Jesus In India — Page 71
CHAPTER ONE 61 the blessing of thinking good. Nevertheless, this example can be of no benefit to others. In short, these Gospels are full of material which shows that they have not preserved their original form, or that their writers were other than the disciples or their pupils. For example, can this statement from the Gospel of Matthew: 'And this is well known among the Jews till today’¹ be properly and cor- rectly said to have been written by Matthew? Does it not show that the writer of this Gospel of Matthew was some other person, who lived at a time when Matthew had already died? Then, in this same Gospel of Matthew in Chapter 28, verses 12-13 it is written: And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, Saying, 'Say ye, his disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept. Notice how childish and meaningless these statements are. If it is meant by this that the Jews wanted to conceal the rising of Jesus, the Messiah, from the dead, and have, therefore, bribed the soldiers so that this great miracle should not become generally known, why was it that Jesus, the Messiah, whose duty it was to proclaim this miracle among the Jews, kept it a secret and forbade even others to disclose it? If it is said that he was afraid of being caught, I would say, that when the decree of God Almighty, had descended upon him once and for all, and he had, after suffering death, come to life again, assuming a glorious body, what fear did he now have of the Jews? Surely, the Jews could not now have any 1. Matthew 28:15 [Publisher]