A Christian may respond with an outpouring of joy for two reasons:

One,  that people in the world are engaging with Jesus much more than most average Christians do; albeit negatively at times.

Two, these books are great conversation starters and effective evangelical tools. The books of this genre have neutralized the terms of conversations on Jesus so we can now boldly discuss Christ without the brand – conversion.

There are several reasons why Jesus might have lived in India, apart from it being a beautiful country with a lot of devout and intelligent people, there are indeed, on the surface, striking similarities between the teachings of Jesus and Buddha. But Elephants and rats are not the same merely because they both walk on all fours and chew their food before swallowing it. An intelligent analysis will point out several other crucial distinctions as well.

Steven Rockefeller points out some of these differences:

• Jesus taught resurrection (Jesus’ references to John as Elijah was only in reference to likeness. And with regards to the issue of being born again Jesus makes it clear that we don’t re-enter the womb but the Spirit of God embraces us) while Buddha taught reincarnation.
• Jesus talked about a personal creator but Buddhism in its original form promotes a non-theistic form of spirituality
• Jesus identified the problem with humanity as sin whereas for Buddha the problem with humanity is ignorance.
• Jesus identified himself as the way, the truth and the life whilst in the life of Buddha no such claim was ever made

Kersten seems suspicious of the authenticity of historical events. Is he then suspicious of the historical data he is quoting from? He fails to scrutinize his sources in the way in which he scrutinizes the Bible. It must be pointed out here that the Bible has always been open to historical verification unlike most other religious texts from India and Tibet to which he refers.

Kersten has completely ignored the historical Jewish context of Jesus, which makes his historical analysis of Jesus seem more like a conspiracy rather than a historical quest. For instance when Kersten refers to God does he mean the Jewish idea of God or the Buddhist understanding of spirituality (which is at root non-theistic).

I hope this helps us and encourages us to engage more meaningfully with our circle of influence.