered with. Firstly, no editions of this purana dating from before British rule can be found. Secondly the predictions stop at 1900, so there are no predictions of events occurring after the first recorded edition of this document. Steven Knapp points out that there is documented evidence of Christians plotting to write such false documents:

In 1784, the famous Indologist Sir William Jones wrote the following letter to Sir Warren Hastings, Governor General of India, confirming our suspicions that this was indeed part of their program:

“As to the general extension [spreading] of our pure faith [Christianity] in Hindoostan [India] there are at present many sad obstacles to it… We may assure ourselves, that Hindoos will never be converted by any mission from the church of Rome, or from any other church; and the only human mode, perhaps, of causing so great a revolution, will be to translate into Sanscrit… such chapters of the Prophets, particularly of ISAIAH, as are indisputably evangelical, together with one of the gospels, and a plain prefatory discourse, containing full evidence of the very distant ages, in which the predictions themselves, and the history of the Divine Person (Jesus) is predicted, were severally made public and then quietly to disperse the work among the well-educated natives.” (Asiatic Researches Vol. 1. Published 1979, pages 234-235. First published 1788).

Over all I think we can assume that this is more likely to be a forgery than a genuine prediction, though there is evidence that the Bhavishya Purana did exist historically and it is likely that it is a genuine document that has been added to and altered rather than a complete forgery.

Just suppose however that the sages really could predict the life of Jesus, Muhammad and the rise of the British Empire (but not be able to see a few decades later to its decline). Would that mean that we should become Christians? More likely it would validate the mystical powers of the Rishis. If we are to believe this part of the Hindu Scriptures then surely we should believe all! In this unlikely event we should see Jesus as an incarnation of God, but also believe the other predictions such as Krishna, samsara and reincarnation. It seems to me that this was not only an attempt at forgery but a futile one at that.

Answer 3

Yes and No.

The concept of Avatar is very different from the concept of God in Christianity, which is based on exclusivity, history-centrism etc.

"Christians believe Jesus alone shares complete bodily and spiritual identity with God. Attempts are often made to describe Jesus as an avatar, a Hindu term. The word 'avatar' in Sanskrit means 'descent into visible form' and refers to God descending on the earth in a human (or even non-human) form to lead us to a higher stage of perfection.

There are cognate meanings here. In both contexts, though God is omnipotent and can do and undo everything, yet he descends in a visible form in order to operate within human laws which are his own creations. By achieving an inner victory or a new realization, especially in human form, the avatar creates the capacity in consciousness for every human to achieve a similar victory or realization. In this sense, an avatar is a kind of incarnation in the same way that Jesus is in Christianity. He role-plays with deliberate and voluntary self-limitation. The avatar has infinite knowledge which he can choose to access, though ordinarily he does not, or else does so selectively. All this would apply to Jesus during his earthly life.

But the differences are insurmountable given the importance of original sin and the role of Jesus as Saviour. Antonio de Nicolas has given one of the finest explanations of the key distinction between Jesus the Saviour and the avatar of Hinduism. He explains Jesus as follows:

The Savior image [is the mediator] between God and the sinful race of humans. We know this image also as the scapegoat, and the Substitute King: someone chosen for the occasion to be the victim of the moment for the salvation of the rest of the community. He gains immortal divinity, saves other humans, brings his Father into the scene, his followers name a Church after him, and these same followers establish a narrative, a theology, and ethics based on principles of behavior… The room left for individuals to improve their spiritual knowledge in this scheme of Savior/sinner is not great, we are, after all, sinners, born in sin, and our individual salvation is only a gift, provided we follow the rules of ethics, and not the result of any superior knowledge of God or deviation from this scheme. Judaism, Islam and Christianity are the followers and founders of the model. God and the rules of ethics come from the outside and their mission in life is to bring all humans to surrender to this model, either through conversion or force. The individual, in this model, is an individual only in name, for after all, individual perfection consists in total surrender to the model, in letting the model become embodied in the subjects in such a way that the model, rather than the individuals, acts through each complying individual … Wherever there is violence, the Savior model is at work.

But the avatar is different:

The Avatar model, on the other hand, has a larger range of human development than the Savior's, from the Language of possibilities of the Asat (Chaos) where all geometries of possible human forms are waiting to be born as heroes, gods, humans etc., to the Language of Sacrifice and Images, where all forms are to be sacrificed … The “gods are this side of creation and they are interior embodiments of a multiplicity of brains at work. Inner acts, rather than names, are at work. These acts are so efficient that they may create new 'gods,' new centers of action, to guide humans to make wise decisions. There are no a priori norms of ethics to accommodate to.

