Ray Riegert and Thomas Moore (editors), The Lost Sutras of Jesus: Unlocking the Ancient Wisdom of the Xian Monks. (Berkeley: Ulysses Press, 2003).
Thomas Moore (b. 1940) is an American psychotherapist, former monk and writer of spiritual books such as Care of the Soul (1992), A Religion of One's Own (2014)., Ageless Soul: The Lifelong Journey towards Meaning and Joy (2017). For the past thirty years Moore has returned to the New Testament, Buddhist sutras and the Tao Te Ching as well as ancient Greek religion for continual spiritual edification. He affirms that "nothing could be more enriching than a highly poetic, life-energizing blend of wisdom traditions. He tells about the Jesus Sutras, but he claims Christianity as his base.
As a "lapsed Christian,'-' Ray Riegert's passion for biblical history and Eastern thought is found in his fascination with the fragile scrolls of the Jesus Sutras. He can hardly believe that after their discovery these beautifully written Sutras, which elegantly weave Eastern truths into Christian parables, a.re still largely unknown. He hopes that his book, coauthored with Moore, will, bring them back into the light.
Both authors of The Lost Sutras of Jesus believe that, “To know only one religion is to know none at all." The subtitle to their book is Unlocking the Ancient Wisdom of the Xian Monks. Their number was two dozen who traveled 3,000 miles from Persia to Changan (today's Xian) led by their bishop Aleben. The group of travelers were "Nestorians" of the church of the East, perceived by the church of the West as ''heretics" because they could not believe that Mary was the "mother of God."
When the monks reached Xian in the year 635 CE, they were welcomed by emperor Taizong, who was always open to new things, including religion. Taizong even built the monks a monastery where they could translate their Christian faith into the familiar idioms of Taoism and Buddhism of Tang dynasty China. In 781 CE Emperor Taizong even erected a 12-foot limestone stele with 20,000 Chinese ideograms and explanation in Syriac in describing the religion of the Xian monks. The stele now sits in the Forest of Steles in Xian where visiting tourists can notice the cross of the West arising from the Lotus, the flower of the East (Buddhism). When religions interact, they can be mutually enriching. Thus, Christianity seen through the lens of Taoism and Buddhism, can be more gentle, less ambitious, or even less competitive.
Wang Yuanlu was the self-appointed Taoist abbot who kept watch over the Gobi desert which included Dun Huang a stopping point for weary travelers along the Silk Road(s) stayed overnight in refreshing themselves and water their horses and camels. Sixteen miles from Dun Huang are the Mogao 500 caves dug out of the hillsides by devoted Buddhists periodically for more than a thousand years. The caves are decorated with frescoes and sculptures as well as a "library cave" where more than 50,000 manuscripts plus other art objects are stored. British Aurel Stein (1862-1943) and French Paul Pelliot (1878-1945), both archeologists who traveled the Silk Roads on different occasions. Both bargained with Abbot Wang and carted out wagonloads of ancient manuscripts for their respective countries' museums. Today we can say that all these Western scholars "stole" precious manuscripts from China. But deeper reflection would result in our thinking that such manuscripts would lie in the arid deserts for centuries to come without the world noticing them.
In today's world of increasing multiculturality, Riegert and Moore are urging us to be "post-pentecostal," that is to see "the mighty works of God" in the language and idioms of the other, instead of limiting them to our own. They have included a useful bibliography at the end of their book; they had drawn heavily on P.Y. Saeki, a Japanese scholar who wrote The Nestorian Documents in China (1951) and David Palmer, The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity (2001), not to mention our article "The Desert Gateway to China" in the Nov. 2015 issue of Tidings.
Review by Franklin J. Woo