Jesus In India — Page 69
CHAPTER ONE 59 account of the ascent to heaven. ☆1 Even if there had been such an account, it would have lacked credibility, for making mountains out of molehills and magnifying small things into big ones, seems to be a habit with the evangelists. For example, if one of them happens to remark that Jesus, the Messiah, is the Son of God, another sets about making him into a full-fledged God, the third invests him with power over the whole universe, and the fourth bluntly says that he is everything, and that there is no other God besides him. In short, exaggerations carry them too far. The vision in which the dead were seen to come out of their graves and make for the city is a case in point. One can notice that this vision had been given a literal interpretation, so far as to say that the dead had actually risen out of their graves, had come to the city of Jerusalem, and even visited their relatives. Consider how an entire crow has been fabricated from a single feather, and that single crow did not so remain, for from it were made to fly hundreds of thousands of crows! Where such exaggeration is employed, how can one arrive at the truth! It is also worth considering that these Gospels, which are called the Books of God, contain preposter- ous claims, such as that if all the works of Jesus, the Messiah, had been committed to writing, there would not be room enough in the whole world to accommodate them!² Can such exaggeration be the way of honesty and truth? If indeed the works of Jesus, the Messiah, were so limitless and exceeded all boundaries, how could they have been compressed into a meagre period of three 1. No one makes the statement that I bear witness to this and that my eyes have seen that he did bodily ascend to the heavens. (Author) 2. John 21:25 [Publisher]