Christianity's exclusivist claim that Jesus was the only incarnation is unacceptable to the dharmic religions. In the dharmic tradition, each avatar comes to establish the eternal truth anew in response to the need of the time. To accept Jesus as avatar on terms established by Christianity would entail granting him exclusive status; this, in turn, would invalidate all other avatars, such as Krishna, etc.

As Sri Aurobindo explains:

India has from ancient times held strongly a belief in the reality of the Avatara, the descent into form, the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view of life and taken firm root in the consciousness of the people. All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be except as either a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore every conscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the apparent finiteness of name and form. But it is a veiled manifestation and there is a gradation between the supreme being of the Divine and the consciousness shrouded partly or wholly by ignorance of self in the finite.

This God-as-Cosmos is what we call 'the world', and its divine play evolves into the immense diversity of forms; hence, the human is in fact God-as-human and no less. Cosmic evolution is the self-unveiling of Di“vine Consciousness. This manifestation has a purpose, and its truths are expressed in the form of multiple lines or trajectories, such as: peace, harmony, power, battle-and-conquest, knowledge-and-illumination, beauty, joy, and so on. Sri Aurobindo explains that when God-as-human 'knows itself and acts within the frame of the mental being and the appearance of birth, that is the height of the conditioned manifestation; it is the full and conscious descent of the Godhead, it is the Avatara'.

For the purpose of creation, the Divine Being assumes several presiding personalities; each oversees the manifestation of particular truths. A given personality may choose to manifest as a full incarnation – in which case it is called an avatar – or as an embodiment of its particular truth – in which case it is called a vibhuti. Thus, avatar is God in visible form, and vibhuti is the manifestation of one or more of his infinite qualities. In other words, an avatar is a vibhuti, but a vibhuti is not necessarily an avatar. For example, Krishna is an avatar as well as a vibhuti, but Arjuna is a vibhuti only. Ushana, the brave king, likewise is a vibhuti.

Unlike prophets, avatars do not serve as intermediaries chosen by God, nor are they absolutely necessary in order for humans to understand God's will in shaping history.”

-Excerpt from the book Being Different by Rajiv Malhotra

Answer 4

This essay answers very well

"Origins of Christianity through their rituals. A rough generic perspective"

Jesus was a yogi, NOT an avatar of any Devas. He was in communion with Gods. He had been cheated by Abraham, the magician who founded the Abrahamic people community and those were before the Jews than the Christians and some group of Muslims.

Jesus was like a kind of Guru of peace through Palestine and Jerusalem and so people killed him.

The Adharmik religions: Christianity, Islam, and jews, were invented through Asuras and Pisachas.

Sources of this part of the answer: many more studies and confirmations from Christianity. Christians Catholics ignore the bible and ignore the Itihasa and Puranas as well. Evangelics tells a set of lies to Iskon which Iskon believe in, in order to get converted Indians.

Know the truths which are bitter but real.

Jesus was a man like Buddha was a man. Jesus death was cruel. The crucifixion. That was pre-existent torture used against political enemies. Why they killed Jesus? Because he was not a good "Christian", in the sense that he wanted Peace and Harmony. Instead, the Pisachas did not want that obviously.

Well, Christians prayed in the catacombs (they prayed the dead bodies) in the times of Constantine the Emperor, who was the first Roman pagan to convert into Christianity and put it as a rule inside the society.

See here: https://www.christianity.com/jesus/early-church-history/early-churches/hiding-and-praising-from-the-catacombs.html

It is narrated in Roman Ancient History, that Constantine's "conversion" was like some sort of "hypnosis" toward an "invisible" entity which progressively guided him to "change".

The result of the conversion was more wars and more bloodshed.

Those people were mostly like Necromancers who preyed on the dead humans, started then to say that "sacrifice of Christ (the messiah = the one who convey a divine message but is a human) blood, can wipe out other people's sins".

The first Christians then started to rebel and many were pagan-Christians in the attempt to save themselves from being Christians. Don't worry, Christians killed them all... Nowadays we must know that the same danger may repeat if we dare rebel again as we did.

Hopefully, many more Europeans are rejecting Christianity. Because their jiva is awakening from this dull sleep.

What is compatible with how a demon with malicious deviated traits would reason is the way of prayer and sin and punishment.

Every time Christians pray for the cross and a dead body crucified over that, they are practicing necromancy and they are unaware of that.

They are asking to a divine GuRu who is dead, let us say, to wash their karmic deeds through his own blood, the fruit of the tortures inflicted to him before his death. In this way, the Christians think to escape the demons (either inner way and outer way). Then they fabricate inside them a world made of sin, fear, suspiciousness, and pain.

