Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 234
It was not until later that I grasped the impact and extent of the Nestorian Church on the history of Asia and could admire the Mongol Nestorians who tried to take Jerusalem for Christianity in the "Crusade of the yellow" AD. 1259. As a further step I learned more about the sociology of the crusades: not only rich gentry and hierarchy took part in them, but a great burden was put on an immense mass of simple and poor believers. The cruel fight being ended, the individual members of the crusade had opportunity to learn different views about Christ than their own dogmatic ones. Just for the eastern Christian Jesus was more a man than God. For some Christian heretics he was only a man. Following the Kinitic creed he was their progeny and had some share in Judas' suicide. In Islam he was a man, a Prophet and a forerunner of Muhammad. The crusaders learnt from Christian heretics of more different aspects of this wonderful character. It is plain that the humiliating traits and stains had to be shifted from Jesus on to a scape-goat. In the medieval Europe naturally and only on to a Jew. This is why the "travelling Jew", originally being the travelling prophet Isa. appeared in Europe with the end of the crusades. IV The last point of my paper concerns the relation of Jesus to Buddhism. A certain similarity between the Christian and the Buddhfr,t movements and later churches was striking the Christian missionaries and tradesmen who came from Europe to India like Marco Polo. More striking was the liturgy and ritual than the dogma. One must not forget that the original teaching of Gautama was not a religion, but an attempt to find the solution of the philosophical question how to avoid suffering. It is hardly probable that the similarity would be a mere chance. 226