PTI
London, Nov 20: Hollywood is all set to bring Jesus to India by filling the Bible's 'missing years' to tell the story of the Christ's journey across the country, living in Buddhist monasteries and speaking out against the iniquities of the caste system.
Film producers have delved deep into revisionist scholarship to piece together what they say was Jesus's life between the ages of 13 and 30, a period untouched by the recognized gospels.
The result is an action-packed adventure movie 'Aquarian Gospel', which portrays Jesus as a holy man and teacher inspired by a myriad of eastern religions, the Guardian reported.
The film title takes its name from a century-old book that examined Christianity's eastern roots.
The film's producers said the $20 million movie would be shot using actors and computer animation like the film '300', which retold the Battle of Thermopylae.
The script would follow the travels of Yeshua, believed to be the name for Jesus in Aramaic, from the Middle East to India. Casting for suitable Bollywood and Hollywood actors has begun.
"The Bible devotes just seven words to the most formative years of Yeshua's life saying: 'The boy grew in wisdom and stature'. The film will follow Christ's journey to the east where he encounters other traditions, and discovers the principles that are the bedrock of all the world's great religions," said Drew Heriot, the film's director, whose credits include the cult hit 'The Secret'.
The film, which is due for release in 2009, sets out to be a fantasy action adventure and accounts for Jesus's life with the three wise men as his mentors.
Although the producers say the film will feature a "young and beautiful" princess, it is not clear whether Jesus is to have a love interest.
The producers say they are hoping for commercial and spiritual gains. "We think that Indian religions and Buddhism, especially with the idea of meditation, played a big part in Christ's thinking. In the film we are looking beyond the canonized gospels to the 'lost' gospels," said the film's producer William Sees Keenan, according to the report.
"We are looking at new themes. In our story Jesus was loyal to the untouchables (in India) and he defended them with his life by saying that everyone could lead the Vedas (Hindus holy books)," said Keenan, a "lapsed Catholic".
The theory that Jesus' teachings had roots in Indian traditions has been around for more than a century. In 1894 a Russian doctor, Nicholas Notovitch, published a book called 'The Unknown Life of Christ', in which he claimed that while recovering from a broken leg in a Tibetan monastery in Ladakh, he had been shown evidence of Christ's Indian wanderings.
He said he was shown a scroll recording a visit by Jesus to India and Tibet as a young man. Indian experts claim that documentary proof remains of this Himalayan visit.
"I have seen the scrolls which show Buddhist monks talking about Jesus' visits. There are also coins from that period which show Yuzu or have the legend Issa on them, referring to Jesus from that period," said Fida Hassnain, former director of Archaeology at the University of Srinagar.
Hassnain, who has written books on the legend of Jesus in India, points out that there was extensive traffic between the Mediterranean and India around the time of Jesus' life.
The academic pointed out that in Srinagar a tomb of Issa (Jesus) is still venerated. "It is the Catholic church which has closed its mind on the subject. Historians have not."
Aware that religious passions are easily inflamed, after the Da Vinci Code film sparked protests among Indian Christians, its spokesman said that a movie about Jesus in India was plainly "fantasy and fiction."