Was Jesus a Buddist?

by Illyrian 37 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Illyrian

  Thank eclipse (believe it or not I've tried that nick and system told me it was taken lol)

  Thanks nvrgnbk. Personally I'm not a believer either way but I am trying to approach this rationally rather than dogmatically as believers usually do.

  I was expecting this to be rather hard pill to swallow for some people but that is why we call these things discussions :), but I'm ready to be proven wrong.
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  nvrgnbk

  Was Jesus Influenced by Buddhism? A Comparative Study of Gautama and Jesus

  </form> SKU: SKU234 Christianity as we know it today differs from the eastern religions in many ways. There seems to be a huge gap between East and West when comparing religious traditions. Dwight Goddard manages to bridge that gap, however, with this revealing book. Much of what we find in Christianity today had been added to the faith on top of the original teachings of Jesus. When we remove the additions and return to what Jesus originally taught, we suddenly find ourselves in a position to see things more clearly in relation to eastern wisdom. What is interesting is that Buddhism has suffered with the same problems of additions and distortions over the centuries as Christianity did, and has also failed to uphold some of the original teachings of its founder. For example, the Buddha told his followers that he was a man, not a god, and not to pray to him after he died. Yet today thousands of people pray to the Buddha for answers when he specificañy told his followers not to, and told them they could never expect those prayers to be answered (at least by him). But the Buddha was a great man who still left behind great wisdom. A powerful religion sprung up based on his teachings and flourished half a millennium before Jesus was ever born. Five hundred years is a lontime for a religion to spread and flourish, so Jesus could have easily-been influenced by Buddhist teachings as proposed by this book. Some would like to think that Jesus received all of his wisdom directly from God, which is one of the things that is supposed to make Christianity so special. But when Goddard examines the teachings of Jesus, strong parallels to Buddhism crop up in many cases. Is this just a coincidence? Goddard does a great job in revealing the parallel teachings. Many years in the life of Jesus remain to this day unaccounted for. A number of books have come out that strongly assert that Jesus had spent time in India, both as a teacher and as a student, complete with supporting evidence. Goddard also puts forth evidence that the Essenes, 6 of whom Jesus had contact with and may have been a member himself, had strong Buddhist influences. If either (or both) of these scenarios is true, then the parallels between Jesus and the Buddha, as outlined in this book, are more than just a coincidence.
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  nvrgnbk

  Saving the Savior In chapter 4 of this book, by Abubakr Salahuddin, the author explores at length the Jesus-as-Buddhist as a subset of the larger issue of Christianity contrasted with Eastern religions in general. Click here to download or view an extract from writing by the same author on this topic.

  Buddhism - Introduction The Buddhist connection is a very interesting and wide ranging topic. Holger Kersten has explored this area in both “Jesus Lived in India” and “The Original Jesus: The Buddhist Sources of Christianity”. Of course, Mr. Kersten is not the first individual to suggest a connection between Buddhism and Jesus Christ. Nicholas Notovitch discovered scrolls in a monasrty in Hemis that purported to Jesus having travelled to the east whilst young and studied the scriptures of several faiths, including Buddhism. Buddhism today is a major religion whose adherents have been numbered between 150 and 300 million people. Many Buddhists would reject the statement that Buddhism is a religion. Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 BC), known as the Buddha, was the founder of Buddhism. The word Buddha is a title that means “one who is awake,” i.e., one who has become enlightened. Buddha was born in Kapilavastu, near what today is the Indian-Nepal border. He was the son of the ruler of a kingdom, and at the age of 29 he began to realize the emptiness of his life. He had been raised in an environment of sheltered luxury. So he renounced all attachments to the world and began a quest for inner peace and inner enlightenment. For a few years he practiced Yoga and became a strict ascetic. Eventually he abandoned this method as pointless, choosing a middle ground between a life of indulgence and a life of self-denial. Finally, at age 35, he was sitting under a Bo tree, meditating. Through this meditation he finally reached the state of perfect enlightenment by moving through a series of higher states of consciousness. Introduction | Teaching of Buddhism | Jesus & Buddha
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  Illyrian

  Well what do you know, thank you for those links nvrgnbk I never read those two books.

  p.s. is that short for never going back? :)
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  Narkissos

  Before comparing any portrait of Jesus we might gather from the NT or extra-canonical Christian writings to anything else, we need to analyse the Christian sources first: exactly who says what about Jesus? Then focus on which sources can be reminiscent of Buddhism for instance: an indirect religious influence on Christian literature (through the cultural melting-pot of Hellenism) is much more likely than a direct Buddhist initiation of the man Jesus. For a few similarities that the latter hypothesis might explain, there would be a lot more in the Jesus traditions to explain away (apocalyptics, Jewish halakha, etc.).

  Not only that they spread Buddhism but they prompted creation of local Gnostic communities particularly in Judea who apparently mixed this new ideology with their old traditional texts. One of the most prominent was Essenes, who according to Josephus existed at least 150 before Jesus’ arrival. In fact the very name Essene is likely to have been derived from Indian word ‘Eeshani’ (a Hindu god). Apart from Josephus both Philo and Pliny mention their existence.
  By the time of Jesus Essenes were already very strong movements that promoted ascetic lifestyle and whose beliefs were millenarian and about the god who is beyond comprehension of human intelligence, which all bore remarkable similarity with views later expressed by John the Baptist. In fact by the time of Jesus’ arrival such worldviews were not uncommon among the many Jews. The question is was Jesus influenced by all of that in any way?

