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1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 doubtful, at best, cited documentation Sep 23, 2009
I believe the author is sincere. I admire her for her avid digging and work on this book and bringing to light the destruction of archaeological treasures that we can't afford to lose. I also admire her for living near the site of the reputed Jesus tomb and lobbying for dna research in these areas. However, the sources quoted are sometimes called fraudulent by those who are supposed to know (like the letter of Pilate to Tiberius Caesar with the description of Jesus), and some of the documentation is highly suspect, even to (unexpert) me. I don't have a problem with the premise that Jesus lived after the crucifixion. We know he did. Did he go to India? Possibly. I just wish so many assumptions in this book were not built on sand. It makes me uneasy to accept any of it. Also, some of the ideas expressed, like Jesus was "working on the family business" by building up his church and Kingdom in Kashmir really gives me the bends. Sounds nothing like the non-material spiritual master, to me.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Author Thoughts on the Bloodline of Jesus May 10, 2009
This is my research into the ancient connections between Hebrews and Hindus on the Old Silk Road. This is also about Magdalene as the "bride" of Jesus, and how this concept led to my interest in DNA validation. This book is also a careful reflection on the entire Christian concept of resurrection. The concept of resurrection may actually be based on Jesus' survival of the crucifixion, not his death, and I show you the evidence beginning with New Testament statements that have multiple interpretations.
The connections between Hebrews and Hindus are more ancient and more established than most people realize. It goes far beyond the appearance of three magi at the birth of Jesus.
For the sacred feminine and Holy Grail seekers, I stand among authors who have struggled to write about Jesus and Magdalene and their "bloodline". Ever since the bloodline concept became a hot topic due to authors like Starbird and Lincoln, Beigent and Gardner, and now of course Dan Brown, they all mentioned links straight back to my family ancestors, to men like Godfrey and Baldwin of the First Crusades. The idea of bloodlines was thrown at me and begging for further investigation. It was close to my home, my family, and my heart. For me, that's how this all began.
We connect to informative and inspirational teachers and writers in important ways. They help us to learn and grow. They expand our awareness. Through them I was pointed in the direction of Kashmir and this began my incredible journey on the Old Silk Road. Without their inspiration and ideas, the journey would not have begun.
Sometimes, however, even with the best, most beautifully inspired and carefully researched books there is no actual truth, just a lot of hopeful and imaginative ideas.
Some versions of history are backed by indisputable facts, and some are not. The Magdalene-Holy Grail, sacred feminine lore currently in fashion is NOT based on even one single proven fact, except that her name was Magdalene (for a reason that I hope I solved) and she lived at the time of Jesus and was considered an apostle. Everything else about bloodlines through her, or escapes in oar-less boats to France, or Holy Grail cups (or wombs as the case may be) is hypothetical speculation that didn't even exist much before the 11th century. A great deal of circumstantial evidence has been gathered, but one must pretty much toss out much of the known history of the last 2000 years in order to accept it. Back to square one. We have to face the fact that all the popular literature about bloodlines of Jesus and Magdalene are false.
If Jesus survived crucifixion and lived another 50 or 60 years, then this changes everything. It does not diminish the meaning of his life and death, it just changes how we interpret everything we have read about his life and death.
Popular `bloodline' authors today have little time or patience for someone like myself. They write agonizing heart wrenching descriptions of the death and heavenly resurrection of Jesus. Some claim these are visions they get from memories stored in their DNA. But if Jesus survived this ordeal, then they are giving us wrong information.
It reminds me of Sister Emmerich of Ephesus, and Anna Anderson who tried to convince the world she was the surviving Romanov, Anastasia. Until DNA, there was no way to validate her claims. Today one would have to be crazy to expect the world to believe such claims. They are easily disproved.
Few have considered history based on the survival of Jesus, or his sojourn to Kashmir. Who among western historians has made a map of the ancient graves showing secret burial places of the prophets, like the Valley of the Kings in Egypt? Who among them would consider this Jesus connection to Kashmir and to the graves of his ancestors? Who among them has considered the Apostle Thomas' views about Magdalene, views that are known by many eastern Thomasian churches? In circa 70 AD, we find the first mention that Magdalene was a temple priestess and prostitute (see Church of the East scriptures). I found the proof in India, in the ancient kingdom of Magadha, from where she got her name.
