I am not sure if you have heard this argument before, but someone recently argued with me that Christianity, and possibly even parts of the Old Testament, are nothing more than borrowed stories and traditions about Buddha with name-changes to fit the Jewish perspective of the writers. Obviously I don’t believe this…but some people have written rather extensive articles on it (I have included one below) and some of the claims are definitely interesting, especially those claims about the simalarities of parables, stories, and names of apostles, etc. between Jesus and Buddha. Has anyone actually done any research on this?
I’m not a scholar on this topic, only an ametur, but there are a few things I might add.
First and most obviously is this: Jesus of Nazereth is called the Christ in a way very similar to Gautama Sidhartha beig called the Buddha. Both are titles refering to a state of conscious unity with the Father or Source.
So while Jesus and Gautama are not the same person, a scholar of comparative religion could make a case that they were of a similar accomplishment in the realm of what’s called “enightenment” or “realizartion.” That is why there are conjectures around that Jesus and Gautama are “brothers.”
Second, while I’m sure there was a historical Jesus who was what in our tradition we call The Son of God, what that means has been a bit clouded by piety and the vagaries of literary style of that time, that being a lack of clarity between historical fact and spiritual guidance. In fact, there are many earlier stories than Jesus’ that involve virgin birth, miracls, death and resurrection.
I say that because the other stories are designed, as parables are, to convey an inner meaning. In those cases, the story is meant, in the hands of an adept, to be a mnemonic and a guide to a very particualr sort of inner transformation that is rarely reached. And becauser this transformation yields a state that is diffent from the ordinary one we walk around in, called “sleep” by those adepts, it is not easily understood. Even Jesus said “let the dead bury the dead.” Certaily he didn’t mean that those in graves should get out and bury the freshly passed. He was refering t the stte f “sleep” that nearly all of us walk around in thinking, unfortunately, that we are awake. If you have ever experienced an extrapordinary mental state, perhaps you have a clue as to what’s being talked about here as a permanent condition.
Anyway, since we can predicate that we are *all *made in the image and likeness of God, it is not a great leap to surmise that many books of ancient origin written as reportage and for guidance from that state of accomplishment must have similarities and use similar symbols. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they sourced each other, though that may have happened as well. I mean today we hear politicians make mistatements and then others of their party quote them as sources of fact.
Anyway, thats a start. Hope it at least stirs some a bit in thier sleep. If you say “Bit I’m not!” we may have something to look at.
