When we travel back from Essenism to Gnosticism we approach nearer geographically and conceptionally to the source from which they both originated. Gnosticism, however, presumes to tell us more than Gotama chose to reveal as to the beginnings of things, and enters into details about various spiritual emanations which are at variance with any inferences that can be legitimately drawn from early Buddhism. In the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, under "Gnosticism," we read: "The Supreme Being, according to Gnosticism, was regarded as wholly inconceivable and indescribable; as the Unfathomable Abyss; the Unnameable. From this transcendant source existence sprang by emanation in a series of spiritual powers. It was only through these several powers that the Infinite passed into life and activity, and became capable of representation. To this higher world was given the name of Pleroma, and the divine powers composing it in their ever-expanding procession from the Highest were called Æons." Jesus, according to the Gnostic conception, was one of these higher Æons or Buddhas "proceeding from the Kingdom of Light for the redemption of this lower Kingdom of Darkness." If the above was whittled down to the bare statement that the Boundless, to be made perceptible, had to become active and creative, and that thus it happened that the Boundless was manifested by and in the universe, Gnosticism, on this point, would not greatly differ from what was probably in the mind of Gotama when he pointed out that the Uncreated or Unproduced must have existence, otherwise the created, the produced, could not be. In face of the historically-established fact that Buddhism had reached Palestine before the Christian era had commenced, and that Buddhistic influences were widely disseminated throughout the Holy Land when Jesus arose upon the scene, I wish to maintain that Jesus, although nurtured in the mixed society of ceremonial and Essenic Jews, cannot be claimed as belonging to the Essenes or any other sect _after_ he emerged from his long retirement and commenced his ministry. During the time of his withdrawal from publicity it must be assumed that he was growing in wisdom, and continued to do so until the perfect enlightenment came to him, when the Holy Ghost descended upon him, and he knew himself to be the Son and symbol of God, and, as such, capable of revealing the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven to those who had ears to hear and eyes to see. This view, or reading, of the Scriptures was the cardinal tenet of the adoptionist Christology of the Paulician school in Armenia. Jesus, as human, was undoubtedly begotten, not made, and died. Jesus, as divine, became so, not by the conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the _manhood_ into God--first the natural, after that the spiritual, as St. Paul says. Jesus, as God, was immortal.