Did Jesus Christ Went To Kashmir?

Professional historians might have laughed at the notion years ago but is there growing and credible evidence that Jesus not only went there but was also buried in Kashmir, India?

By: Ringo Bones 

Maybe “touristy Jesus Freaks” should blame the Israeli government’s ongoing tensions with the Palestinians for making their prime Israeli Jesus tourism sites in Jerusalem about as difficult to visit to the casual tourist as Moscow is during the early 1980s. And the ongoing conflict in Syria due to the so-called Islamic State also placed some Jesus tourism sites in Syria now out of reach of the casual tourist. Given these problems, are there other “alternative Jesus tourist sites out there”? Maybe, Jesus tourists should check out a rumored Jesus Christ tomb in Kashmir, India. 

In the backstreets of downtown Srinagar is an old building known as the Rozabal shrine. It is part of the city where the Indian security forces are on regular patrol, or peering out from behind check-posts made of sandbags. The security situation has recently improved in this Indian administered part of Kashmir and thus the tourism has returned once again in what is more famously known as the Venice of the East. But recent Lonely Planet travel catalogues has listed Rozabal Shrine as the actual tomb of Jesus Christ. 

Officially, Rozabal Shrine is the burial site of Youza Asaph, a medieval Muslim preacher – but a growing number of people believe that it is in fact the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. Since the 1980s, many “New Age Christians”, like the US based Christian sect known as the Church Universal and Triumphant, believe that Jesus survived the crucifixion almost 2,000 Easters ago, and went to live out his days in Kashmir. The rumor that Rozabal Shrine might have something to do with Jesus of Nazareth lends credence in Islam, in which Jesus is the penultimate prophet and a minority tradition adopted by the controversial Muslim Ahmadiyya sect, that Rozabal does contain the grave of Jesus Christ.

Should There Be A Fixed Date For Easter Sunday?

Given that it is one of the most important holidays of the year and all of Christendom, should there be a fixed date on when should Easter Sunday should be observed on the calendar?

By: Ringo Bones 

It must have been very awkward back in 2014 when Easter fell on the 20^th of April which made for a very awkward Easter Sunday celebration. Not only because April 20 have been set aside for the celebration of 420 – i.e. the global movement for the legalization of marijuana not only for medical use but also for recreational use as well and there had been recently unearthed evidences that Jesus Christ used marijuana, but also because April 20 his Adolf Hitler’s birthday which gave a whole new meaning of the “comical euphemism” - Jesus Hitler Christ. Thankfully to the relief of more “conservative Christians” plans are in motion to set aside a fixed date for Easter Sunday and it is safe to bet that it will not be one of “awkward days” between the months of March and April. 

The current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, had been in talk with various leaders of the different Christian sects around the world and the preliminary agreement of the talks suggests that most of them are in favor of a fixed date for Easter Sunday. The only group opposed to the proposal of a fixed date for Easter Sunday was the top brass of the Coptic Orthodox Church. But according to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the final decision to establish a fixed date for Easter Sunday will probably happen 5 to 10 years from now. But why is it that the celebration of Easter Sunday doesn’t have a fixed date? 

During the early days of the Christian church prior to the reign of Pope Victor I (189 – 198 AD), the Western Churches, as a rule, kept Easter on the first day of the week in the beginning of Springtime, while many of the Eastern Churches conforming to the Jewish rule of celebrating Passover, observed Easter on the 14^th day of the Jewish month of Nisan. Through the energetic efforts of Pope Victor I, the latter practice gradually disappeared. But another problem came to the fore: granted that Easter was to be kept on Sunday, how was that Sunday to be determined? 

The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD paved the way fro the final settlement by ruling that Easter is to be observed by all on the same Sunday, that this must be the Sunday following the 14^th day of the paschal moon, and that moon was to be accounted whose 14^th day followed the vernal equinox. Because of the differences in the systems of chronology followed in various places, however, the decrees of Nicaea did not immediately remove all difficulties nor win universal acceptance. The Gregorian correction by Pope Gregory XIII of the Julian calendar then in use in 1582, moreover, introduced still further discrepancies. 

Throughout Western, Christendom the corrected calendar is now universally accepted and Easter is solemnized on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox as first suggested by an English monk named Venerable Bede back in the year 700, with the result that the earliest possible date for Easter is March 22 and the latest is April 25. In the East, however, the calendar has not been bought into accord with the Gregorian reform and thus their observance of Easter seldom coincides with the Western date. In recent years, laudable endeavors have been made to fix the date of Easter, but definite results are still awaited. Let’s just hope that the current Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby succeeds and his name will be immortalized together with the Venerable Bede.