Reference : latest post – Wrong View of Creationism (and Eternal Future Life) – Part 1
#5 ‘The Bible never mentions people having a second chance at life or coming back as different people or animals’.
The early ‘Church fathers’, the philosopher-theologians of the day, influenced by the Neo-Platonists in particular and by Greek thought in general, embraced ‘reincarnation’. Only later did the now dogmatic pope-dominated Church stamp out, forcibly at times, the ‘heresy of re-incarnation’.
The compilers of the New Testament in the late 4th Century A.D selected only those books for inclusion in the Bible that accorded with the current accepted tenets of the hierarchy, who were averse, to put it mildly, to the idea of their having been common men or ‘brutes’ in former existences. Many additions, obliterations and alterations were made and kept being made in line with the changing creeds or ‘whims’ of one pope or another. It was easy to do. Since printing had not yet been invented, all hand-written copies in all churches and monasteries were simply ‘corrected’.
So it is difficult to see where Jesus figures in all of this. To my mind, 90% of the whole of it is a fabrication, hundreds of them rolled into one. Yet something of his true teaching surely must have survived even after this mighty butchering and soup-mix of texts. One finds passages that teach compassion, good-will, generosity and point out the conflict between good and evil that each must go through in life.
Perhaps we will never know whether Jesus had indeed been a Buddhist monk during those ‘lost years’ between the ages of 12 and 29, taught the ‘pure teaching’ during his ministry and returned to India after the crucifixion.
