Freethought & Rationalism Archive

ChandraRama · 07-29-2009, 06:00 PM

http://argumentativeindians.blogspot...n-daruber.html

...
I provide, from a report favorable to Lindtner, a rough sketch of what the philologist is upto:

>>Lindtner pointed out how virtually each word and sentence found in the Greek text could be traced back to two independent texts belonging to the same corpus of Buddhist scripture, namely the Mûlasarvâstivinaya. One text provides the legend of Gautama, the eponymous progenitor of Gautama the Buddha. The other text is the Mahâparinirvânasûtra, first edited in Sanskrit, Pâli, Tibetan with a translation from the Chinese, by the late German scholar Ernst Waldschmidt.

It could then be shown how “Matthew” first had cut these two sources to little pieces and then pasted them together anew. In this way he had preserved nearly all the original words but created a new whole, a collage, a mosaic. The result therefore, was purely fictitious. “Matthew” displays a most artificial way of “translating” - a fact that has lead to much confusion. Sometimes he translated the sense of the words or sentences, sometimes he translated the sound of words and sentences, and sometimes he tried to combine the sound and sense of the original Sanskrit in the Greek. Nearly all the motives had been taken over from the two Sanskrit sources - e.g. the crucifixion and the Eucharist - but combined anew.
...

mountainman · 07-29-2009, 06:52 PM

This is a very interesting argument.

Does anyone know the estimated date
of authorship and/or publication of the
MSV, or links thereto?

Quote:

The main Buddhist source of the NT Gospels is the Mûlasarvâstvâda-vinaya (MSV), a huge collection of texts which also include the celebrated Catusparisatsutra (CPS) and the Mahâparinirvânasûtra (MPS). CPS and MPS were edited in Sanskrit and Tibetan by the German scholar Ernst Waldschmidt, Berlin 1952-1962 & 1950-1951, respectively. The CPS also forms a part of the Samghabhedavastu (SBV), the Sanskrit text of which (from Gilgit) was edited by Raniero Gnoli, Rome 1977-1978. Full references to these and other relevant sources may be found in the indispensable Sanskrit-Wörterbuch der buddhistischen Texte aus den Turfan-Funden, Göttingen 1973.

Toto · 07-29-2009, 07:10 PM

It sounds dubious, like parallelomania gone wild.

There is a wesbite: www.jesusisbuddha.com

There is a rejoinder here which echoes my first impression that Lindtner was forcing parallels from chance coincidences:

Quote:

. . .

Here we discover a main Secret about Christian Lindtner: A deep unwillingness to ponder the Jewish (and Hellenistic) background of the Gospels. ....

. . .

The “translation”-technique used by the Buddhist to create the Gospels as presented by CL is such an astonishing nonsense, that no scholar could possibly take it serious. CL refers to keeping sometimes the meaning of the alleged source text, sometimes consonant values (a Semitic concept alien to Indo-European languages!) or both with as many exceptions and modifications as to make the evidence fit into the hypothesis (German: Hinein-Interpretation): Thus consonants may represent any other consonants of the same group, Liquids sometimes are dropped or interchanged, the meaning sometimes shuns the letter by letter riddle-translation. With Robert Countess I would advise CL to take a arbitrary narrative – even some with a similar (religious) development structure like Goethe’s Werther and apply his method upon it: It would work. CL here very dangerously deviates from sound scholarship into the dungeons of half-insane amateurism. I remind the reader at the amateurs looking for an Ur-language for all the world’s languages etc.

. . .

BUT - this author, Dr. Burkhard Scherer, goes on:

Quote:

Having said that, what rests? Is there no Buddhist influence in the gospels? Since more than hundred years Buddhist influence in the Gospels has been known and acknowledged by scholars from both sides. Just recently, Duncan M. Derret published his excellent “The Bible and the Buddhist” (Sardini, Bornato [Italy] 2001). With Derret, I am convinced that there are many Buddhist narratives in the Gospels. I would differentiate between narratives (like parables), motifs (like Jesus walks on water) and some proper names like place-names etc. (like Magad[h]a). This narratives and elements were transmitted orally by mercenaries (esp. Parthians) along the trade routes, i.e. the Sea Routes and the Silk Route(s). They all have in common that they have a clear contextual and /or narratological functions in Buddhist sources and lack this function in the Gospels so that their Buddhist origin is narratologically proved even without taking more iconographical chronological evidence in favour of the Buddhist texts into consideration. I gave some examples in my book “Buddha” (Gütersloh 2001, Basiswissen). So there is “much Buddhist stuff going on in the Gospel”. But its not the only source, not even a main source for the NT.

And there is this very unfortunate website here in which Lindtner appears to be a Holocaust denier.

So - there may be Buddhist sources to the Bible, but Lindtner is not going to show that.

mountainman · 07-30-2009, 07:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

It sounds dubious, like parallelomania gone wild.

An apt description of the New Testament itself.

Quote:

So - there may be Buddhist sources to the Bible, but Lindtner is not going to show that.

Demonstration that Buddhist sources of a story very similar
to the NT story have a chronology that is earlier than the
presumed (unknown) chronology for the NT would suffice
to get the appropriate interest. However I have not seen
any sort of chronology expressed anywhere on the website.