So it is completely useless then they after that complain about devil existence.

They used to self inflict physical torture in order to expiate what they call sin. They did in the middle age but they did every time they verbally go against a non-christian.

Only Christians and Muslims invented "conversion" with the swords and the pain, because so much downgraded and barbarian were the people belonging to that era.

These people however now are dead.

Only demons and Gods are immortal, along with Aatmas.

One big mistake of the Christian churchmen is that they interfere with other humans karmas, putting themselves in the wrong way towards the Gods.

After that, they call " pagans" the ones who are attached to the spiritual achievements of the sadhana.

Historically I must also add that:

Abraham warped the name of Brahma and Maa Saraswati became Sara. They were two humans to create a "holy" progeny of human people.

I was born in a Christian Country and I rejected Christian teachings of any sorts after knowing the real things.

Definitely, Evangelics, in particular, are buying Indian and non-Indian Hindu (Sanataani) since a lot of time for power reasons.

I must tell this thing to you because otherwise, you will go on to drink their words, wandering in the Vedas and Puranas.

B. Puranas prophesized that Kali Yuga Adharmic religions would have been Christian and Jews and Islam. And so it is.

Tripura Asuras were the architects of these religions.

Remember very well how the asuras ask the boons to Devas in order to create other faiths and other languages.

Before Sanskrit and Tamil, before Brahmi scripts, there was nearly nothing to communicate certain ideas.

Om - AUM is a syllable coming straight from the Universe.

Amen is a copy of this syllable.

So everything that happened around Christianity and Islam and in those eras was Kali Yugic and so Asuric.

Mahamada (Mohammed) is an illusionist warper of time. It may seem everlasting longer the time of this Yuga even if actually is almost over.

Pisachas are working hard to discourage Sanatana Dharma to rise back again, coincidentally with the end of this Yuga.

But we are almost finishing this period since the level of the consciousness of humans is going on a better road than before.

This answer will be hated by the Abrahmics lovers I know.

But so Itihasa.

Om Namah Shivaya

In my path of detoxification from falsehoods, having helped tons of Hindus to Stay Hindus and do not sell their choice of life, I have been persecuted verbally online and offline by Evangelical "hardcore" fanatics.

Hence I am not feeding all of my sources in here. Here I am going to attach some main sources. I have noticed a certain tendency to menace and censor this topic on the search engines and most common social media platforms. There were historical videos on YouTube describing the History of the Church which had been removed after many people shared those videos, stating irrefutable facts already proved by several years of study. This new millennial process of persecution against the people who refuse to believe in the Christian church must stop. Nobody is insulting no one by narrating back the History.

By the way, whoever is having the same mind can contact me on the given to this platform email.

About the Christian-Muslims Indians: Don't challenge me again. As you can notice, you earn not a thing by menacing me.

SOURCES FOR THIS ANSWER: Some material for the debunkers who want to try to save the appearances: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lCf9Onf98tQ

https://www.gotquestions.org/crucifixion.html

https://www.vyasaonline.com/bhavishya-purana/

https://markhumphrys.com/christianity.killings.html

https://www.academia.edu/36317581/Una_storia_di_visioni_Costantino_e_i_fenomeni_di_contatto_in_prima_persona_col_sovrannaturale [Browse Alessandro Barbero Historian in 2020 you find then everything about him, he is a professor of Ancient and Middle Age History].

https://www.history.com/news/inside-the-conversion-tactics-of-the-early-christian-church

https://www.boloji.com/articles/15273/brahma-and-abraham-part-ii [How for trading reasons Indian and Sumerians got close and after that, the Jews started to call the Brahma "Abraham" is mentioned in here].

https://www.christianity.com/jesus/early-church-history/early-churches/hiding-and-praising-from-the-catacombs.html

https://houseofintuitionla.com/blogs/news/was-jesus-a-yogi-research-reveals-his-true-story

https://swarajyamag.com/culture/how-jesus-as-a-yogi-is-being-used-for-conversion-propaganda

[Either Jesus was a yogini or not, this is not an excuse to invent lies such as he was any avatar. He wasn't. He was a human being. Krishna was NOT any human being like Jesus. Stay Hindu].

I hope that Abrahamic fanatics will not remove these online articles, which state part of the truths around what it is on Christianity.

The proofs that I am right about the menaces that I had received lies down there in the section comment. That is: a user threatened to make me ban from this platform unless I will not erase my answer. I am not going to do that. The user must hope to erase the Internet of the Things and burn the Bibliotheques of the entire world, in order to erase the truth. I hope he won't do that.