I am deeply saddened by the crass commercialism of a few who have jumped on the bloodline bandwagon. Now that the idea has become popular pulp fiction, it attracts claimants who desperately want to "be somebody." In the process they have made a mockery of the bloodline concept. This sets the research backward instead of forward. The whole idea of `bloodlines' is now trashed and ridiculed almost beyond repair. As I stated, one would have to be crazy to make such unsubstantiated claims today.
We have become less gullible and more careful and we demand irrefutable proof that can only come from science or verifiable documentation.
This is what the 'DNA of God' project is all about. Gathering irrefutable evidence.
Christianity is the largest and fastest growing religion on the planet. Most of the highly developed civilizations in the world today are based on the founding principals of Christianity. To tackle these foundations without diminishing the very best Jesus has given us, this is not easy to handle, even with grace and faith. Former President of American History Society Richard S. Latourette said:
"Measured by its effects on history, Jesus is the most influential life ever lived on this planet."
And this is our dilemma. If we have discovered "the truth" about Jesus, then how can there be so many opposing Jesus-Magdalene stories?
Someone is right. Everyone else is wrong. But who? What kind of evidence will we require to be believable? Written documentation? Stigmatas? Ancient memories that cannot be verified?
DNA would only be valid if we can also prove beyond reasonable doubt the remains of Magdalene or Jesus. Irresponsible claimants know this and try to cash in on the lack of undeniable validation. Therefore, we have to impose boundaries of credibility on them and on ourselves.
Either Jesus died on the cross, or he didn't. Either he married Magdalene, or he didn't. Either they had children, or they did not. Their graves may be in Ephesus or Jerusalem or France, Britain or Japan, the Himalayas or Kashmir (where the evidence is overwhelming) but there cannot be multiple graves and multiple exit scenes for Jesus. There cannot be multiple truths. Scientists, archaeologists, historians, researchers, priests, clairvoyants, modern day prophets, and even SETI explorers each offers us a different interpretation, a different analysis of the evidence.
I discovered records that Jesus married a woman in Kashmir named Marjan, not Magdalene. Their eldest son was Eli-Kim. This is verified on a pillar at a famous Kashmiri temple (Takht-i-Suleiman), and establishes a real bloodline. This suggests that most bloodline proponents have been following the wrong leads for centuries. Now we must discover the family of this son, Eli, and here we get lucky again, for there IS a family living in Kashmir who may help establish that bloodline. They even have the ancient scrolls to substantiate their claims and they encourage the DNA verification. This is very encouraging.
There is additional corroboration to their claims found in the writings of Saul, who said that he met Jesus' son, known to him as Eli-Mar. Now we have the same name, Eli, son of Jesus, in two widely different geographical areas. He is Eli-Kim in Kashmir, and Eli-Mar on the road to Damascus. I explained what these titles mean in my book.
The family living in Kashmir today lives very near to the ancient tomb of Roza Bal, the tomb of Jesus, and they have always claimed that he is Issa-Jesus, their ancestral grandfather. Centuries before the modern fads about bloodlines, their claims were publicly acknowledged. This is a very compelling reason to get the DNA for verification. It's a terrific start. It means there is a chance we can validate bloodline claimants and a family of Jesus after all.
It so happens that just when I personally disassociated myself from the bloodline theories, then a really strange thing happened to me: my own DNA results came back and squarely placed me in the very region I was studying. I have Kashmiri-Tocharian-Pashtun blood in my veins, something I never knew about or expected. I expected French, Hungarian, Basque, German, or even a little British. But not this.
This new fact about my own DNA ancestry, and that I may be connected with this Kashmir family, has thrown me into a deep emotional spin. Now I am asking new questions. Do ancient memories persist in our DNA or our genes? Is that the unknown force that led me on this path from New York to the Old Silk Road and the Himalayas? Or is it all coincidence?
We do have precedents for such experiences. Transplant patients will suddenly remember lives of their donors. This seems to prove that some memories are stored in the cells of our body, but do we retain certain memories and carry them forward for generations, or even for centuries? Are such memories passed from father to son? Mother to daughter? If the DNA is ever recovered from anyone identified with Jesus, there might be a way to validate this theory, but for now it's all speculation.
This doubt attracts the hopefuls who count on wild claims for attention or for money or book and film offers. They feel assured they can never really be exposed as fakes. Does this mean we can expect descendents of Moses, Cleopatra, Mohammed, Genghis Khan, Odin or Christopher Columbus to appear with more blood curling tails of their illustrious ancestral memories? Surely if the theory is valid, then everyone in the world would be full of such memories and could help historians fill in a lot of missing information. But as you see, it hasn't happened that way.
