with texts by Tom Morton and Helmut A. Müller (in english)
Paperback, 56 pages, 27x22,4 cm,
3.1: Describe the key events in the life of Jesus Christ, and their
significance to the Christian Faith
45 minutes. Extra test time is available to eligible students under
the US Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 2004
First off, Dr./ Mr./ Mrs./ Ms. or
Miss Examiner, I’ve got to tell you that question 3.1 on the test is way
confusing, and whoever it was at the Wyoming Department of Education who dreamt
it up needs to seriously rethink his/her vocation, and possibly his/her broader
Lebensplan.
Leaving aside the whole business of whether there ever really was a man or
perhaps more precisely some kind of combi man/god who corresponded to the
figure of ‘Jesus Christ’ as described in the canonical Gospels (which, as
you’ll know, are in any case not exactly a model of biographical consistency),
and forgetting the profound difficulties involved in identifying a single
‘Christian Faith’ (I’m guessing the questioner is referring to the beliefs
associated with American Mainline Protestantism, rather than, say, the
Catechetical School of Alexandria), we’re still left with a problem. Videlicet:
the Bible tells us absolutely nothing about Our Lord’s life between the ages of
12 and 30. That’s 18 years, well over 50% of the period Jesus spent on Planet Earth,
and plenty of time for all sorts of ‘key events’ to take place. I don’t know
about you, Dr./ Mr./ Mrs./ Ms./ or Miss Examiner, but this is what my Dad would
call a major gap in the record.
So, Dr. /Mr./ Mrs./ Ms. or Miss Examiner, I want you to imagine that
it’s the year 393 AD, and we’re at the Synod of Hippo in what’s now the city of
Annaba, Algeria, and the Bishops of the Early Church have gathered together to
settle once and for all the question of which of the Holy Scriptures will make
it into the New Testament. Now, we can’t know for sure, but it’s likely that
one of the texts that came up for discussion was the Gospel of Thomas, which in
contrast to the G’s of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John doesn’t present Jesus as a
Lord, or a King, or even really as the Son of God, but rather as the very
fabric of the universe itself: ‘I am the light that shines over all things. I
am everything. From me all came forth, and to me all return. Split a piece of
wood, and I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find me there’. (I might be
paraphrasing, stuck as I am in this room without my books, laptop, phone, or
even a decent pen, but the meaning should be clear enough: both Ex uno
plures and E
pluribus unum).
The G of T, of course, didn’t survive the Synod’s editing process, and
its author receives a kinda lousy press in the canonical Gospels – you prob.
know him as ‘Doubting Thomas’ from John 20:24-29 or thereabouts, where he gets
all snarky about the resurrection, and says he won’t believe that Christ has
risen until he’s stuck his fingers in His wounds. So-called Doubting T, though,
was actually a Pretty Cool Guy. According to the Acts of Thomas (another
Scripture that didn’t make the grade at Hippo, IMHO because it claims its subject
was Jesus’ actual, genuine, no-shit identical twin), he was the only Apostle to
spread the Good News to India, where he performed all sorts of miracles
including bringing this one guy’s wife back to life after the guy had murdered
her for being really into sexual intercourse, which was way stupid of the guy
as sexual intercourse can be enjoyed as part of a happy, loving marriage. A
side note: in the Gospel of Thomas, the Boy Jesus kills some poor Palestinian
kid just for bumping into Him. Not with His fists, or a weapon, but with six
simple words. JC says: ‘Thou shalt not finish thy course’, and the kid drops
down dead. Sheesh, no wonder the Bible features Gospels According to M, M, L
and J, but no G According to T.
If you’ve got this far and didn’t simply
drop the F-for-Fail Bomb at the end of para.2, you’re prob. thinking huh, OK,
fine, this is all very fascinating, but what has it got to do with test
question 3.1? I submit to you that if a whole bunch of would-be sacred writings
were blackballed in the 4th Century, it’s not beyond the bounds of
probability that someplace or other there’s a ‘lost’ or a ‘hidden’ or even a
‘suppressed’ Scripture that tells us exactly what Jesus was doing between the
onset of puberty and the moment he hooks up with John the Baptist on the River
Jordan’s banks. If such a Scripture were to come to light (and these things do happen, think of the Dead Sea
Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Library etc.), it’s worth thinking about what it might
tell us about the Lost Years of Our Lord. One theory is that he basically just
sat on his ass in Nazareth for 18 years. Others involve him sailing to England
with his Great Uncle Joseph of Arimathea (see for e.g. William Blake’s ‘And did
those feet in ancient time…’), or taking a trip to the United States to visit
the Native Americans, who at that point were apparently calling themselves the
Lamanites (there’s a whole heap of sci-fi stories about this, if you’re into
that kind of thing, most of them written by members of the Church of the Latter
Day Saints). My personal favorite
theory, though, is that Christ spent his teens and twenties traveling in India,
where He studied Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism etc. etc. etc., all of which were
to inform His ministry when He finally set up shop in back in Galilee.
Let’s look at the evidence. That ‘I
am everything’ line from the Gospel of Thomas certainly sounds pretty Buddhist to me, then there’s
the whole Christ/Krishna same-ish name
coincidence/non-coincidence, and an account in the Hindu Puranas of Jesus
chilling in the Himalayas, which describes Him as a ‘handsome’ man with ‘copper
skin and white garments’, as though He’d stepped right out of that poster at my
Real Mom’s Pentecostal Church. Perhaps He went to Kashmir to visit one of the
Three Magi or Wise Men (Caspar/ Gaspar/Gathaspar was supposed to have been an
Indian dude), kind of like the way I plan to visit my Uncle Robert in San
Francisco once I get out of here and
I’m old enough to drive. Furthermore, if we can bring ourselves to
accept the whole ‘Jesus Christ and Doubting Thomas were identical Twins’ thing
(which means, presumably, that they had the same mother and far more
importantly the same freaking father), it makes sense that following JC’s
crucifixion DT would head out East, where people were prob. a lot more relaxed
than in the supposed ‘Holy Land’ about combi man/gods wandering about the place
and offering them spiritual tips. Dr./Mr./Mrs./Ms. or Miss Examiner, I am no
conspiracy theorist. I know enough about the Historical Method to know that
none of this adds up to proof that Jesus, if there ever was such a person, set foot on Indian
soil. But when even my Dad’s number one philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer claims
that ‘whatever anyone may say, Christianity has Indian blood in its veins’, it
seems to me that we should pay attention. (Personally, I actually prefer F.
Nietzsche to A. Schopenhauer, but as Dad says sooner or later I’ll prob. grow
out of it, and my Re-Entry Counselor agrees).
By Tom Morton
ISBN 978-3-941601-64-2
The publication is released on the occasion of the solo exhibition "Teenage Jesus" at Brenzkirche Stuttgart from September 16 until October 28, 2012.
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