Jesse’s “ (Christ) Lineage Tree” and Its Buddhist “Branch”

7/30/2019 Jesses (Christ) Lineage Tree and Its Buddhist Branch

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Jesses Lineage Tree and Its Buddhist BranchMichael Lockwood,Advocatus Diaboli

_________Then a shoot shall grow from the stock of Jesse,

and a branch spring from his roots.

Isaiah 11:1

When King Aka, in the mid-third century BCE, sent out Buddhist monks from India as missionaries(the worlds first Salvation Army, propagating the Buddhas Gospel: The Dharma) to the kingdoms beyondhis borders, the kings 13th Rock Edict inscription specifically names rulers of the Seleucid Empire, Egypt,Macedonia, and the lands which were approximately todays Libya, Greece, and Albania:

(XVI) So, what is [peaceful] conquest through Dharma is now considered to be the best conquest byThe Beloved of the Gods [i.e., by Aka].[1]

(XVII) And such a conquest has been achieved byThe Beloved of the Gods not only here [in hisown dominions] but also in the territories bordering [on his dominions], and as far away as sixhundred Yojanas, [where] the Yavana [Greek] king namedAntiyoka[2] [is ruling and], beyond [thekingdom of] the saidAntiyoka, [where] four other kings named Tulamya,[3]Antikeni,[4]Maka[5] andAlikasundara[6] [are also ruling]. . . .

And, in another Rock Edict, the 2nd, Aka assigned certain medical and botanical duties to be carried out:

(I) Everywhere in the dominions of king Priyadarin [i.e., of Aka], Beloved of the Gods, andlikewise [in] the bordering territories such as [those of] the oas [and] Piyas [as well as of] theSaty-putras [and in] Tmrapar [i.e., r-Lak] and [in the territories of] the Yavana king namedAntiyoka and also [of] the kings who are the neighbours of the saidAntiyoka everywhere KingPriyadarin, Beloved of the Gods, has arranged for two kinds of medical treatment, [viz.,] medicaltreatment for men and medical treatment for animals.

(II)And, wherever there were no medicinal plants beneficial to men and beneficial to animals,everywhere they have been caused to be imported and planted.[7]

As Akas main object was, of course, for the monks to spread the Buddhist Gospel (The Dharma) throughoutthese lands, these words about medicinal plants carry an additional, suggestive meaning. Aka is known tohave sent to the island of r Lak a physical shoot of the Bdhi tree, under which the Buddha was said tohave gained Enlightenment. One can view this venerated tree in r Lak, today, some 2250 years after itsshoot was transplanted there. In Indian art during Akas time, the Bdhi tree was the very symbol of theBuddhas Enlightenment (his realization of The Dharma). Therefore, consider the following:

Proposition 1: Besides the physical medical plants which had been imported into these countries, Akasinscription can be taken to signify that a metaphorical medical shoot (the Buddhas Gospel: The Dharma)had also been introduced in these lands.

Proposition 2: However, this introduction would not have been a simple case of transplanting theBuddhist Gospel directly into the foreign soil of these western countries, but rather, the Buddhist monksaccomplished it by slight of hand, a very clever and discreet (upya-kaualya) case of engraftment!

Proposition 3: Though it may never be known when exactly this engraftment was first initiated, it hadalready established, by the second century BCE, both the Essenes of Qumran with their followers throughoutPalestine and the Essenes of Mareotis (Philos Therapeut) with their followers throughout Egypt.

ESSENES The name of the sect is variously given asEssaioi(Philo) orEssnoi(Josephus, Dio,Hippolytus) in Greek,Esseniin Latin (Pliny). Epiphanius mentions . . .Essnoi,which he identifiesas a Samaritan sect. . . .8


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become a mere Stump that is, what little was left of the Jewish nation. And, by the end of the first centuryof the Common Era, when, in Alexandria, the allegorical gospel accounts of Jesus had begun to be writtenin Greek, this allegorical Jesus a disguised meta-Buddha was now put forward by the evangelists as ahistorical Shoot which had sprouted up from the Stump of Jesse some one hundred or so years beforetheir own time.