My essay here to complete this answer: https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/a/44124/22667

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And why he is not an aavatar?

He was born as a man and it is told that after that he suffered very well, He became a Union with God and so He is in the Kingdom of God sitting down next to God, at his right side to be precise. So there is Father, Son, Holy Spirit all in one.

According to the Christian Theology.

This is completely different than being an aavatar.

Aavatar are Indeed Gods parts of God. That is not the same thing of Transustanziazione of Christ body, which should be that the aatma of that body go to the Loka of the Supreme. This is according to the christians.

But nowadays 2.0 ignorants want that Krsna become Jesus. .... Political ploys ....

Answer 5

Short answer is no he is not and the Jesus of Bible and Jesus of Bhavishya Puran is not same.

I) THE HINDU PERSPECTIVE TO JESUS:

The Bhavishya Puran which is listed under the list of authentic Purans by all the Acharyas of the various ancient sampraday and its authentic version available is the only Hindu scripture to mention Jesus, however as the article progresses we shall find this Jesus is not the of Christianity but this point is entirely for providing the Hindu perspective to Jesus and only that shall be done and this difference cleared in the next point.

The Bhavishya Puran Pratisarga Parv Khand 3 Chapter 2 mentions the incident of King Salivahana meeting Jesus. One thing however must be noted that Jesus is actually never mentioned as Jesus but rather calls himself Isha putra not as only Isha; Isha means God in Sanskrit hence Ishaputra simply means son of God it is an expression not a proper name. One may ask why then I wrote the name Jesus instead of directly mentioning what is stated in the scriptures however that would make the already difficult subject even harder to grasp hence I used the term for ease of the readers. Ishaputra has been described as a white skinned person wearing pure white clothes and seated in yogic posture. The chapter describes the conversation between the king and the yogi where the king asks the yogi about his views on Dharma and his works to which ishaputra replies he was born in the land of mlecchas and ther he established Dharma as much as he could establish which was in alignment with the veidic principles and then came back to Himalayan.

One may ask how a mleccha had Veidic knowledge while only a selected few can study the Vedas however two things must be kept in mind while answering this questions; first the recital of the exact Veda mantras is indeed for a select few however knowledge is not denied to anyone and for this exact purpose were the puranas and Itihasas so that even though everyone can not chant the vedas all may get access to their rules. Secondly knowledge of previous birth can stay in the next birth as well for instance Vidur who was incarnation of Yama himself retained his knowledge of Dharma despite being born to a Shudra woman (Reference: Skand Puran Nagara Khanda Chapter 138-139 and confirmed by the Shankaracharya of Puri Govardhan Matha Shri Nischalanand Swarasatti).

II) MODERN JESUS:

As stated in the earlier point ishaputra was never called Jesus in Hindu scriptures in the first place however just like an impostor copied the description of Buddha from scriptures and corrupted the original doctrines of the Hindu Buddha to create his own cult the same was done in this case. For instance as mentioned already the yogi mentioned in the Bhavishya Puran called himself ishaputra which is a Hindu concept and to which references can be found in the Svetasvatara Upanishad Chapter 2 verse 5 which was copied in the Bible to cite a few references of Jesus stating himself to be son of God are Jhon Chapter 5 verse 30, Jhon Chapter 10 verse 29, Jhon Chapter 12 verse 49, Jhon Chapter 14 verse 24, and Jhon Chapter 14 verse 28 and this instance is used by the Christan missionaries to do a wordplay and appropriate their genocidal warlord as a Hindu yogi appropriated by Hindu scriptures; it must be also noted that the Bible actually has an entire book called Isaiah which is yet another tool of wordplay. Also, the yogi mentioned in the Bhavishya Puran is stated to be white skinned and wearing pure white clothes while we always find the Christan Jesus wearing colorful clothes and often in various skin tones whether black or brown or white as depicted by the confused missionaries who are unsure of the basic appearance of their own prophet though most of the time they portray Jesus in the appearance described in the Bhavishya Puran.

It must also be noted that the yogi who is mentioned in the Bhavishya Puran states he established Dharma in alignment with the principles of the Vedas while the Bible states in Exodus Chapter 20 verse 1-6 and Exodus Chapter 22 verse 20 that only it should be followed in however the Bible is entirely against the principles of the Vedas which is completely opposite of what the Bhavishya Puran states example of which has been given in the next paragraph.

