Vie Esoterique de Jesus de Nazareth et Origines Orientales du Christianisme. by BOSC, Ernest (1837-1913) - 1902

Paris:: Dorbon Aine, 1902., 1902. 8vo. [vi], 448 pp. Modern red half cloth, marbled boards. Fine copy. Limited edition, each copy numbered, this being copy #938 with the author's ink-stamped signature. The "eastern origins" of Christianity is a theme in this book. / Bosc wrote at the end of the 19th century and, at the beginning of the next, numerous works devoted to esotericism, the transmutation of metals, black magic, astral life, magic mirrors, electro-culture (of plants), theosophy, as well as a number of drugs (hashish, opium, other psychic substances). / "Bopp's researches, carried with wonderful penetration into the most minute and almost microscopical details of linguistic phenomena, have led to the opening up of a wide and distant view into the original seats, the closer or more distant affinity, and the tenets, practices and domestic usages of the ancient Indo-European nations, and the science of comparative grammar may truly be said to date from his earliest publication. In grateful recognition of that fact, on the fiftieth anniversary (May 16, 1866) of the date of Windischmann's preface to that work, a fund called Die Bopp-Stiftung, for the promotion of the study of Sanskrit and comparative grammar, was established at Berlin, to which liberal contributions were made by his numerous pupils and admirers in all parts of the globe. Bopp lived to see the results of his labours everywhere accepted, and his name justly celebrated. But he died, on the 23rd of October 1867, in poverty, though his genuine kindliness and unselfishness, his devotion to his family and friends, and his rare modesty, endeared him to all who knew him." Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition, 1911. / "Bopp must, more or less, directly or indirectly, be the teacher of all who at the present day study, not this language or that language, but language itself — study it either as a universal function of man, subjected, like his other mental or physical functions, to law and order, or else as an historical development, worked out by a never ceasing course of education from one form into another." – Martineau, Russell, "Obituary of Franz Bopp", Transactions of the Philological Society, London, 1867, pp. 305–14.