Jesus and Siddhartha Gautama

[Cypress]

Agreed about evidence of travel to India, but aside from the Bible and a dubious note by Flavius Josephus, there is zero evidence Jesus existed.

Disagreed that Jesus or anyone else couldn't spend two decades traveling from Judea to India, living there and returning. OTOH, he wouldn't have to go all the way to India. Just far enough east to encounter the ideas of Buddhism and other Eastern religions.

Agreed on Zoroastrianism but I fail to see why you are in such denial that anyone from Judea could learn about Buddhism.

All I am saying is that in all the history and religion classes I have taken, I have never heard of any credible evidence that first century Christians interacted in any way with Indian Budhhists.

[Cypress]

That's the problem: there is no word from Jesus or anyone else from the time he was 12 until he came to Jerusalem at age 33. So where was he? Maybe I missed it.

I think the point of the Gospels was to provide witness to Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection. I do not think they were intended as biographies of his life in the way modern readers are accustomed to biographical literature

[Doc Dutch]

All I am saying is that in all the history and religion classes I have taken, I have never heard of any credible evidence that first century Christians interacted in any way with Indian Budhhists.

There's an old saying about how things happen when their time has come. This is why sometimes a few people will come up with the same idea, but only one was lucky (or skilled) enough to get credit for it. Tesla and Edison are two famous examples.

Even though Siddhartha predates Jesus by about 500 years, tech being what it was in those days, the concepts Buddha brought to India could have be independently brought by Jesus to Judea. Even so, I think the missing years present an opportunity for travel and education. Why do you think there is a 20 year gap in the history of Jesus?

[Doc Dutch]

Hopefully the experts will show up in the thread & dazzle us w/ their brilliance or try to baffle us w/ their bullshit.

LOL Always more fun that way.

For some reason there is no "thanks" bar under your name, so "thanks!"

[Doc Dutch]

I know many asked the same question, often filling in the gap w/ their best guess/educated guess, but why did he have to go some place?? Back then most ppl didn't travel far unless they had to + if he was a carpenter, could he have just been busy??

Perhaps he was driven. Secularists would think in more Earthly terms, but those who believe in the divinity of Jesus might think it was God driving him to explore the world a bit for perspective.

While most people would stay on one place, can we agree that, regardless of religious views, Jesus wasn't "most people"?

[Doc Dutch]

I think the point of the Gospels was to provide witness to Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection. I do not think they were intended as biographies of his life in the way modern readers are accustomed to biographical literature

A fair point, but that also leads to the possibility, and truism, that the Gospels were heavily edited posthumously. In fact, the entire earlier part of the life of Jesus could have been fabricated postmortem in order to fit the prophesies. That would explain the 20 year gap too.

[Bill]

Sure....


On this site I have always been surprised, in a mostly disappointed kinda way that some of the more prominent self proclaiming hard ass Christian never start threads on the topic, & some almost never started any threads when I arrived, & that is out of several thousand posts..

They're here to defend trump, not their faith, whatever that may mean or be.......

Have a great night!!!

[ThatOwlWoman]

As long as it's civil, anyone can voice their own beliefs, but the main topic is how how the philosophy of Jesus compares to Buddhism. It should be obvious to all that the differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament are as different as night and day.

It should be obvious to those who take a look that there are more similarities between the philosophy of Jesus and Buddhism than between the God of Peace, Love and Mercy as presented by Jesus and the God of Wrath as presented in the OT.

Atheists love to mock other religions with "sky daddy" while protecting their own beliefs as "disbelief". That's not the topic here. It's possible to discuss the philosophy of Jesus without divinity. When Christianity started out, there was great debate about whether Jesus was a prophet or divine. It's no secret the Gospels were written several decades after the Crucifixion and that the concept of the Trinity was not finalized until three centuries after the Crucifixion. In those days, aside from the Romans, the biggest killer of Christians were other Christians as their various beliefs evolved and conflicted.

Thanks for the clarification. I know next to nothing about Buddhist beliefs so I'll butt out of that discussion.

As far as religion in general and Christianity in particular, all faiths have borrowed from faiths that they have supplanted. Some have more heavily than others. There has been a lot written regarding the events in Jesus's life that mirror those of the Mithra faith/cult that was prevalent at the roughly the same historical time period. Born of a virgin, resurrected after three days of death, etc. I don't think it's a leap to wonder if the writers of the gospels and other NT books didn't borrow from Buddhism as well.

It's a shame that Kudzu no longer posts. She has vast knowledge of comparative religions and would have really added a lot to this discussion.

[Iolo/Penderyn]

A fair point, but that also leads to the possibility, and truism, that the Gospels were heavily edited posthumously. In fact, the entire earlier part of the life of Jesus could have been fabricated postmortem in order to fit the prophesies. That would explain the 20 year gap too.

I think you make it too conscious. If Jesus were the Messiah, then, since the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, Jesus must have been, so he was - and etcetera. I doubt that anyone ever knew all that much about Jesus's early life in reality.

[Cypress]

A fair point, but that also leads to the possibility, and truism, that the Gospels were heavily edited posthumously. In fact, the entire earlier part of the life of Jesus could have been fabricated postmortem in order to fit the prophesies. That would explain the 20 year gap too.

The historicity of the Gospels are always open to scholarly inquiry.

I believe the expectation that biographical literature should account comprehensively for a person's whole life is a modern conceit of the 19th and 20th centuries. That is not the way people wrote in antiquity. Homer and Virgil only wrote of the great deeds of Achilles, Odysseus, and Aeneas. Not about their whole lives. And the ancient Greeks considered the people and events of the Iliad and Odyssey to be absolutely historical.