In the Vulgate Bible, the Isaiah passage would later be translated into Latin by Jerome as:

et egredietur virga de radice Iesse et flos de radice eius ascendet. . . a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up . . ..

(Flos, pl.floris, is Latin for flower. Virga is a green twig, rod . . . , as well as a convenient near-pun with Virgo or Virgin, which undoubtedly influenced the development of the image. Thus Jesus isthe Virga Jesse or shoot of Jesse. Wikipedia)

Nazareth

The foregoing discussion offers a solution to the long-standing theological puzzle of the evangelistsstatement inMatthew 2:23:

And being warned by a dream, he [Joseph, with Mary and Jesus] withdrew to the region of Galilee;there he settled in a town called Nazareth. This was to fulfil the words spoken through the prophets,He [Jesus] shall be called a Nazarene.

The New English Bible

The problem with the last sentence, of course, is that nowhere in the Hebrew Bible do the prophets mentiona town called Nazareth. The fact is that the evangelists were rather careful about openly declaring thatJesus was the Messiah/Christ (the messianic Shoot N-Z-R, in Hebrew from Jesses Stump). Theywere under Roman rule, when even such an allegorical claim might appear treasonous. So Matthews passageis camouflage: Jesus is called a Nazarene because of his having lived in Nazareth. Thus, Matthew, by meansof this passage, is obfuscating the fact that the followers of Jesus, the Nazarenes (including Paul, ofcourse), were, indeed, followers of Isaiahs messianic Sprout from the Stump of Jesse. But keep inmind, these Nazarenes were not the ordinary Jewish, militaristic variety of messianists: they were pacifisticcrypto-Buddhist-Jewish messianists!

Employing Christian Lindtners analytic method and following his use of gematria techniques, onecan throw light on how Nazareth, the putative residence of Jesus, is actually derived from Jesus, theShoot, which had been graftedonto the Stump of Jesse. Take the word netzer in:

Isaiah 14:19

Hebrew (Strong 5342): netzer=NeTZeR = N-T-Z-Ra sprout, shoot, branch, descendants

NeTZeR / N-T-Z-R = N-Z-R-T / NaZaReT (Nazareth, in English transliteration)

It follows that the name of the town ofNazareth is but a Greek metaphorical transmogrification of theHebrew word for sprout or shoot; so Nazareth can be rendered in English asSprout-town. In this waythe theological puzzle is solved in one stroke. Arthur Drews, a century ago, presented an extensive scholarlyanalysis covering much of this same ground. (See the Appendix.) Only, Drews did not grasp the presence ofBuddhism: the evangelists conception and literary engraftment of the Buddhist Jesus onto the JudaicStump of Jesses Lineage Tree.

In the year 93 or 94 CE, Josephus used the Greek word Naziraios twice in hisAntiquities: in iv, 4, 4,and in xix, 6, 1 (see Drewss remarks on page 204 of his work in the Appendix where he gives Nazaraios

for Josephuss first entry and Naziraios, for the second). Note that the context of each appearance of theterm in theAntiquities is crystal clear and unambiguous: it involves the Nazirite tradition of the HebrewBible (think of Samson and Samuel). As Josephus was mainly addressing educated Roman Gentiles in hiswritings, the term Nazaraios, meaning Nazarite, would have thus appeared to them totally innocuous.

Thus, protected by the smokescreens of the town of Nazareth and the Hebrew Bibles Nazarites,Plinys first century BCE Nazerini, the Gospel of Johns 19:19 Nazoraios, and all the other Nazorans,


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The Karma Kgyu Lineage Tree, Tibet


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The Drikung Kgyu Mahmudr Lineage Tree, Tibet

Reclining Viu as Padmanbha, a lotus (padma)arising out of his navel (nbha), Brahm sitting on it

Reclining Jesse, a Lineage Tree arising from his navel

The Basilica of St. Quentin, France

Courtesy of Wikipedia


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Nazarans, Nasirans, and Notzrim all terms derived from N-Z-R or N-S-R will have to be examinedanew, now, as possibly signifying the presence of crypto-Buddhists-Judaic organizations from as early asthe second century, BCE, and crypto-Buddhist-Judaic Christianity from the end of the first century, CE.

