"They walked with Jesus" is the incredibly boring and slow-paced sequel to "Jesus and the Essenes", a book I haven't read. Dolores Cannon is a New Age regression hypnotist who claims to have the ability to make people remember their past lives. In this book, she interviews two women who claim to have walked with Jesus in their previous lives.
The stories aren't even remotely convincing. They sound like typical New Age fantasies: Jesus is a pantheist, he talks about "heart chakras", studies with the Essenes, and doesn't suffer on the cross. Nor is there a bodily resurrection, since the soul of Jesus gets separated from the body. The body was probably stolen from the empty tomb, etc. (Why can't a New Age sage be resurrected? Do these people have some kind of hang up over physical resurrections?) At one point, Dolores quotes the notorious forgery "The Archko Volume" to back up a point made by one of her regressed subjects. The village of the lepers mentioned by the second subject could be inspired by "Ben Hur". A kind of ultra-mushy form of Sunday School Christianity is also visible in all the stories about Jesus being kind to children, constantly glowing with a white light, etc. He's nice to turtle doves, too.
I think it's obvious that the two regressed subjects, Mary and Anna (note their Biblical names!) are really enacting some kind of private psycho-dramas. Mary is a single, thrice-divorced woman in her late thirties. Is it really a co-incidence that her meeting with Jesus sounds subliminally sexual?
Anna is a Jew who has been interested in Jesus since childhood, something her parents and peers apparently took strong exception to. In her "past life memory", she is a young girl who meets with parental disapproval when she attempts to join Jesus as a disciple. Cannon claims that Anna's recollections are very reliable, since Anna never read the New Testament, nor had any other kind of knowledge about Jesus. This is silly. Are we to believe that an American adult living in a big city *never* had any exposure to the Christian message, never saw any Christian symbols, etc? At one point, Cannon is surprised by the fact that a Jew has heard of the Sea of Galilee. This surely tells us something about Cannon's prejudiced opinions about non-Christians...
Try again next week, Dolores!
In reality, Anna is spinning her story from memories of "Ben Hur", the New Testament and Catholic iconography. At several times, she claims that Jesus had a literal halo, or that light emanated from his heart. That's not Biblical, but I'm sure it's on display everywhere in LA, Anna's place of residence before moving elsewhere. But OK, I admit that Anna's knowledge of the Christian scriptures needs some honing. At one point, she refers to Jesus' disciples as Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel! But then, how many Sunday Christians can name more than two or three of Jesus' disciples?
In addition to the above, there's apparently a whole story surrounding the portrait of Jesus on the front cover of this book. It's based on a vision by Nanette Crist Johnson. Visions in Medjugorje, South America and Colorado is said to have confirmed that Jesus really did look like this. "The Archko Volume" and (I presume) Anna's recollections also confirm them.
And then, maybe not.
I think "They walked with Jesus" tell us more about a certain New Age/cultic subculture, than it does about the purported subject of the conversations.
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