[Doc Dutch]

Thanks for the clarification. I know next to nothing about Buddhist beliefs so I'll butt out of that discussion.

As far as religion in general and Christianity in particular, all faiths have borrowed from faiths that they have supplanted. Some have more heavily than others. There has been a lot written regarding the events in Jesus's life that mirror those of the Mithra faith/cult that was prevalent at the roughly the same historical time period. Born of a virgin, resurrected after three days of death, etc. I don't think it's a leap to wonder if the writers of the gospels and other NT books didn't borrow from Buddhism as well.

It's a shame that Kudzu no longer posts. She has vast knowledge of comparative religions and would have really added a lot to this discussion.

Studying Buddhist religions can be as messy as studying Protestant religions since there isn’t just one version. The main ones include Theravada, Mahayana, Tibetan and Zen, but there are several variations and distinct differences.

Although all do not recognize a God per se, several believe in an afterlife including reincarnation so they do believe in a spiritual world. Due to this, one perception is that there is a God and it is all of us; that we are all little pieces of God temporarily separated. Other variations, more pure to Siddhartha’s original thoughts, is that we don’t know and can’t know if there is anything beyond mortality. What we can do is choose how we live our lives at the moment and that it is best to live right. Siddhartha defined that as the “Eightfold Path” with guidance on living right, speaking right, acting right, etc: https://www.learnreligions.com/the-e...ld-path-450067

Similarly, while Jesus presented his sermons in a Jewish traditional manner, his guidance also including wisdom on how to live right such as love and trust God, love your neighbor and the Golden Rule.

FWIW, “Buddha” is a title just like “Christ” is a title. “Buddha” means Awakened One” or the "Enlightened One" and refers to a 5th-4th century BC Nepalese prince named Siddhartha Gautama. “Christ” means “anointed” or “messiah” with Jesus titled “the Christ” as in “the Messiah” or “the Anointed One”.

[Doc Dutch]

The historicity of the Gospels are always open to scholarly inquiry.

I believe the expectation that biographical literature should account comprehensively for a person's whole life is a modern conceit of the 19th and 20th centuries. That is not the way people wrote in antiquity. Homer and Virgil only wrote of the great deeds of Achilles, Odysseus, and Aeneas. Not about their whole lives. And the ancient Greeks considered the people and events of the Iliad and Odyssey to be absolutely historical.

Agreed people wrote differently in those days, which is why modern people can misunderstand certain concepts or take a certain translation literally instead of understanding a translation can include a lot of opinion or bias on the part of the translator. This, too, also figures into the cultural bias of the translator.

As anyone who has ever playing the game “Telephone” or “Gossip” or has met a fisherman knows, stories change through the retelling. Legends grow. This explains why there are differences between the Gospels on certain identical events such as how many, if any, angels were in Christ’s tomb. IMO, due to the human-induced flaws, to understand Christ requires reading all of the Gospels and trying to understand the general gist of what he was teaching rather than cherry-picking specific quotes to define everything Christ was teaching.

[Doc Dutch]

I think you make it too conscious. If Jesus were the Messiah, then, since the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, Jesus must have been, so he was - and etcetera. I doubt that anyone ever knew all that much about Jesus's early life in reality.

While I tend to agree, there is no evidence either way except what has been detailed in the Gospels. Since the authors of the Gospels went to so much trouble to detail the early life of Jesus, whether fabricated, exaggerated or not, it piques my curiosity that there is not a single word about his life between age 12 and 33ish. It appears his ministry began about 3 years before his execution. So what was he doing before then? Just building carts and tables with Joseph? The Christ doing nothing at all when, according to the Bible, he displayed spiritual precociousness at an early age? My question why wasn’t he doing this all of his life? Why did he virtually pop up out of nowhere and begin recruiting his apostles and starting his ministry at about age 30?

As you allude, one reason is because his early life is entirely fabricated and the authors didn’t fabricate his teens and twenties. OTOH, IMHO, there’s also the possibility that he left the region during a majority of that time, say late teens or so for a decade or so until he returned and began his ministry.

[Iolo/Penderyn]

While I tend to agree, there is no evidence either way except what has been detailed in the Gospels. Since the authors of the Gospels went to so much trouble to detail the early life of Jesus, whether fabricated, exaggerated or not, it piques my curiosity that there is not a single word about his life between age 12 and 33ish. It appears his ministry began about 3 years before his execution. So what was he doing before then? Just building carts and tables with Joseph? The Christ doing nothing at all when, according to the Bible, he displayed spiritual precociousness at an early age? My question why wasn’t he doing this all of his life? Why did he virtually pop up out of nowhere and begin recruiting his apostles and starting his ministry at about age 30?

As you allude, one reason is because his early life is entirely fabricated and the authors didn’t fabricate his teens and twenties. OTOH, IMHO, there’s also the possibility that he left the region during a majority of that time, say late teens or so for a decade or so until he returned and began his ministry.

I don't think I'd put any money on anything stated about Jesus's life before his baptism by John, but I don't think anybody consciously fabricated any of it. People think differently in different societies and religions, and our thinking is very, very unlike theirs, which is why I find all the fundamentalist 'faith'-pretending pretty ludicrous.

[Doc Dutch]

I don't think I'd put any money on anything stated about Jesus's life before his baptism by John, but I don't think anybody consciously fabricated any of it. People think differently in different societies and religions, and our thinking is very, very unlike theirs, which is why I find all the fundamentalist 'faith'-pretending pretty ludicrous.

That would be as fair an assumption as anything else since there is not way to prove it either way.