Images of scenes from the Hebrew Bible are not too common in Christian Churches. However, thoseillustrating Jesses Lineage Tree, because of its connection with Jesus, are the most numerous. It is interestingto note that these images began to appear in Christian art, especially in Europe, around the 11th century CE,

the same period when the Buddhist Lineage Tree images were also coming into prominence.In the Basilica of St. Quentin, France, the remarkable carving of the Reclining Jesse with his Lineage

Tree growing up out of his navel area would immediately make anyone familiar with Indian iconography tothink of the images of the Reclining Viu Padmanbha13 with a lotus flower growing up from his navel,providing a seat for the smaller, sitting image of the creator god (Demiurge) Brahm! Christianity has certainlyborrowed from India in the creation of the St. Quentin image! The navel theme of Viu Padmanbha canbe traced back to literary images in the ig-Vda which, long before the prophet Isaiah and the HebrewBible, praise the all-encompassing creator-God, Vivakarma (sometimes identified with Brahm). Forexample:

HYMN 82 (Vivakarma)

(Verse 6) The waters, they received that germ primval wherein the gods were gathered altogether.It rested set upon the Unborns navel, that One wherein abide all things existing.

_______________Endnotes (MLs)

[1]Mid-third century BCE Rock Edict XIII, at Eagui, ndhra Pradsh; ed. and trans. by D.C. Sircar, in AokanStudies (Calcutta: India Museum, 1979), p. 35.

[2]Antiyoka = Antiochus-II Theos (regnal years 261-246 BCE), Greek ruler of the Seleucid Empire (stretching fromSyria to Bactria, in the east), and who was therefore a direct neighbor of Aka. His capital city was Antioch, future arenaof dramatic incidents in St. Pauls life. . . .

[3]Tulamya = Ptolemy-II Philadelphus (r.y. 285-247 BCE), the Greek ruler of Egypt.[4]Antikeni = Antigonas Gonatas of Macedonia (r.y. 277-239 BCE).[5]Maka = Magas of Cyrene (r.y. ca. 288-258 BCE) [Cyrene is approximately todays Libya.][6]Alikasundara = Alexander-II of Epirus (r.y. 272-255 BCE) [Epirus, todays Greece and Albania.][7]

Akas Rock Edict II, at Eagui, ndhra Pradsh (Aokan Studies, ed. and trans. by D.C. Sircar [Calcutta: IndiaMuseum, 1979], p. 15). The identifications and dates are after W. Norman Browns, in his book, The Indian and ChristianMiracles of Walking on the Water (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1928), p. 63.

8John J. Collins, Essenes, The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 619. (Boldingadded.)

9David T. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), p. 228. (Boldingadded.)

10Frank Williams, The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1987), p. 115; the bracketedwords have been added by ML.

11David Winston, Philo of Alexandria: The Contemplative Life, The Giants, and Selections (Mahwah, NJ: PaulistPress, 1981), p. 41; the bracketed words have been added by ML.

12Winston, Philo of Alexandria, pp. 41-42; the bracketed words have been added by ML. The reference for Vermesbelief, which is not given in Winstons book, but which was recently communicated personally to ML, is: E. Schurer

and G. Vermes, A History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ: A New English Version by G. Vermes et al.,vol. II (Edinburgh 1979), p. 596.

13The gold idol of Viu in his Padmanbha form, pictured above, was discovered along with countless otherinvaluable treasures, in 2011, in a hidden vault of the Padmanbhaswmy Temple, Trivandrum, Kerala, South India.The Padmanbha image, solid gold, is said to have weighed in at 30 kilos! and reported to be valued (only the gold?)at Indian Rupees Five billion that is, roughly, US$ 100 million!

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Jesse’s “ (Christ) Lineage Tree” and Its Buddhist “Branch”