I don't offer you the answers. I would not dare to presume the answers without scientific validation. I am reluctant to even bring this topic up because it leads others to make wild claims about their `memories' of Jesus, just like Anna Anderson and Sister Emmerlich. It leads us away from real science and into fringe areas of the paranormal and delusional.
Were Anna Anderson and Sister Emmerlich delusional? How powerful is the human mind that it can convince itself so thoroughly of something that isn't real? If Jesus survived crucifixion, then Sister Emmerlich (and Mel Gibson) were wrong, regardless how vivid and well-intentioned their stories were. It is amazing that the human mind can induce such powerful effects on the rest of our bodies. However, that is an entirely different kind of scientific study.
Your religious experiences (whatever religion you put your faith in) mysticism, ESP, deja vu, intuition, unexplained cognizance, or any other 'out of the ordinary' experiences are hard to validate, and there HAS to be validation outside ourselves, especially concerning these claims to bloodlines. Validation is demanded whether through genealogy records, through DNA tests, or in other verifiable ways. We are too smart to be fooled again by the Anna Andersons of this world.
We put great store in our belief in a soul and an afterlife. Getting it right is an important expenditure of our time, but we must demand validation. Jesus may be taken on faith, but claimants to his ancestry must have a lot more to show us for their credibility. Whatever the truth is about Jesus, I will accept it. But I demand validation from any bloodline claimants. That's why this DNA project has begun.
I admit to a few typing and grammatical errors in my book and I humbly apologize for my haste in re-assembling this book without catching these minor errors, but these will easily be corrected in the future edition.
Some people get angry when they are challenged for documentation about their "bloodline" claims. They demand we accept their claims on faith, not reason. It is easier for them to attack others rather than try to validate their own claims. I trust an intelligent reader can see through such attacks for what they really are.
I admit that I lack the admirable skills of Dan Brown (for thrill writing) an Eric von Daniken (for alternate historical writing) and scholars like Bart D. Ehrman (scrupulously written and excellently researched books about Christianity) but I hope this does not dissuade you from considering that there are still lots of new ideas here that are rarely known among western scholars. This alone should bring you an immensely rewarding and exciting reading experience, and amazing new and valid ways to understand the historical Jesus.
I am always available to you if you want to discuss anything after reading this book, or its new companion book, "Roza Bal, The Tomb of Jesus".
Thank you for joining me here, especially on the 'DNA of God' project.
I am excited to see how far we get with DNA validation as the research progresses.
Suzanne Olsson
3 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 I had a cerebral gas expulsion....... May 05, 2009
My previous review was not only unkind and boorish, but implacable as well. Although this book was originally not my cup of tea, I shoudn't have trounced on someone else's hard work. My sincere apologies.
IMPORTANT UPDATE!
This book has certain editorial problems with respect to presentation, but - NOT WITH CONTENT!! This cannot be overemphasized! Get past it and you will be rewarded with some exquisite, compelling evidence that not only support the claims of this book, but that introduce the reader to some jaw dropping historical specifics that have wide ranging sociological, archeological, religious and anthropological affects. Sometimes the truth, or even a hint of the truth, can be, well let's just say a bit discombobulating. As Jesus is reported to have said in the Book of Thomas (I think) {paraphrasing} "There is much more I have to teach, but ye cannot bear it now." With just a bit of tweaking and refinement this book is a 5 star grand slam. 4 stars from me, but the server will not allow me to change the star meter.....
2 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Sweet Jesus, what a mess May 05, 2009
Inchoate and rambling, ungrammatical and mispunctuated, Suzanne Olsson's "Jesus in Kashmir" reads like the rough first draft of a book that would probably have best been left unwritten. It's a grab bag of (to put it kindly) highly speculative ideas without a shred of verifiable evidence to back them up. Any author who quotes the Vatican, as Ms. Olsson does, to back up her contention that aliens were somehow (and I could never quite make out how) involved in Jesus's mission and his sojourn in Kashmir is difficult to take seriously.
9 of 10 found the following review helpful:
Jesus Life After Crucifixion Sep 13, 2008
Suzanne Olsson has written a plausible, more robust picture of the personality known as Jesus in the West which deserves the attention of both serious scholars and believers who wonder about the veracity of some of the claims about his life.
Not an arm-chair scholar, Suzanne has spent years with Persian, Afghani, Pakistani, Kashmiri, Indian, and Sri Lankan professionals and ordinary people in a search for the Jesus beyond the Gospels. She was caught up in the aftermath of "9/11" on the other side of the Kyber Pass. She often traveled by foot and animal power to identify the legendary sites associated with the major figures of Hebrew history and the Eastern ministry of Jesus and some of his disciples beyond the Tigris and Euphrates and down through India to Sri Lanka.
