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him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life;
and the life was the light of men. (St John 1:1-4)
This can be compared to the words of Krishna to Arjuna:
But beyond my visible nature is my invisible Spirit. This is the fountain of life
whereby this universe has its being. All things have their life in this Life, and I
am their beginning and end. In this whole vast universe there is nothing higher
than I. All the worlds have their rest in me, as many pearls upon a string. I am
the taste of living waters and the light of the sun and the moon. I am OM, the
sacred word of the Vedas, sound in silence, heroism in men. (BG, 7:5-8)
The Gospels are also the stories of God born on earth as a man—an avatar. St Matthew
tells of the begetting of Jesus by the Holy Spirit: ‘Behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall
bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with
us’ (St Matthew, 1:23). The poetic John writes, ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us’ (St John, 1:14).
And finally, they are the tales of the clash of ancient versus modern senses of justice and
morality: Matthew writes that when Joseph discovered Mary to be with child before they had
consummated their marriage, ‘being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example,
was minded to put her away privily’, but that ‘the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a
dream’ telling him not to fear or bow to moral convention, ‘for that which is conceived in her
is of the Holy Ghost’ (Matthew, 1:19-20). St John debunks the strong Hebrew sense of
ancestral authority in a similar way that Krishna did the Brahmanic scriptures when he writes
of the Baptist:
John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, he
that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me. And his
fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by
Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. (St John, 1:15-17)
St Mark writes of how Jesus went into the synagogue and taught on the sabbath ‘as one
that had authority’, and was scolded by ‘a man with an unclean spirit’. Jesus ordered the
unclean spirit out of the man:
And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves,
saying, What thing is this? What new doctrine is this? For with authority
commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him. (St Mark,
1:21-27)
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