How myths are made

Bart Ehrman is James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at U.N.C. Chapel Hill. A leading New Testament scholar, he is the author of over 25 books on the New Testament, including:

• Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
• Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
• Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

After 2000 years, with only an oral tradition for the first four decades after Jesus' crucifixion and mysterious disappearance, finding the real historical Jesus is obviously difficult if not impossible. What is less obvious, though, is why it is that after only 45 years of Meher Baba's passing, as old memories begin to dim and new stories and reports begin to emerge, finding the real historical Meher Baba is already becoming increasingly difficult.

In scholarship, to put quotes around words implies they are accurate (especially if they are taken from a source written in the same language). Any revisions are put into brackets. But for some reason, when it comes to Baba's words, this practice is frequently ignored. The words are simply altered and we have no explanation why. We find numerous versions of Baba's words, surprisingly even when they were originally jotted down in English as most of the early diaries kept of Baba's life were.

Consider these two versions of what Baba said in 1925 about the true facts of Jesus' life.

1986 version:

There is one secret about Jesus which the Christians do not know. When Jesus was crucified, he did not die; he entered the state of Nirvikalp Samadhi (the "I Am God" state without bodily consciousness). On the third day, he again became conscious of his body and he traveled secretly in disguise eastward (with some apostles) to India. This was called Jesus' resurrection.

After reaching India, he traveled farther east to Rangoon in Burma where he remained for some time. He then went north to Kashmir where he settled. When his work was finished on earth, he dropped his body and entered Nirvikalp Samadhi permanently.

Saints in India have verified these facts about Jesus' travels. Mankind will soon become aware of the true life about Jesus.

2012 version:

There is one secret about Jesus which the Christians do not know. When Jesus was crucified, he did not die; he entered the state of nirvikalp samadhi [the "I Am God" state without bodily consciousness]. On the third day, he again became conscious of his body and he traveled secretly in disguise eastward (with some apostles) to India. This was called Jesus' "resurrection."

After reaching India, he traveled farther east to Rangoon in Burma where he remained for some time. He then went north to Kashmir where he settled. When his work was finished on earth, he dropped his body and entered nirvikalp samadhi. He was buried in Kashmir, and his grave can still be seen there.

Saints in India have verified these facts about Jesus' travels. Mankind will soon become aware of them.

It is ironic that the very habit of scriptural revision that gradually caused the confusion over Jesus' life that Baba is talking about, is currently being applied to his clarification of those events. (Note: I am not pointing to one particular editor as the revisionist, but clearly someone has altered it, either in the first or second version.)

There are other features that caused the true story of Jesus to be lost that continue to be practiced.

Consider the subtitle of one of Ehrman's books:

Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.

There are many books containing Baba's life and words where the author is not actually the author - a habit that we will see is traditional to religions. Consider, for example, the following editorial note at the bottom of the page in Bhau Kalchuri's Awakenings where the author's other works are listed:

While compiling this list for Awakenings, Bhauji said, "How many books have I written? How did I do it? Even I do not know."

This seems an odd comment to put beneath such a list. It implies that Bhau did not know how many books he had "written," perhaps because he didn't himself write them all. For instance Bhau wrote, from Baba's instructions, a biography of Baba in Hindi verse immediately after Baba dropped his body. This was then translated into English by Feram Workingboxwala. The current English Lord Meher, that is 20 volumes and over six thousand pages, was compiled from diaries and new interviews by his son-in-law David Fenster and others. It is not clear what portions remain from the original Hindi verse written by Bhau.

This is not a new religious practice. Not only were the four gospels of the Christian Bible (traditionally attributed to four apostles of Jesus) written by anonymous scribes who were not witnesses to his life, but the authorship of the Hindu Mahabharata (which in English is 13,000 pages and 19 volumes), while traditionally attributed to saint Vyasa, is believed to have been the work of many writers.

But then the question arises, what is the reason that this habit must be borrowed from these primitive times? One intelligent person who is familiar with such matters theorizes that the Avatar must throw in a monkey wrench. For what reason I have no idea. Baba once said that the lives of the Avatars in time become legends, then myths, and finally no longer even believed.

Recent events suggest that we have already entered into this period, or were already in it, where his life begins to be merged with legend, and one can no longer separate what we in the West call 'literal fact' from 'fiction.' The East, as our own ancient forebears in the West, the Greeks, did also once long ago, sit much more comfortably where such notions of fact and myth converge. To read an ancient Greek "history," one cannot separate myth from fact -- mythic gods enter straight into the story. Today, we still argue over whether Greek ancient accounts were myth or reality, yet they still affect our imaginations deeply, such as the fabulous Atlantis myth conceived by Plato - a story that begins about gods dividing up the earth into continents.

So let us return to the story of Jesus. I did not always know that this account by Meher Baba, told by him in 1925, is really a traditional Indian belief. It was not Baba's creation; he merely repeats it. His prediction that the world would come to know this story (whether fact as we Westerners now conceive the term, or simply another myth of interior importance and meaning) has turned out to be prophetic. While few in the West knew of this story prior to Andreas Kaiser's 1977 book Jesus died in Kashmir and Holger Kersten's 1981 bestseller Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life Before and After the Crucifixion (originally in German), today one finds the internet brimming with such accounts in English. Even more recently Paul David's 2008 documentary film, Jesus in India: The Movie, has brought this concept to the world. In fact even the BBC has done a documentary on it. This concept has so reached the world outside India (true to Baba's words) that the BBC News has since reported tourists flocking to Kashmir.

Why, there is even a Wikipedia article on the theory, that explicity mentions Meher Baba. (In case anyone's wondering, no I didn't write it.) There is a website titled simply tombofjesus.com, which mentions Baba's remark.

So in the end, what do we know of Baba and his words? Probably enough. And we could even argue that there is a right story for everyone, as people will tend to believe what works for their own spiritual life. External facts do not always jive with internal realities. And that is the only reality that, in the final calculation, will wind up mattering. Perhaps that is the purpose of Baba's monkey wrench – to keep one searching and never finding, until one's search takes him to the Real, where he will find he never traveled at all.

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Other videos:

Jesus in India the Movie (8 min. clip from film)
JESUS IN INDIA - Mystery of Jesus' death on the Cross (13 minutes)

There are in fact dozens of documentaries and books on the topic of Jesus in India.