Jesus

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Jesus : biography

c. 4 BC – c. 30

Jesus is sometimes called the "Seal of the Israelite Prophets", because Muslims believe that Jesus was the last prophet sent by God to guide the Israelites. To aid in his ministry to the Jewish people, Jesus was given the ability to perform miracles, by permission of God rather than by his own power. Jesus is seen in Islam as a precursor to Muhammad and is believed by Muslims to have foretold Muhammad’s coming. Muslims deny that Jesus was crucified, that he rose from the dead, and that he atoned for the sins of mankind. According to Muslim traditions, Jesus was not crucified but was physically raised into the heavens by God. Muslims believe that Jesus will return to earth shortly before the Day of Judgment and defeat the Antichrist (ad-dajjal).

Ahmadiyya views

The Ahmadiyya Movement believes that Jesus was a mortal man who survived his crucifixion and died a natural death at the age of 120 in Kashmir. According to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the 19th-century founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement, Jesus did not die on the cross but fell into a coma and later regained consciousness after being nursed back to health with an ointment. Ahmadis believe that after his apparent death and resurrection, Jesus fled Judea and went east to continue teaching the gospel, and that he is buried at Roza Bal in Kashmir. Ahmadis reject the notion that Jesus traveled to the Indian subcontinent before his crucifixion. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad declared himself to be the second coming of Jesus for Christians and the renewer of faith (Mujaddid) for Muslims. Mainstream Muslims reject this and various other Ahmadi beliefs, and some (for example, the Pakistani government) consider Ahmadis not to be Muslim.

Bahá’í views

Bahá’í teachings consider Jesus to be a manifestation of God, a Bahá’í concept for prophets—intermediaries between God and humanity, serving as messengers and reflecting God’s qualities and attributes. The Bahá’í concept emphasizes the simultaneous qualities of humanity and divinity; thus, it is similar to the Christian concept of incarnation. Bahá’í thought accepts Jesus as the Son of God. In Bahá’í thought, Jesus was a perfect incarnation of God’s attributes, but Bahá’í teachings reject the idea that divinity was contained with a single human body, stating that, on the contrary, God transcends physical reality.

Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, wrote that since each manifestation of God has the same divine attributes, they can be seen as the spiritual "return" of all previous manifestations of God, and the appearance of each new manifestation of God inaugurates a religion that supersedes the former ones, a concept known as progressive revelation. Bahá’ís believe that God’s plan unfolds gradually through this process as mankind matures, and that some of the manifestations arrive in specific fulfilment of the missions of previous ones. Thus, Bahá’ís believe that Bahá’u’lláh is the promised return of Christ. Bahá’í teachings confirm many, but not all, aspects of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels. Bahá’ís believe in the virgin birth and in the Crucifixion, but see the Resurrection and the miracles of Jesus as symbolic.

Buddhist views

Buddhism is a nontheistic religion that denies the existence of a Creator God. Buddhist scholars such as Masao Abe and D. T. Suzuki have stated that the centrality of the crucifixion of Jesus to the Christian view of his life is totally irreconcilable with the foundations of Buddhism. However, some Buddhists, including Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, regard him as a bodhisattva who dedicated his life to the welfare of people. It is recorded in 101 Zen Stories that the 14th-century Zen master Gasan Jōseki, on hearing some of the sayings of Jesus in the gospels, remarked that he was "an enlightened man", and "not far from Buddhahood".

In a letter to his daughter Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote, "All over Central Asia, in Kashmir and Ladakh and Tibet and even farther north, there is a strong belief that Jesus or Isa traveled about there." The theory that an adult Jesus traveled to India and was influenced by Buddhism first appeared in Nicolas Notovitch’s 1894 book The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ, which gave rise to other theories, but the author later confessed to fabricating the evidence. Van Voorst states that modern scholarship has "almost unanimously agreed" that claims that Jesus traveled to Tibet, Kashmir or India contain "nothing of value". Marcus Borg states that suggestions that an adult Jesus traveled to Egypt or India and came into contact with Buddhism are "without historical foundation". Although modern parallels have been drawn between the teachings of Jesus and Buddha, these comparisons emerged after missionary contacts in the 19th century, and there is no historically reliable evidence of contacts between Buddhism and Jesus during his life.