It must be noted that the Vedas declare the Purans to be authentic sources of Dharma to cite a few references to this claim are the Atharva Veda Book 15 Hymn 6 verse 10-12, the Chandogya Upanishad Chapter 7 Section 1 verse 4 and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad Chapter 2 Section 4 verse 10. The puranas are replete with references to idol worship to quote a few instance are the Shiv Mahapuran Vidyeseshwar Samhita Chapters 16, 19-21; the Shrimad Bhagvatam Book 11 Chapter 27 and the entire Skand Puran is full of description of temples where idol worship is practiced. However contrary to this the Bible explicitly forbids idol worship in Exodus Chapter 20 verse 4. This also clears that the "other gods" mentioned in the Exodus Chapter 20 verse 3 actually includes veidic deities in the list which yet again is against the Vedas and hence contradictory to the very basic of the Bhavishya Puran.

Yet another two other factors that are worth of mention in this article are the first council of Nicea and a person named Ceaser Borgia whose identity we shall come to know in the post itself which will give us a better understanding of the subject. The history and significance of the First council of Nicea is not unknown to the Christan world however since the Hindu readers of my article may not be aware of it, it is my duty to inform them. The First council of Nicea was done in a bid to compile the Bible into a proper structured form by the highest esteemed christan clergy of that time and while some controversies remain about its date in some sections of the people, it has been unanimously stated to be 325 AD which gives us the conclusion that the teachings of Jesus were compiled three centuries after his death and may have substantial corruption which has been hinted at in the Bible itself in Deuteronomy Chapter 31 verse 29. The second notable fact is about Ceaser Borgia; Ceaser Borgia was the son of Rodrigo Borgia who later took the name Alexander VI and became the pope, strange thing is before the advent of Ceaser Borgia the Christan cross bore no figure of man and no portrait of Jesus that was made before birth of this man has any resemblance to the paintings we have in our age while in these new paintings Jesus looks exactly like Ceaser Borgia which yet points out at foul play on part of the Christans.

III) CONCLUSION:

The yogi mentioned in the Bhavishya Puran is and Jesus or Isaiah are entirely different. Their birthplace, appearance, their purpose and teachings, all are different. Most importantly the story of crucifixion finds no mention in the Hindu scriptures and the yogi is stated to reside permanently in the Himalaya in full good health while the crucifixion is very famous in the Christian side. The modern day Jesus is a Christan fabrication which tries to steal identity of a yogi mentioned in Hindu scriptures to propagate their anti human teachings what we now call Christianity. What we see in present times as Christianity is a very vile and corrupted doctrine with no connection to the yogi mentioned in the Bhavishya Puran.

JAI VEERBHADRA JAI SHANKARACHARYA

Credits of the writing and compilation belongs: Jalandhar.

Answer 6

It's an emphatic NO that Jesus was not the incarnation of Vishnu. Vishnu is so called by Vedic followers but it is the god almighty which is being called in respective names according to their religions. He is god for everybody. Similarly when a realised soul descends on earth, it has to be in a religion and in a specific place. However the motto of that incarnation is for the benefit of mankind who are in need of it. If I don't want it, fair enough but I have no right to pass any comments on such incarnations.

Answer 7

On the seven ladders of consciousness, elaborated here https://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0 and https://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AF%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%97_%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A4_%E0%A4%AD%E0%A5%82%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%81

(both these articles have clear references).

Avatar descends from top level and is marked by having all powers right from birth.

Yogi/sage/Buddha on the other hand is a soul who has to earn spiritual merit and rise through the ladder.

1. This is fundamentally different in entry.
2. Their purpose and end are different.

Avatar's return to abode. Yogi lands up according to achievements.

In my personal observation, avatar comes when there is "more than" human angle to situation, like a demon with special powers. E.g. Hirankashyapa, Mahishasur, Ravana etc.

Answer 8

Contrary to popular belief avatar are not humans or animals. They r paranormal supernatural energies experienced by advanced tapasvis after activation of kundalini and chakras. Ancients used figures of speech in art and literature and personified concepts. Eg: kurma or tortoise is model for self controlled man. This symbolism is found in many texts like Santi Parva (247.4) of mahabharata. Kurma or Kachhap withdraws limbs into shell like a yogi,renunciate withdraws from world. Prophets r only group leaders of ancient abrahmic nations. There were many groups so many prophets. Not necessarily same as Indian yogi. These r tales cooked up by colonised minds. Scholars say Jesus never existed. Also, it was very common name. Romans ruled Hebrews and punished everyone by crucifixion. Nothing holy, or miraculous about it. Rest is just word salad cooked up by selfish people to manipulate masses, slaves. If real, Jesus would have been a Jew by belief.