Did Jesus visit Jagannath Temple of Puri? [closed]

Question

Levi H. Dowling wrote the book The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ.
The title of section VI is: Life and Works of Jesus in India, here is an extract:

"And Jesus was accepted as a pupil in the temple Jagannath; and here learned the Vedas and the Manic laws." section VI, chapter 21, verse 19

Mark Mason wrote the book In Search of the Loving God, here is an extract:

Sri Daya Mata, president of Self-Realization Fellowship, went to India in 1959, and in an interview with one of India's great spiritual leaders, His Holiness Sri Bharati Krishna Tirtha, the Shankaracharya of Puri, she mentioned that she had been told that Jesus "spent some of his life in India, in association with her illumined sages. His Holiness replied, 'That is true. I have studied ancient records in the Puri Jagannath Temple archives confirming those facts. He was known as "Isha," and during part of his time in India he stayed in the Jagannath Temple. When he returned to his part of the world, he expounded the teachings that are known today as Christianity.

Did Jesus really visit Jagannath Temple of Puri?

Remark: The two quotes above are not proofs of such a visit, but just clues.

Are there published "ancient records in the Puri Jagannath Temple archives confirming those facts"?

Answer 1

Yeah Jesus did visited Jagannath Temple. The ancient text in the temple mentioned a foreigner to be a pupil of Hindu Gurus.

What is to be noted here is that, In India his Hindu masters initiated Jesus into yoga and the highest spiritual life, giving him the spiritual name “Isha” (from 'Ishvar') which is a descriptive title often applied to Gods.

Zohar (2:188a-b) a compilation of ancient Jewish mystical traditions and the major text of the Jewish Kabbalah, contains the following incident regarding the knowledge of an illumined rabbi concerning the religion of India and the Vedic religious rite known as the sandhya, which is an offering of prayers at dawn and sunset for enlightenment:

“Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Hiyya were walking on the road. While they were walking, night fell; they sat down. While they were sitting, morning began to shine; they rose and walked on. Rabbi Hiyya said, ‘See, the face of the East, how it shines! Now all the children of the East [in India], who dwell in the mountains of light [the Himalayas], are bowing down to this light, which shines on behalf of the sun before it comes forth, and they are worshipping it.…Now you might say: ‘This worship is in vain!’ but since ancient, primordial days they have discovered wisdom through it.”

According to Swami Nirmalananda Giri (see here):

“In the nineteen-fifties, the former head of the Govardhan Math, and head of the entire monastic Swami Order of Shankaracharya, Jagadguru Bharat Krishna Tirtha, claimed that he had discovered “incontrovertible historical evidence” that Jesus had lived in the Govardhan Math as well as in other places of India. He was writing a book on the subject, but died before it could be finished. Unfortunately the fate of his manuscript and research is presently unknown.”

Moreover, it is generally supposed that at the end of his ministry in Israel Jesus ascended into heaven. But Saint Matthew and Saint John, the two Evangelists that were eye-witnesses of his departure, do not even mention such a thing, for they knew that he returned to India after departing from them.

Now, about some people in Jesus' period.

Apollonius of Tyna (born c. 4 AD), the great saint of the Greek world, was a teacher, a great ascetic, a celebate, a vegetarian. These practices were UNCOMMON among Greeks who practiced Pederast Homosexuality at the time. But on the other hand such practices were not only VERY common in India, but were a way of living of Hindus. A greek sophist of the Roman imperial period, Philostratus has devoted two and a half of the eight books of his Life of Apollonius (1.19–3.58) to the description of a journey of his hero to India. So its clear that traveling to India for things like medical treatment, education (Pythagoras traveled to India for treatment of his Epilepsy, thats when he came across the advanced ideas of Geometry taught in Indian 'Gurukuls'. Whatever that has been attributed to him is actually Indian knowledge.)

Because of Apollonius' Yogic skills, Apuleius ranked him with Moses and Zoroaster. Lampridius tells us that Alexander Severus included Apollonius with Abraham, and Orpheus amongst his household Gods. For this very fact, he became a hated name among the Christians (here, the followers of Jesus and NOT the Church). In their struggle against Christianity, Pagan philosophers often invoked his name. Hierocles, proconsul of Bithynia under Diocletian (c. 305) cited Apollonius' miracles to show that miracles were not the peculiar property of Christianity. Orthodox Christians could not believe that there could be such a great ethical and divine character outside the Christian fold, apparently OUT OF JEALOUSY.

So when it was so common and popular at the time, for the Europeans to travel to India for enlightenment, its not far fetched to believe Jesus must have got his wisdom from Hindu Gurus in India like others at the time. In fact, the Yogic miracles he showed were COMMON ATTRIBUTES of ascetics in ancient India. I mean even today there are ascetics in Himalayas who have great Yogic power.

Jesus was a GREAT ascetic Yogi, trained in India.

Answer 2

Are there published "ancient records in the Puri Jagannath Temple archives confirming those facts"?

Nope. None to speak of. Claims of Jesus in India go back to the 19th century. See the associated Wikipedia article. Nicolas Notovich admitted his story was a hoax, and Dowling's source for his own book was "channeling." See Robert Van Voorst's comment (quoted in the article):

Jesus' putative travels to India and Tibet, his grave in Srinagar, Kashmir, and so forth. Scholarship has almost unanimously agreed that these references to Jesus are so late and tendentious as to contain virtually nothing of value for understanding the Historical Jesus.

Answer 3

There is no biblical support for the idea that Jesus meditated in India before beginning His ministry in Israel. Nor is there any evidence that He left the land of His birth at any time to go to India or anywhere else. Of the four Gospel accounts, only two mention the birth of Jesus (Matthew and Luke), and only one (Luke) mentions anything about Jesus' life prior to His beginning His three-year ministry in Israel. So, from His birth until 12 years of age, the Bible tells us very little about what happened in Jesus’ life. And from ages 12 to 30, we know nothing. This has led many to speculate as to what Jesus did during those intervening years.

There are many who are convinced that between the ages of 12-29, Jesus travelled . These sorts of claims are presented in the film The Lost Years of Jesus. They are also made in Shirley Maclaine's Out on a Limb, Janet Bock's The Jesus Mystery, Elizabeth Clare Prophet's The Lost Years of Jesus and Holger Kirsten's Jesus Lived in India. Edgar Cayce the trance medium, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and Sai Baba have also claimed that Jesus went to India.

The Life of St Issa

The claim that Jesus spent his missing years in India originated with Nicholas Notovitch's The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ in 1894. Notovitch, a Russian journalist, claimed he had found documents in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery which described Jesus' life. In these scrolls Jesus was known as St Issa. At the age of 12 he left Jerusalem for India where he studied the Vedas. He was welcomed by the outcasts for his wisdom and miracles but the Brahman priests grew jealous and sent St Issa away. He journeyed to Kashmir and Tibet. In Tibet he mastered the Buddhist Scriptures and then returned to Palestine to preach.

Answer 4

Jaganatha is actually a Buddhist deity, may be a preceptor of the Buddhist pantheon. According to common perception worshipers were regarded as Brahmin priests. But about the evidence as claimed to have seen by Bharati Krushna Tirtha cannot be ignored because we do not have access into the corresponding temple record. It is a fact that then during the life time of Jesus Puri was an important seat of knowledge and spiritualism. And the place had foreign connection both in the east and middle east from 261 BC and then Puri was a famous trade center too which has been testified from discovery of Kushan coins. Thus historically visit of Jesus cannot be regarded as mere hypothesis. Yet scholars are attempting to collect striking evidences.