Jesus Christ and Gandhi on This Christmas
Posted : December 25, 2006 at 5:57 am [IST]
On this holy day, I came across two stories that try to change the prevailing notions about the two great persons that the world produced.
The Times of India published a story by David Leafe, ‘Did Jesus have a secret family?’, from Daily Mail on December 24,2006.
Deep in the Judean desert, in a remote part of the Holy Land that has changed little since Biblical times, stands an ancient Greek Orthodox monastery with a highly unusual portrait of the Holy Family in its chapel. Showing young Jesus being carried on the shoulder of Joseph, while his mother Mary rides behind them. Next to Jesus, Mary and Joseph is a mysterious fourth figure - a young man with a golden halo who is wearing a simple dark robe and carrying his belongings on a stick. is name is James and, a controversial Channel 4 documentary to be screened on Christmas Day has made a story out of that. According to the programme, Jesus did have a hidden family. Not a wife and daughter, but brothers and sisters: James, Joses, Simon, Jude (sometimes referred to as Judas), Salome and young Mary. These siblings apparently played a key role in founding Christianity, but their teachings proved too dangerous for the church. The documentary claims the church tried to eradicate them from history by rewriting Christ’s story, fabricating his birthplace, falsely crediting him with the Lord’s Prayer and inventing the idea that his mother Mary remained a virgin lifelong.
Dr Robert Beckford, a committed Christian and reader in theology at Oxford Brookes University is the author of the programme. According to Dr Beckford, the Bible supports his arguments.The St Gerasimos monastery houses that intriguing painting of the Holy Family that dates back many hundreds of years and clearly shows the relationship of James to Jesus. Dr Beckford believes that the early clerics suppressed such portraits because they knew these were Jesus’s full-blood brothers and sisters. The same censorship is apparent in the Gospels. Both Matthew and Mark mention Jesus’s family briefly, but although the Gospel of Luke drew heavily on these earlier works, it does not mention any other children of Mary and Joseph. Dr Beckford maintains that the reasons for this censorship can be found in a vicious power struggle among the early Christians in the years after Christ’s death in approximately 33AD. The Gospel of John suggests that Jesus asked his disciple Peter to take care of his flock and, indeed, it is Peter who is traditionally regarded as the first leader of the Christian church.
And then Mr. Singh passed on to me last evening the latest ‘Outlook’ that has a story by Rajmohan Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, Bapu’s Human Tryst’. It deals with the passionate love relationship the Mahatma had with a fiery beauty from Bengal called Sarladevi.
It was the one relationship in his life that even a compulsive confessor like Gandhi barely spoke about, keeping her deliberately out of his otherwise candid autobiography. His grandson reconstructs the story in his forthcoming biography, ‘Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire.’
Why are these stories written? Does it serve any purpose? The views may be inferences from some circumstantial evidences in letters and painting, but may not be the truth. Even what the eyes see many times and try to infer or conclude are not truths. Are these stories created to get a fame to become a thinker who went out of the traditionally accepted notions? Why should we hurt the feelings of millions and millions of human beings who worship them as lords?
- Indra
Category: Religious/Social issues |
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