Deliverance from the Cross — Page 132
had heard of them several times, but considered that they were probably people who had been converted by European missionaries from Eastern Persia, or else that they were a relic of the time when Herat had been a flourishing bishopric of the Nestorian rite, before the Arabs conquered Persia in the seventh and eighth centuries, But, from their own accounts and what I could observe, they seemed to come from some much older source. . . . . . . There must be about a thousand of these Christians. Their chief is the Abba Yahiyya (Father John), who can recite the succession of teachers through nearly sixty generations to Isa, son of Mary, of Nazara, the Kashmiri. According to these people, Jesus escaped from the cross, was hidden by friends, was helped to flee to India, and settled in Kashmir, where he is revered as an ancient teacher, Yuz Asaf. It is from this period of the supposed life of Jesus that these people claim to have got their message. I had several conversations with the Abba; though, not unnaturally if his story was true, there were few points on Christian doctrine, as we know it today, that he could recognise. The Abba lived on a farm, and like all the Christians says that their teacher stipulated that his followers should always have a worldly vocation. Jesus, according to this community, was a carpenter and also a shepherd. 132