  Neither the name of the Essenes (Greek essènoi or essaioi, maybe from chasin, the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew chasid(im), or from Hebrew `etsah, council) nor their doctrines or practices (if we go by the common interpretation of the Qumran sectarian writings as "Essene") suggest an Indian influence -- Persian dualism is way closer.

  The remarkable admission is actually in the bible itself in both what it says about Jesus as a person and what it avoids. What we know is that by the age of 12 he was already well versed in religious ideas of his time as recorded in Luke (2:47).[is it unreasonable to conclude that such Essenic ideas have impressed young mind?]
  What is furthermore remarkable is that bible remains silent what happened to him from the age of 12 till he was 29, i.e. most of his life is missing. When he finally emerges to be baptized by John the Baptist he is already accomplished teacher. So what happened to Jesus in meantime? Could carpeting profession equip him with extraordinary insight and wisdom he displayed in later years?

  It is certainly not unreasonable that a historical Jesus could have been impressed by some form of Essenism (which has nothing to do with Buddhism imo). But the isolated Lukan upbuilding childhood story is hardly to be taken as a historical clue. Remember that neither Mark nor John say anything at all about Jesus' childhood.

  A Chinese text preserved in Tibetan "Glass Mirror" talks about Yesu, who was "a teacher and founder of the religion who was born miraculously, proclaimed himself the Savior of the World," and who was incidentally following Buddhist principles
  .
  The Persian Kamal u-Din by Said-us-Saddiq also talk about Jesus

  The Kashmiri Hindu text "Bhavishya Maha Purana" speaks about king Shalivahana meeting a foreigner calling himself Ishvara Putaram (Son of God)

  Dates? Context? Details?

  The lists of alleged parallelisms should be checked up item by item to see how many of them really apply to Buddha and to Jesus, and according to which sources... You'd be surprised at how little remains. (There was a thread recently on "world saviours" debunking the same kind of argument: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/136105/1.ashx)
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  justsomedude

  I swear I love this board, I was just thinking about this yesterday.

  I starting seeing someone who is buddist just last week, started reading the dhammapada(sp?) and couldnt help but notice how many of the... well whatever you call their verses, had some sort of corresponding thought in the bible. Really to the point of them being basically the same thought.
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  Warlock

  I wouldn't think so.

  Warlock
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  Paralipomenon

  Wasn't Job the greatest of all the orientals?
  
  The bible does support the belief of YHWH being worshiped in Asia, it just doesn't go into detail.
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  Narkissos

  Geographically speaking, Israel is part of Asia (continent) afaik -- and the setting of Job is rather the Arabian peninsula.

  Direct influences from Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia are clear -- this doesn't rule out influences from farther East but they are more likely to be fewer and indirect.
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  Leolaia

  Thanks Narkissos for saving me a lot of time making the same points.

  The initial post made some rather dubious statements about the Essenes and had a rather uncriticial view towards Notovitch and other presumed texts. "Philo for instance recorded presence of Buddhism in Alexandra (Egypt)". Is that the case? Did he refer to "Buddhism" by name? I think the author is thinking of the references to the Therapeutae, which some scholars (imho pretty legitimately) LINK to the Essenes, which then the author (not legitimately imho) LINKS to the Buddhists. A reference to the Therapeutae is very, very different from a reference to a Buddhist circle per se in Alexandria. I don't recall explicit references to "Buddhism in Alexandria" in Philo of Alexandria, but I could be wrong.

  Of course, Eastern Buddhism was not unknown to those in Alexandria who were informed on the outside world. Clement of Alexandria in the second century AD, for instance, said that "among the Indians are some who follow the precepts of Buddha (hoi tois Boutta peithomenoi), whom for his extraordinary sanctity they have honored as a god" (Stromateis, 1.15.71). Notice, though, that he is describing followers of Buddha in far-off India....not there in Alexandria.

  The initial post mentions very, very late works like the Ikmal-ud-Din which dates to the tenth century AD and which reports local traditions long after the spread of Christianity and Islam through the area. I have no idea about the relevance or veracity of the other "documents," tho the story of Notovitch is well known and his work is better classified as a modern pseudepigraphon than anything else. I personally have witnessed "Jesus in Japan" crackpottery when I visited Japan, complete with fake "ancient documents" to support the claim, so one should be skeptical about claims of a globetrotting Jesus, particularly when the evidence itself is dubious or late.

  That does not mean that there could not have been indirect influence, and quite possibly there was .... especially involving the eastern branch of Christianity which had more contact than in the west (see Edward Conze and Elaine Paigels who have argued for some kind of contact between Thomasine gnosticism and Buddhism). But one should bear in mind that influence is often in the other direction; the Lotus Sutra shows a direct dependence on NT gospel passages, some of which can be shown to be later redactions (e.g. a portion of ch. 5 that reflects John 9, which is absent in earlier witnesses to the text, e.g. the translation from Sanskrit into Chinese made by Kumajariva in AD 406).