Buddha coins exist for the mid-third century in Sassanid Persia
and we may reasonably presume that the story of Buddha was
well known to the epoch between Ashoka and Marcus Aurelius.

Clivedurdle · 07-31-2009, 03:09 AM

Please remember that from Alexander the Greek Persian and Buddhist worlds were the same thing. Where were those Greek statues of Buddha blown up again? Afghanistan was it?

The Library at Alexandria would definitely be collecting and translating everything it could.

Back Again · 07-31-2009, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Please remember that from Alexander the Greek Persian and Buddhist worlds were the same thing. Where were those Greek statues of Buddha blown up again? Afghanistan was it?

The Library at Alexandria would definitely be collecting and translating everything it could.

It's anachronistic to tie Alexander the Great to the Buddhas in Afghanistan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan

Clivedurdle · 07-31-2009, 12:39 PM

I don't mean a direct connection

Quote:

Greco-Buddhist art is the artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural syncretism between the Classical Greek culture and Buddhism, which developed over a period of close to 1000 years in Central Asia, between the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE, and the Islamic conquests of the 7th century CE.

Greco-Buddhist art is characterized by the strong idealistic realism of Hellenistic art and the first representations of the Buddha in human form, which have helped define the artistic (and particularly, sculptural) canon for Buddhist art throughout the Asian continent up to the present.

It is also a strong example of cultural syncretism between eastern and western traditions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhist_art

So it is quite reasonable to look for syncretisms in the other direction using different media!

mountainman · 07-31-2009, 06:31 PM

According to the following the site is associated with Buddhism from the second century. In the third century we have Buddhist coins minted in Sassanid Persia, we have Philostratus in the Roman empire, under the imperial sponsorship assembling the "Life of Apollonius of Tyana" who trecks to India, and we have the Persian prophet Mani emulating the journey made by Apollonius of Tyana to India - perhaps after reading Greek Philostratus.

The Buddhist presence in the empire has not been examined because the "Christian Glasses" which everyone uses to see history have been designed so that only "christian history" has any relevance to the universe. Any anachronisms perceived are a result of a lack of objective (ie: not christian-centric) ancient historical education. We might reasonably infer that Buddha had a presence in Alexandria and that the Jesus character had none until the Alexandrians learnt about him from Constantine.

From WIKI

Quote:

History of the Afgan Buddhas

Bamyan lies on the Silk Road, a caravan route linking the markets of China with those of Western Asia. Until the eleventh century AD, Bamyan was part of the kingdom of Gandhara. It was the site of several Buddhist monasteries, and a thriving center for religion, philosophy, and Indian art. It was a Buddhist religious site from the second century up to the time of the Islamic invasion in the ninth century.

Monks at the monasteries lived as hermits in small caves carved into the side of the Bamyan cliffs. Many of these monks embellished their caves with religious statuary and elaborate, brightly-colored frescoes.

The two most prominent statues were the giant, standing Buddhas Vairocana and Sakyamuni, identified by the different mudras performed, measuring 55 and 37 metres (180 and 121 feet) high respectively, the largest examples of standing Buddha carvings in the world. They were perhaps the most famous cultural landmarks of the region and the site was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site along with the surrounding cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamyan Valley.

The smaller of the two statues was built in AD 507, the larger in 554.[4] The statues are believed to have been built by the Kushans, with the guidance of local Buddhist monks, at the heyday of their empire.

The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang passed through the area around AD 630 and described Bamyan as a flourishing Buddhist center "with more than ten monasteries and more than a thousand monks". He also noted that both Buddha figures were "decorated with gold and fine jewels" (Wriggins, 1995). Intriguingly, Xuan Zang mentions a third, even larger, reclining statue of the Buddha.

07-29-2009, 06:00 PM	#1
ChandraRama Regular Member Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: US Posts: 107	Ancient Buddhist texts as source for NT? http://argumentativeindians.blogspot...n-daruber.html ... I provide, from a report favorable to Lindtner, a rough sketch of what the philologist is upto: >>Lindtner pointed out how virtually each word and sentence found in the Greek text could be traced back to two independent texts belonging to the same corpus of Buddhist scripture, namely the Mûlasarvâstivinaya. One text provides the legend of Gautama, the eponymous progenitor of Gautama the Buddha. The other text is the Mahâparinirvânasûtra, first edited in Sanskrit, Pâli, Tibetan with a translation from the Chinese, by the late German scholar Ernst Waldschmidt. It could then be shown how “Matthew” first had cut these two sources to little pieces and then pasted them together anew. In this way he had preserved nearly all the original words but created a new whole, a collage, a mosaic. The result therefore, was purely fictitious. “Matthew” displays a most artificial way of “translating” - a fact that has lead to much confusion. Sometimes he translated the sense of the words or sentences, sometimes he translated the sound of words and sentences, and sometimes he tried to combine the sound and sense of the original Sanskrit in the Greek. Nearly all the motives had been taken over from the two Sanskrit sources - e.g. the crucifixion and the Eucharist - but combined anew. ...

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07-31-2009, 03:09 AM	#5
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	Please remember that from Alexander the Greek Persian and Buddhist worlds were the same thing. Where were those Greek statues of Buddha blown up again? Afghanistan was it? The Library at Alexandria would definitely be collecting and translating everything it could.

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