Old documents and artifacts accessed by Suzanne, with the assistance of indigenous scholars, reveal numerous corroborations of the life of Jesus and his family before and after his crucifixion. Material written in ancient Persian, Pali-Prakit (ancient Indian languages), Sanskrit, Vedic, Hebrew and other regional scripts fleshes out (literally) the saga of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Solomon, David, and Joseph and Jesus. This historical evidence, unknown to all but a few Western scholars, place these legendary archetypes, along with their female partners like Sarah, Mary, and Marjan, in real time and actual places. These mystical figures are grounded in history by their actual homes, temples, and tombs whose existence has been lost to the Western mind for almost two millennia.
A Timely Book. The recent plethora of sensational books in Europe and America about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, their bloodlines, the Mother Mary and Jesus' siblings, the angel Gabriel, and a virgin birth demonstrates that millions now question the unsubstantiated assumptions of the supernatural theology of Western religions. However, such speculative books would have a small market of credulous readers if the public had general access to the more authentic Hebrew and Buddhist literature and artifacts of the East in Olsson's book.
This review provides only a sample of Olsson's well-documented answers to the questions unanswered by Western historiography. The questions include: Who was the angel Gabriel who announced to Mary her conception of Jesus? Who were the magi who visited Jesus at the time of his birth? Why would the birth of an "illegitimate" son of a "poor" carpenter attract the attention of magi from afar and from Herod the local Roman governor?
Gabriel was likely one of the beings described in the Bible as the "gods who had intercourse with the daughters of men." The magi who visited Jesus appear to have been Hebrew kings or kings-in-waiting who were members of Jesus' own royal family tree descended from Noah. They acted as if Jesus was a son of one of the Biblical gods who was destined to become a magi-priest-king.
Why was Jesus described as physically different form others? Where did he spend the years between age 12 and 30? What was his Egyptian connection?
Jesus, described as one with unique physical features, and light hair and eyes, was associated with the beings responsible for Adam and others considered progeny of "miraculous" conceptions. As a member of the ruling elite he was reportedly educated in Egypt in preparation for assuming his birthright as the king of the area known as Kashmir.
What did the title "King of the Jews" mean as it was reportedly inscribed above Jesus' head on the cross? Why was Jesus missing from the tomb provided by Joseph of Arimathea after the crucifixion? And why could his disciples see and touch him later? What happened that led to the myth of resurrection?
His expected future as the king of the Jewish colony in Kashmir merited the title used in irony by his Sanhedrin opponents who wanted him killed. Taken from the cross before dusk by Pontius Pilate's soldiers who had been ordered to go easy on him, Jesus survived the crucifixion. When he was well enough, he presented himself to some of his followers. His survival with assistance from "heavenly beings" and subsequent departure from Israel demanded an explanation for his followers. Legends of earlier Hebrew leaders being taken into the heavens (ascending) in the gods flying vessels added fuel to the supernatural concept of resurrection invented in the New Testament.
Can evidence be found for the descendants of Jesus? How did Jesus fit into the Hebrew genealogy of royal (from the gods) blood? What did he do after leaving Jerusalem?
Olsson reports both the historical accounts of Jesus' family in Kashmir and the family traditions maintained by his alleged descendants. They describe his extended family as the lineage of Noah and the major Hebrew patriarchs. Jesus was reportedly still working with Thomas and other disciples in the East eleven years after the crucifixion. Texts refer to his coronation as the king of Kashmir and his participation in the 4th Buddhist Council circa 90 C.E. Some allege his death at age 100 or over. A case can be made for his progeny.
Why do Christians in the West have so little knowledge of the influence of Jesus in the East? Where was the physical body entombed?
When I was in Kashmir is 1988, embedded in my Western heritage, working on my book Gods, Genes, and Consciousness: Nonhuman Intervention in Human History, I had little insight into the region's history that lay beneath the surface or recorded in scattered documents. Suzanne Olsson has now made it possible for others to re-discover the lost half of the Indo-European traditions that gave birth to Western civilization. Tradition and artifacts point to Jesus' burial in Jewish fashion (east/west alignment) in the tomb known as Roza Bal, where also lies a 12th-century Muslim on a north/south axis.
Readers who look for a good index and bibliography will be frustrated with these deficiencies. The documented sources are scattered throughout the book, so keep notes as you go.
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