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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
Isa is also the name of Ishwara as well as of the individual soul, according to Hindu Scriptures. Mr. Harold Bayley, the author of "The Lost Language of Symbolism,' points out that the word 'Isse' or 'Ishi’ appears to have anciently meant Light in many directions. This radiating Light is the Light of Intelligence, which is the soul.
It must be now obvious that the word Jesus simply means the soul, which is certainly incapable of being slain. Hence, the enigmatical statement of the Sura Nisa already quoted.
For these and similar reasons, the release of Barabbas, the securing of the sepulchre, and other such allegories, all tend to emphasize the fact that ignorant humanity care only for the body, and altogether ignore the soul, - a point which is well brought out in the account of the initiation of Indra, the deva, and Virochana, the asura, in the Upanishads.
Modern Orientalists fail to understand the merit of religion, because they try to study it on lines of historical research. But to interpret religious records in the light of history is to put the cart before the horse, oftener than not. The nature of the contradictions which exist in connection with the life of Jesus, when we try to study it from the standpoint of the historian, is so deliberate and determined, that no single fact can be seized as an actual event in the world of men. There is piling up of allegory upon allegory and metaphor upon metaphor, on the one hand, and a delightful determination to violate the order of events, invent personalities, defy facts, disregard chronology, and, in every possible
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